sagraiasolar's activity

 I think your geometra's point is that any heat given off by the pellet stove might be lost in your boiler room but would be useful if lost to your salone.

 If you do put something in the salone and you want to look at flames and have efficiency with it a wood burning stove has several advantages: Around twice as many Kw.hrs on same fuel cost. No noise. Big flames. Cook and heat kettles on top, doesn't look out of place, burns fuel you might grow on your land, much cheaper to buy for same power output. There are disadvantages: less control, log lugging, dirty... if these bother you I would seriously consider a heat pump which is so much more cost effective than a pellet stove and in the long run will leave you better off. Don't forget you can borrow money to put in PV panels and then you really start getting near to a ZERO COST energy system especially when a heat pump is in the equation.

 ... and another benefit of the stove is that with a back boiler you can easily route heat to underfloor pipes and radiators and do the hot water for showers etc too. In most houses you can turn the gas boiler off.

I'm comparing two houses here so not exactly like for like but still useful I hope.Small house is probably similar to yours. The €20,000 quote was for all the pipes but not the waste system. It did include a €2,000 stufa and the heat bank and radiators as well and a new gas boiler.The second bigger house (250 square metres?) had several quotes from Italian plumbers in the €35,000 range and that was for a 3 bed house with underfloor heating throughout and it did include the waste system. Buying the stufa, heat bank, was all extra.I think the trick is to get the job broken down. Once you have the heat bank parked in the tech room your pumps and wires and controls are already done so the plumber then has to justify why he needs more than a few hundred to run a few pipes to your showers etc. The heat bank site by the way is www.heatweb.com and the tank is called an Excel ... I always specify the 475 litre one.... another two coming out on Thursday so this area is going to have a few warm houses.

ah the skimming... I can certainly tell you how to dodge the plumbing skim.... fit a DPS heat bank for £3,300 + VAT and then most of the tricky plumbing is all done... your plumber can then only charge for the few pipes to baths etc.We have recently quoted for a house of your size and including the stufa, tank, rads we could not get the quote over €20,000 and yet €35,000 odd seems to be the going rate around here and that's without the kit.good luck

have a look at 'Tenuta casa bruciata' on the net ... near Umbertide/Perugia    this place has the most awesome position with a high commanding view... the infinity edge pool is second to none.   The cook comes out from Perugia.. all good stuff we stroll over for a fab supper from time to time.  They have several appartments ... we have taken many of them before so PM me for a chat with er indoors about which is best. There is a lot more than Assisi to do from here... trains to Rome or Florence, The 'Madonna del Parto' at Monterchi, Anghiari, Sansepolcro, Sienna, Arezzo, lunch on lake Trasimeno,.. all quite near.

Having collected and compared data from various sources I have compiled a table of energy costs for just about anything. It is in the form of a bar chart showing how many kW.hrs €1,000 will buy you.  I'd be happy to send a copy to anyone who PMs me. The answers to some of the conversations here are that wood reigns supreme with over 25,000 kW.hrs - enough for a year of heating.  Assuming you burn wood anyway for the joy of the flames etc it would be hard to pay quite a lot more for pellets.... they will get you 14,000 kW.hrs for €1,000. When you get to grips with all the facts in an orderly way you end up with the solution that so many people are installing - and talking about - around Umbria and Tuscany. Integrate a wood stove, some cheap solar panels and a heat bank and you'll have good heating at a minimal cost. In case you are wondering, pellet stoves are not the next best thing to wood. They are comfortably beaten by heat pumps which have no cleaning out issues or storing fuel and about as maintainance free as your fridge. I would urge you not to base your heating strategy on gas as there is some chance of all gas systems being redundant over the next few years. The Russians have already shown us that they can fiddle with supplies and I hear that the supplies do not match expected growth in demand.

Before abandoning PV solar completely perhaps another glance at the maths would be worth a shot. Just on saved bills and payments from the production meter your payback should be around seven years and that includes paying back the bank for the loan they will happily give (just some 65 signatures and 'Robert's your father's brother') Remember it's not about selling excess to the grid - the production meter pays you regardless of whatever happens to the power after that. Power produced during daylight hours and not exported is yours for free and if you are crafty with your timing you can pump the pool, wash up, do laundry etc.... but best of all - run a heat pump and store up some free energy for later... roughly, the power is free during the day and half price at night. (you are effectively charged for using the grid as your private energy store).... so before you doubt too much think how it would be in 7 years time... you would be making enough to pay your wood bill and a lot more besides... you would be running ZERO COST on all energy.... there are four houses near me doing this right now.

Just to clarify a previous post - I really was suggesting you can heat a whole house and cook and shower too with something like the Anselm Cola in the kitchen... I can show you round a large house that does just that.The 'slave to the stove' issue is real though but so is the love of fire. Most of us really love to have some flames somewhere and happily wood provides the cheapest source of energy you can get here (leaving solar out for the moment)... for most houses an average sized stove will do the heating anyway so the job is done - you have flames etc. If you need more energy than your wood lugging tolerance allows then the next cheapest source of energy comes from a heat pump - clean, reliable etc... and for a bigger house this is the most obvious choice to run alongside a stove or indeed on its own. A heat pump running on solar PV panels can even be cheaper than wood during daytime running. Pellets trail a fair way behind both these heat sources and are only about 3 times better than gas. Glass of wine by the pellet stove anyone?

Hi Kensington2,You can run a wood burning cooker for about one fifth of the running costs of a gas one. Have a look at an Anselm  Cola - thermo cucina "Johanna"We specify these as a sort of Aga type bit of kit which look nice and work well.... apart from the cooking side they also can heat the entire house, and do the hot water so instead of €300 a month on gas you can turn it all off completely.... it's a paradox but it will cost no more to run your house in the winter than it does in the summer.