Roger Bryant:

As others on here have said the real problem is Britain's housing design and expectations. Individual houses with solid or possibly cavity walls are not a good start.  If you look at the continental building styles, especially in the colder lands, multiple occupancy homes are the norm. This immediately reduces the surface area to volume ratio. Our apartment has two external surfaces. The other 4 surface are 'insulated' by other apartments.


The structure is usually a mixture of brick and concrete (wood in some areas) with a thick external layer of insulation (20-30cm) and then a hard waterproof skin. This allow the heavy structure to act as a heat buffer (in summer and winter)


Heating is usually by a wood or oil fired boiler serving all the apartments or sometimes a link to  a district heating scheme. A bigger boiler is generally more efficient, once again a better surface area to volume ratio.


How could we acheive something like this in Britain? Could we move peoples mindsets away from my home is my castle? Could we change the various building regulations to encourage an efficient build?

People in Britain want houses.  There's a "pecking order" with detached houses being the most desirable, then semi-detached houses, terraced houses, and flats at the bottom.  The terrible leasehold system in England really doesn't help with that (I believe Scotland has a better system).


House builders are only interested in knocking out estates full of standard houses of "traditional" build - i.e. brick cavity walls.  It's what they know how to do, and they can build them quickly and cheaply.


There's a lot of suspicion of district heating systems.  We have a regulator that controls the price of electricity and natural gas, but nothing else.  If you're on a district heating system, you have to pay whatever bills they choose to charge, with no say in how it's run.

Zoomup:

Robert Whitney:

Zoomup:

Plant a tree.


Z.

Indeed, need to do that too. But trees take a few decades to become effective carbon sinks. We can stop producing the pollution today by simple changes to our homes and behaviours.


Rob

Don't trees naturally produce CO2 at night and Oxygen during the day? Do you really think that CO2 is "pollution"?


Z.

too much of anything can be considered pollution, especially things that are hazardous to human health (nox and particulates) and excess C02 that cannot be absorbed by the seas and plants. record high levels of  atmospheric co2 is increasing the greenhouse effect and raising global temperatures to levels that are having adverse effects on weather and ecosystems, fires, floods pestilance. but as a Professional Engineer you already knew that right?

Simon Barker:

Improving the efficiency of heat pumps is going to be tricky.  They should be able to deliver a COP of up to 4, but only if the heating system inside the house is very well designed (underfloor heating or big radiators), and if the heat source isn't allowed to get too cold.


Air source heat pumps are always going to be at the mercy of the weather.  That's not too bad in the South of England, but in the North of Scotland, temperatures below freezing aren't exactly unusual.


A well-specified ground source heat pump should do better.  But in small urban gardens, that means bringing in a drilling rig and drilling at least two deep boreholes to get a big enough heat source.

agreed but GSHP are another £££££ on top of an ASHP. community arrays are a great solution to this!