Chuck out the gas bombola

I was talking to someone today about the Agibilita and in particular the cost of bombola inspecting and certification along with 5 year reviews all at over €100 a go. On top of that there is the cost of special fencing and fire extinguishers. Now there is a fineof up to €3,000 if you don't get the gas boiler a €110 service every year. My reaction is to use all the gas in the bombola and get it removed entirely with small gas canisters like on caravans used instead. The boiler servicing cost is equal to the gas it consumes every year so that can go too ... Badger is on track - get a heat pump.

... that is by chance exactly what we are in the process of doing... Mind you it may take 2 years to use the gas as we don't have a gas boiler, just use it for the cooker hob...

Just thought, that it is 7 years that the pump has been in operation here. It ticks away merrily in the technical room, with no problem, 30 mins to service each year, without anyone having to come out. 2 x 47Kg bombola used for the hob in the kitchen, which usually last at least 6 months each. 50 quintalle of wood bought 7 years ago, which is only half depleted, if that, as only used if a major power cut, or for a visible fire at Christmas/New year etc. Best investment we ever made, in my opinion, as we have 24/7 hot water and heating.

How many sq mtrs is the heated area of the house?

Hi Atessa. I found the details of your house size, from one of your earlier posts @ 120 sq mtrs? You can correct this if I am wrong. Ballpark figure, as I do not know the insulation levels etc, would be for a 9kw output heat pump including 160ltr DHW tank. If GSHP, circa 14k excluding trench excavation. Depending on soil/humidity type, 120 - 150 mtr trench, 1.3 mtr deep x 1.2 mtr wide. ASHP: With electric aided DHW tank 13K, but no excavation cost. With no DHW tank, but electric back-up circa 11K. Both are IVT Swedish units. (IVT HT plus for the GSHP or Air 90 for ASHP ) I was actually going through Atessa on Tues, to look at another project, so a coincidence you have the same name!!!

For those of us that dont have the odd 11k around and have an exsisting bombola...it would be rather rash to chuck it away.We do not pay for inspections by our supplier, it already had a fence, and as we have a house and a letting apartment both the boilers get serviced yearly anyway as part of the legal requirements but no way at a cost of 110e each . I admit it is an expensive way of heating, but as the apartment is not usually let over the winter months, and we have a stufa in the house we manage.Over the summer the price for cooking and hot water is tiny. I think you have to work with what you have and what you can afford.

In the summer Angie, it is very cheap to heat the water here, probably 10kwh per week. Even @ 30c per kwh, that is only E3. Gas is only for the hob and think I can live with E150 per year. You also must remember, that we heat the whole 120 sq mtrs for 24/7, so a little different than just using one room with a stufa. You have been in the house and know that is all open plan, so it is false economy to try and heat a little part of it. Also I did not relish the thought of bringing wood in daily, risking running out of gas, as the lorry could not get here, or having a gas bomb in the garden. Our choice, as it is yours the way you want to live!!!

All sounds good, but we intend to stick to a 3kw Enel supply and so the woodburner /solar combo will be at the heart of our system.

This link may be of interest to some, as it gives prices for different fuels across the EU. Some of the data seems a little out of date, but Italy for domestic electricity is not the worst!! http://www.energy.eu/

Sent you a email yesterday, in reply to yours, with my contact details if you want to talk about options etc You are welcome to come and see the one operating here. We are on the Fermo road, not far from the Riding stables.

Lucy and Gerry. A 9kw output pump, would need circa 135mtrs of ground loop x 4, so over 500mtrs of tubing. It would have to be a very large pond!!

Just sent again. hope it gets through this time!!!

Floors are now starting to warm up. Pump had only run for 5 hours so far this week, so will be interesting to see how much by tomorrow morning when I take the readings again!!!

Outside temp must have really dropped down last night. Thismorning was only 8C @ 9.30. Pump had run for 5 hours in 24, so probably 4 hrs on heating cycle!! Temperature outside now 9.6C, inside house at set temp of 18.5C, underfloor flow temp 25C.

We use anything between 9 - 10000kwh per year. I cannot give a accurate figure for the pump, as it is still on the single meter, until I change to the special lower tariff 2nd meter next year. As a rough guide, the heat pump has run from 24/10/2011 to 29/10/2012 for 1788 hrs. Its input is 2.2kwh, so approx 4000kwh. Heating is on 24/7, with hot water timed off overnight. Room temp is set @ 18.5C with hot water @ 48C. Current temperature in the house is 18.7C, with an outside temp of 5.5C, but it must have been around 0C overnight as frost on the cars. Hope this helps

Ariston Nuos. If you do not mind me, commenting on this unit. The Nuos is primarily designed for the low usage Italian market, where the electricity supply is low. This is why they say only a 300w energy need, with the 1200w heater for a boost. Obviously the reheat time is high, but then you have to take in the amount of water you would normally use over a day. The last price I had on the unit from a few years ago, when first introduced for the 80ltr model was circa E800. On another point with your house heating, you could consider 2/3 air to air inverter units. These would provide winter heating and aircon in the summer.  With a air/air, you could also have the lower rate tariff meter.

