Small Community Heating Scheme

[Geoff Stow]

A self build group are planning their second stage and they want to build a terrace of small well insulated houses with a small community heating system.

Any advice on setting it up and metering systems would be appreciated.

[Anonymous]

Cant help with the district heating but metering should be fairly starightforward using a heat meter.

see http://www.kamstrup.com/index.html

HTH

[Anonymous]

There are few technical problems with this type of system. Either proportion the bills or supply heatmeters to each house.

I advised on a similar scheme in Bristol for a terrrace of 6 self build bungalows. By having a communal heating system and communal solar system the build cost was many £1000,s cheaper than individual systems, standing charges and maintenance £100,s per year cheaper.

But this all went by the wayside because of percieved problems are more about management. Who reads the heat meters and apportions the bills?

So the scheme went back to individual gas boilers, hopefully with solar hot water systems.

[Nick Grant]

Someone will need to do the sums, but one scheme where we looked at district heating for new highly insulated buildings the calculated losses were more than the heat load. And in summer hot water circuit losses don't give useful space heating.

May not be an issue for compact terrace with well insulated pipes but did surprise us.

Nick

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