1936 Tenement House: Coal vs Duon High-Methane Gas Heating - Cost, Efficiency, and Installation

Question

I live in a very old tenement house - built in 1936. This year high-methane gas from Duon will be carried out in my town. I'm thinking about switching to gas heating. Despite the fact that I have a boiler with an eco feeder, I'm fed up with shoveling black gold and dumping ash and dust...

Xantix · Accepted Answer

It's really oversized and twice. But with the feeder it is not so severe yet. In an overflow boiler, such oversizing would be a path through torment.

As to the merits. Gas heating will come out about 1/3 more expensive than coal based on energy unit. Adding an increase in comfort and less work (actually, no work) it basically does the same. If you can still reduce the heat consumption of the house, the coal-gas difference will drop significantly and you can pay virtually the same amount. Until the gas refuses to go up sharply. By the way, as advised by a colleague above, I would leave this solid fuel boiler emergency. In case of "W" can save the skin ...

miro.nasz · Answer

Hello!
I have to warm 300m. I heat with oil. When I connected it, the oil cost 30-40 groszy per liter. Currently about PLN 3.
When connecting the oil boiler, I did not delete the coal boiler.
To heat my room, I burned 600l of oil a month. Coal 4-5ton. depending on winter per year. Oil heating was very convenient because I did nothing. I just kept tanks full.
The issue of coal is just like you said: charging, cleaning, ash, but saving about PLN 2,000.
A similar situation for gas. The decision is yours.
I would like to add that my pipes are made of steel for self-circulation. Currently, I have used a pump, thermostats, electronic control. I will have to replace the installation from steel to copper. The amount of water and fuel consumption will decrease.
My advice is if you switch to gas, leave the stove on coal. You can switch it on at any time.

Regards Miro. Ours

andrzej lukaszewicz · Answer

A bit too little data, what area, room height, central apartment, gable, window condition etc.

BUCKS · Answer

It will certainly be more expensive on gas but not 100%, so don't worry. What is the ceiling I will not help, because I have no insight, it will come out in your laundry.
I switched from tiled stoves to gas, but I don't remember the difference in operating costs. Generally, for me there were more benefits, because I ended up running to the basement and tugging buckets of coal and wood and the temperature stabilized throughout the cottage and ceased to be a sauna after lighting up and the cold room after cooling down.

In the case of an old tenement house, you probably have high rooms above 3m. Then you should consider the option of installing a suspended ceiling, even lowering by 20cm makes a difference and fill the resulting gap with wool. Window tightness is equally important, if you have an old leak it is worth setting up a new, energy-saving one and most importantly use the assembly by a specialized company with references, because installation by accidental professionals may mean throwing the money down the drain. Incorrectly installed windows, even if they were super economical, will not give the desired results.
Entrance doors may also be important, because if you have old wooden ones, they are usually extremely leaky.
If you embrace all these elements, you will have relatively low heat energy losses, which will translate into lower operating costs, better thermal comfort, etc.
Everything costs but I treat such things not as an expense but as an investment in my hut to make life more comfortable.

jojoro · Answer

This is not an apartment - it is a whole tenement house. I am currently heating an area of about 180m2. The height of apartments is 2.7m. The walls are made of solid brick, without an air gap. Thickness 45 (floor) -60cm (ground floor). The eastern wall is not insulated, balcony 8m long along the entire width of the building. numerous glazing (2 balcony doors, large windows). South wall of a twin with another tenement house. North wall - the so-called entrance gate between tenements. Insulated with 20cm graphite but from a height of 1.8 m above the ground, otherwise it would not have been possible to drive the car into the gate - gate width 2.20m. Western wall insulated with graphite 10cm. There is also a balcony and glazing. Corner window. on the ground floor terrace on the ground. On the eastern wall on the ground floor there are 2 unheated stores. In the western part, the unheated staircase. Basement with boiler room under half the building. L-shaped building, irregular shape. Stone foundations. Attic not usable. Roof covered with roofing felt. Ceilings of rooms on the first floor lined with 5cm foam. Next, cane and pola in the attic. Gravitational ventilation (efficient). Double-glazed plastic windows K 1.1 are 20 years old. Radiator installation: eco boiler, 4d valve with servomotor, PID controller, solar tank, 2 coils, 200 l, closed system, distributors. New steel radiators with electronic heads.

