ᐅ Heating Concept for New Construction – Heat Pump vs. Masonry Heater?

Hello everyone,

we are newcomers to housebuilding from Franconia and will probably have a good chance of getting a plot from the municipality, so we will have the honor to build. With 3 children and an estimated 500–600 sqm (5400–6500 sq ft) plot, the house should roughly be 150–180 sqm (1600–1900 sq ft).
Background
In our last house from the 1990s, we installed solid oak parquet flooring and really liked it. Currently, we have an apartment/house built in 1997 with tiles throughout, heating radiators plus underfloor heating. There is also a large traditional masonry stove which we feed with wood from my brother-in-law. Last year we used about 9 cords (Ster) of wood, and the heating was kept at minimum (just to avoid cold tiles).

For the new build, we would like a tiled stove plus wooden floors, but a heating system for vacations, old age, or illness must not be missing. Retrofitting heating later is not really an option.

• We often read that photovoltaic systems combined with an air-to-water heat pump and underfloor heating are common.
• I also find ground loop collectors interesting. Depending on how much work we do ourselves, costs get close to the first option. Since we want to install solid hardwood flooring, summer cooling capability might be very limited.
• Heating with wood is enjoyable in a 1990s old building because cheap family wood really saves money. Now probably a small masonry stove would be enough to properly heat a KfW55-standard house. However, additional costs for chimney sweeps, chimneys, and of course the stove itself must be considered. I have wondered whether a hot water heat pump combined with an “emergency electric heater” and a masonry stove would work? Electric towel radiators. In an emergency, a heat pump could still be retrofitted if the pipes are already installed. Are such concepts known or is this economically nonsense? Heat pumps are not cheap these days. I have also read that masonry stoves can be operated reasonably well in KfW55 houses.

Another idea that came to mind was to use ceiling heating instead of underfloor heating. Wood planks nailed to a batten substructure resting on the concrete slabs including impact sound insulation, etc. This would save screed and not stress the wooden floor with underfloor heating, although ceiling heating probably costs more extra than saving the screed? I am not fond of wall heating or infrared. Noise from the planks does not bother us, and with solid wood we don’t need underfloor heating for comfort.

Some of you might be horrified by these ideas, but I am really interested in alternatives beyond photovoltaic plus air-to-water heat pump that are not purely a financial luxury.
What are typical electricity consumptions for option 1 in a 150 sqm (1600 sq ft) single-family house? (Obviously it depends, but I have no sense whether we are talking about 3000 or 8000 kWh; so far I mainly know oil heating.)

Once we have the confirmation, we will also contact builders and others for quotes.

Thanks for your input and best regards

PATALMTT

Tile stove / masonry heater – no problem when combined with underfloor heating
==> only disadvantage when selling the property: a heating system like this without free wood is a negative point
==> from an ecological perspective, one of the worst heating methods alongside oil
==> hot water preparation with electricity or hot water heat pump
==> enough wood is always available free of charge and the work is not too much for you (even in old age)?

Photovoltaics + heat pump – virtually always possible

Trench collector – not complicated, further increases the efficiency of the heat pump, good for DIY. In that case, it’s a brine heat pump

Wood flooring and underfloor heating – they don’t interfere with each other, not with today’s supply temperatures

Wood on a slatted framework – also possible. Even works with underfloor heating, no ceiling heating needed then. The significant extra cost will be quoted by your builder

Typical electricity consumption in a new 150 sq m (1,615 sq ft) house? At current prices and without a heat pump about €60-70 per month including hot water (I’m assuming 3,000 kWh)

So everything you mention is doable. It just depends on your personal preferences. If it were my choice among your options, I would implement the trench collector in EK and heat pump plus photovoltaics. With screed and then glued wood flooring (whether engineered wood or solid planks – you won’t really see or feel the difference and will only notice it in your wallet).

What Karsten writes is quite comprehensive. We have a heat pump despite being in a forested area.

Do you want to constantly pollute the neighborhood? Here in the community, a few people have pellet stoves and tiled stoves – I understand that according to the manuals they should operate without any smell, but in practice, apparently not.

I can only hope that any form of heating with an open flame (whether firewood, pellets, oil, or gas) will soon be made as unattractive as possible and ideally banned for private heating.

HeimatBauer schrieb:

I can only hope that any type of heating with an open flame (whether firewood, pellets, oil, or gas) will soon be made unattractive and ideally banned.

For a house in a remote location, far off the beaten path, obviously that wasn’t enough for you. That’s actually quite a pity.
I don’t even know how someone can write such nonsense.

If the masonry heater has only a thermal mass storage and is not connected to a central heating system, it can be used safely even in new buildings. You can of course also operate it together with a heat pump for vacation times and summer (domestic hot water) using a buffer tank. However, this can also cause hydraulic problems, as a recent case in this forum shows.

For cleaner combustion, you could use a wood gasification boiler instead of the masonry heater. But then you lose the flickering fire in the living area and the radiant heat from the thermal mass. On the other hand, you only need to stoke it once every two days (depending on usage, design, and outside temperature).

The cost-benefit ratio and comfort have to be weighed individually. Due to the simpler technical setup, I would probably recommend a central heating system and domestic hot water production using an air-to-water heat pump with surface heating (wall, ceiling, or floor), combined with a masonry heater without water connection. You could then use the latter for heating during the really cold season but never have issues with hot water supply or the drawbacks of the buffer tank when running the heat pump.

By the way, wood does not always have to be free for economical operation. The pure costs for firewood, either sourced from the forest or delivered as logs, are around 50€/rm or 50€/2000 kWh, which is about 4 cents per kWh. With an 80% efficiency, this is still cheaper than a heat pump with a seasonal coefficient of performance (SCOP) of 4 and an electricity price of 30 cents per kWh. Of course, this also requires physical effort.

Using wood for heating in new buildings is certainly not necessary. Whether it is ecologically problematic depends on whom you ask. In my opinion, anyone who eats meat or dairy products, uses leather somewhere, travels on vacation by any means other than bicycle and tent, or owns at least a television and a smartphone should not judge or insult users/operators of wood stoves or other wood-fired heating appliances.

Regarding resources and CO2 emissions, any new building, regardless of its heating method, is questionable.