Family house using biomass in Rijeka

Mr. Tomislav Bolić is the owner of the family house located in Rijeka, Primorsko-goranska county. For years he used fuel oil for heating and electricity for cooling, but six years ago, in 2014 he decided to invest in a modern and more environmentally friendly system for heating – pellets. His family house has two apartments with a total area of 180 m2 , and the heated area amounts to around 150 m2 .

Before he was encouraged to proceed to the new system, he spent a lot of time reading about RHC systems’ benefits. His neighbour is a heating and cooling installer, so he had all the information needed and decided to give it a go, even though at that time, there were no incentive schemes in his region.

New system with an installed capacity of 30 kWth (same as old) is located in the separate boiler room on the ground floor of the house. Since he already had a boiler and an indented central heating system, he just had to invest in the new burner and pellet storage. Heating is conducted through existing radiators. Investment amounted to around 800 EUR, and the installation did not take more than 3 days.

He was unsatisfied with the existing system due to the high energy bills and pellets are much more environmentally friendly options. Since the system is located in a separate room on the ground floor, his family doesn’t experience any problems with noise or dust. In the first years, their economic savings were very large, up to 50% lower energy bills in comparison to the previous system. Moreover, plants in their garden became less diseased after the installation of the new system.

This best practice is issued from the activities of Work Package 4 “Preparation of instruments for replacement campaigns” of the REPLACE project. Read it now to discover many more best practices illustrating the benefits of innovative low-carbon and renewable heating and cooling systems.