Central Heating - Radiator Style

[Tia Maria]

I had someone round to give me a quote for ducted heating yesterday, but we don't have enough space under the house and he said our ceilings are too high (3.6m) for ceiling installation to be effective.

He said we could consider Heat Pumps but that we would need quite a few and that probably the best option was to have central heating - 'English style' as he put it.

I hadn't even thought of this but he knew of a company on the North Shore that does it.

I wondered if anyone had had this fitted in their NZ homes? If so, is it effective? Was it expensive - to run or fit? Is it easy to install into a villa?

I'm not sure why his suggestion shocked me, I guess I just didn't think it was that common over here.

Cheers

Tia

[sizzlingbadger]

Depends on what system it will run, if it runs electrically then the bills might sky rocket. We've seen one house here with radiators in, very odd sight as we're so used to seeing a wood burner. I think it ran off oil which in turn could get very expensive again, the trouble with it though was it didn't warm the house sufficently anyway, still had a couple of wood burners, oil radiators in rooms.

Have you thought about night storage heaters ? May have to swap the electricity over to a cheaper rate at night but may be a better way to go.

One of my friends has a big villa and she's got a heat pump in the main lounge and just has a portable oil radiator in her daughters room.

[Angelonthemove]

We went to an expo for houses the other day. OH is more into than me.

cheapest heating we are considering is one pump in the lounge, that is then ducted to the other rooms via similiar to DVS but no cold draughts. The good thing is we will buy the 1st pump, $3-4000 then when have more money have the ducting put in $4-5k, that way you are only paying for one pump of elec. Pumps are the cheapest for electric and most efficient, had them in previous place. You can put them on timer like central heating. Gas is quite expensive over here and to put a central heating system in the cost up front will only be cost effective if you stay there for years. Can't find the guys card now OH must have moved it.

there was something in the newspaper recently re most effective heating cost its on the forum somewhere.

[clg]

We installed a boiler and radiators. Fairly easy to install if you have a place for running the hot water lines. They had to run a lot of ours outside the house but the lines are insulated. It works fine for us, keeps the house nice and warm. We have a 70's house with insulation in the walls but not the roof, we have high ceilings so I expect we get a fair amount of heat loss there. No real way to insulate that though without either major cost or hiding the wood which we don't want to do.

Ours is fueled by diesel and not that bad to run, we have a large house and our worst month last year (june) we spent about 500 on heat, but that was with my wife/daughter staying home with the heat on most of the time. When we are home we kept the house at 20 last year but we have been OK setting it at 19 so far this year, curious to see if it has much difference on cost. With fuel prices where they are now last June would have been a bit less than 400. We know quite a few people who had power bills over 500 last june, a really bad month, just heating rooms in their houses, not the whole house. For July and August last year we spent about 350 a month on heat.

You can get a boiler fueled by wood pellets, the boiler costs quite a bit more and I think it would even be more expensive to run but it may work out better long term depending on how oil prices work out. If it ever gets really bad, we will switch over to pellets but for now I am hoping oil does not go totally crazy for a while.

Worth talking to them certainly, we are quite happy with our heat. It is very nice to just have the house be warm without thinking about it! We have a wood burner and use it evenings some time but more more for ambiance. Although in autumn/spring it is enough and we don't need the heat in the evenings if the fire is on. We do use the heat in mornings though.

We would have used ducted heat if we could (costs less to install but maybe not to run) but was not an option with our house, like yours. Heatpumps would have been very expensive as well because of our layout so we could have gone this way or electric, those were our only options.

Chris

[incredible hulse]

We put ducted gas heating in 2/3rds of our house, and are getting a heat pump for the other 1/3rd. We looked at ducted heatpump system for the whole house but it was not affordable and whilst more efficient than gas with the extra cost of installation and higher electric costs it would have taken about 7 years to make up the difference. The cost of gas ducted system was about 8.5k for the whole house (280sqm) as opposed to 14k for heat pump ducted system. I don't find the ducted system (ceiling outlets) as good as the radiator system; it is noisier and the heat does not warm the room as much or disperse around the room as well but this maybe because we have no double glazing so hard to compare I guess. It does take the chill off the rooms however and relatively cheap to run I guess (about 200 dollars per month for a few hours in morning and evening).

[Tia Maria]

Thanks for all the information guys. I think I'll get the central heating guy round and then maybe get a quote for installing one heatpump, like suggested.

Do heatpumps have to be on outside walls?

Probably by the time I've got round to getting all the quotes it will be summer again!

Cheers

Tia

PS I meant to say that I know someone who had the ducted system installed in a 3 bed villa - underfloor - and it cost about $8,500

[nippa&pippa]

Not sure if that any help, we stayed in one of bach/3 bedroom cottage got central heating system work by rayburn (aga), so I wondering if it could work with logburner heat water as same way as rayburn/aga to heat water into heating system in the rest of house?
Just thought.