Solid Fuel Boiler in Scottish Borders

If you’re looking to warm up your household to ensure your comfort all year long, there are actually a wide array of heating systems out there that you can put into consideration. However, in this article, we’ll be taking a look at gravity feed boiler and how it works.

A gravity fed heating system is basically an all water based hydronic heating ( both hot water and steam) that makes use of the natural gravity attributes of heated water as well as water vapour to distribute energy. Normally, this type of heating system possesses a cold water tank in the house’s loft or attic with a boiler on the ground floor as well as a hot water cylinder which is usually somewhere between these two components.

In the event whereby there’s a call for water, the boiler is going to fire up and warm a large volume of water. And due to the fact that cold water is a lot denser than the newly heated water, it’s able to drop down to the boiler. Subsequently, the heated water is transported up to the hot water cylinder from where it is forced out and distributed to the hot water taps. If there happens to be a heat request during this period, the heated water will be transported to the radiators with the help of a pump. As a result, when it comes to gravity heating system, it’s simply impossible to have heating in the absence of hot water. this is of course unless you’re making use of C Plan which features 1 zone valves alongside 6 wires. These kind of system are, however, usually operated by programmers that automatically switch hot water on any time there’s a heat request.

As an environmentally conscious homeowner, it’s very likely you would have heard of a wood pellet boiler or maybe even considering fitting one in your home or property. So if you’ve heard about wood pellet boilers, you’d probably want to know about it especially how it works. In this article, we’re going to walk you through the wood pellet boilers operating process. Let’s take a look!

✓ Typically, wood pellet boilers possess 4 major components, these includes a burner ( which ignites or burns the pellets), a hopper ( which stores unused pellets), a conveyor ( which works to carry the pellets from the hopper to the burner where its ignited) and lastly, a controller ( which responds automatically to your thermostat and appliances’ demands).

✓ In the event whereby your thermostat demands heat or if you happen to switch on a hot water tap or appliance, pellets will be automatically fed into the burner which in turn ignites it and set the firing rate to match the needed heating load.

✓ In a situation whereby more pellets is needed by your boiler, the vacuum or augur system will act by pulling pellets from your bulk pellet storage bin and automatically refill itself.

✓ The wood pellet boiler will clean the burn pot and heat exchanger areas ( moving ash into the ash bin), during and after the burn cycles. The ash bin will be emptied once for every 2 to 3 ton of pellet that’s ignited.

Other facts about wood pellet boilers

✓ The wood pellet boiler can be directly linked to existing plumbing and heating system, regardless of whether or not there’s an existing heating oil boiler remaining.

✓ Wood pellets can be stored in bulk in a storage bin outside your home as the bins are generally weather resistant and also very durable.

Due to the fact that wood pellet boilers are contingent on eco-friendliness and cost efficiency, they’re gradually growing in popularity amongst home or property owners. It offers a viable alternative to other types of boilers such as oil fired boilers, gas boilers or electric boilers partly due to government’s Renewable Heat Incentive scheme which makes it more affordable to operate when compared to traditional boiler systems. Although there are several kinds of boilers available in the market today, but as the name suggests,wood pellet boiler makes use of wood pellet as the heating source. So if you’re thinking about installing a wood pellet in your home or property, you’d probably be interested in knowing how much the home appliance would cost. In this article, we’ll give you a rough estimate of the cost to help you make informed decisions.

When purchasing a wood pellet boiler for your home, one of the first thing to consider apart from the cost is the is the storage space needed to keep the pellets, which is usually given in plastic sacks. However, if you don’t have the storage space, you’ll have to spend a certain amount of your budget so as to construct a storage room specifically for the boiler.

In general, a standard wood pellet boiler will cost within the range of £4000 to about £6000, although you’re most likely going to put the pellets into the boiler by yourself, which may actually prove to be inconvenient in the long run if you’re going to do it on a more frequent basis. However, there are more expensive versions which are able to feed themselves automatically. The cost of these versions are usually up to £10,000 upwards.

Traditional heating system that features a solid fuel boiler makes use of wood or coal stoves. However, in modern times, biomass boilers have rapidly grown to become the popular solid fuel option. Not only are they very effective and efficient just like the other heating systems, but they’re also renewable due to the fact that they’re able totally carbon neutral as they burn plant based organisms as a great alternative to oil, gas and electricity. As a result, they’re a perfect choice of heating system for off-gird homes or properties.

We have two main types of solid fuel boiler, these includes the following:

✓ Solid fuel stoves. This is also referred to as wood burners. Although coal burners are also available in the market, but we’d only recommend using wood burners as coal can be highly polluting and also set to be banned as a domestic fuel by the government. The most popular options of wood burning is wood log but it can also be operated using wood chips or wood pellets. Due to the fact that they’re stand alone heaters, they can only warm up the room in which they’re fitted.

✓ Biomass boilers. The type of solid fuel heating system makes use of natural material to warm up a space. These natural materials may be wood chips, wood pellets, wood logs and even plant based organisms. How they operate is very similar to that of the traditional boilers. They’re able to provide both hot water and hating by burning fuel, however, the only carbon released into the air was previously absorbed by the wood fuel. As a result, they’re a carbon neutral renewable heating system. But in contrary to solid fuel stoves, they’re fed automatically via a hopper but there are also manually fed biomass boiler.