Biomass Heaters and RHI's

People are always look for ways to save money, whether that's cutting down on luxuries or reducing the utility bills. Well another way to help is by investing in a new heating system. Biomass heaters are the solar panels of the heating industry. Not only can they reduce your heating bill by £100 - £580 a year, the government will give £2000 off the installation of a biomass boiler under the renewable heat premium payment scheme, RHPP. This offer is only available until spring 2014. Now the cost of a biomass boiler is a whopping £11000. The other options are significantly cheaper but not as efficient. The more expensive heaters are the ones that will save you more money. Now £11000 is a lot even with £2000 off (£9000). The annual savings on your energy bill will help repay that in quite a few years, however the time it takes to make back the money will be dramatically reduced as of spring 2014. The government will remove the RHPP scheme and introduce a new scheme, the renewable heat incentive, RHI. This is like the solar panel feed-in tariff except the more efficient your biomass boiler the more you get paid back. This scheme is already in play for non-domestic uses.

Apart from the financial side of this, there is also an environmental side. These biomass boilers use biological materials from plants (mostly trees). This material can be processed into heat, fuel or electricity. When it is burned it produces co2 which is taken back in by the tress that are planted to replace the ones that have been cut down. So there is no overall gain in co2.

If you would like to get quotes for a biomass heater then visit our website http://www.biomassquoter.co.uk/

If you’re a quality biomass Installer new to Price Engines, sign up now or if you’re already an existing customer, and can offer biomass installations, then log in to your Customer Admin Area and add biomass and start receiving telephone qualified sales leads today.

Solar panel savings on the 21p feed-in tariff

If you've been wondering how much income a solar panel installation would generate on the 21p tariff rate, the Energy Saving Trust website has already done the calculations for you.

Based on a typical 3kw photovoltaic (PV) solar panel installation, you could earn:

£530 a year from the Generation Tariff of 21p

£40 a year from the Export Tariff of 3p (paid directly by your energy provider)

£100 a year reduction of your current energy bills.

That adds up to £670 a year. On a typical 3kw installation, that's a very attractive payback period of just 12 to 13 years, leaving you with the remainder of the 25 year period to reap the rewards.

That payback period also assumes no further energy price rises in the next 12 years!

If December's (2011) tariff reduction is reversed, then you can see why the 43p rate is so attractive to those who've already installed solar on their roofs.

And you could save even more by applying a few energy saving measures around your home.

Some installation companies will offer free (or packaged) energy surveys of your home, and these can help highlight areas where you could save energy. Especially if you're aiming for complete self-sufficiency from the grid, then you'll need to get your energy consumption as low as possible, before the installation takes place as you'll only want to pay for the generating capacity you need.

And the news 'on the wire' is that this October's forthcoming Renewable Heat incentives may require a certain energy efficiency rating of your home, before they'll be paid.

The Government is said to also be considering  similar move with the Feed-in Tariffs, so to get the tariff payments, households may have to spend extra on insulation and other energy efficiency measures to get their property's energy rating lower.

This story first appeared in our weekly homeowner newsletter dated 6th February 2012. Click here to read the full newsletter, which also included a round up of the weeks top home improvement offers.

If renewable energy is of interest to you, then you might like to follow our dedicated renewable energy news blog which publishes daily (mon-fri) - click here to visit Renewable Energy Quoter. They can also be followed on Twitter.

5 years ago… Home Improvement Trends of 2007

Has a lot changed since 2007? We took a quick peek back at the home improvement trends of 2007, which included the housing market, buy-to-let, DIY and eco-friendly homes.

2007 saw more people than even get bitten by the by-to-let property bug, whilst other homeowners thinking of selling their properties were confronted with the HIPS pack for 3 bedroom houses. Average house prices had risen 156% in the last ten years and homeowners were adding extensions and conservatories to increase their homes value even more.

One report predicted the average house would cost £300,000 by 2012, despite December seeing a third consecutive fall in house prices, signalling, some said, an end to the property boom.

Rented homes were already in great demand as the cost of buying a first home or a larger family proved too much for the British public. This fuelled the by-to-let market as properties were snapped up and consequently let by a growing army of private property investors.

DIY was as popular an obsession with the public as it had ever been. The previous 5 years had seen a steady increase in 'handy women' with Tesco reporting it had sold 21,000 pink tool kits last Christmas.

The flip-side of the coin was increasing numbers of young professionals without any DIY skills, and a culture of 'call in an expert' for even simple tasks was evolving.

Eco-friendly interiors was surely one of the hottest topics of home improvement as house builders started incorporating natural materials like lambs wool insulation. The revolution was truly underway as energy saving lightbulbs were snapped up, although much more was achieved by simply turning the heating down a agree or two and switching off lights when not in a room.

Finally, the 18-24 age group surprised us by getting increasingly green-fingered as Britons spent an average of £180 each on sprucing up their gardens. However, those obsessed with 'keeping up with the Jones' ended up spending ten times as much as last year on landscaped gardens and even driveway turntables.

2007 also saw us launch Loft Quoter - an instant online loft conversion quoting website, joined our growing family of 'Quoter websites. It's regularly updated with the industries latest prices and can still offer free online quotes, whether your attic is traditional trusses or the more modern W shaped trusses in construction.

This story first appeared in our weekly homeowner newsletter dated 6th February 2012. Click here to read the full newsletter, which also included a round up of the weeks top home improvement offers.