BUCKS · Answer

The glass has k = 1.1 but the whole window if it has 1.7 will be fine. Only knowing life, since they assumed these windows 20 years ago, I suspect that you have 99% screwed installation and theoretical 1.7 you can have, for example, 2.6. It was similar with me, after which it turned out that when I dumped the window and put it in myself again, the effect with the old window is better than when it was done by professionals. Contrary to appearances, to find a good window assembly team is art and luck.

Xantix · Answer

First of all - the most important. What part of Poland do you live in? Because in the south you may be affected by a ban on solid fuels or the need to replace the boiler with a V-class. What calorific value? For example, as coal with a calorific value of 7 kWh / kg at an average boiler efficiency of 60%, it gives us consumption of about 30,000 kWh per year. The price of 1 kWh from gas for me is 22 gr (after taking into account the efficiency of the boiler). So assuming the same consumption we have a cost of PLN 6,600 per season. So about 1/3 more expensive than on coal. Do not complain there - you have an automatic boiler and you complain, imagine how much work there is at the charging boiler ... PS. Fill out the form from the website: www.cieplowlasciwie.pl and place a link to the result. Added after 2 [minutes]: Then put it in the form I have linked to and everything will become clear. The system will even calculate the estimated heating costs for different fuels.

BUCKS · Answer

If you heat 180m2, it's probably about 1-2 apartments, not the entire tenement house. . For the apartment this site is not reliable, at least it has not worked for mine and as for me the boiler output is too high.

Xantix · Answer

But the guest clearly writes that he heats the whole building, not the apartment. Which does not mean that he counts wrong. He can't take all the data into account because it's too many variables. What? Gas? IMHO can not overstate the power of a gas boiler because there are two or three power variants because you do not need more. Coal does not increase anything, only in accordance with the standards that apply to calculate the heating source, and in addition there are comments ordering that the boiler power reduction should be taken into account when burning fuel other than basic. So I'm sure - this calculator does not overstate the recommended boiler output. Added after 3 [minutes]: Besides, how are you sure that this tenement house does not consist of just 2 apartments? By the way, the author writes that there are shops on the ground floor that he does not heat, so the heated surface for him is different than the usable one. As for me, everything is correct.

jojoro · Answer

On the first floor there are 4 rooms, on the ground floor 2. On average 25 sq m. It gives 150m2. For this I give roughly 30m2 for 2 small bathrooms and some corridors. End. This is the whole house.
A quarter of the building is occupied by a staircase, 55 sq m, two shops, in addition, the body of the building is not a rectangle, but also has an indentation in which the terrace and the external entrance stairs are inscribed.
The building's area is 350m2 and the rooms are like a single-family house. A brilliant solution, but I have it.
The windows are actually stunned. The corner ones are the peak of madness. Plastic pillar in the corner, empty inside, 1 compartment. When you move your hand to the window, you feel the cold despite not blowing.
With this termowlasciwie.pl it is hard for me to calculate something sensible there because of all these irregularities in the shape of the building, unheated surfaces, basement only under half of the building, etc.
As much as I tried, a 29kW eco boiler came out of this side. Meanwhile, I have 24kW and I think it is 40% oversized minimum. In the current weather, I burn 10kg of eco a day and the boiler works on 1-10% PID, and sometimes it gets sustained - because there is nothing to do with it.
I buy a weak eco, some 22-24Mj, and I go all winter.

Xantix · Answer

In current weather, every boiler will have nothing to do with power - because now you only need a few kW max. In transition periods, almost every coal boiler is oversized. Such a specificity of this fuel. Write how much eco-pea coal is going on every day on an average winter day and then you will see if the boiler is really oversized.

jojoro · Answer

At -5 C he took 30kg that year. In frost -20 C 40kg. He never burned more than 40kg a day

BUCKS · Answer

For me, everything is not right, because my idea of the tenement house is quite different. For me, this one flat can have 150m2 but not the whole tenement house. If the whole is to have 180 m2, I would sooner call it a semi-detached house, not a tenement house I have gas, but there were various options on the site, I don't remember anymore, I know that the powers were significantly oversized, about 100% more than I really need. On the other hand, there are too many variants, and the site does not offer many options to choose from. I also use a program to choose radiators, which calculates the demand for heat power for specific rooms and in the case of my apartment, the obtained values are more or less consistent with reality, but there are more options selected, such as the energy class of the building, the type of windows and their energy efficiency, the number of external walls , the ratio of the size of the windows to the walls, the location of the building in the field, susceptibility to winds, etc. On the given page there is not much of this data, so the final result is a kind of rounding.

