A woodland house

You have a 3 phase 11KV line there. Why do you think it is going to cost you £15K for the hydro to hang a transformer on one of those poles and drop a feed down to your house?

 

A local build here cost £10K for the supply but that included undergrounding a section of the 11KV line that was in the way for his house. You don't have to do that so your cost should be a lot less than £10K

 

If you are going for solar pv then you want a stored hot water system to dump excess power.

 

I think re ASHP's the general consensus is buy one and fit it yourself. If you are intent on claiming the RHI you will most likely find the extra cost of having to get it supplied and installed by an MCS registered contractor will be more than the RHI payments would be.

 

Many on here don't like wood burning stoves (I do) but given your woodland it would be foolish not to use all that free fuel.  Make sure it is sized properly and get one with a ducted air intake.

Thanks for the comments, particularly ASHP which we haven't given a lot of thought to yet.

 

As we don't have plans for SSE to give a firm quote, I asked them for a budget estimate and that's what they told me.  So perhaps they quote on the high side to cover themselves at this stage.  Admittedly  there was no breakdown from them and so I don't know how the contestable/non contestable elements would work out.  I also haven't spent much time pressing them on the cost although it will be worthwhile at some point.  This was what they said they needed to do:

 

• Shutdown the network and tee-off existing pole X, and install a stay.
• Install a new overhead Extra High Voltage line, consisting of 1 span, 1 x stout terminal pole, 1 x stay.
• Install a new 16kVA transformer to take the new load of supply.
• Take a connection from the transformer and lay new single phase service cable to the new 100 amp cut out.
• Customer to excavate and reinstate all tracks at no cost to SSEN.

 

Our current thinking is to use a masonry heater style stove (something like the ecco stoves), partly as they're more efficient, but also because I think it makes more sense to have something that releases heat slowly in a well insulated house. 

Edited March 19, 2018 by jamieled

We had to go 220 meters back to the transformer, it wasn't as much as your quote but the amounts quoted did fluctuate one day to the next.

 

We were fortunate enough to obtain a grant to help with the connection and were able to do some of the work ourselves.

 

I take it your property will probably be the only one to use the potential new transformer as I can't remember whether you get some kind of pay back if other connections come from it in the future.

 

If you know your definitely going ahead I would get a temporary electricity supply set-up and then it's just one less area to get stressed over. 

 

What about water, will you take a private supply from somewhere on the woodlands?

 

We also have a proportion of woodland on our croft and plan to utilise this for our stove.

 

On 19 March 2018 at 21:18, jamieled said:

• Shutdown the network and tee-off existing pole X, and install a stay.
• Install a new overhead Extra High Voltage line, consisting of 1 span, 1 x stout terminal pole, 1 x stay.
• Install a new 16kVA transformer to take the new load of supply.
• Take a connection from the transformer and lay new single phase service cable to the new 100 amp cut out.
• Customer to excavate and reinstate all tracks at no cost to SSEN.

 

The bit in bold seems unnecessary.  Why take a spur to another pole.

 

All I see in this situation usually is the transformer mounted onto one existing pole. You don't want them adding extra overhead lines across your land. They may need to add stays to that pole but that is usually the extent.

 

You could do as some of us have done here. Make your meter box a permanent structure on a bit of fence or wall close to the pole. You can use it as a site supply there to start with then take your own feed from the meter box to the house rather than getting your supply moved.

Thanks to you both for the replies.  @Thedreamer  - it needs a lot more investigating from me and working out how they've come up with that number.  We will be the only people using that transformer I reckon.  As both you have @ProDave have mentioned I'll take a look into siting a meter box elsewhere - space is thankfully not a problem so it would make sense.  I think they just threw together a cost fairly quickly, as we couldn't give them much of a plan.

 

Water will be a gravity feed from a burn, probably with a ceramic and UV filter although that's also to be determined. 

 

While I know not everyone is a massive fan of wood burners, I do think that they make sense in some circumstances, particularly if they're run efficiently.  Part of the woodland plan is to establish a bit of birch coppice for this purpose.