The new Greener Homes grant gives money towards the cost of installing renewable energy in the home. Sounds attractive, but what's it like living with an alternative heating system? Does the fire still dance? Can you shower whenever you want? Will John Rocha be designing solar panels any time soon? And does it break the bank to heat your home? Jane Powers explains some of the new eco-technology.
We've come a long way since John Hinde's iconic postcard of Ireland, depicting the redheaded children and the donkey laden with peat. To be sure, the image was deliberately folksy, but less than half a century ago, when Hinde photographed the donkey, its cargo - along with coal - as the preferred way of heating most of Ireland's homes.
Since then, Ireland has prospered mightily, and ditched the donkey and the baskets of peat in favour of oil and gas central heating. Our young people came in from the bog, to the glow of the computer and television, and became fat and warm in their machinewashed, tumble-dried T-shirts. But after just a few short decades of bliss and plenty, we find ourselves in an embarrassing and ignoble position. Ireland is now the seventh most oil-dependent economy in the world and the fifth-highest producer of greenhouse gases per capita. And, as far as reducing our use of fossil fuels goes, we come bottom of the class, being the slowest in the European Union to change.
Businesses have used some of this energy, but the domestic sector is consuming much of it. This country's galloping appetite for non-renewable fuels has landed the householder in a situation where we have to change our diet rather more quickly than we would have imagined.
But, aren't we the people who were cajoled into embracing electricity and fossil fuels in the last century? Yet now, by the look of things, we've no choice but to switch to more renewable energy forms. By the time the turf-bearing donkey's centenary rolls along, oil and gas will be all but finished, and the only place you'll see a sod of peat may be in a museum.
In the meantime, we have to get our heads around a bunch of novel ideas: cutting back our carbon dioxide emissions, using renewable energy, and understanding a host of confusing new technologies. The government's very welcome (but a long time coming) Greener Homes Scheme was launched on March 27th, and might just help us in this task - as it offers grants for three renewable technologies. But how many of us can honestly say we wholly understand any of them?
Before last week, wood pellet stoves and boilers, solar panels and geothermal heat pumps weren't exactly the stuff of daily conversation, but by the time the five-year grant period is up, they'll be tripping off our tongues as easily as "peat briquette".
You'll find more detail on the technologies on the websites of Sustainable Energy Ireland (the government agency that is administering the grants: www.sei. ie) and Construct Ireland - an excellent magazine devoted to sustainable building and renewable technologies (www.constructireland.ie).
Yet, what is becoming clear is that we need to change our thinking on the entire matter of heat and energy. We can't go on letting it leak through our homes like water from a colander, frittering away the precious resources of the planet and filling the atmosphere with greenhouse gases. As architect Sam Mays, of Fitzpatrick & Mays, says "The number-one issue for mankind today is global warming. It is far more important than anything else. "And look at the price of a barrel of oil. With oil and gas you are backing a loser. We are going to have to switch. I'm saying this to all our clients."
And his clients are listening: two have installed geothermal heat pumps, which collect low-grade heat from the ground, compress it and release it at a higher temperature into the house. "It works like a fridge in reverse," explains Mays. "It concentrates heat rather than dumping it."
Installing such a system is expensive, and can be messy, if it is being fitted to an existing house. A horizontal collector involves digging up an area larger than a tennis court, to a depth of a metre, while a vertical collector requires a bore hole, 100 or more metres deep.
GEOTHERMAL ENERGY
One of Fitzpatrick & Mays' clients says that three years ago his horizontal geothermal system cost about €10,000 more than a conventional system, "but we've made that back, definitely. We wouldn't be happy living in this large house and heating it with oil. I hate to think of countries being pillaged for oil. And," he continues, "there's no penalty to the environment in taking a bit of heat from the ground."
Paul O'Donnell of Unipipe, a company that installs such units, claims that after putting a geothermal system into his own 350 sq m (3,767 sq ft) home, his yearly heating bill is now ¤986, instead of the €4,000 that he would pay if using oil. "You'd be the village idiot if you went to buy an oil boiler now," he says - and repeats it for good measure.
Although geothermal systems are a big deal to put in, they are relatively discreet when in place, as most of the workings are invisible, being below ground. The pump unit - which may be the size of a fridge-freezer - can be installed internally, or in some cases, may need to be housed in a boiler house or garage.
