What is the land area for a viable biomass scheme

[Ben Downie]

We are architects dealing with the conversion of a former agricultural barn to a house, it stands on about six acres of land in a an SSI.

We are intending to use the land for traditional coppicing to promote wild life and to contribute to a sustainable heating strategy for the house.

It is intended to super-insulate the building in order to reduce heating loads. Is there any rule of thumb for the acreage required to provide the fuel needs of an individual dwelling? Or does anyone know of a similar successful scheme.

Any advice on suitable boiler manufacturer's/ technology would also be welcome.

[David Olivier]

But my view is that the Sutton Courtenay building still uses many times more kWh of wood per m2 than energy-efficient buildings with mains gas or LPG systems have used. This may be due to the control difficulties with wood.; it would benefit from further study. Even this scale of wood usage (about 30,000 kWh per year) poses serious concerns over air pollution; small woodstoves still emit many grams / hour of particulates, plus other chemicals we have been trying hard to eliminate from the atmosphere in part by the move from domestic coal burning to oil and gas.

You could be better off trying to bring the building up to AECB Gold standard or German Passiv Haus standard. Some projects in Germany have already done this. The heat input is then so low that it may become viable in a domestic-scale building to use bottles of LPG, not tankloads. A solar heating system with storage would be even better but the UK has done zero research on this for two decades and not everyone has the means to transfer the technology themselves from the USA or Sweden and adjust the system design for the differences in climate.

David.

[Author]

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