We’ve been in our rented place for nearly a month now and our thoughts are increasingly focussed on the bungalow we are in the process of buying. On the whole, it doesn’t need a lot of work doing to it. It’s not exactly what we envisaged buying when we put our wee house on the market, but it’s going to be our home, so we’re making the most of it. And dreaming of a warm, eco-friendly home at that. Yes, colour us smug.
The place currently has electric storage heaters and a wood-burning stove. It runs on economy 7, which is a cheaper electricity tariff BUT I would most likely be spending a lot of time during the day in the house, and I want a more controllable way of heating the place. Also, as this isn’t exactly our ‘forever home’, we want to make it attractive to potential buyers. Hold that thought.
So. The way forward is *obviously* gas central heating. There is a gas line in the street, so it would just be a matter of connecting it to the property and getting a central heating system installed. And then a friend suggested we consider a biomass boiler. No, I thought, pooh-poohing the idea after we had had a depressingly brief chat about biomass heating systems with some company last summer at the Forestry Festival. They had said it wasn’t worth doing if there was gas already in the property. And then we did some more research and rang some engineers, estate agents and builder friends, and once again, after pretty much talking ourselves out of the decision, it looks as though we will go for a biomass system afterall. Which is exciting, especially after the recent news about fracking which hubby and I are emphatically against on both moral and environmental grounds. With this decision, we won’t feel so hypocritical when we criticise the dash for shale gas as we won’t be using it!
Of course there is the matter of how potential buyers would view this asset of the house (as we see it). Of the three estate agents I contacted, only one saw it as a positive and the other two were suspicious. That said, the positive agent is the most forward-thinking and is the guy who we put our house on the market with back in August. He is a new-breed and doing very well. I think we’ll go ahead with it regardless.
Would you buy a house with a biomass boiler?
bookwormbird 