Xantix · Answer

I don't know how to oversize. Anyway, most gas boilers have a power well above 10 kW and their wide modulation range and lossless power regulation easily compensates for this excess. If you think about coal, first take a look at the specifics of these boilers. As your apartment needs e.g. max 4 kW of thermal power and the above-mentioned calculator offers you an 8 kW boiler, don't be surprised because coal-fired boilers with a power less than 8 kW simply they do not exist on the market. This calculator takes into account such nuances. The same boiler for fine coal is always chosen for much more power because this is the specificity of this fuel. To sum up, this calculator selects the boiler power well, and the differences result from not taking into account all variables. First of all, termowlasciwie.pl was created mainly for coal heating and flats are not heated with this fuel. Obviously, flats are more complicated for OZC than single-family houses. So there is more inaccuracy. And the site itself was invented with the thought of gray Kowalski, which usually has no idea what is the energy class of the building or the lambda insulation ratio at home. There you enter the data that every citizen knows, i.e. the date of construction of the house, the material from which it is built, what insulation, etc. The goal is at least to estimate the order of the energy demand of the building - it is really a serious dose of information about their home for many people. And the programs for OZC are cool and it is known that they will give a precise result, only that not everyone Kowalski will have the idea to complete them. Something for something.

BUCKS · Answer

I meant that there were different options on the site and regardless of the boiler, the value was overestimated. Assuming my demand at 8-9kW, and the site stated that I must have a 20kW boiler for the same As for gas, condensing actually has a wide modulation range and a 20kW boiler can modulate from 2-3kW. I still have old gas open 24kW chamber which begins to modulate from 9.1kW, so as you can see you have oversized gas But at home I have made steps to minimize the effects of oversizing, so roughly OK, although the best situation will be as eventually the old boiler will be replaced with a new condensing which I think will happen in a few years. depends what and where, for me, most of it heats with tiled stoves, which can be seen and felt. Although it may be better not to know what people smoke in these furnaces. But gradually people are switching to gas, because there is no other alternative worth attention, and the lack of having to mess with coal and carry it from the basement is a big advantage.

gaz4 · Answer

For small apartments in tenements, there is another alternative - electricity on the 2nd tariff. Operating costs are similar to gas (in Mazury, electricity on G12r is about 2 gr / kWh more expensive than gas), but investment costs are much lower. Because tenements have a lot of solid brick walls, you are asked to perform wall heating using cables or heating mats. Such an investment is up to PLN 10,000 cheaper than making a gas installation, so it is very economically viable. Heating mounted on internal walls allows for max. the brick's heat capacity is used and it gives very high thermal comfort. It is true that the author of the topic has a large area to heat, so 15 kW of standard power on 3 phases may not be enough. But for most apartments with an area of up to 50 m2, even one 5 kW phase is enough, especially if the tenement house is insulated. It is difficult to predict energy prices in the future, but until 2022 when the Yamal gas contract ends, it will change little. Over half of the gas consumed in Poland comes from this contract, and its prices depend on oil prices. At the moment, there is no indication that oil is more expensive than $ 60 but you can not see the price drop to $ 40 as it was recently. The zloty tends to slowly strengthen so with a large dose of luck until 2022 gas will increase slightly. The highest risk is created by the dollar, which can strengthen to 1 euro at any moment (i.e.> 4 PLN), which will immediately increase gas prices. The geopolitical risk associated with the construction of NS2 is much more important, it will also indirectly affect us. Putin does not hide that it is about bypassing Ukraine as a transit country, but in this way also bypasses the gas storage facilities there. When in 2014/15 there was a general attempt to bypass Ukraine at the beginning of the season, Gazprom had to reduce gas to the pond to the minimum level specified in the contracts (also for Germany and other countries!). These reduced deliveries continued until the end of the season, were it not for the fact that we already had a reverse on the Yamal and the Germans had a surplus of gas in storage, it would be short of about 2 million m3 - that's what we bought from them. But in 2014 and 2015 we used 16 billion m3, in 2016 17 billion m3 and everything indicates that in 2017 we can reach 18 billion m3. Assuming the darkest scenario, i.e. limited supplies from the east and no supplies from the west, there will be up to 5 billion m3, i.e. the current regasification capacity of the gas port. But only part of the additional consumption will fall evenly throughout the year, most will be consumed during the heating season. The colder the more, and our gas storage facilities have only 3 billion m3 of capacity for the entire heating season ... The risk of pressure drop and / or gas quality is very high, it should be taken seriously. By 2022, there should be a Baltic pipe (10 billion m3 annually), expanded to 7.5 billion m3 gas ports + many connections to countries with large gas storage facilities (e.g. Latvia via Lithuania), so the risk associated with the construction of NS2 will drop to almost zero. Unless gas consumption explodes up to> 20 billion m3 in the meantime, it will not do without additional transmission capacity and new storage facilities. It costs everything, so even if the gas did not increase by odd chance, the transmission will definitely go up. IMHO cost of kWh from gas will long be close to kWh on the night tariff and some 30-40% higher than from coal or biomass burned in good boilers. When dynamic tariffs come in, at certain hours electricity can cost less than wood / coal, but the use of very cheap energy will be associated with having a very large thermal capacity of heating devices - a few hours of heating must be enough per day. The latest news from the gas front is not optimistic. According to Gazprom, the average price for Europe will soon reach $ 200, which would amount to PLN 800 / 1000m3 nett at PLN 4 per dollar. After adding VAT we have 1000 PLN gross, i.e. 1 PLN / m3 without transmission, storage costs, margins etc. (about the fact that Poland pays more than the European average, not to mention). Gas heaters should follow the dollar as well as franc holders - if it goes up, poverty will rise.

