Tips and ideas for stone cottage new radiators, stoves and boiler what to choose?

[snowspider]

We can't have underfloor heating. We have an old Pembrokeshire cottage which we are gutting and using lime mortar and lime wash etc. It was probably a barn in 1700s, became a cottage in 1800s. Last main work was in 1970s which we are undoing. We need to get our skates on if we are not going to have a third winter without central heating. We have put a multi fuel burner from Welsh company Chilli Penguin in the sitting room.

We now need to decide on fuel for central heating. It was oil when we moved in but we have disconnected and removed pipework and radiators and the old boiler was from 1973. This is an opportunity to redo but are working out pros and cons of a wood chip boiler, calor gas or oil again plus another stove for an inglenook.

I like the idea of having some old school style radiators but could only afford a two or three as they seem to be £££s.

So does anyone have any tips or loves to suggest from their own experience?

Thank you for reading!

[UnconsideredTrifles]

Not much to contribute I'm afraid, but we are in the process of buying an old stone house (in Pembrokeshire!) and also figuring out how to heat it - the current oil boiler has been condemned...

I think we're probably going to go with an underground LPG tank - Calor do a sort of rental system for them which at first glance looks good. Solar/ground source are prohibitively expensive and we'd like to go a bit greener than oil! We'll be having a wood burner I expect as well - open fire at the moment.

[snowspider]

We are hoping to go greener, had high hopes that the English green grants would also extend to Wales. There is the other renewable energy scheme but you have to pay in a lot initially and then get it back over the next few years -

Our house was covered in concrete inside and out, dp has laboriously chopped most of it off and been doing the lime and it is definitely much less damp.

[UnconsideredTrifles]

That's interesting - ours has hard render inside and out, and the surveyor was really against hacking it off and liming it!

We were disappointed with the English scheme too!

[SewingWaspish]

We have a wood pellet boiler and it works really well and very cheap to run compared to oil. RHI grants are still available. You need space to store pellets though - we have bags because we don't have enough space for a hopper.

[SewingWaspish]

By the way, our pellet stove is in an inglenook so serves two purposes - room heater and house/water heater.

[snowspider]

We didn't have a surveyor, making it up as we go along. Dp did a very good lime course for basics over a couple of days and we have done lots of research.

@SewingWaspish could you share what type of pellet stove it is? We looked at a Klover one not sure if our inglenook is big enough to allow for servicing. Half of it is taken up with a bread oven which is redundant but staying.

[SewingWaspish]

We have 2 houses in fact - mirror images - and a klover boiler in each. One has the klover diva, the other has a slightly larger klover (can't remember the name, sorry) because they stopped making the diva and the replacement was going to stick out into the room too much.

We also have solar thermal panels, which means we don't have to run the boiler on sunny days to get hot water. One summer the panels were not connected and running the boiler on a hot day to get hot water wasn't great. If it wasn't on display I'd definitely get a fully enclosed pellet boiler that doesn't put heat out to the room - if you have a suitable outhouse or space in the garage then definitely think about that as an option. Perhaps where your old oil boiler was?

It does heat up the stone in the inglenook wonderfully over the course of the winter though, and the stone is almost warm to the touch by spring - a great thermal store.

The only real downside is that when it's running full the fan is noisy. No worse than a roaring fire, but it keeps going while the fire is on, unlike a log fire which dies down but keeps chucking out the heat.

[SewingWaspish]

Found the second one - the smart 80. We chose it because it puts less heat out the room. It's not commissioned yet though so I can't tell you what it's like when it's running, though I suspect it's similar to the diva. www.klover.it/en/products/kitchen/pellet/smart80bt

[snowspider]

Thank you. We are also planning to have solar alternative for water. Unfortunately we need to get our roof checked out and any work required on that done before solar panels, though I think you can have the water tank (Megaflo maybe?) with the option before the panels are installed. Struggling with having to do X,Y and Z before we can do something else. Living in the house while doing everything is also very dirty and slow!

Good to know the Klover is an option, as it is expensive!

[snowspider]

We don't currently have any outbuildings, well a ty Bach which is mostly below ground level and a very small ruined stone pigsty which has the oil tank in at the moment and a very basic tin log store/tractor shed. The oil boiler is in the integral garage which is going to be a living room. Will have to build a barn for all the stuff that's in there.