Heat Pump Prices - How to Get the Best Heat Pump and Save Money Too!

If you're thinking about buying a heat pump but don't know what type to get, what brand or how much they cost here's a few things you may want to know. Whether you want to use it for heating or cooling or both you want to get the best heat pump price and the best heat and air conditioning model for you.

Heat Pump Prices - How to Get the Best Heat Pump and Save Money Too!

Heat Pump Prices - How to Get the Best Heat Pump and Save Money Too!

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Heat Pump Prices - How to Get the Best Heat Pump and Save Money Too!

Heat Pump Prices - How to Get the Best Heat Pump and Save Money Too!

You can save a lot of money if you choose a heating/air conditioning pump with less power. You want to check the size of the BTU's (British Thermal Units). The 10,000, 12000, 13,000 and 14,000 BTU models are the heatpumps you'll see most commonly.

There are two general types - air source heat pumps and ground source heat pumps. Ground source pumps require a laying of pipe under the ground and are much more expensive than air source. Plan on spending at least ,000 or so including installation and other costs associated with it.

There may be future maintenance costs also, so keep this in mind.

Most commonly people will opt for the air source heat pumps. These cost a lot less than ground source pumps and generally people buy them and place them in a window or buy a free standing mobile or portable unit they can easily move from room to room. A central heating and cooling system using a heat pump to try to heat or cool the whole house will cost between 00 and 00 depending on whether you need to install ductwork if it's not already in place. Even with central air you may still need a smaller unit for a garage or bedroom.

If cost is more important to you than perfect heating or cooling capacity, then look to the lower end BTU units. If you have just a small area to heat or cool or require little air conditioning then these units will be a better buy for your money.

The smaller a/c heating unit prices can start from 0. If you stick to the name brands like Amana, Honeywell, Sears, Carrier and Trane, you may pay more but you'll get a good unit with less likelihood that it will need repairs, troubleshooting or maintenance. However there are many lesser known brands that people are quite happy with. You can always start with a smaller unit and see how that works and move up from there if you can't decide. But you want to know your prices so you can compare.

Heat Pump Prices - How to Get the Best Heat Pump and Save Money Too!

Chimney Cleaning of Woodburning and Multifuel Stoves

Although woodburning stoves are highly efficient machines nominally 70 to 80% compared with an open fire with an efficiency of 20-to25%, cleaning of the chimney or stainless steel insulated flue still remains an important issue. In theory a good woodburning stove with the correct air supply and a highly efficient burning chamber should produce little or no smoke if burning only good seasoned wood. Having said this, bear in mind there may be smoke when the fire is initially lit which causes soot deposits and this may continue until the woodburning stove chamber reaches it optimum burning temperature. Leaving the woodburning stove in slumber mode (starved of air ) for long periods will also increase sooting of the chimney. Under these conditions the flue gas temperature falls, condensation occurs and deposits on the chimney liners or steel flue lining takes place. Have your local registered chimney sweep clean your chimney prior to the installation of the woodburning stove. It is always advisable that you inquire from your chosen chimney sweep initially that he has knowledge and experience of cleaning chimneys connected to a woodburning stove.

Chimney Cleaning of Woodburning and Multifuel Stoves

Chimney Cleaning of Woodburning and Multifuel Stoves

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Chimney Cleaning of Woodburning and Multifuel Stoves

Chimney Cleaning of Woodburning and Multifuel Stoves

Try the guild of master sweeps to locate a registered sweep in your area. Recommendations are that you normally have the chimney cleaned again half way through the burning season, which is about 3 months if the woodburning stove has been used regularly. Check then with the chimney sweep after the first clean on the amount of deposits that where removed from the chimney. Should these deposits be negligible which can be the case if only seasoned wood was used in the woodburning stove, your chimney sweep will recommend his next date for a visit providing the seasoned wood is being continually burned in the same way. In our showroom we used lovely seasoned beech acquired from a re-forestation farm in North England. It was burnt daily in a contemporary steel convector stove approved to Din+ standards. Three months later after continual daily burning for approximately 8 hours a day we had the stainless steel attached flue cleaned. The steel liner was amazingly clean and the chimney sweep advised that another clean would not be necessary for at least another six months.