AEROTHERMAL ENERGY
Aerothermal units, which collect heat from the air, have to be located outside. Some systems release moisture and very cold air, which can turn into ice: on a seven-degrees day, the air expelled from the unit is at two degrees. Accordingly, it should be put where the water can drain away, and where ice is not a hazard.
Over a flower bed will do (although nothing will grow underneath), as long as there is 35cm clearance behind, and about a metre in front. A trellis or hardy shrub will screen it from view, ensuring that it does not become a blot on the landscape.
SOLAR POWER
Screening, alas, is exactly what you cannot do with a solar panel - which needs to have uninterrupted communication with the sun. But, says Sam Mays, if you have a double-pitched roof (like an M), you could put panels in the unseen, middle part. Or, if your south-facing roof-pitch is at the back of the house, you could put them there. But when you think about it, a solar panel doesn't have much more visual impact than a large Velux window - and it hasn't taken us long to get used to accepting their presence all over our roof faces.
Solar panels make only a partial contribution to water heating or central heating (from 25 per cent up), so you need a back-up system.However, the sun's power is there for the taking, with one square metre of your roof receiving a yearly dose of energy that is equivalent to that produced by 100 litres of oil. You can be saving the world while saving your money: a double return for your investment.
WOOD-PELLET ENERGY
The third of the grant-aided technologies is wood pellet heating. The pellets are made from compressed sawdust, bonded with lignin, the natural "glue" in wood.
Wood waste, or timber from sustainable forests, is used. And while burning wood does generate carbon dioxide, the trees that produce the pellets absorb the same amount of the gas as they grow - so no extra carbon is added to the atmosphere. Wood pellets are thus classed as a "carbon neutral" fuel. They also burn with remarkable efficiency, producing so little ash that the waste compartment in a stove or boiler needs emptying only once or twice a month.
"If you have a stove in your sittingroom, you can just run the Hoover into the ash pan when you're doing your weekly housework," says Anne McLoughlin of Ecologic in Mayo, a company that instals wood-chip and solar heating. (You can also spread the ash on your garden, or add it to the compost heap.)
WOOD-PELLET BOILERS
Wood-pellet boilers need to be housed under cover, and the fuel must be kept dry - if it takes in moisture it becomes useless. If there is not sufficient room in the boiler house for the pellets, a weatherproof steel hopper can be placed outside, and the pellets fed into the boiler's smaller hopper via an auger. (An outdoor hopper, with a 3.5 tonne capacity, measuring approximately two metres each way, costs about €2,500.)
A tonne of pellets lasts about as long as 500 litres of heating oil, but is half the price. Bulk deliveries are made by lorry, with the fuel being blown in through a tube. The need for lorry access, and the fact that the boiler and pellets do require a bit of space, may not make this system suitable for smaller houses.
WOOD-PELLET STOVES
Wood-pellet stoves are a far more attractive prospect, and can be fitted even where there is no chimney - as long as the flue has an initial vertical run of around 1.5 m. All have automatic ignition, and controls for setting the room temperature, while some are so high-tech that they can even be turned on remotely, by your mobile phone. A quiet fan circulates warmth into the room, so the stove itself does not heat up - making it safe around children. Yet the flames that can be seen through the heat-proof window are reassuringly real, flickering and dancing irregularly, just like those from a wood fire. Ah, but what of style?
"Well," admits Ecologic's Anne McLoughlin, "some are so big and bulky that you wouldn't know where to put them." But she likes Ecoteck stoves (www.ecoteck.it) which have Italian good-looks. And Bill Quigley, of Nutech in Dublin, finds the German-made Wodtke stoves (www.wodtke. com) "very architectural".
In any case, industrial chic is growing upon us: just look at the prevalence of stainless steel in domestic kitchens. And design, of course, will evolve, as these new technologies become the norm. In a decade or two, fashion-conscious Irish houses may have John Rocha solar panels in the roof and a Philip Treacy windmill in the back garden. .jpowers@irish-times.ie
MY SOLAR HOME
Marlene Ffrench-Mullen has had solar panels in her Wicklow house since 1991. Her husband Douglas runs Eilish Oils, a vegetable fuel business based in Co Wicklow. "We have one set of solar panels for water and another set for generating electricity. In fact we have everything: wind energy; wood stoves; a car that runs on vegetable oil. Some of the technologies are better than others. At the moment our wind generator is giving trouble, but there's never any problem with the solar panels. They don't break down, and they work with the slightest bit of sun. They don't make any noise. And they're always on.
