I am looking at buying a house which is not connected to mains gas, so the best option seems to be getting a biomass boiler installed in a separate outbuilding.
So rather than randomly trawling the web can anyone recommend a company/installer in the Southwest?
Not really an answer to your question but our new Windhager has just been delivered this afternoon 
rich - the problem with a recommendation is that few people have any experience beyond of their own machine.
I have a Woodviking Biotriplex and Ulma burner. If you search over the last 18 months or so for me and pellets you should find plenty of posts about it and pics.
If you want to find out more about woodviking, I recommend speaking to Mike Thorne at http://www.ecogreenenergy.co.uk/About-eco-green-energy-devon.aspx and he's in the SW
He has been helpful to me in the past even though I did not get my boiler through him.
My neighbour has a bells and whistles OkoFEN http://www.oekofen.co.uk/ which cost probably 3 times as much as mine, but it's very advanced. Mines a bit more hands on. But Ive started burning logs in mine daily and saving a ton of money in the process. In comparison with oil, my pellets are about 5-10% cheaper. Burning firewood that I can get cheap, is probably less than 30% of the price of oil.
You'll rarely find an installer that knows more than one manufacturer so there's little help researching out there. You just have to do the leg work yourself.
feel free to ask any qus in here or at my PM.
BTW whatever you do, check its a certified boiler and installed by a certified installer.
The Woodviking pelletmaster is certified but my biotriplex model has not yet been tested and certified which is a pain as Im not eligible for RHIs yet
http://www.microgenerationcertification.org/mcs-consumer/product-profile.php?ID=327928
Thanks stoner!
Don't run a bio mass boiler myself, but there are several at work and I have some involvement in chip supply.
My observations are that they run best as big systems, running near capacity to avoid soot and ash buil-up, don't skimp on chip quality - you'll just get moist stringy chip that does the auger/boiler no favours.
Wood pellet is more consistent but not far off oil prices. You'll need a lot of dry storage space. One of our properties stores 200 ton chip in a 2000sq.m barn, but they do run a huge system and will burn most of that a year. Green credentials are dubious considering the number of machine hours to process. Timber prices are fairly good right now, which is nice, for me.
Not trying to put you off, just what a salesman may forget.
I am buying a house which is off mains gas, and considering oil prices and the way the seem to creep higher and higher, wood pellets seem like a good alternative.
The RHI, and grant to have the boiler installed reduce the pain as well
I've no personal experience of any but do work on the periphery of the biomass sector. SW Woodshed has a database of suppliers in the south west.
Logs boilers tend to be hungry beasts and chip boilers fussy eaters. In my experience both logs and chips suffer from quality issues, seasoning for logs and size consistency for chip, though every supplier will tell you their product is bone dry and perfectly sized. Pellets are becoming widely available, are an (almost) consistent product and there seems to be a good range of smaller/medium sized pellet boilers.
Having talked to a number of biomass fuel suppliers I know they would all plead with you to spend as much time thinking about fuel storage as about what boiler to get. Forest Fuels may be worth talking to from a fuel perspective as they deal in all major biomass fuel types.
Thanks SB, I have a dry stone annex attached to the house which I am hoping to store the boiler/thermal store and pellets, and I also have a reasonable size barn/stable which is dry as well, which can be used if necessary.
I really like the look of the log wood boilers. I have no experience of them but the stuff made by hdg-bavaria.com looks suitably Teutonic and burly. I like that they take logs and not pellets.
richc where in the soutwest are you? I have a plumber who fits pellet boilers all the time and he is excellent quality. Exeter/mid devon although he travels all over.
The other alternative is heat pumps. We have an air source one that removes about three degrees of heat from a ton of air it passes over an element, like an air conditioner in reverse, except that it uses the heat to heat water up to about 50 degrees. You can get ground source ones, if you have a large lawn or area of land, that do the same but from a salne solution piped throgh a sort of underfloor system in the lawn. The theory being that, even at 0 degrees C, there's still 273 degrees of energy to take out of the ground or air.
Solar is also good if you have roof area facing the midday sun.
My advice with solar, heat pumps and biomass is to shop around. There are so many companies offering green energy solutions and have got rich quick on the back of government grants but may not offer you the best solution. Some have built up in an almost competitionless environment, so haven't been rivalled on price or quality until recently. Ask to look at existing installations they've done and talk to other customers first.
I am in Bristol, and am starting to get quotes, so if you have his number that would be great.
I am looking at solar water heaters, as the rear of the house faces southwest, so would be a good place to put it. Air and ground source won't work well as the house was built in the 18/19th century so the insulation isn't great and I can't improve it that much without hitting other problems.
dunno if he would travel to bristol... I'll send you email and you can contact him and ask.
edit no email in your profile. email me baby.
As the price of oil goes up, so does the cost of our machine work, hauling, chipping, drying - so chip price will increase too.
Pellets are a by-product of the big mills.
Strongbow makes good points.
One of our properties is swapping out an over-specced, fussy chip boiler for a smaller pellet boiler.
Another friend has a ground source heat-pump, but not a lot of ground on their plot, so they drilled down to the heat. Pump runs at night to warm underfloor heating, like a giant night storage heater really.
so they drilled down to the heat.
Is it a geothermal system? If it is, hot rocks or a loooooong drill there. I'd guess a ground source heat pump so it just exchanges heat / cold with the earth rather than drawing up heat. Curious as to where they are if it is geothermal.
there's still 273 degrees of energy to take out of the ground or air.
It's a ground source system, just had to go down due to lack of space. Heat exchanging, not heat seeking. My vague description at fault there, sorry if you were hoping for some hot rocks.
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