Selfsufficientish.com

Hello there ,

does anybody keep track of how many KWH their range or stove makes ?

In our heating system we've got a few meters built in that register the ammount of KWh that the
appliances make .
The solar boiler makes around 4500kwh ayear,the Stanley Erin 7500KWH and the Esse Ironheart
has not been in use long enough, but expect alot of it .

On a yearly basis we use 20000KWH , yes 20 MW of energy a year to keep the house warm and
the use of hot water , so since we installed all the above we are saving 60 to 70 % off the gas bill.

But the down side is that we need 12m3 of wood , which has to be bought at a high price of 750€.
Further the wood of our land is also used , and then the wood we buy in creayes loads of heat ,
it's heats me at least 3 times , loading , off loading and choping .

All the figures of useage , kwh ,and so on are calculated into an Excel spreadsheet ,
then on trying to save on electricity we use LED GU10 light bulbs which only use 3,5 watt
instead of the standard 50 or even 100 watt bulbs .
All this effort is put forward to be self sufficient , and or at least to make hardly no co2 footprint.

So in our quest to be self sufficient we've invested 30k , hopefully we'll get a return of it ,depending on
Mr Poetin and MR Medledev , which brings me back to the question I earlier asked on the forum ,
is self sufficiency a hobby for the rich ?


regards ,

paul

Well, according to manufacturers blurb, our stove in the front room produces 6kw, of which the back boiler takes nearly 3kw to heat the hot water and run the radiators. The range in the kitchen is rated at 6kw too.

I don't know the rating of the solar panel, but it provides plenty (too much) hot water from late March until mid October.

All the firewood we use comes from on-site, so our heating & hot water bills per year are zero - just my time to cut it, which I'd need to do anyway (the olive trees need pruning in order to remain productive.) Sure, there was a capital cost of installing it all, but the house came with no heating and an immersion heater for water.

The solar system cost €600 to install, including a new tank, and by my rough calculations it paid for itself in 15 months. The stoves cost roughly €2000 in total, so even if you take the facilities for cooking out of the equation, it was cheaper than installing central heating, with no running costs.

In my situation (lifestyle, climate, available resources, etc..) it makes both financial and ethical sense.

Our Jotul is 12kW but it doesn't tell you at what temp you need to run it at to achieve max kW output - I have a stove thermometer and we try to keep it in the low to middle of the ideal temp zone - below that and you get a sooty flue and above that I wouldn't know as it would be way too scary to imagine! No such thing as a back boiler in France.

We've just paid €990 for 6 cordes (3m3) of 50cm split 3 yr old chestnut, and that was at a discount because of the amount of cordes that we ordered. We have a little bit of our own firewood every year and we've got a new propane boiler on order because our current one is absolutely useless and was wrongly installed to work with underfloor heating and eats propane like there is no tomorrow .

We find dealing with so much firewood extremely time consuming and back breaking so to have a CH boiler that works properly, efficiently and cheaply (compared to the current one) to give us a bit of a break from the firewood lugging chore will be great, plus we get a government 40% tax credit because it is a 'green' boiler (sorry forgotten what it's called off hand! but it won't need the current boiler's chimney - oh - a condensing boiler? I think). Plus we are switching propane suppliers as our current contract is due to expire next year and we will get much cheaper propane plus there are loads of cashback type of incentives that come from changing suppliers at the time of a new installation!!! Should be enough for a whole free tank of propane which costs over €1K.