Projects

The plan was to install a solar hot water and heating system to replace our existing Gas boiler.

Firstly it’s not very green to replace something that was working perfectly. However:



• Our boiler was starting to become unreliable
• When the gas was igniting we were sometimes getting a loud deep boom
• The boiler was approx 6 years old and we have had several problems over that time
• We are also planning to ‘do up’ the kitchen and this would have required the gas boiler to have been moved at considerable cost.

Other considerations are Bourne around cost.

Gas
Gas is getting very expensive. The rental of the meter alone is 30p per day, whilst this does not sound expensive this equates to running a standard 3kw immersion for 1.5 hours (April 2010 prices). And that is without considering the cost of the gas to actually heat the same amount of water as 4.5KWh’s of electricity.

Superheat Tariff from Guernsey Electricity
If you have an ‘electric wet’ central heating system you can get a preferential rate of electricity from the local power supplier. What is an ‘electric wet’ central heating system? I hear you ask. Simply put it is a central heating system that uses radiators with hot water running through them to heat the house where the heating of the water is done with electricity. The normal scenario for this is converting from a Gas or Oil fired central heating system.

The super heat tariff costs 6.92p per unit, whilst this is slightly higher than the ‘Economy 12’ rate of 6.29p you get the low rate for 18 hours per day rather than the normal 12. This supply has a meter charge of £2.70 per month.

The local government energy policy also is pushing towards a move to powering everything with electricity. All the fuel / renewal’s will then be used to generate the electricity.