You need to think about how you will heat your house. Strangely enough, this is something which many don’t consider at all, believing that Spain is warm all year around. In actual fact, whilst Spanish winters are short, they are still cold enough to require heating. Spanish properties do not come equipped with central heating as is the case in the UK. The method of heating is something which the buyer must select prior to the construction of his property. There are several ways in which Spanish properties can be heated.
Portable Gas Fire.
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Known as cabinet heaters, these are portable catalytic gas fires which run on bottles of butane gas. Better suited for background heating, they will nonetheless heat quite a large room. Being portable they can easily be wheeled from room to room. This type of heater liberates quite a lot of water and may create a feeling of dampness when the building is cool.
Safety requires that they be operated only with a good supply of fresh air so a window must always be open. Butane gas in bottles has risen considerably in price over the past two years as have most petroleum products and today costs around €10.50c. The same size bottle in the UK costs £18.00. Bottles are delivered regularly but when full weigh 25kg - over 50lb, making them very difficult to handle by women. |
Cost from most who sell this type of heater is around 75 Euros. The duration of a bottle of gas is between 8 – 60 hours depending upon use.
Open Fireplace
Quite popular with many ex-pats is an open fireplace in which wood is burned. Costing around 15 cents per kilogram, wood from both orange and almond trees is available which provides a very pleasant aroma when burning. Wood fires also give out a considerable amount of heat, despite much of it going up the chimney. Many who live inland collect wood, which always seems to be lying around, to burn during the winter.
Whilst wood tends to crackle and spit, Spanish houses with their tiled floors are not affected in the same way as would be the case with carpeted floors in the UK. Open fires are extremely attractive, very effective and provide a focus point for the room but they do require the storing and lifting of considerable amounts of wood. There is also the ash to dispose of the following morning. If the thought of sparks jumping out of the fireplace concerns you, a very attractive option for this type of fire is a chain mail curtain which can be drawn across the open fireplace and which effectively stops all sparks without reducing too much heat.
An advancement on the open fire which is more economical to operate and which provides far more heat is the cassette fire - more often than not simply described as a wood burning stove. Basically this device sits neatly in the fireplace and as with the open fire, burns wood - the difference being that the fire is enclosed behind glass or pyrex doors.
Regulating the amount of oxygen the fire consumes controls the speed at which the wood burns and when set to minimum will burn for up to 48 hours before needing more fuel.
This is ideal for “keeping the fire in” overnight. Open the control to maximum and within 30 seconds the fire is burning brightly and providing full heat. Particularly impressive about these fires is that some have scavenging systems in them which remove heat from the chimney, making them much more efficient. A tangential fan pulls air from the top grilles of the fire, circulating it through heat exchangers in the chimney and blowing it out of the bottom grille. The speed of the fan can be controlled. This type of fire is economical to operate, attractive, clean in use and costs around €950.00.
Radiators
If you wish to heat your whole house as would be the case in the UK, you may wish to consider a wet system or radiators. If you elect this type of heating you will also have to consider the type of fuel you will use. In Spain, only the large cities have mains gas so whatever you burn is going to have to be delivered. There are three options.
The first is propane gas. This is provided and, delivered in large bottles which are housed in a little building especially erected for the purpose. The provider will change the bottles for you so there is no effort or inconvenience involved in having to drag them around on a hot or rainy day. Two sets of bottles are required and operated by an automatic manifold. When one set of bottles have been depleted, the system changes automatically to the other and tells you to order more gas. Propane provides a lot of heat, is clean and the boiler requires very little maintenance. Bottles are about 5ft tall and contain about 50kg of propane.
An alternative to propane is 35 second gas oil. This requires a large storage tank which must be isolated from the ground so as to prevent oil going into the soil in case of spillage. Oil provides good heat but when the boiler is running some may find the noise annoying. Oil, despite what those who provide the equipments say, is dirty and the smell of diesel is never too far away. White walls around the chimney don’t stay that way too long.
On the same theme but this time using bulk gas supplies. By installing a propane tank somewhere on your land you will be able to purchase propane in quantities large enough to last you for a year or even more if this is what you require. You may even be able to do a deal with the supplier to provide you with a free tank. Although unsightly, they can and are easily disguised by placing them in rockeries and covering them with climbing plants.
In both cases, the purchase price for the average three bedroom house using either oil or propane will be in the region of 7000 Euros.
Still with radiators but this time using butane as the fuel. For the smaller property, Primus of Sweden manufacture a wet system which runs on butane which is delivered in 25 kg bottles, the type of which are used by the cabinet gas fire described above. This involves dragging them around when they require changing or when they have to be exchanged for full ones.
This system will require about 12 butane bottles operating on a manifold with six either side. Butane does not provide the same heat as propane so you are likely to be changing bottles on a regular basis. This is the cheapest wet system available on the market but may be a little on the costly side to run. Suitable for situations where there is no constant demand for high levels of heating. Expect to pay around €3500.00. for a five or six radiator system.
Air conditioning
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The final system worth reviewing happens to be the cheapest, possibly the best and without doubt the choice of most. It is air conditioning. Providing not only heat in winter, air conditioning will provide delicious cooling during the hot summer months. Further, it is particularly effective when it comes to use of energy.
For every 3kw of power consumed, a heat pump (air conditioning compressor) will provide 5.5 kw of heating or cooling. |
Further, air conditioning can exist in many forms from the simple “window rattler” which is merely a hole in the wall into which a small a/c unit is fixed, to large single units which will air condition a whole house. The choice of most is the split level system which consists of a compressor mounted somewhere outside of the house attached to an evaporator mounted on a wall inside. The evaporator is where the cooling occurs and is usually operated by a TV type remote control.
Both heating or cooling commence within seconds of the A/C unit being switched on. Whatever temperature is selected, once it is reached the unit will either switch off the compressor or set it to idle. Most units today are “Inverters” which have the ability to switch on without the need for drawing large starter currents and which can maintain temperatures at a “tick over”. These units are about one third more efficient than previous units.
It’s quite common when shopping for air conditioning units for the supplier to try and sell a separate unit for each room. This is not necessary because a single compressor can supply up to four or five evaporators.
Here in Spain the average configuration for air conditioning is for a unit for the lounge providing both cooling and heating and for a smaller unit for a single bedroom doing the same. It may well be considerate to air condition a guest bedroom but most don’t, even though the cost is quite insignificant. For visitors, a hot August night with temperatures approaching 30 centigrade may be something which they find far from pleasant and which a fan provides little relief from.
Another method of air conditioning which would be the choice of all were it not for cost, is ducted air. This requires a single compressor and evaporator which then distributes filtered air, either warm or cool, throughout the house.
Every room can be individually and thermostatically controlled. Silent, clean and of great benefit to those who may suffer respiratory problems, in our experience this is the ultimate method of heating and cooling a house in Spain. Such units are often equipped with devices known as kettles and if called upon can add moisture to the air should the occupants feel it is too dry. |
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Although ducted air heating and cooling is generally found only in larger houses, this is probably only because buyers of larger houses have larger budgets. The system would work equally well or possibly even better in smaller properties and provide the same advantages.
In some parts of Spain the deep ground temperature lends itself to both cooling and heating and it is often possible to utilised this heat with an air conditioning system. The result can be substantial savings on both heating and cooling bills. If this possibility interests you, ensure that you discuss it with us during the design stage of your property or email us for further information.
Air conditioning costs:
