Woodfuel Case Study 4 Innovative people throughout the Highlands are turning to wood as the fuel of the future for homes and businesses. This series of factsheets features interviews with some of the pioneers who have been leading the way on woodfuel. The factsheets have been produced as part of the PELLETime project, a European collaboration between partners in Finland, Iceland, Scotland and Sweden. A domestic pellet stove H eating a 100 year old Highland cottage using a state-of-the art wood pellet stove looks to be proving a smart move for an Easter Ross household. When Peter Elbourne and his wife Katherine moved into their one and half storey cottage near Alness, an off-mains gas heating system and Rayburn provided the bulk of their home heating. Peter’s work as an environmental advisor made him uncomfortably aware of the large household carbon footprint resulting from heating a draughty old building using fossil fuels. The 10 year old liquid petroleum gas (LPG) boiler was in need of repairs and the Rayburn, which had been kept in constant use, was unsuitable for conversion from expensive LPG to wood. Now improved insulation and a stylish MCZ Musa Italian pellet stove has transformed the semi-detatched stone house into a cosy home with environmental credentials which reflect the owners’ ethos. “After spending a lot of time and energy learning about the impacts of greenhouse gases and helping other people reduce their carbon emissions, converting to renewable energy seemed an obvious step to take when we bought our house,” Peter said. “LPG is an expensive form of heating and prices are rising all the time. The boiler was about 10 years old and wasn’t working well; rather than Peter and Katherine were advised that a pellet stove might be a good compromise in providing an efficient way to heat their home with biomass whilst avoiding much of the heavy work associated with logs. spending money getting it repaired we decided that improving the insulation and replacing the heating system would be our top priority. “We had one wood-burning stove in the living room at one end of the house, and our original idea was to put in a second stove which would heat the hot water as well as space in the middle of the house.” However on researching this idea more, Peter and Katherine soon realised they would need a very big stove, and a huge amount of logs to heat the whole house using this method. “When you use a wood burning stove as a boiler you lose a lot of the heat going into the room; we were advised that a second stove used in this way would not be an efficient way to heat the space,” Peter explained. “In addition, I realised that storage and processing of logs could be an issue. There would have been a lot of work involved with processing and storing enough logs to heat the whole house. “We already use several tonnes of firewood a year in a wood burning stove which is just a room heater. When we thought the idea through, we realised if we’d put in another stove to heat all the radiators and hot water we’d have ended up going through an awful lot of logs.” Specialists had suggested a pellet stove might be a good compromise in providing an efficient way for Peter and Katherine to heat their home with biomass whilst avoiding much of the heavy work associated with logs. Peter admits he had harboured some reservations about pellet stoves, reckoning that the energy used to create and transport the pellets negated some of the environmental benefits of using this form of woodfuel. However exploring the issue in more depth, he concluded that switching to pellets was vastly better than carrying “In terms of carbon dioxide, the pellet system should offer a 90% saving from that of the old LPG heating.” on using fossil fuels. “Logs are the lowest carbon form of woodfuel - however for many people it’s just not practical to convert entirely to a log fired system. “In terms of carbon dioxide, the pellet system should offer a 90% saving from that of the old LPG heating.” Getting a chance to quiz a Kingussie householder using a wood pellet stove at a woodfuel seminar in the Cairngorms National Park was the factor that finally clinched the couple’s decision. “I’d imagined pellet stoves would be industrial looking machines you would have in a shed outside,” Peter recalled. “At the seminar in Boat of Garten we heard how these people were using a freestanding pellet stove with an integrated hopper. I’d heard a little about them before but it was only when we heard more first hand about someone’s actual experience using one that we realised it was a something worth exploring more about. Seeing what it looked like made us consider it as a serious option.” In July 2010 Peter and Katherine got a quote from Inverness-based renewables firm Fraser and Sun and applied for a grant from the Energy Savings Trust. The home renewables grant scheme, which has now closed, provided 30% of the £8,000 cost of the system. In March the 15 kilowatt Musa Hydro was installed. “The installation went pretty well,” Peter said. “There were a couple of issues as you would expect in installing a modern system in an old house like this - it’s a messy job and I don’t think there’s any way to avoid that. But all in all, it went fine.” The stylish stove sits on a glass hearth on the wooden floor. A new 150 litre hot water cylinder contains an extra coil so solar thermal panels can be added in future. The Elbournes plan to replace the existing LPG tank in the garden with a pellet store. In the meantime, they buy pellets by the bag for £260 a tonne. Buying in bulk will bring the cost down to around £225 a tonne. The system is easy to maintain; burning produces a tiny amount of ash which has to be removed every three or four days. When the stove is in constant use the glass requires cleaning once a week. A 10 kilo bag of pellets costs around £2.60, with the system using two bags a week in summer and a bag a day in winter. Once the stove is lit it takes 45 minutes to heat the hot water cylinder. Carrying out home energy surveys and giving advice to householders on cutting fuel bills and the potential to switch to renewable forms of heating had made Peter acutely aware how few examples people had to inspire them. “The heating system you choose has to be compatible with a whole range of factors including the layout of the property, storage space, lifestyle and degree of automation required,” he said. “By putting in a pellet stove and heating system, we’ve created an example and describe our experiences first hand. You learn a lot when you go through the process of researching and selecting a new system, then learning how to get the best out of it. “By sharing that knowledge we can hopefully inspire others to explore this route; and help people realise that modern biomass heating can be efficient, flexible and easy to use.”