Mr and Mrs Doxey’s old oil boiler had started to smell, they’d had it for nearly 20 years and it was now struggling to heat their home. It would take about an hour before the radiators in their 100 year old home, would come up to a decent temperature, not ideal with the colder winters the UK has been experiencing over the last few years.

The Doxey family live just outside Doncaster, South Yorkshire, in a beautiful stretch of the countryside which has no mains gas delivery, so the only option the family previously had to heat their home was to rely on oil deliveries.

“The biomass boiler installed by Euro Energy Services is fantastic. My radiators used to take an hour to get warm with my oil boiler, now the heat is pretty much instant and I have total control over it. I’ve already recommended them to several friends.” – Mr Doxey, Doncaster.

Time to get rid of the inefficient oil boiler

As their oil boiler was coming to the end of it’s useful life, as well as being really inefficient and expensive it was also making a nasty, rather worrying smell, and making the room where it was housed very warm. A sure sign it wasn’t working properly and wasting energy.

Mr Doxey knew that it was time to find a new way to heat his home so began to look into his options. He could have replaced with a new oil boiler, but taking into consideration the wild fluctuation of the cost of heating oil, the fact that the supply can be easily affected by world events and that the supply of fossil fuels is fast dwindling, he made the decision that installing a Biomass boiler was a viable and sustainable alternative.

Why switch to a Biomass Boiler?

The property the Doxey’s own is over 100 years old and is set in a beautiful garden, they are clearly very proud of their home and take on a home improvement project every year, so investigating how biomass would benefit them was another project to embrace. Mr Doxey spoke to friends who were already using commercial and domestic biomass boilers and then scoured the internet for more information.

He found that by installing a biomass boiler he would qualify for the UK Government’s Renewable Heat Incentive scheme, meaning that the initial cost of installing the biomass system would be more than paid for by the monthly payments owners receive.

Add into that the fuel savings achievable, due to the wood pellets used in biomass boiler being around 90% efficient and up to 50% cheaper to purchase than oil, it made the decision to switch to biomass very easy.

What returns can the Doxey’s expect from their biomass boiler?

A huge bonus for installing a biomass boiler is the Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) payments, which are index linked, tax free and paid directly by the government to homeowners every quarter for seven years after the system has been installed.

This subsidy, combined with the fuel savings due to more efficient running, means that Mr and Mrs Doxey’s system will have paid for itself in around 5 years.

Based on their heat demand the RHI payment, for the first year alone is £4953.63

Over the seven year term of the RHI, on an assumed 2.8% inflation rate, we estimate that the total payment they’ll receive is just under £38,000.

That’s a 38% return on their original investment

Which biomass system was right for the Doxey family?

When our renewable energy consultants visited they completed a Green Deal Assessment Report (GDAR) and worked out an estimated figure of heat demand for the household from an Energy Performance Certificate (EPC). This also ensures the home meets minimum energy efficiency requirements of loft and cavity insulation, as renewable heating works best in well insulated properties.

Euro Energy Services have an in-house team of accredited Green Deal Assessors and can provide these assessments and reports if you don’t already have a valid Energy Performance Certificate, which is less than two years old.

The Energy Performance Certificate showed that the home had an estimated heat use of just over 45,000 kWh. Based on this we recommended a 35kW biomass boiler be installed, it may look odd that the size of boiler is lower than the estimated heat use, but it is vital that biomass boilers are sized using professional calculations to ensure they work at their most efficient.

Biomass boilers burn wood pellets which need feeding into the boiler. There are two options for this, hand feed or vacuum feed. As the family had plenty of space in their garden, and didn’t want to fill their boiler by hand, they opted for a 6 tonne fuel store with vacuum feed system to the boiler, this easily holds enough pellets to feed their boiler for several months, even during the winter.

Installing a biomass boiler in an Eco-shed

As you can imagine a 6 tonne fuel store is quite a large piece of kit so, to house it, we built them a 6 x 4 metre Eco-shed with a concrete floor about 20 metres from the main house. The fuel store sits neatly within the Eco-shed and is filled directly from a truck using a blown delivery. So when ever the store is running low, the pellet supplier simply attaches a pipe which fills it easily and quickly.

Every installed biomass boiler needs a flue to take away the fumes. The standard finish for most boilers is a chrome, however, we installed a black flue to the Doxey’s boiler as our customers tell us these are less noticeable and more aesthetically pleasing.

As part of installing a biomass boiler, we needed to lay 20 metres of super-insulated pipework from the boiler to the house. Unfortunately this needed to go through the Doxey’s lovely lawn.

To make sure we didn’t ruin his pride and joy, we very carefully dug the trench by hand. Any other installers would have brought in diggers, but we didn’t want to cause any lasting damage. Once the pipes were laid we back filled the trench and relaid the turf we previously lifted, making the garden look immaculate.

Our installers hand dug this trench to contain the super insulated pipes.

…and filled it in afterwards.

Efficient heat control

The Hargassner domestic biomass boiler the Doxey family chose is a top of the range system, and has a range of controls to ensure it delivers the heat your home requires. This particular system has a digital control panel on the front of the machine, which shows a whole range of information about the boiler’s performance.

Inside the house Mr and Mrs Doxey can control the temperature using a wireless thermometer meaning it can be placed it in any room they like giving them improved levels of heating efficiency ultimately helping them lower their heating bills even further.

To find out more about installing a Biomass Boiler, just fill out this short form and we’ll arrange for one of our experts to visit you.