Wood biomass dodgy installer help/advice appreciated

[welshfarming]

Just wanted to add my name to the list of those who've had a similar experience to Happiness, where I've ended up with a Biomass system not fit for purpose, fails to heat the house adequately, and like Happiness says, might get to 80 degrees in the evening, but by the morning the tank is down to 30 degrees again. It's burning wood at a rate of 700kw a tonne, where the GOv stats suggest that the wood should burn at 3500kw a tonne, so 20% of the expected energy recorded, and hence 20% of the rebate I would get. At the moment, I am buying the wood in at £800 for 15 tonnes, and then seasoning. It works out that the rebate I get back from the Goverment matches 50% of the cost of the wood, so effectively for 15 tonnes of wood/£800 I get £400 from the Government, and spend £400 myself. Much more expensive than oil, and a lot of effort to split and dry the wood.
One day this will be exposed as a scandal and I will want to see my supplier in court for it - at the moment no agency/tribunal/organisation wants to do anything to support those like Happiness and myself to correct what has been installed.

 

[Happiness]

Just wanted to add my name to the list of those who've had a similar experience to Happiness, where I've ended up with a Biomass system not fit for purpose, fails to heat the house adequately, and like Happiness says, might get to 80 degrees in the evening, but by the morning the tank is down to 30 degrees again. It's burning wood at a rate of 700kw a tonne, where the GOv stats suggest that the wood should burn at 3500kw a tonne, so 20% of the expected energy recorded, and hence 20% of the rebate I would get. At the moment, I am buying the wood in at £800 for 15 tonnes, and then seasoning. It works out that the rebate I get back from the Goverment matches 50% of the cost of the wood, so effectively for 15 tonnes of wood/£800 I get £400 from the Government, and spend £400 myself. Much more expensive than oil, and a lot of effort to split and dry the wood.
One day this will be exposed as a scandal and I will want to see my supplier in court for it - at the moment no agency/tribunal/organisation wants to do anything to support those like Happiness and myself to correct what has been installed.

Ah Welshfarmer, I hope we come through this with our sanity intact. Alot of people getting done over. Spoke to CLA who advised one of their members invested around £1million on wind turbines only for the company to go bust before they delivered. They are stuffed. Can you imagine?
We have been searching for wood. A chap local to us delivers rounds of seasoned 18cm3 softwood for £1000. We spent £5 k on wood processing implements. Husband is doing contracting with it to try and make the money back. Looking for cheaper wood will keep you posted.

 

[welshfarming]

Yes, i've spent a little buying a pto driven wood splitter, really need a hakke pilke (spelling very probably wrong). Will get another company in to review, think the config of how it's setup much like yours is wrong, and that there's some overspeccing or basically its not been matched to the requirement we had for it. It was a very good move for you to go back to oil for the house, it does make sense - I've bought a few electric wall radiators cos even though they say it's expensive to run them (about £70 a month) at least it means i dont have to buy wood and chop it and load it, which in the end works out at costing me about £150 a month anyway. Biomass was a very big mistake, I could think of so many other ways of spending £30k, apart from just £5k for a decent oil boiler.. Never mind, we will get there in the end..

 

[Turra farmer]

Does anyone know what the minimum reccomeneded water tank to kw is? We are looking at a 260kw boiler what is the minimum tank we could get away with??? It is going to power 2 50kw fans in a biulding and 100kw heat exchanger to blow into a drying trailer

Hi How is it working with the drying trailer? How did you manage to get rhi for this ?