Central Heating Project

This is probably one of the more ambitious projects I've undertaken, especial since I'm not a plumber by trade. Anyway .... the story begins as far back as 2001 when I began to design and install the pipe-work for the heating system. Over the years the house has been slowly finished, but up until now no radiators had been installed since we have mainly occupied the house during the summer months and so the pipework remained unused for many years. But planning ahead, I knew that someday would would live in Pucon on a full-time basis and thus would require central heating.

Originally I expected to use a standard Gas combo boiler (10 years ago when the price of gas was half reasonable); but gas has probably tripled or more in cost today and so I looked around for alternatives. In the end I settled for a pellet boiler due to the very low emissions and cost per KW/hr which works out at about $35 pesos (~$7 cents) at today's prices. I also love the fact that biomass pellets is basically renewable fuel which can even be produced at home from grass and leaves with the purchase of a small pellet mill; and of-course pellets are completely safe and easy to store and handle unlike other heating fuels.

We took delivery of our new 29KW boiler last week. We decided to transport it ourself from Temuco to Pucon to save some cash - but I kind of under-estimated the size and weight of this thing! When the fork-lift dumped the boiler in the back of the truck - which sank considerably (240kg), I soon had a moment of panic thinking how the f$%k am I going to unload this thing back at the house!

Fortunately, we have some good neighbors whom were eager to help. Since no one had a forklift or any way to even use a simple winch, we had to think of some other way to get this beast out of my truck and into the house. Last year we had our entrance/drive way leveled out which just happened to create a level change which matched the height of the rear of my truck which allowed us to slide the boiler out. We (five men) then rolled the boiler over to the house using 3 circular fence posts. It was comical to watch, but effective ... like transporting a tremendous Moai from the stone quarry to its final resting place.

In part 2 I'll describe the installation of the radiators and the Pellet boiler.