Hi there
I own a mid terraced house in Zurich with gas boiler and water tank located in our ground floor wash room. The house has four floors with existing rather older radiators.
Currently there is nothing wrong with the boiler, I have it serviced periodically, and hooked up to my Google Nest which works well in managing it.
With an eye on replacement within the next 5 to 10 years, I have a couple of questions:
1. When replacing, is it now mandatory to install something else like a heat pump?
2. Anyone have a similar experience of replacing gas with heat pump in Zurich and can share experience, costs, good company, etc?
3. Do all such systems require an external box with fan to sit in the garden? I ask because our garden is small and such a box would be very unsightly.
4. If holes need to be drilled into the ground (?) can they do this directly in the washroom where my current setup is, or does it have to be done externally?
4. I heard that there is an alternative heating system available in some places using a pipe fed by Abfall (waste) heating. Is there any news on this for Zurich?
5. Anything else I need to consider?
It's called Fernwärme (= "remote heating").
https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/...gsgebiete.html
In striped light blue / yellow the served areas, in solid light blue / orange the expansion plan:
The expansion has been financed with a recent vote and will be concluded in 2040 after four steps:
https://www.stadt-zuerich.ch/ted/de/...ernwaerme.html
Two types of heat pumps
1. Geothermal. One, or two, holes drilled in your property (+/- 100m) uses the differential in water temperature to generate heat. Not for everywhere, such as with rocky bedrock.
2. Atmospheric Sucks the heat out of the air. Can be noisy (neighborhood permission could be required). The lower the outside temperature the less efficient.
Not much. Mine is rather new, 2 years old, and it's extremely quiet (not louder than a regular indoor fan). The strictest regulations in Switzerland are probably those that determine if and how you can get a subsidy, and in my case they had me install a little "house" around the device, to reduce any possible noise coming from it. So now it's 100% silent. You can't hear a thing, even standing next to it. It's a bit unsightly, but it's in a corner where it doesn't bother anyone.
I bought an old house with a broken oil heating in 2009, and replaced it by heat pump with 2 wells 180 m deep each. Drilling at that tiime costed me about 30K. The pump, boilers/buffers and work all together about 50 k more.
I'm pretty sure the company like GTS Bohrung (highly recommend as a happy customer) can run these black plastic pipes from the wells straight into your cellar, but double-check first. As far as I can remember, at some conditions air may accumulate in the vertical bends of the pipes so that additional air valves may be required.
If I would plan heating system today, I would do it with Photovoltaic sun panels instead of heat pump - these panels got a lot cheaper since 2009. Batteries are still expensive, need space and periodic replacement, but I think it's possible to save energy in the water instead of batteries. I'd put three or four 1k-liter good insulated tanks in the cellar, and let them all heat up by sun electricity in a good sunny day, warming up the house in the nights and rainy days. Of course you can sometimes take electricity from the provider when it rains for weeks, but, generally, this should even reduce your electricity bills.
The initial costs should be comparable with a heat pump solution, but turn out more profitable in the long run.
And... I'd highly discourage from using air-air pumps. Ineffective and noisy crap.
1.2 Pipes can also be laid under the earth if you have a big enough garden.
1.3 Pipes can be in a body of water like a large pond or lake.
First thing to be done will be to insulate the house, the amount of energy when compared to other systems like Oil or Gas is far lower, so insulation is good required.
Second, the radiators will most likely need to be changed. Usually these systems work best with underfloor heating, but read they can be used with radiators which are larger... This is because the system does not get as hot...
It will not be possible to drill inside your cellar. Not sure if you have seen the machines that do the drilling but they are BIG, and the drill pieces are long..
Depending on how you insulate, you may need to add a solution to ventilate your home, this is normally done in modern homes with a heat exchange system that continually brings in fresh air from outside through a heat exchanger and takes out air at the same time. Extract from ceiling of Bathrooms, Kitchen wash room, come in at floor of all other rooms.
1. I think from 1. September heat pump or wood will be your only choices, unless you can prove that a fossil-fuel based solution would be substantially cheaper.
3. No, you can have it in the cellar.
4. No. BTW, in some areas (like mine) you are not allowed to drill because of water reservoir protection.
5. Fernwaerme. Might make sense to contact them and see if they already have a network nearby. They need to increase the coverage of the city from the current 25% to 60% before 2040, so they might be able to make good offers, especially if some of the neighbouring buildings decide to connect at the same time.