Heating options... (another noob question)

[JackOrion]

We are renovating some old outbuildings to be used for workshop / home-office spaces. It's a primitive (120+ years old) single storey, long and slim brick building separated into 4 rooms (see plan attached), and it's just been re-roofed. We'll be insulating and replacing old doors and windows and it needs to be up to standard in terms of comfort and heating as we'll be working from these spaces over winter (and potentially using them as ancillary living accommodation in future).

 

I wasn't sure which of the sub-forums to post this in, as I don't know what the best option is in terms of heating (this is the question...)

 

We have:

 

• Electricity supply to the building

• No gas

• No boiler in the building

• Large ongoing supply of firewood from the woodland on site.

 

They are small rooms (approx 2.5 to 3m ceiling height), and given firewood is available, we wondered if a wood burner can be channelled to heat up all rooms – maybe via a back boiler?

 

The floors in Rooms 3 and 4 are both stone flagged (cold earth beneath) so will be insulating under there whichever route we take.

 

Room 2 is concreted (presumably over stone flags / earth) and Room 1 is flagged on I-beams with a cellar beneath.

 

Other thoughts included UFH for Rooms 3 and 4. But I've a feeling there will be someone on here with a better insight and more experience of heating a space like this.

 

We have some constraints (no boiler, no gas) but being a small space, with a well insulated roof and (eventually) walls / decent spec doors and windows, hoping there are a few options available...

 

As ever, many thanks in advance for any thoughts. And apologies if this should have been posted elsewhere (couldn't find a more general heating forum)

 

 

 

[ProDave]

If you have unlimited firewood then the obvious is a WBS in one room with a back boiler to heat water for radiators in the other rooms.

[SteamyTea]

If you have enough height, you could add a few inches of floor insulation, then underfloor heating pipework, then a couple of inches of concrete floor (exact sizes would need to be established later).

Then you can connect any type of boiler you like.

 

Alternatively, you could go for forced air heating via duct work, which may be able to be fitted in the roof, or even externally.

Again, the choice of heating is up to you as it will all go via a water to air heat exchange in the duct work.

 

There are also relatively cheap air to air heat pumps that may work.

 

You may notice that I don't mention traditional radiators, that is because they are a pain in a workshop.

 

My choice of heat source would be an air source heat pump.

But if money is tight, and you can get decent insulation and airtightness levels, storage heaters are cheap to install, and not that bad to run on Economy 7/10 (or whatever time dependant tariff will come along in the future)