Let there be heat

A big job this year has been to get the central heating installed.

Being so remote, we don't have mains gas so we had the option's of a gas tank, heating oil, wood or electricity. With an eye for the future, we have gone electric. Oil and gas process are only going to go up over the next few years, where as most electricity in France is nuclear or hydro -electric, which should keep prices a bit lower and is a lot better for your carbon footprint.

After a lot of research, we opted for an air source heat pump, which extracts heat from the air, and uses that to heat up water for the house. This is very efficient and should produce 3 or 4 Kilowatts of heat for each KW of electricity that you put into it.

Robert had already laid underfloor heating pipes in the downstairs floors, but before we could install the heating, we needed to weather proof the old dustbin shed, which was to become the new boiler room.

First of all, we had to fill in the gaps between the top of the stone walls, and the roof. I built some stud work and fixed chipboard on the inside, insulation in the middle and tongue and groove on the outside to make it look better.

We filled the open window in with glass bricks, and to keep the room weather proof, I built a new door, to replace the one with holes in, recycling some old beams to make the new door frame.

Finally, I connected the cupboard up to the mains and we were ready to go.

The French heating guys were very efficient, fitting the whole system in three days.

The biggest piece is the compressor, that sucks in air and takes the heat out of it. This sits on the back of the boiler room. It looks huge, but it is incredibly quiet.

This sends the heat inside into the heat exchanger, and then on to the underfloor heating. The tanks also lets us power some radiators , which are still on order.

The pump is not power enough to heat the whole house, but we should have enough power for radiators in all of the upstairs rooms.

The underfloor heating seems to be working well at the moment, and it doesn't seem to be using too much electricity at the moment, but it will be interesting to see how it reacts when it gets really cold.