Renovation of Ellesmere Bungalow.

Good luck with the purchase, hope it all goes smoothly.

 

you’ll thank yourself for living a stones throw away from your parents, it certainly saves on a lot of stress and time when looking after the oldies, but on the flip side selling their property isn’t quite so nice which I’m in the middle of now with my dads bungalow, still think on balance it’s more a good thing

We were quoted £400 for removal of the old heating system so we decided to do it ourselves.  Thinking it would take all day, it actually came out in a couple of hours.  And we even got £10 for the metal at the local recycling place. 😄

Looking at the plate - it was an 8.5KW system - no wonder it used so much electric!  There was a large box underneath, with the vents to the other rooms for the warm air.  After speaking to the ASHP company, we left the box in place, just tidied up the space.  They plan to bring some wood to sit the new system on.  After holding up all those bricks, I am sure it will cope with a water cylinder. 

 The plan is to use the bricks in the new garden and make a BBQ with them.  they even have grooves for a rack.

Those were popular in their day, and only a few years ago, you could still buy them new, it was about 10 years ago I last installed one.  These days they market them for heating industrial spaces.

 

BEWARE if your install is anything like many I have seen, the walls of that cupboard could be lined with asbestos as is often the inside of the cupboard door.

 

They were meant for whole house heating, so 8.5kW is just like having 3 big storage heaters all in the same box.  On a 7 hour off peak they could store almost 60kWh of heat.

 

I once replaced a fan motor in one of those.  Never again, miserable job with a huge amount to strip out to get at it.

 

Even if the house has suspended floors (which it probably does for the under floor ducting) there is likely a cast in place concrete slab under there for it to sit on.

Probably too late now, but at some point this year Johnson & Starley were due to produce a new version of the Aquair 'Heat Interface Unit' to allow a heat pump to supply warm air via the ducts used by those central storage heaters.