Boiler/heating decisions

[crom]

I'm trying to work out the best approach for heating a barn conversion and I'd appreciate some help/advice/comment:

The layout is as follows: The barn is 30 metres from the house and about 40 metres (in the opposite direction) from the nearest road (and mains gas/electricity supply). It will have 2 rooms downstairs and 2 rooms upstairs and the area of the building is 60-70 square metres. It's 400 years old and we want to avoid running unecessary pipes. Bear with me...

The original plan was to only put electricity (no gas/oil) down to the barn and share the main house supply with the barn. The supply would be fed using thick, armoured cable (4-5cm diameter - can't remember name) down to the barn. The supply cannot be buried in the path (due to listed building restrictions - and cost! - but will be hidden from view and being chopped into by spades, by a stone/cement hood). We would use a heatstick boiler for the two zone wet UFH and have separate oil filled radiators for upstairs.

However, an electrician has said that a domestic 100A electricity supply will not be sufficient to be shared between the main house and the barn and that we should consider having a separate electricity supply installed to the barn. This would need to be run from the road at the bottom of the garden, approx 40 metres! Another alternative would be to have a second phase installed to the house and the barn feed taken from that.

The latter is probably the cheaper option but we still have to pay for the feed from the house to the barn whereas a new connection would be straight to the barn.

My questions are:

1) Are the alternatives to the above solutions? 2) Are heatsticks our only option if we decide to go solely electric? 3) Given the increased running costs of an all electric solution would it (in the long run) make sense to have a gas or an oil supply put in? I'm assuming that a gas supply would have to go underground and up through the garden (like the mains electricity supply) and therefore be expensive but if we had an oil tank fitted at the foot of the garden oil could be piped up using a 12mm pipe run above ground.

As you can see, I'm in need of some experience/clarity of thought. Any assistance will be greatfully received!

Crom

[John Rumm]

That depends on the load you place on it in the house. If you are not running heating in the house from the supply the chances are it may have plenty of spare capacity.

The gas supply can often be provisioned by the contractors by them digging a couple of holes, and then having the pipe run be "dug" by a mole type device that burrows from one hole to the next. Far less disruptive that digging up a trench.

[crom]

Thanks for the thoughts John. I've come across the mole before but not had any experience of using it. It's interesting what you say about loads for the electricity supply. Perhaps it's a case of better safe than sorry on the electrician's part. I'll do some calculations.

Anyone have any other thoughts?

Cheers, Crom