We have recently installed a couple of Biomass Pellet Boilers from an established European manufacturer with outlets in most major countries and we have been extremely pleased with the results. They were remarkably easy to fit, one in a new installation and another as a replacement for an existing oil boiler, and in both cases the installation proved to be much less complicated than we had envisaged. The changeover from oil to biomass was easily achieved in a day and with very little disruption to the household.
However, another clients of ours who decided to go-it-alone was not so lucky as he bought a unit on-line from another manufacturer who doesn’t have a reputation, and from what we can establish no customer support either, and they had nothing but problems with their unit and the installation because the system was damaged when it arrived and a number of the internal components were either damaged or had not been fitted correctly, so when it was finally filled and pressurised there were leaks everywhere. Fortunately, the client concerned is an extremely capable and hands-on gentleman and after three days of hard work he virtually rebuilt the unit in his garage and it is now working, albeit not as well as it should be!
Having had the opportunity to monitor the systems over a period of time we were also pleasantly surprised to discover just how efficient they are, as one client whose house measures about 180 m² is spending about €3.00 a day on pellets to provide heating and hot water and the other client whose house is of a similar size but only uses his system for heating is using a little less. These figures compare very favourably with oil and gas costs, perhaps more so with oil because the boilers are similarly priced, but overall pricing with gas is slightly less favourable because a similarly sized gas boiler costs roughly 50% less than oil or Biomass, however, we believe that over time pellet prices will remain much more stable than gas as they are not dependent on oil prices which historically are much more affected by worldwide events, so as a long-term investment they appear to be a better proposition.
As a result of these installations we will be advising our future clients who only require heating and hot water to use biomass wherever possible, simply because of the easy installation, the efficiency of the pellet boilers and the economical running costs.