Woodburning stoves fitted with a top exit flue

Woodburning stoves can normally be cleaned through the door of the stove providing a stove exit pipe has been fitted on the top outlet of the woodburning stove. The baffle plate will need to be firstly removed to give a clear access to the stovetop exit. This is a plate which straddles the upper part of the internal stove chamber and is either freely fitted or held in place with a couple of bolts. This procedure is not normally possible if a central heating wrapround boiler has been fitted into the stove, as part of the boiler becomes the baffle plate. The woodburning stove should then be cleaned in the same way a woodburning stove fitted with a back exit flue pipe is cleaned. This is normally carried out via a soot door either mounted on the vertical exit steel flue pipe or through an internal or external soot door mounted on the chimney breast where feasible.

Woodburning stoves fitted with a rear exit flue.

Ensure, prior to the fitting of a woodburning stove where a back exit flue 90 degree bend is required that your qualified fitter also provides a soot excess door. This can be fitted on the internal or external wall of the chimney breast for easy cleaning purposes and also ensure that the rear stove exit 90 degree bend is fitted with a door for debris removal. This also applies to an external insulated stainless steel flue where sections of the flue are purchased with flue cleaning access doors. Many customers with an internal chimney breast opt for the soot door to be fitted on the chimney breast in the roof space. The chimney sweep can then clean upwards and downwards, pushing the debris into the back bend of the woodburning stove The door on the back bend is then opened and the debris sucked out, as well as being sucked out of the woodburning stove chamber. A backbend, more commonly called a 90-degree bend, can also be purchased as a 90 Degree T piece. I think these are great as the chimney sweep removes the T cap at the unused end, attaches a debris collection bag and then cleans the flue via the soot door as described above. The stove fitter will be well aware of this product.

On a final and very important note if you are using a multifuel stove it is recommended that the chimney be cleaned at the same regularity as if you where using an open fire. The reason for this is that unlike woodburning stoves, multifuel stoves are left constantly burning for days on end and are used a lot to burn fossil fuels. The result of this is a much dirtier chimney as they are left in slumber mode during the night. This results in a drop in temperature in the burning chamber and chimney leading to more pollution due to non-combusted gases. Please consult your registered chimney sweep on this issue,

11th June 2009

Chimney Cleaning of Woodburning and Multifuel Stoves

Having a Wood Burning Stove Fitted - What Happened to Me When I Had to Replace My Old Parkray Boiler

First things first, the house or cottage in which we live was built in the late 19th century mainly of stone construction, for farm workers to live in close to their work on the farm ( normally called a tied cottage) and had been occupied by a family working on the farm prior to our move into the property in 1987, since when a certain amount of modernisation had been done by ourselves over the years, new bathroom, showers and kitchen etc.

Having a Wood Burning Stove Fitted - What Happened to Me When I Had to Replace My Old Parkray Boiler

Having a Wood Burning Stove Fitted - What Happened to Me When I Had to Replace My Old Parkray Boiler

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Having a Wood Burning Stove Fitted - What Happened to Me When I Had to Replace My Old Parkray Boiler

Having a Wood Burning Stove Fitted - What Happened to Me When I Had to Replace My Old Parkray Boiler

At the end of July this year we had the chimney sweep in to clean the soot from our two chimneys.

The one that had been used non stop over last winter as our main heating was the worst as it had a Parkray multi fuel heater fitted into the wall with a surround of tiles and tiled hearth; this fire had been there since before we moved in and although pretty ugly had given good service over the years by heating four radiators and the hot water in the winter.

We had it fuelled by anthracite eggs or ovals, which gave plenty of heat but this fuel is getting very expensive, it also comes with certain ecological issues attached being a fossil fuel, which spoils our carbon footprint. We had occasionally burnt wood in it but it was not an ideal wood burning stove due to the grate being built for a coal based fuel.

"BAD NEWS" said the sweep when he had finished the job, "your back boiler is leaking into the grate and there is a lot of wet in the bottom of the grate".

So, we had to bite the bullet and replace the fire with a new one of some sort, we had looked at all the different options over the years and decided against oil because we have access to plenty of wood from the farm. Also most of the modern systems depend on having electricity to ignite and control their burners, and because we are subject to power cuts in the winter, just when one is most vulnerable to the cold; it was important for us that we had a system that will work on its own, we wanted it to continue to heat the water and the radiators upstairs by convection to keep the house warm until the power supply returns.

