keep up your spirits

New hurdles appearing every day.
I tell myself the phases when you regret having started are the hallmarks of a successful project. Progress photos click here (same album as below but we update it).


So far we have had:

• first digger was too small and could not progress fast enough
  
• second (needed smashing down wall) was too large to move around properly in the garden
• third digger was the right size but seems not available when needed (think we had 4 kinds of diggers so far)
  
• digging area originally estimated has increased from 13m to 15m (because of a mistake) and from there to about 18m (having forgotten to account for length of joints between each collector) taking us right to the edge of the stairs
  
• falling over of dumpers, causing some minor delays
• powerful dumper broke engine after falling over and has been there and irremovable for a week
• heat pump came with damaged door
• joints (between all the collector panes) supplied were the wrong size
• the digging contractor walked out from the job, he gave up and left (without being paid)
• not enough space to put all the soil so collectors have to be put in and tested in phases making job more complex and time consuming
  
• also the little space and the wrong estimates means that branches of apple tree are being damaged by the diggers
  
• after old loft tanks were removed and new pipes wired up we had a water leak from the loft through to our bedroom and into the ground floor sitting room
  

Monday 2nd July: the works begin !

More than 18 months after the initial idea it is finally all happening now.

Pictures of progress and works click here.

Problems on the way:

• the digger that was organised to dig the trenches is too small and makes slow progress. A larger one will be coming in a couple of days and the wall around the garden gate needs to be broken to make room for a larger digger.
• existing water pipes are all over the house like spaghetti and a the new layout requires a bigger mess than predicted (cutting up floors, removing parts of walls, drilling through walls...)

Benefits we are expecting keep our hopes up:

• a modern efficient ground source heat pump (the major point!)
• cleaner layout of pipes and no water tanks in the loft
  
• secondary hot water loop (instant hot water)
• mains pressure (no noisy pressure pump in the house)
• more space and no heater noise (heating system is in the garage)
  

moving closer : compact collectors

Finally with the help of a local registered Worcester-Bosch installer we might start digging up our garden mid June. The solution would be neither a bore hole, nor an air source heat pump but digging trenches to bury compact collectors and then using a combi ground source heat pump (a Greenstore 11 Combi) to provide heat and hot water for 9 rooms and 4 bathrooms. Technical specification is here.

We are also considering a secondary loop for hot water to reduce the time we wait for water to turn hot once you turn the hot tap on (which leads to wasting water).

The DTI sets out strict requirements to receive a grant (see this link).

disappointments on the way....

Don't know what I'm doing wrong. Nobody seems to want to do the job. I found it remarkable enough that at the very beginning when I didn't know how to start there were so many agencies that referred me on to the next and next one until I ended up in a circle (literally I remember ending up ringing a number and the lady said "oh, you remember we spoke some time ago?" ...!).
After the energy assessment/ heat loss calculation it went downhill:

• Garry Woods from Greentec Systems promised various times "I'm going to write you a proposal over the weekend" (why the weekend?) ... I must have rang him five times or more - no progress. Hoping for progress here has delayed me by several months.
  
• Earthcareproducts not too far from here in Ware sent stuff through, asked for my heat loss calculation but haven't come back yet
• Geothermal Heating and Cooling Systems Ltd have a phone number which nobody seems to pick up so far
• Ice Energy looks good and Rickaby could recommend them too. The guy seemed to know from the first moments over the phone exactly what the only best solution is, a visit to check would cost me £500 and when I questioned anything this particular sales guy responded very aggressively.
  

a bit frustrating ...

AIR source heat pump?

Garry recommends an air source heat pump.
The disadvantages (compared with ground source energy which is a more constant source) would be that it is slightly less efficient in the most cold days and that you couldn't use it to cool the house IF you had a cooling system (which we are not planning to build anyway since it is too complicated for our old house).
But both, air source and ground source heat pumps, would be of same capacity and in either case he would recommend a backup since you couldn't guarantee 100% efficiency all the time but perhaps for 95% of the time.
The advantages of the air souce heat pump would be

• that it is far simpler to install (no drilling and no trenching) and the air and heat exchanger are in one single unit which has to be outside (which is important for us as storage space is scarce)
• that in the summer (with warm air) the production of hot water is much more efficient than from ground source

ground source heat pump

We want to move ahead with drilling a borehole and installing a ground source heat pumt. I have contacted Garry Woods from Greentec Systems. He is going to come round to discuss in a couple of days.

recommendations

Peter Rickaby produced a National Home Energy Rating (NHER) certificate for our house.
Our rating is 5.6 (on NHER scale of 0 to 10) or 42 (on SAP scale of 1 to 120) respectively. Did you know the estimated carbon dioxide emissions associated with our house are nearly 12 tonnes per year!
In order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions (this is essentially what wer are "investing" in) he made a number of recommendations:

• adding 200 mm thick mineral fibre insulation in the accessible loft spaces
• filling the cavity wall of the rear extension with blown fibre insulation
• installing secondary glazing (custom made in our case) and draught proofing to all the windows
• dry-lining the sloping first-floor ceilings with insulating thermal board (a laminate of rigid plastic foam insulation and plasterboard)
• dry-lining some of the other, solid walls of the cottage with thermal board during the course of any redecoration or refurbishment
• improving the heating controls by adding more thermostatic radiator valves
• re-locating the existing room thermostat nearer the centre of the house

This in itself would probably reduce carbon dioxide emissions to approximately 8.5 tonnes or less and bring the rating to 7.7 NHER/ 59 SAP or better.

For a more significant reduction (and back to the original resolution) he confirmed

• a ground source heat pump (GSHP) extracting heat from a borehole
  
• and perhaps for the future local electricity generation from an array of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells (they are very expensive but by fuelling the GSHP through solar cells could bring down carbon dioxide emissions to zero!)