anyone know roughly what the total costs of installing a ground source heat pump system are? 10k, 20k?
It would be horizontal coils not a borehole, and 3 bed detached bungalow.
thanks
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ground source heat pumps
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Posted 1 year ago #
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lots! probably the higher of your two prices, and maybe more
Posted 1 year ago # -
Not the same but we were quoted £6K for air sourced so this plus cost of pipes as a very rough guess.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Lakes - where are you?
Have a look at gogeothermal.co.uk
Guy called Tim Williams who knows his stuff and very helpful.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Ive seen figures of c. £1k per kW.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Depends on lots of things, but you need to think about type of heating (underfloor is best), level of insulation in the house, floor area, how many folk living in it (water requirements).
Without doing a proper survey, 10-15k would be my finger in the air.
If your in Scotland and want a formal quote, drop me a line, email addy in my profile.
EDIT: Unless you are able to do the groundworks yourself or the work is being done as part of a new build, our latest advice is that Airsource is a more economical alternative (based on Nibe and Danfoss pumps). The extra outlay of the ground collector offset against efficiency, will take over 10 years to recoup.
EDIT 2: You might want to hold off until the RHI payments have been confirmed too.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Have you really investigated it?
I know it's total hearsay, but the two I know of though personal friends, one has it completely removed and the other is regretting it & considering changing to a normal heating system at extensive cost (on a brand new build)
Posted 1 year ago # -
Hmmm.
Was just wondering about options for a house i'm thinking of buying. Its on oil at the moment (no mains gas anywhere near) and i knew there are grants / RHI payments available, but just wondered what total installed costs could be.
Anyone know if LPG is much cheaper than oil?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Anyone know if LPG is much cheaper than oil?
About the same - both expensive.
Halfway house options include getting a multifuel stove and plumbing that into a thermal heat store. You then have the choice / convenience of oil, but can also use the stove when you are feeling energetic.
Or of course there is the pellet / biomass option.
Posted 1 year ago # -
No doubt lots of ppl are very happy with it, I'd just advise investigating it throughly, considering the two cases I've heard of.
Should be seeing the 2nd person soon, so will ask him his current thoughts.Talk to people who run the systems & not just companies trying to sell you it.
Posted 1 year ago # -
lakes - read some of the stuff Ive posted in here.
http://www.singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/and-the-heating-oil-cartel-swings-into-action-once-againwill pop back in and answer any question you have in a bit.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Talk to people who run the systems & not just companies trying to sell you it.
+1Posted 1 year ago # -
Have you compared this with chp as a viable alternative? The boiler is the most costly and the more you spend up-front, the more efficient this will be.
Wood chip pellets are relatively cheap (at the moment, there are a lot of wood chip pellet power stations being built that will increase the cost of the fuel, trust me) and will provide electricity as a primary energy and the exhaust will provide usable heat for heating.
As long as the forestry sector responds to the increase in demand, there should be no major hike in cost.Posted 1 year ago # -
I know it's total hearsay, but the two I know of though personal friends, one has it completely removed and the other is regretting it & considering changing to a normal heating system at extensive cost (on a brand new build)
Yup my brother had it installed at great expense and their heating bills are currently astronomical.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Yup my brother had it installed at great expense and their heating bills are currently astronomical.
I hope he's had the installers back to it. Setting them up to run efficiently requires experience. There are plenty of new firms setting up who don't have the experience to do the job properly.
Posted 1 year ago # -
Whereabouts are you Lakerider?
I only ask because I used to work in the green energy/eco field and might be able to introduce you to someone who can advise better.
Don't get hung up on putting in GSH just because the property is on oil. Many installs (e.g. 3 bed) can easily be £10k-20k, depending on bores vs trenches and the amount of additional groundwork/excavation necessary.
Oil isn't that bad at all, unless you're on an absolute budget. Sure, it tends to go up in winter before dropping again, but going for GSH or even ASH may not be necessary. Also depends on rads and boiler(s) etc - if they're crap then you'll probably need to replace them anyway. Plus GSH can ruin gardens, i.e. cool it down and prevent much from growing. Still relatively new in the UK, unlike Scandanavia et al.
What does the oil do? CH and HW? Is there an immersion?
Posted 1 year ago # -
Get the heat loss calls done for the house - if it is more than 50w/msq and you have radiators, then it's going to be a new heating system as well as the ashp/gshp install.
Posted 3 months ago # -
The Ecovision chaps seem fairly credible
Posted 3 months ago # -
£1000 per kw + a bit more for the ground source system. Not for anything else. Underfloor/connecting to existing system etc.
Also not including digging trenches or concrete required.Existing house - Investigate the high temp air source units from Daikin and marry up with existing oil boiler.
Still not cheap but an awful lot cheaper than GS. The high temp units can heat radiators properly meaning you won't need to change them and if it can't cope or you undersize a bit then the oil boiler can kick in. Look at a buffer vessel for the air source to feed into and the oil boiler comes in when flow/return temps drop too low.
Posted 3 months ago # -
we've got air-sourced.. fantastic value for money but a little noisy
Posted 3 months ago # -
I have done a fair amount of evaluation of these systems for commercial installations. My comments would as follows:
1. Stoner is about right for commercial installations, approximately £1K per 1KW.
2. A horizontal loop is the second cheapest way of collecting heat so that saves money.
3. Evaluationing run cost savings is all about relative coefficient of performance and unit costs of enegy. In a modern commercial building you can achieve cop of 5+, 4+ are common. This means for every 1kwh of electricity you pay for you get 4-5 kwh of heat. A gas system can never have a cop of more than 1. However gas is to a commercial buyer typically a third of the cost of electricity. So if you want 4 units of heat, a gshp will cost you 1 in electricty whereas gas will cost 1.33. (Air source cops are between 2 and 3 and capital cost is less.