BUCKS · Answer

As for electricity, only cheap electricity is right, that is, heating for 8h at night and 2h in the afternoon, and for the remaining 14h we use accumulated energy. Otherwise electricity doesn't make sense. As for investment costs, I do not know if they are much lower, but you also need to take into account the nuisance of wall heating installation. In the case of a gas pipe, I put on a boiler, in a house because of the curves of the chimneys, there may be a problem with the installation of the chimney liner, I give the pipes on the surface, the radiators, so I have new heating without major renovation. In the case of wall heating, this means forging plasters, installing heating mats and re-plastering, i.e. we have a nice mess at home, a pile of dust and a mess. Rather unrealistic in the apartment, which is our only and we do not have the option to temporarily live in another apartment. The second thing for me apartments are 70, 100, 150m2, small are only a few pieces, so these are exceptions. As I increased the power allocation, I got a maximum of 9kW, because the storage division did not allow for more. On the other hand, electric heating also requires a small renovation of the electrical installation, so it gets total armageddon. I have the installation after renovation, but I did not plan electric heating, so I do not have dedicated circuits and I do not have insulation, because although there were plans, the conservator of monuments did not give permission. In my opinion, the assembly of the gas pipe is less problematic than the wall electric heating, but each case must be analyzed individually. From what I read, apparently the greatest comfort is given by heating on external walls, mounting heating on internal walls gives less benefits, unless the option of external walls + additionally on internal, if they are internal walls only from my rooms, because it makes no sense to heat the internal walls bordering the neighbor.

gaz4 · Answer

With external walls there is the problem that their heating increases heat loss. Instead of 20 degrees they have 30, and this will clearly raise the electricity bill. It is better to warm up a neighbor with two bad things, because ultimately the heat will stay in the house

Most of the flats in the tenements I saw were small and very small, around 50 m2. As there was no access to district heat, they were heated with stoves, so switching to gas or electricity always involves renovation with dust and clutter. When you use mats, not heating cables, you don't have to chuck the plaster. How old is healthy and holds the walls of the mat well, you can attach to it and give it another layer. For mats with low power per m2, it does not have to be thick, because they heat up to low temperatures, slowly giving back heat to the bricks. Heaters installed in tiled stoves are another alternative to tenements, you can also do classic CO with heat buffer (provided space for several hundred liters).

The classic G12 night tariff is cheap electricity for 8h at night and 2h in the afternoon. There is also a G12w weekend in Poland where cheap electricity is available throughout the day on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. But in different regions there are other, very interesting. Energa has a G12r where electricity in the second tariff costs about 27 grosze, and is valid for 9 hours at night and 3 hours in the afternoon (13-16), half a day in total. I think Tauron has a similar one where apart from the above hours cheap electricity is also from 22 on Saturday to 7 am on Monday. For well-insulated or small apartments (consumption below 15,000 kWh per year, i.e. max. Power of approx. 15 kW when supplying for half a day), the biggest challenge is the heat accumulation capacity. If you overcome this obstacle, you can have heating as cheap as gas. And with current coal prices, you don't even need it - in economic terms, the most cost-effective option is an electric heater working at night and, as you can not, burning in the oven. Most have 30-40% efficiency (the best tiled stoves with vertical channels can have up to 60% but are not popular) which at almost PLN 1000 per ton gives over 30 gr / kWh. The same as for electricity in the 2nd tariff but without dirt

1936 Tenement House: Coal vs Duon High-Methane Gas Heating - Cost, Efficiency, and Installation

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