home heating

what is the best and cheapest way heat a new house,oil,wood,turf,gas,solar.
i am intrested in solar but dont know how efficent it would be to heat a house.my neighbour has underfloor heating and claims that it costs him three or four times as much as when he had radiators for a year.
will solar heat underfloor heating?
can you use a open fire in conjunction with oil heating so that it is possible to use one or the other.

First you have to find out what the heating demand of the proposed building will be. A good engineer will calculate that for you. And then you have to convince your engeneer that you want a low-energy house or a zero-enegy house. Once the heat demand is low then you can choose the heating system. Every chimney uses energy (sucktion), so an open fire or a stove will certainly not help to reduce the anual energy demand.
The anual energy demand is expressed in kilo Watts per square meter per year , or in the egeneer's term in kW/m2a . If you have a home with less then 30kW/m2a heating demand then home heating with the aid of thermal solar power should be possible, about 50% can then be covered but you'll need a backup burner unless you're opting for a zero energy home (or an energy plus home).

In terms of chimneys using energy if one of the modern gas fires is installed with a fully enclosed glass front does that fully negate the energy loss?

It depends on two factors: firstly there must be an oxigen suply for the fire, if this is drawn from the room then there is warm air drawn from the house and blown up the chimney.This air would have to be replaced , usually that is done by vents in the walls and by leaks in the structure's envelope.That needs aditional heating because the replacement air is cold. Secondly there is a permanent open duct - the chimney- which should be included in the surface meassurements of the house.The outside surface dimensions of the chimney (usually not well insulated) have to be included in the total surface of the building to get a heatloss calculation for the building. Minus the squaremeters it covers in the plan. That brings up the heatloss/heatdemand per habitable squaremeter.And that in turn is bad for the valet and scores not good when preparing a calculated energy pass.