Off we went to StoveTec in Hereford UK to look at what was available to us and just how much it would cost, we looked at all the models in the showroom and chose a Hunter multi fuel with internal boiler (Hunter are a part of the Parkray Group apparently), with single door with one clear pain of glass in the front, which I liked because it had none of the fiddly bits just clean lines and simple design.

Steve the owner of StoveTec then arranged to come out to do a site survey on the next Wednesday; whereupon the measurements for the base and the layout of all the pipe work was checked, and the chimney stack was inspected from the garden.

The quote, which was very reasonable and included the fitting of a new stainless steel chimney liner, was accepted and it was arranged for the men to start work the next week.

The team duly arrived and proceeded to start with the removal of the original fireplace, in preparation, I had already turned off the water and drained the system with the garden hose prior to their arrival.

As with all building workers, we made sure that copious amounts of tea, instant coffee and biscuits were available throughout the day in large mugs with a good quality tea bag per mug with various spoon-fulls of sugar and whole milk according to taste, which after the first day we learnt off by heart.

The removal of the old fire place created a large amount of dust and noise from the hammer drill and chisel, and a large quantity of waste rubble and a pile of bricks that I decided to save for any small garden project which may require a few bricks, a barbecue comes to mind, which is not a high priority for us but may come in handy in the future .

Once the old tiled hearth and surround had been broken up, the feed pipes to the boiler were now exposed enough to be able to get a hack saw in to cut the pipes and free up the stove for removal. It was very heavy and had to be manoeuvred onto a sack trolley to be wheeled out of the house and lifted in to the truck for scrap.

It was then that we were able to see what we thought was the full extent of the space available at the back of the fire, we could see a large amount of brick and stone infill, for what we thought must have been the original cast iron black grate; complete with an oven on the side, which looked so pretty in pictures but were extremely difficult to get the oven up to temperature and were dirty as the fire was open and not enclosed; but they normally had a trivet to hang or place a pan or kettle over the fire for cooking soups and stews.

But No, they had to remove two more courses of brick before the final aperture was revealed in all its glory, it really made the room look so much bigger, once all the rubble had been removed and a bit of tidy up had been done.

Meanwhile the men had placed the climbing frame and ladders up onto the roof and around the chimney stack so that the new stainless steel liner could be lowered into the chimney stack, once it was in place a plate was cemented in and a new chimney pot and cowl fitted to top out the flu.

Where the liner came down into the fireplace it was fitted into an enamelled stove pipe via a socket fitting on the end of the cut flu liner, and then into the socket on top of the new Hunter Stove.

Before the new stove can be placed into position there had to be a new base fitted on the floor of the cavity, we finally decided on large pieces of slate, which is more in keeping with an old cottage than the polished granite that we thought about first, this is fixed in place on the floor of the base level with a coat of cement and tapped level.

The next job was to fit a metal plate to the inside of the fire place above the new stove, where the new flu came through a hole cut in the middle to block out the rest of the chimney and stop any of the soot from the old fire falling down into the room in the future; this was sealed around all the edges to finish the lower part of the chimney off (this was later sprayed with black enamel paint).

With the hot water pipes connected to the boiler (the out flow hot to the top, and the inflow connected to the bottom on the opposite side of the boiler cold), the water was then turned back on and the system filled to check for leaks and and test under pressure with the pump running.

Then it was all systems go for ignition to see how it all worked with a fire burning in the grate. It was simply amazing just how fast the boiler heated up and hot water started to move up the pipes to the hot water cistern. It is now a week since we have had it up and running and we have now got the hang of it managing to keep it in over night with the aid of some very dry seasoned oak blocks.

There is no doubt in my mind that the main thing with running a wood burning stove is to have dry seasoned wood at all times otherwise it will not burn correctly and it willl not get hot enough, plus it will clog up the chimney with tar and get the glass front of the door all covered in a dirty black coating of soot and tar. I always think that if the wood burns slowly down like a cigarette glowing across its length the stove is working correctly and that the wood is dry.

The best types of wood to burn locally around us is oak or ash if you can get it, but I also have access to plenty of willow, which is OK if very dry, I occasionally get a bit of pine, which burns very fast and noisily spitting and popping away in the grate.

I can thoroughly recommend our wood burning stove and I look forward to many years of warm winters by the fire in the future.

Having a Wood Burning Stove Fitted - What Happened to Me When I Had to Replace My Old Parkray Boiler