Eon or Fortum - Whichone is cheaper

[DMC]

you can stick your nose to your wallet and smell what the suave salesmans pitch left there. solar power requires sun, there isn't sun in Finland. the average is 30 sunny days in the year as opposed to 300 somewhere in the Med.

You have obviously never tried it.
Solar for electricity production is not viable - in Finland or anywhere else. It is only worth considering if you don't have access to a mains supply.
Solar thermal is viable, and I can say this based on practical experience not a salesman's pitch. Oh, and peak daily production in Finland is in the spring, not the summer. If you had any knowledge of the subject you would know that, and also know that there is production for far more than 30 days per year.

seriously solar isnt a viable option for Finland at all

So you haven't tried it either.

Totally agree. Unless you complement it with other sources for Heat generation, Solar aint gonna cut it. Most houses that we seen are using a combo of Pelletti, Solar and määlämpöpumppu

Of course no-one should consider using **only** solar, anywhere in the world. It can only ever be part of your solution. It can be a useful part though.
We also use a määlämpöpumppu and that has also been a good investment.

[Upphew]

Of course no-one should consider using **only** solar, anywhere in the world. It can only ever be part of your solution. It can be a useful part though.
We also use a määlämpöpumppu and that has also been a good investment.

Maalämpöpumppu as investment... Isn't that like getting another car with little emissions as investment?

[DMC]

Maalämpöpumppu as investment... Isn't that like getting another car with little emissions as investment?

Not exactly. More like getting a more economical car as an investment. Fuel savings eventually pay for the car/heat pump, after which the lower running costs provide a real return.

[Rosamunda]

DMC, did you install all that in a new build or have you renovated an older property???

We would love to switch to geothermic pumps but our house is about 20 years old and fitted with an oil burner and radiators. We thought that the geothermic would require us ripping up the floorboards and putting down underfloor heating.... Do you have the maalämpö pipes under the floor or behind the walls? Do you have parquet flooring or tiles?

We are thinking of solar thermals though because we have a large roof (house is all on one level) which is SSW facing. It would help us get the oil bills down and reduce our carbon footprint.

It's always easy to install all that stuff in a new build, but conversion costs are usually prohibitive.

[Jukka Aho]

We would love to switch to geothermic pumps but our house is about 20 years old and fitted with an oil burner and radiators. We thought that the geothermic would require us ripping up the floorboards and putting down underfloor heating....

I’m not sure what the current trends are in the geothermal business, but my parents have a geothermal pump in their 20+ years old house. The house was originally built with that thing in and the heating in the rooms is based on hot water radiators – not on underfloor heating.

Their old pump (from the mid-1980s) is now at the end of its life, though, and would need to be replaced with a modern one. But the system has worked well for them in the past and while I don’t know the exact numbers, its running costs have been quite low when compared to the alternatives. (On the other hand, I’m not sure about the total cost of it all – especially given that the pump would now need to be replaced.)

They also have electric immersion heating elements in their boiler for backup, but using those instead of the geothermal pump is not all that economical.

[DMC]

True, it is always easier and cheaper on a new build, but it is possible to retrofit to older properties. Our house was built in the 1890s so is not exactly modern. We previously had an oil burner and radiators. We still have them, we simply plumbed a heat pump into the existing heating system. We didn't touch any floorboards or anything else inside the house. The only new pipes are the ones going out to the ground loop, and they just go straight out of the house. We kept the oil burner for backup / topup but haven't needed it.
What is the temperature of the water in your heating system? If it is low enough you may not need to change to underfloor heating. A heat pump will be OK up to about 55C - although the cooler the circulation, the more efficient the heat pump will be. That's why heat pumps are a good match for underfloor heating, where the circulating temperatures can be down in the 30s. As an alternative to converting to underfloor heating you could consider adding more radiators so that the heat output required from each one would be lower and the circulating temperature could be reduced.
Your roof may not be ideal for solar panels. Assuming you are at Helsinki lattitude you would want the panels at 75 degrees, i.e. almost vertical. Ours are mounted on a south-facing wall.
If you go for both the heat pump and the solar thermal, seriously consider linking them so the solar panels can heat the fluid returning from the ground loop, before it gets to the heat pump. Our installer advised against that. At the time I didn't know enough to ignore him, but I wish I had.

[Rosamunda]

70 degs in our system (same circuit heats tap water and radiators).... would not want to increase the number of radiators if possible.

The southfacing walls are nearly all windows, so panels would be difficult then. We are in Espoo, so same latitude as HEL.