Rosietat, could you please explain what an ecofan is please?. Does it just sit on top of the stufa in which case it must get very hot....sorry still pursuing ways of making the house warmer and dispersing the heat from the stufa (which really just heats the kitchen/dining area)

Here's the Ecofan. http://goo.gl/kky7W

Thanks Andy will research.

Hi Atessa. 1) The GSHP would be expensive. 2) The ASHP I quoted, would also @ circa 11k be over your budget on the basic system. 3) Alternative, is the Nuos, that you mentioned, plus 2/3 Inverter units. I would estimate, that you would get to about E5000 for that type of setup.

I've got one on my UK wood burning stove - seems to be effective. [Apparently they were originally developed for narrow boats where the stove would be at one end of the boat and there was no electricity for 'normal' fans to shift the warm air about] Still prefer the open log fire in my Italian 'holiday home' - not so efficient as a log burner stove, but visually more pleasing, and nice to snuggle up to in Winter - but would go for a stove if the Italian place was my permanent residence

Can a Ground Source Heat pump be used to feed rariators or is the temperature too low and only useful for underfloor heating?

Yes, Pat H. We have a number of installations purely on radiator systems.

PatH. Have put a link to some examples of installations here in Italy. Any that say termosifoni are ones that are purely radiator systems. Please ignore the 2nd from right at the bottom of the page in Marche, as this is underfloor heating, will get them to correct!! http://www.geotherm.it/Esempi_impianti.html

Excuse me for being dense, but what is a heat pump, and what does it do? Can it work with existing systems, and how much does it cost? Is it anything like geothermic heating (scuse my lack of knowledge here)? Many thanks for your patience!

No problem that you do not know how the system works. Will try to put it as simply as possible just to make it easier: You have say 100sq mts of house that you want to heat, so the heating need may be 9Kwh. You could use 3 x 3kw fan heaters to provide that requirement. A 9Kw output ground source heatpump needs 2Kwh input to produce the same amount of heat for underfloor heating, or 2.6kwh for radiator heating, based on a outside temperature of 0C. The equivalent air/water source needs 2.1kwh for underfloor and 2.6kwh for rads, but this is based on outside air @ 7C. With both systems above the criteria is 35C for underfloor and 50C for radiators. The air/air system is based on a 6C outside temperature, 20c internal and can use between 0.13kwh for a 0.9kwh output up to 1.7kwh for 6kwh on the same unit, plus it can also cool the house as well. All 3 of the systems can be used on the special electricity tarrif and apart from air/air can be retrofitted to an existing installation. Difficult to say costs as every house is different, but I have given some ideas in other posts. Hope this explains it a little better

Just read your other post in the firewood section. As your house is smaller to the example I put previously, then you could even be down to a 6/7kwh system. GSHP would be input 1.3/1.7kwh for the 6, or 1.6/2.1Kwh for the 7, including the 165 ltr hot water tank. 6kw air/water 1.4/1.7kwh input

Many thanks for this info Badger. But can you tell me how it works. Do I dig a hole for it? How do I connect it to the radiators (which at the mo are powered by gas - not that I ever use them as GPL is too expensive). Roughly what sort of cost are we looking at? As is probably obvious from my questions, I know really nothing about this!

Would be a lot of digging for the ground source unit, for a 7kw output unit, about 120 mtrs, 1.3 mtrs deep x 1.2 wide. That system works by extracting the heat from the ground and then using to boil a refrigerant in the heat pump. Last quote that I had for a 7kw output system earlier this month, inclusive of the 165Ltr domestic hot water tank on the above was E15500 excluding excavations. The pump shown in the link is the same one as we use, Swedish made by IVT. Simplified explanation link below: http://www.iceenergy.co.uk/Renewable-Energy/Heat-Pumps/Ground-Source-Hea... With the air/water source, there are no excavations, but it works on a similar principle to the above, so easy to understand. It does not normally come with a DHW tank, so would come in sub E10000.   You can always PM me if you want to know more details. Both the above can be connected to a existing heating system.

I think what your friend was talking about is a open loop system, where the pump would take the water directly from the cistern and then return it to another area. Yes, it is possible, but, there can be problems associated with the build up of scale in the pipes etc. You could not  discharge back into the cistern itself , as the cooler return water would reduce the source temperature. Remember also that the flow rates of the pump can be 0.2 - 0.6 ltrs per second, depending on pump size. Here is a article that helps describe it all. http://www.geo4va.vt.edu/A2/A2.htm Hope this helps!!

At the moment there is the up to 55% of the cost income tax deduction over 5 years. There are number of our clients who have opted for this offer. This may be replaced by the 40% over 2 years rebate as Penny posted, but this has not come into law as yet. Also many have changed to the special Enel electricity rate for heat pumps, which is a big saving over current prices. A few years ago, we calculated that the approximate break even point over LPG was in the region of 4 years. Cannot post the calculator on here unfortunately though.