sagraiasolar's activity

Atessa - I worry that the route you are taking will introduce an increasing drain on your resources. May I suggest that you first put a stove in the open fireplace. Open fires consume about 5 x the wood as a stove does and can even go negatively efficient when it is really cold because they suck in a lot of air. Any stove is better than a fire and even better if you connect it to a tank so that hot water for showers is there all winter too ... same tank could take solar panels later if needed. As Bunterboy says - stove + solar does the trick and there are only a few days when an immersion heater needs to bridge the energy gap. Note that we are off gas from the start .. too much costly regulation and gas is now 7x more expensive than wood! Bottle gas for cooking is fine but I'd be considering an induction hob for my next house. You'll be able to do a lot of cooking on a stove too so that will tame the bills. As we are all getting older we'll be less inclined to be log luggers so if you can't start off with a heat pump you should at least be heat pump ready - just 2 insulated pipes and a conduit out into the garden would be a good provision.  While planning your strategy please note: my heating model shows that a heat pump often makes solar panels unnecessary so if you saved €2,000 on the gas boiler and €3,000 on the panels you'd have practically paid for a small ASHP.   

I was talking to someone today about the Agibilita and in particular the cost of bombola inspecting and certification along with 5 year reviews all at over €100 a go. On top of that there is the cost of special fencing and fire extinguishers. Now there is a fineof up to €3,000 if you don't get the gas boiler a €110 service every year. My reaction is to use all the gas in the bombola and get it removed entirely with small gas canisters like on caravans used instead. The boiler servicing cost is equal to the gas it consumes every year so that can go too ... Badger is on track - get a heat pump.

Penny,    Sorry the Landy is not for you .. but not too sorry as I love going out to get wood and stuff with it.  I'm also selling an almost like new Italian reg. RAV4 which is much much more up market. This will come with new winter tyres and snowchains in the boot so as near to a shiney new winter-worthy car as I can get it.

Hi Penny = It's a 1985 diesel coil sprung Landy  ... speedo not working but suspected circa 100,000 k  Structurally very straight and clean so given a respray it would look practically new again, however the interior is very tatty and needs a makeover. It is registered as a camione so officially a 3 seater although there are 4 more seats in the back. Recent new timing belt, battery, and a few suspension bits for the MOT.  The engine starts easily but is still a bit tired sounding.... bottom line is that this would make a great restoration project for a tinkering person.  Parts are cheap sent out from UK.   I love it dearly and it's a joy to hitch up the trailer and go fetching logs after felling a tree.

... you'll need a Landrover with nice big nobbly tyres to get out in the snow of course - with snow chains.  If by some chance you are looking for a Defender for about €1,400 then I might be able to help.

Badger - I know the 25,000 kW.hrs is a bit arbitrary but it seems to be the mark for a typical stone casa out here of around 280mq. Yes I quite agree a 10kW ASHP would do the job on its own and only cost around €2,200 to run. My model also suggests that the longest run time would be 15hrs so plenty of capacity in hand. The model also picks the better ASHP tariff when appropriate and in this case it does so and saves about €750. Also a mains supply of 10kW is suggested although I think I'd need your expertise to confirm that the parameters are steering correctly here.

I see this debate looking a bit like Wood vs. Heat pump but I'd like to think that both together make the perfect system. We all like a wood fire and wood is the cheapest fuel so item 1/. A wood burning stove.  Log lugging is not the best bit so we'll keep this side down to 12kW max and more like 7kW normal running. In a power cut the wood stove can be stoked up to meet the whole load. With a greater part of the heat load taken care of we can now use a smaller heat pump. The associated bills will be so small that the slightly reduced efficiency of an AIR source heat pump makes little difference but the installation cost will be something more akin to the cost of a good pellet burner.  Both the stove and the ASHP can share a tank so I don't see that there are any extra costs involved in having both together. My heating model suggests that a large house requiring 25,000 kW.hrs would need €900 worth of wood and a 7kW heat pump to make up the balance for €700.  I seem to have joined in the hijacking of my own thread - never mind.

Allan, When you get to doing the stufa on the ground floor thing just let me know and I'll send you a pdf. of the dump rad circuit by e-mail. Same goes for anyone else .. It's just an elegant little tweak that allows the stove to automatically dump excess heat  in a power cut and also gives a daily timed heating of an upstairs radiator(s) without going through the tank - heat bank - . The nice bit is that you can get the stove warming your bedroom in the late evening and all the hot water in the tank is still there for your morning showers.

If you buy a TV in Italy the shop reports your address and you have to pay the annual fee.  If, on the other hand, you bought a 'monitor'  ahem ... in the UK you'd be fine.   I don't know about Freeview in Italy but that would obviously be for Italian TV - cheesy  shots on moronic gameshows etc. If you want proper UK TV for free you can get Freesat on a big dish at the moment although the footprint might reduce when the old Astra bird gets replaced. www.astra2d.com/italy used to be a good source of information.

Allan,   Yes the UK diesel is properly treated for winter but the Italians certainly didn't do it last year. My RAV4 refused to run untill I poured hot water over the fuel filter and put hot ashes under the fuel tank. A friend with a Landrover Disco got stuck in a ski resort for days too and there were lots of other local diesel stories.  I haven't seen a Coleman petrol tilley lamp for sale in Italy - mail order from the UK would do the trick.  Our local bar keeper was looking at an old one on the bar a while ago and couldn't believe me when I said it ran on petrol... I sent away for new mantles and filled it up for him and everyone was amazed. Your comment re the stufa overheating: my regular tweak might help - you put a power free valve on the hot line at the stove and that routes hot water to a dump radiator above - hopefully your bedroom.... it's a gravity circuit so the stufa runs in a power cut... and extra tweak is to fit a timed by-pass valve/circuit across the dump valve so that the radiator can be used daily daily. If there is no room above the stove then a UPS will give some respite.... and I could now ramble on about extra big UPS and off-grid PV combinations with the battery pack half in the electric car and half in the house.... another day.