4. Add in subsidy which should be forth coming. In the commercial sector, the rhi is moving forward breakevens so it is starting to make sense to switch from mains gas.
5. Average life of heat pumps is 20 years so replacement costs are less, plus you only have to pay for the loop once, the last 100 years.
Posted 3 months ago # -
Have a look at biomass, probalby the cheapest fuel per kW
Posted 3 months ago # -
On commercial systems, Biomass is a lot more expensive than GSHP over a 20 year period.
Posted 3 months ago # -
Mefty - why is that? GSHP groundworks can be very costly, RHI payments for Biomass are very good too.
Posted 3 months ago # -
Ground source here. Had to dig up the garden anyway. I think the it was about 16k for the heat pump and all the underfloor heating for downstairs. Additional costs for groundworks and engineered floor. But the house is just over 3000 sqft so we needed a 8kw NIBE heat pump.
Been in three years and it's been fantastic. Cut our electricity bills by about 70% (but we did have storage heating which was useless and didn't keep us warm) Payback is going to take a while but as we have no gas here, it's a fantastic solution and I love the UFH.
Posted 3 months ago # -
Bear - Big commercial biomass boiler are pretty expensive, the capital cost on big systems can be 2/3 of the cost of a GSHP system, added to the shorter lifespan, higher servicing costs, lower RHI and fuel costs they seem to work out expensive. Having said that the comparison I was looking at involved a small bore field for the max heat output so was cheaper than some.
Posted 3 months ago # -
It's just a fridge in reverse. Bodge one up yourself: http://ecorenovator.org/diy-ground-source-heat-pump/
Posted 3 months ago # -
^ mefty is correct.
Be aware that COP's can vary lots - my boss only gets 2.5...
Also, if you have mains gas, work out that it has 1/4 the 'carbon weight' per unit of electricity - so unless your COP is more than 4-5, you achieve no saving in carbon emissions.
Posted 3 months ago # -
Posted 3 months ago #
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You achieve a huge saving in carbon if you are changing from oil, CoP is above around 2.5, which if designed properly it will be:
carbon factorsOil including boiler efficiency is around 0.3kg/kWh
Assuming a CoP of 3, which is reasonable (4 or 5 as quoted above is not likely), you get around 0.17kg/kWh.The key is that CoP, try to get it included in the contract, essentially, the bigger the loop the larger the CoP will be, and the installer should be able to provide you with calculations showing the ground temperature and CoP over 50 years. They will need your current heating bills to do this.
I have ignored hot water, as this will kill you CoP, you will need to heat this electrically. GSHP works best when the flow temperature of the heating is low, around 45 is what we generally work to. But this means your current radiators wont get the hopuse up to temperature, you'll need either underfloor heating or much bigger radiators.
Posted 3 months ago # -
also it will pay for itself quite quickly. Air source is yet to be proven as saving carbon I believe, for the same reason, the CoP is low when it's cold outside, ie when you actuually need it
Posted 3 months ago # -
I know Ive hung my hat on biomass and solar thermal (q.v. ad nauseum), but I never thought of heat pumps as being particularly economically efficient unless they can be driven by a reliable, off grid, renewable electricity source, such as a water mill or combination of PV/wind/water.
Pegging a CoP to electricity costs means your costs are still subject to electricity generation inflation, although admittedly at the reduced at a factor of 1/CoP.
However, electricity inflation is not going to be any lower than RPI over the longer term. On the other hand, I believe biomass fuel supply will for sometime yet exceed demand keeping biomass fuel costs down. Entry to the biomass fuel supply market is not restrictive, the equipment is relatively inexpensive and the raw fuel source is plentiful as much of it is just wasted at the moment.
As captaindanger says above as well, GSHP is not particularly useful for providing domestic hot water. And to state the bleeding obvious it doesnt run in a power cut, although you could use an inverted battery supply but the pump power requirements would make it prohibitive. My biomass system can continue to run the UFH, radiators and DHW with <100W of electrical energy - very doable from a combination of an inexpensive inverter/100Ah battery and intermittent charging with a 2kW generator. A project for spring is to install supply switchover controls to give me this backup for my system.
I do however, think ASHP as direct replacement for electrical heating systems (i.e. storage heaters) is a great idea, if retro fitting wet installations is OK.
Having said all that, Im dying for an invite for Al to go and see his GSHP installation sometime
Posted 3 months ago # -
Im dying for an invite for Al to go and see his GSHP installation
Ah, *that* Al! I had visions of carbon fibre sheeting buried in the ground.
Posted 3 months ago # -
Whenever I've looked at air sourced (not in the same detail as the above) I've concluded it's worth doing only when I need to replace the existing oil fired boiler, but also have concerns about the noise.
Posted 3 months ago # -
Stoner - my evaluations are based on biomass feed costs rising with inflation, electricity outstripping inflation by 2.5% and gas outstripping by 4.5%. The latter two derived from a reasonable source, the former is a finger in the air, mainly because biomass was likely to be a non starter for other reasons.
The CoPs I quoted are independently audited real world numbers but I guess these may be being achieved partly because of the sophistication of the control systems, which are not cost effective for the domestic market. Therefore these may not achievable for domestic installations.
Higher temperature circuits are possible but generally the cop is lower for a higher temperature heat pump.
The thing about hot water is most people overheat the water and add cold water, a change in approach whereby you just use the hot water tap makes it work. A number of friends have GSHP systems and they work very well, but they are 5 bedroom + houses and they have land.
I should add I know little about the thermodynamics involved, I approach this stuff as a financier, not an engineer.
Posted 3 months ago #
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