Updating the Heating System of an Old House – What to Consider?

Many older houses still use traditional heating systems, which can be expensive, inconvenient and harmful to the environment. Pellet heating offers a sustainable alternative, being efficient, automatic, clean and eco-friendly. Installing a pellet heating allows for diversifying heating sources while reducing the carbon footprint and increasing the overall energy efficiency of the household. When should owners of old houses consider switching to pellet heating and what should be taken into account?

The prerequisite for switching to pellet heating is that the house has a water-based central heating system, whether it’s underfloor heating, radiators, convectors, wall or ceiling heating. If the building previously used oil or logwood heating and the boiler is in good condition, it may suffice to install a new pellet burner on the existing boiler. Installing a new burner on the existing boiler is the simplest, fastest and most cost-effective method – the work takes just two hours and the price is very reasonable.

If the boiler itself needs to be replaced, the work is somewhat more extensive, but using a special pellet boiler increases the efficiency significantly.

An air-to-water heat pump is also an economical, modern and eco-friendly heating solution if the house has underfloor heating or low-temperature radiators. However, in old houses, radiators often require high temperatures and the efficiency of the heat pump significantly decreases when providing high temperatures. The critical point for heat pumps occurs at around zero degrees Celsius. With pellet heating, it doesn’t matter whether the house has underfloor heating or any type of radiators; it heats well in all cases.

If the house has a solid fuel boiler heated with logwood, is it worth replacing it with pellet heating? If you come home late in the evening, with firewood heating, you need to start by carrying wood, and you’ll get warm only after a couple of hours. In the morning, it’s still warm, but then the temperature starts to drop, and by the next evening, it’s only 15-17 degrees inside again. The accumulation tank should be large enough to hold a constantly stable warm temperature in the home.

With pellet heating these concerns disappear –  you might need to remove ash from the boiler and add pellets to the hopper once a week, but daily wood carrying, time consumption, and cold are avoided. The boiler operates fully automatically and can be controlled via the internet, no matter where you are. Your home is always comfortably warm, and when you get home, you can relax and enjoy time with your family. Most of our current private house customers have switched to pellet heating from logwood.

For new houses it’s quite common to choose an air-to-water heat pump as the heating system, but after the first harsh winter, a pellet boiler is added. In autumn and spring, the heat pump is a good and economical choice, but unfortunately, it falls short on the colder days of the winter.