We’re doing a big refurb on an old, grade 2 listed farmhouse. It currently has no plumbing, although it is connected to mains gas. We’d love to make it as eco-friendly (and cheap to run!) as possible and I’m wondering if anyone with a similar type of house has any experience of air/ground source heat pumps? And pairing them with solar panels for electricity?
We’re planning to fit lots of roof insulation, desperately hoping we’ll be allowed to fit heritage double glazing (windows are falling apart anyway and will need to be refurbished/reglazed at least) and we think we’ll be able to do underfloor heating for about half of the house, but we’re aware we will be limited with what we can achieve in terms of air tightness. Are we fighting a losing battle here? Anyone with a similar sort of house got any experience with heat pumps? Has your electricity bill gone up a lot in order to run it? Could it be run off solar panels instead?
If we really don’t think renewable is an option for us, we’re looking at the idea of a hydrogen fuel cell boiler instead. It’s not renewable, as it uses mains gas to create hydrogen, which it uses to generate electricity and then the waste heat from that to heat the house, but overall it’s lower carbon than gas and electricity separately. Can anyone share any experience of using these?
Or any other renewable/low carbon heating method I’ve not come across?
Thanks