Central Heating: anyone an expert on "passive houses"?

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griffid

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We have a very small budget and it will probably be the house we live in till we are old and grey so we want to make it the best house we can on what we can afford. I'm loathe to be so conventional as to get a gas or oil fired central heating system installed but cost wise, I may have no other choice! Any advice from anyone would be good.
 
Re: while I'm on the subject of central heating, anyone an expert on "passive houses"

These guys have loads of good info.They are in Temple Bar in Dublin.
http://www.sustainable.ie/

have a gander here, though I think Solar powered yokes are initially expensive to install.
http://homepage.eircom.net/~solaris/

The English also have some sort of grant system ( I think it is called Clear Skies ) where you get a grant for using 'green' technology. Maybe DoE here have something similar in the pipeline?
 
Re: while I'm on the subject of central heating, anyone an expert on "passive houses"

Noel Dempsey anounced a similarity to the German /British subsidy system in the press-accordingly to the German press.Alas, he is the Minister for Information and his home page doesn't work.......As far as I understood subsidies in the form of fixed numerations/kwh will be paid to small scale generators of electricity.Not for solar panels creating warm water.Which is the cheapest way to make use of the sun .
But he isn't the Minister of Finance ,and the boiler industry is hopefully keeping up their donations.
Pay back time for a solar system can be short,depending on usage.Shorter than paying back the mortgage anyhow .And after that it delivers for free.That might be the reason why there will be no subsidies for it.Those who can handle the calculater would be using solar energy for warm water production anyhow.
Try your Velux supplier(web,DIY market),they offer small systems in GB.If you are interested in a good boiler go to http://www.sedbuk.com/
Go for nothing less than 90% efficiency.What excludes Irish manufacturers.
If you have the time/broadband flip through these 450 German pages,some are in English as well.Not all are manufacturers,sellers,installers,search.It will give you an overview who is on the market and what is available.Some offer "solarrechner" that is a solarcalculator.Type in your data like positioning of the roof/wall plus the number of people and they will spit out the necessary information.When typing in your position on the map use "Northern Germany" or "Hamburg-postcodenumber 22113",that will give you roughly the solar intensity of Ireland. http://www.top50-solar.de/
You can figure out what your energy demand is(your engineer/architect should be able to do so).With this information you can get an energy adviser to figure out for you what is economical adviseable.Producing warm water by solar energy IS the cheapest way,with or without subsidy.Subsidies are only an instrument to kick-off a decision.Since you plan to live in the house for a longer time it will be worth it.About the cost of a cheap package holiday for a family of 4.And installing it will be fun for the entire family for a lifetime.The boiler will be dead and replaced several times before the solar panel fails,guarantees of ten years are standard.
Excuse my English,I hope you can manage.
heinbloed
 
Re: while I'm on the subject of central heating, anyone an expert on "passive houses"

Heinbleod,

Thanks a million for all the advice. I'll keep it in mind (and hopefully in my message inbox) and will refer to your information when the time comes to make a decision.

Griffid
 
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