Starting from scratch...

[Greenbeast]

If you were building a timber frame/strawbale infill house from scratch, what combination of heating/cooking devices would you use?

Wood burning stove in living room/kitchen? with/without back boiler?
Wood burning range and/or gas, electric?
solar thermal (obviously)
UFH?

Just putting together an ideal self-build

[ecogeorge]

Will you be on or off grid?

[daftlad]

A masonry stove is a must and maybe you need to think of thermal mass?
laters

[Greenbeast]

george - on grid moving towards as little dependence as possible, much as i am now. If i thought i had the money to put enough pv/wind along with the build then i will but i'm prepared for a electrical/gas grid connection

daftlad - do you mean more of a cob building than strawbale? or just large thermal mass surround a heat source/stove to store and re-radiate?

[Ted]

Have you heard of/seen Rachel's strawbale building in St. Dogmaels (Cardigan)?  I went to see it a couple of years ago and it is a beautiful place.  It won the Grand Designs Eco Home of 2008 competition.

She started out with a masonry stove but replaced it, with a wood burner I think, as she couldn't get enough heat from it.

Here's a couple of photos I took.  The place is well worth a special trip if you are planning something similar.

[billi]

Rammed clay is a nice, cheap sound thermal mass

Billi

http://www.lehmtonerde.at/english/w5.html

[Greenbeast]

Nice place

I think a woodburner would bee a good idea but i'm torn on the installation of back boiler unit
It's very all or nothing. if i want to heat the room loads of the fire's energy will be stolen for the HWC, when i might not want to heat the cylinder

[KLD]

Nice place

I think a woodburner would bee a good idea but i'm torn on the installation of back boiler unit
It's very all or nothing. if i want to heat the room loads of the fire's energy will be stolen for the HWC, when i might not want to heat the cylinder

Isn't this where a log or pellet batch boiler comes in? A la Kristen.
You could still have a little WBS for the cosy corner 

Klaus

[dhaslam]

If you can avoid a back boiler in a wood burner it would be  much easier to manage.     With very good insulation you still need heat in rooms that have no passive heat, particularly bathrooms.   Underfloor heating is good in a bathrooms.   If I were building again I think I would build a seasonal store with  about three times the normal area of solar panels,   heat pump as backup and just a small non boiler stove.   I am still experimenting but low wind  speed turbine, grid connected,  seems to be the best choice for electricity,. but not possible in a built up area.      

[Greenbeast]

Isn't this where a log or pellet batch boiler comes in? A la Kristen.
You could still have a little WBS for the cosy corner 

Klaus

Yeah that is a good possibility
I've looked into them in some depth before for a different project/thought exercise

[Greenbeast]

If you can avoid a back boiler in a wood burner it would be  much easier to manage.     With very good insulation you still need heat in rooms that have no passive heat, particularly bathrooms.   Underfloor heating is good in a bathrooms.   If I were building again I think I would build a seasonal store with  about three times the normal area of solar panels,   heat pump as backup and just a small non boiler stove.   I am still experimenting but low wind  speed turbine, grid connected,  seems to be the best choice for electricity,. but not possible in a built up area.      

i wonder whether its worth fitting UFH through out or just in the bathroom (and/or bedrooms?)
we tend not to use the heating and we live in a victorian place that is hard to heat (we don't mind the low temps), so i wonder if the expense and complexity of fitting UFH through out the whole place will be largely pointless due to under-use
i suspect we'd run a woodburner in the lounge in the winter evenings, much like we ran our little gas fire in our current lounge rather than heat the whole house

[DominicJ]

You could have several wood burners?
An Aga type thing in the kitchen for cooking and hot water, and a small stove for room heating in the living room.

[Greenbeast]

I think the multiple device idea is practical.

I think rather than converging the devices, they should be separated
Wood burner (without boiler) in the lounge
Have a separate wood burning stove or log boiler just for hot water, in a more practical loading area (i'm planning a decent utility/work room)
Separate cooking device(s): induction hob, plus cob oven and rocket stove outside

[EWF rob]

If you were building a timber frame/strawbale infill house from scratch, what combination of heating/cooking devices would you use?

Wood burning stove in living room/kitchen? with/without back boiler?
Wood burning range and/or gas, electric?
solar thermal (obviously)
UFH?

Just putting together an ideal self-build

Hi Greenbeast, just saw this thread and decided to make it my first post.
Ok, I'm all for the wood burning stove (mine is in the living room) but with a wrap-around boiler. We live in a 1930's semi, there is wall cavity insulation and 600mm insulation in the loft. The stove feeds 7 radiators including a towel rail in the bathroom, it also backs up the 210 Ltr hot water cylinder if required which is not often as we rely on solar for our hot water.
All the pipe runs are well insulated and I also fitted a Laddomat21 to the boiler system.
My wife like plenty of hot water and rooms temps at 22c +.  So last summer when I fitted the lot I was told by many so called experts that it simply would not work.....! It worked through the winter better than I could have ever hoped. No complaints from her-indoors either!!!  Whole house heating, plenty of hot water and no fuel costs for either. I did worry that there would be an all or nothing situation but this really is not the case.
A point of note is that I also dry lined all the walls and we have existing uPVC double glazed units.

Currently we cook on an LPG hob with electric oven. Long term plans are too have a vertical axis grid connected turbine (5Kw) - budget permitting.

I did a SAP calc with an air source heat pump in mind for back-up....... it was a no-brainer to leave that thought and move on.

I have been very lucky in that all the wood has been sourced FOC, all be it a little work on my part to split and stack.

Clearly this is not suitable for everyone as a stove will only hold in over night and so if you are away for a few days then expect to come home to cold house unless next door are happy to light up your stove. I have looked at some batch boilers but would prefer to go the pellet route with auto ignition and modulation etc..., but at the moment will keep things as they are.

Looked at the masonry stove option and would agree that once that thermal mass is heated then you are going to win, but again it will need to be kept stoked.

What would I do if starting from scratch???  Timber frame house, large buffer, LOTS of solar, log boiler, small wood stove in living room, under floor heating and a snazzy low wind start-up vertical axis turbine.

I'm off to buy some lotto tickets now.

[daftlad]

The best way to heat your house (by a country mile) is passive solar because it costs zero money to run and doesn't need stoking BUT..... The sun doesn't always shine....grrrr
But it does shine enough to make it worth while, to make it work well you need tonnes (quite literally) of thermal mass.
But thermal mass takes up space and doesn't insulate well, what I would/ will do is use straw for the north, east and west walls, glass (with a sun space) for the south wall and cob for the internal walls and floors. I was going to make the ground floor 600mm thick.
Masonry stoves add to thermal mass and are very efficient.
Normal tin box type wood stoves are not so efficient and if you add a back boiler they become even less efficient.
Don't tell anyone but I am not sure about using masonry stoves in a passive solar house because if the stove is hot and then the sun unexpectedly comes out you may end up too hot, so maybe a gassifying stove with a thermal store would be better?
To cook on I am looking at some sort of cross between a masonry stove, a rayburn and a Indian outdoor cooking stove.
Earthships are a big inspiration for me.
laters