"Occasionally, you have to replace one of the pipes, but that's the same with anything. We've had these since 1991, and they're still functioning.
"The water-heating panels are best. I don't actually know how much of our water they provide, because we run them in conjunction with wood stoves. But on their own on a sunny day, they'll give you piping hot water - sometimes too hot, and you have to mix it with cold - and even on a bad day they'll heat the water to tepid temperature. The other (electric) panels work as well, but their actual energy output is quite low.
"If I was starting out again, I'd do a few things differently. The angle of the panels is very important. We have three panels on one roof and two on another, and the roof with two panels is far more efficient simply because it's on a metal support that's set to the optimum angle. If I were to design a house, I'd set them all to the best angle.
"I don't want to sell a false dream. I say this as someone who has been doing this for 30 years. You need to be willing to learn and to adapt your lifestyle slightly. For example, solar panels won't heat the water at night, so in the morning you won't have really hot water from those alone. You'll have it in the afternoon.
Or you need to switch on an immersion, even for a few minutes. You need a reasonably informed attitude or it could prove a frustrating experience."
MY GEOTHERMAL HOME
Peter Mac Namara installed a geothermal heating system in his house last year: "We took a third-of-an-acre site in Terenure, Dublin, imported logs from Finland and extended the existing house to 2,360 sq ft. The house has marble floors throughout so I thought it would make sense to have underfloor heating running at a constant low temperature.
With the rising price of oil and gas, there would be definite cost benefits in an alternative heating system.
"I run a stone floor restoration business, www.pmac.ie, and had come across geothermal systems in a few houses in Dublin. Underground pipes in the garden take heat from the ground and use it to heat the house. I worked out the relative cost per square foot of this system, and there was no contest in comparison with conventional fuels.
"I put more than €40,000 into heating and plumbing, but it's hard to say how much of it went on the geothermal system. Plumbing a house of this size would have been expensive whatever way I'd done it. In terms of running costs, our heating and electricity bills come to around €70 a month.
"I saved a massive amount of money - probably half the price - by doing some building work myself, but I had sleepless nights between digging the garden in July to lay the pipes, and switching the system on in November. I wondered if it would ever work.
"I haven't had to adapt my life. My wife loves a hot shower and can have a 20-minute shower no problem. It's ready for another shower 20 minutes after that. And our kids seem much healthier. They're all in creche or school, and they haven't had one cold or flu since we got this in.
"The one downside I can see is that - being fairly handy myself - I'd have a go at fixing a conventional boiler if it broke down. This, I wouldn't go near; I'd have to call an engineer. But they say it's so stable it won't break down."
The Mac Namaras' geothermal heating system was installed by Eamonn O'Connor (087-2436443), who works in south Dublin, Wicklow and Wexford.
The money
Government funding is available for applications made from March 27th onwards, and is not retrospective. Grants may be applied only to the cost of the products, not towards the labour. You must use a product approved by Sustainable Energy Ireland (SEI), and employ a registered contractor to do the work (no DIY allowed). Lists of approved products and registered installers are available from SEI (1850-73473, www.sei.ie).
HEAT PUMPS: Grants: €4,300 for a horizontal ground collector; €6,500 for a vertical collector; €4,300 for a water-based collector; €4,000 for an air ("aerothermal") collector. Purchase and installation of a geothermal or aerothermal system: €12,000-€21,000. It is more expensive than a conventional heating system, but the extra outlay should be recouped in three to 10 years, depending on who you ask and on whether it's a new build or not.
WOOD-PELLET/WOOD-CHIP STOVES AND BOILERS: Grants: €4,200 for a central heating boiler; €1,100 for a stove; €1,800 for a stove with back boiler. Purchase and installation prices: €6,000-€16,000 for a central heating boiler; €2,000-€5,000 for a stove; and €4,000-€8,000 for a stove with back boiler. Running costs are half of those for oil-fuelled systems.
SOLAR PANELS: Grant: €300 per sq m of solar panelling (max. grant: €3,600 for 12 sq m, or 129 sq ft). Cost of supplying and installing solar system for water heating only (5 sq m of panels, or 54 sq ft) for a five-person house: €4,500-€6,000, including VAT. Panels meet 25-70 per cent of hot water requirements, depending on season, situation of house etc. Cost of installing and supplying solar system for central heating (10 sq m of panels, or 108 sq ft): €10,000- plus, which should supply 25-30 per cent of heating needs.