Off Mains Gas Advice Please

[SneakyBiscuitEater]

We are moving to a lovely 'middle of nowhere' house' soon and it is off the Mains Gas grid. We were thinking of using some of the cash from the sale of this house and taking advantage of any government grants out there to convert the heating and hot water to some thing more eco friendly, more convenient and hopefully cheaper in the long run.

It is currently running on LPG bottles which are delivered every 2-3 weeks in the winter and look to be a pita. We can't get a gas or oil storage tank as it would be a fire risk as the fire brigade couldn't access the property (very remote off road access). So we were thinking wood chip / pellet boiler? 4olar panels? Electric 'wet central heating? But really have no clue.

Anyone know where to start?

Thanks.

We lived with no mains gas for 3 years. It's horrible. No surrounding houses means no shelter from the wind.

I would say thermal everything and a woodburner.

We have bought two wood burning stoves one for each end of the cottage which we'll get installed once we are in next month. Do you have any central heating at all fluffy?

Investing in good insulation where you can should be your priority; if you have dodgy windows I would invest in upgrading those first; wood pellet boilers can be pretty bulky so you need to make sure there is space for them. For our hot water we have an air to water heatpump, like this and, together with solar PVs, much prefer it over solar thermal panels as it is much more efficient in winter and in effect provides free hot water through much of the year. Woodburners are fab, but make sure you start stocking up on wood now and find a reputable supplier; we decided against a backboiler, but that could be an option to consider

Can't say much about supplementary heating though - our house is new and well insulated, so a single woodburner heats the whole place

We had storage rads, the house was only 18 years old.

We had friends in the bigger 5 bed detached ones which cost £300 per month in gas deliveries. Only one house had solar cos it didn't have a conservatory which stops them fitting them on the back of the house.

It was very windy, they want to put a wind farm there. It's that windy.

Most houses had oil or gas tanks.

Our neighbours there were racking their brains too to get a warmer house.

Have you thought of an aga op? Or a Rayburn?

Are you sure you can't get an oil or gas tank installed? We live rurally and there's no way a fire engine would get to our house or any of our neighbours and it would take them at least 20 minutes to get here even if they could. We have oil as do most houses around here.

Thanks for the replies everyone. The house is at the bottom of a cliff so refilling oil or large gas tanks would not be possible as far as I can see as well as the fire consideration. The LPG is currently taken on a bit of a long off road journey down a slipway in a trailer which needs to be done only at certain times of the day/ week.

The air source heat pump looks like magic! Thanks for the link inia

I'm in awe at your location; on second thought LPG might not be so bad as you probably get the most heat per 'bulk' (not sure that's the right expression) - anyway, all the wood for your stoves and possible wood pellets for a boiler would need to make that same trip (and a tonne bag of wood is NOT easily moved around)