Just been chatting with Herself about the after effects of Arwen and the problems of out total reliance on electricity...
The property's hot water and heating comes from a GSHP, installed in 2011, and got the RHI approval a few years later which runs out (I think) next year. Both the houses I have built will run from a gennie, the first used LPG for heating.
However, this property has a 12kW heat pump output, and needs a good slug of juice for startup*, so the 4KW gennie is not up to running the heatpump, so in power cuts, I switch it off and run the house from the gennie, and heat with a mix of a small woodburner stove in one room, and a Superser gas heater. However, this means no hot water!
When the house refurb was being done, I discussed an LPG combi as backup with the heating engineers, but was advised that an RHI inspection would look unfavourably on one, unless is was fancy hidden system.... So I left it.
Now that the RHI is coming to an end, I am thinking again on what is the best way forward to safeguard our comfort etc
1. Gas combi install about £2K, for a simple manual changeover system, running off a 47kg bottle. House on a cheap existing gennie
2. A simple, £2K, 25KVA gennie. However these seem to require that the tractor PTO runs at a genuine 540 output, as running on economy mode leads to problems... http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/engineer/facts/00-059.htm#choose So probably rather loud near the house
Or go and buy a similiar priced stand-alone powered generator, sized to start and then run the GSHP from it.
* But I cannot find out how much load!!
The property's hot water and heating comes from a GSHP, installed in 2011, and got the RHI approval a few years later which runs out (I think) next year. Both the houses I have built will run from a gennie, the first used LPG for heating.
However, this property has a 12kW heat pump output, and needs a good slug of juice for startup*, so the 4KW gennie is not up to running the heatpump, so in power cuts, I switch it off and run the house from the gennie, and heat with a mix of a small woodburner stove in one room, and a Superser gas heater. However, this means no hot water!
When the house refurb was being done, I discussed an LPG combi as backup with the heating engineers, but was advised that an RHI inspection would look unfavourably on one, unless is was fancy hidden system.... So I left it.
Now that the RHI is coming to an end, I am thinking again on what is the best way forward to safeguard our comfort etc
1. Gas combi install about £2K, for a simple manual changeover system, running off a 47kg bottle. House on a cheap existing gennie
2. A simple, £2K, 25KVA gennie. However these seem to require that the tractor PTO runs at a genuine 540 output, as running on economy mode leads to problems... http://www.omafra.gov.on.ca/english/engineer/facts/00-059.htm#choose So probably rather loud near the house
Or go and buy a similiar priced stand-alone powered generator, sized to start and then run the GSHP from it.
* But I cannot find out how much load!!