So you laid the maalämpö pipes out in a field rather than down a bore hole?

[DMC]

Maybe you would have to convert to underfloor heating, and that soon gets into a large and expensive project.
Mounting panels on a roof at a greater angle than the roof is possible, but a bit more bracketry is needed and it might look odd. Walls would be my first choice at these lattitudes, but the roof is still possible.
And yes, our pipes go out in a field, not in a bore hole. It was the cheaper option, and we have the space.

[raamv]

Hi Penny,
I am sure that your SO would know about this.
1) There are 3 options for getting Geothermal heating into the house : One using an existing well and drilling deeper and fit the geothermal pipes, another being distributing pipes around the grounds (töntti), and digging a new hole to fit the pipes..
2) and then the distribution of that heat is generally by many mechanisms including having water circulated batteries, water circulated under-the floor pipes ( and maybe lättialämmitys)
Check these links and I strongly suggest getting the Rakentaja guide for that €60..
an example: http://www.ivtlampopumput.fi/pdf/oks2005.net.pdf
A Forum for discussing it but only in Finnish:
http://www.kyronlahdenporakaivo.fi/cgi- ... t=idPumput
Information about Housing:
http://www.rakentaja.fi/index.asp?s=/Su ... sp?id=3331
Companies doing this :
http://www.rakennusopas.com/yritykset.h ... p%F6pumppu

[raamv]

and one company's info in English:
http://netfi.oilon.com/cms400/Geomain.aspx
as well as more links on different heating options:
http://www.rakentaa.fi/lammitys.php

[Pursuivant]

or in the case you live by a body of water you can have the pipes go into there, what I understand it is the most efficient???

[Upphew]

or in the case you live by a body of water you can have the pipes go into there, what I understand it is the most efficient???

And probably hardest to get permit. Who owns waters? Kalastuskunta? Good luck getting permit from them. And then there is risk that someone gets their anchor attached to your pipes. So it might be most efficient, but easiest it is not.

[Pursuivant]

whomever owns tha water rights, ha thats one fun snag in real estate law...

[meplusthree]

I replaced oil burning boiler system with maalämpö in 2000. I have 700m of standard black plastic water pipe about 80cm to 1m deep and 1.5m apart, it uses about 3000 sq m of my garden. Installation was relative simple from a plumbing point of view - just replaced the hot water and heating feeds from the old oil system with those from the maalämpö system, however did require upgrade to the electricity as the unit also uses electrical emersion heaters to heat the hot water in times of high demand.
My maalämpö system came as on big unit, half contains the compressors and half the water tanks it takes up about the same area as 2.5 fridge freezers.
The system has worked fine since installation,the house (built 1970 + extensions in 1990 and 2000) is mainly heated by radiators and they have been ok. The only problem with maalämpö is that it does not heat the water for the heating system to as high temps obtained from oil. We had to use one extra electrical radiator for two weeks when the outside temp was below -20 for that period. However since I have built the 2nd extension with Takka no extra heating has been required and the Takka is only used a few times a year. The hot water supply is fine and have never run out even when having sauna party and two showers in use.

So if your house is reasonably well insulated (mine was a drafty old box) the existing radiator system should be ok.
My monthly electric bill (fortum/eon) for the last few years has been 145 eur just gone up to 160 for 230 sqm house.

So things you should investigate are can you fit the machinary in the house and how much it will cost to drill the Bore hole as this can vary a lot and depends on what they have to drill through.

[Rosamunda]

Thanks, that's really interesting as it is a similar scenario to our situation, except that we don't have a field to lay out the pipes, so we would have to drill down (through clay, the foundations of the house are built on pillars that go down 15-20 metres presumably that's where the granite is). We have a "boiler room" in the house (with access from outdoors) where we have two oil tanks and the boiler. Presumably we would put the pump etc in there and remove the oil tanks.

It is the temperature of the radiators which worries me though.... ours are not particularly efficient and we removed a couple when we had a new window put in. Did you keep your old radiators? Did you have them cleaned out before you switched to maalämpö? If so, how did they clean them out? I think ours are full of gunge and yuck... we tried flushing them out but probably need to have a specialist clean them.

We have a takka, which is in the takkahuone, but that is in totally the wrong place (ie not in the middle of the house)and is way too big to move. We installed a ceiling fan to circulate the hot air from the takka huone around the rest of the house (all on one level) but I don't think that works very well.

Did you do a sort of Return on Investment calculation? How many years before you break even? We guestimated 8-9 years.