Hi all,

does anyone have a biomass pellet boiler ? Im building a house next year and am tempted to apply to the council for permission to ad an adjoining annex , in order to claim RHI under the commercial side, that once awarded, is eligible for a period of 20 years.

If I just build the house as it is, a single dwelling, I will be looking to apply for the domestic RHI coming in this spring, which is valid for a period of 7 years, as opposed to 20.

my initial feelings are that it may be better to build an annex in order to qualify for 20 years worth of payments , albeight at a lower rate than the proposed domestic 7 year rates...

Can any one give me personal experience of this.

regards. MY2010 TDV8 Vogue Ipanema Sand
2002 V8 Vogue Oslo Blue - Gone.

I'm in the middle of something similar - it might not be as simple as adding an annex to get the commercial rate, as I understand it you need to be paying business rates on the property or separate council tax bills and then you will only get RHI for the metered usage rather than the deemed usage that you get with domestic

Hopefully I will be going on a site visit soon to see a guy who is heating the attached house next door, in. Which his parents live. I'll get the dope off him and see what he says. I understand council tax will be payable on the separate dwelling, but as long as it is a shared biomass installation , and the second house is not significantly altered for commercial use, it will be classed as heating multiple dwellings and qualifies for the commercial side . Aa you said, it will be metered , but what is to stop you leaving the heating on 24/7 in order to rack up kilowatts? MY2010 TDV8 Vogue Ipanema Sand
2002 V8 Vogue Oslo Blue - Gone.

Nothing really other than wasted consumption. Unless there is another dwelling not too far away that you could plumb underground to and share even more heat with? get some more moola in would it not by doing multiple buildings? FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
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What kind of burner are you looking at?

One of the ones you stock up and it self feeds over a day or two depending on how much output you want? FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.

Looking at one with an vacuum that sucks pellets in automatically from a 4 tonne store or similar MY2010 TDV8 Vogue Ipanema Sand
2002 V8 Vogue Oslo Blue - Gone.

How much are the pellets as I'm guessing your ordering a good few tonnes at a time and have some big store for them? FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
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I will try to get as big a store as I can. they are cheaper when delivered by a tanker that "blows" them into the store through a hose. I am going to look at a local guys installation soon so i can get a better idea of the whole system. I believe the pellets are around 260 per ton, when pallatised in 10kg sacks, so I would assume, getting larger amount delivered by a tanker will be cheaper. I've heard that on a 20kw system, 4 tons of pellets will see me through the winter, with smaller mounts required for summer. MY2010 TDV8 Vogue Ipanema Sand
2002 V8 Vogue Oslo Blue - Gone.

That's not too bad then, what's your roi calculations like? FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.

Yep - you can leave the heating on all day and all night to jack up the payment but when I was doing my sums I found out that the non domestic payments were about 8p per KWh but only for something like the 1st 1000ish hours each year (I can't remember the exact figures) then it falls to something like 2p per KWh. Pellets at £220 per tonne works out at about 4.5p per KWh making it impractical.

In my case the domestic 12p per KWh looks favourable with the help of a friendly green deal assessor giving a helpful deemed heat figure.

I do know a Hotel who has access to very cheap (sometimes free) wood chip - he has the heating on non stop and the windows open !

The more I have been looking into it, it could be for a domestic installation ( if I was just heating the house I am living in) It may be much easier and practical to install a ground source heat pump, and maybe plumb a woodburner into it to top it up in the winter. I think I should have enough garden to put the heating coil in the ground if it dig it up. anyone else got a ground source heat pump? There is a huge amount of info on the net, almost too much as it bamboozles your head after a while. MY2010 TDV8 Vogue Ipanema Sand
2002 V8 Vogue Oslo Blue - Gone.

Im just not sure about if I would receive payment for both solar and GSHP at the same time , for the maximum estimated energy produced, or if the payment would be based on the house's estimated energy requirements, split between the GSHP and solar thermal MY2010 TDV8 Vogue Ipanema Sand
2002 V8 Vogue Oslo Blue - Gone.

Are gshp systems are not silly priced when you take into account the work needed to get them in? FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.

They are not cheap, but a lot of the expense is installing the ground loop apparently. I could do that myself. The only reason I'm looking to put one of these system, be it -gshp, biomass, or solar is a) there is no mains gas available and b) government looking at making payments on these installations cone this spring. MY2010 TDV8 Vogue Ipanema Sand
2002 V8 Vogue Oslo Blue - Gone.

To be honest the biomass will be the easier system to maintain in the future. Also maybe an air source heat pump could be added in to the system if you really wanted.

Just think how much work you will have to get someone or yourself to do with the systems as well. It's not as simple as working out the money side, it very rarely is these days.

If it were me I'd go with biomass as it's so much simpler and been around since the year dot  FFRR MY06 facelift With TDV8 Alloys Zeros/ATR's
Mantec Sump Guard, Rigid Load liner, MY10 BT upgrade.