Electric Heatpumps.

Quote: Writing in the Sun, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "the Greenshirts of the Boiler Police are not going to kick in your door with their sandal-clad feet and seize, at carrot-point, your trusty old combi".

Z.

For most folk with £ 5k to spare, looking very hard at reducing the heat lost from the building will be a more useful exercise. ‘negawatts’ - power off the bill are a true saving.

 Round here there has been a spate of solid wall  ex council houses developing 100mm of celotex style insulation and then an outer brick skin - making it into a thick-fill cavity wall with the old wall as a rather heavy inner leaf. Apart from  drilling to screw in wall ties and really deep window cills with creative brickwork shapes near doors that open out and so on,  the disruption to the folk living indoors while the work is being done seems to be pretty minimal, compared to taking all the floors up to plumb in a new heating system.

I only know one person who had it done well enough to ask them , but the result is apparently ‘toasty warm’, and if my estimating likely U values of perhaps 2 watts/degree.m2 for the old wall and maybe 15% of that afterwards are anything like it, I can well believe that. 

 I suspect that sort of investment to be a better bet and to be delivering savings long after any heat-pumps being  installed right now have reached end of life.

Mike

More green madness.

When will it end!

Oh. I know. When the money runs out!

It's a bit like the ev charge point grant. 500 quid to people buying £50K  cars.

Suits the wealthy. Not the poor.

Jon Steward: 
 

More green madness.

When will it end!

Oh. I know. When the money runs out!

Or the gas runs out.

Or there are no suppliers left. As of yesterday, my supply has been taken over - from a competitive fixed rate to a standard variable one. Problem is that I cannot shop around until the changeover has been completed. ?

Problem is that I cannot shop around until the changeover has been completed.

Don't worry - there aren't any cheap deals out there to switch to anyway.

AJJewsbury: 
 

Problem is that I cannot shop around until the changeover has been completed.

Don't worry - there aren't any cheap deals out there to switch to anyway.

I haven't dared to look! A 30% increase wouldn't surprise me. We can cope, but it would be a real problem for a family which is just making ends meet.

The Council are about resurface the footways  in our road, they are going to get rid of the broken slabs and tarmac the paths, we had a letter asking if we wanted to widen our driveways and drop kerbs, I said yes and have paid to have the drop kerb widened.

The letter from the Council said if we don’t have the drop kerbs widened when they are resurfacing the footways we cannot have it done for five year, because they have no intention of allowing the newly tarmac to be dug up for at least five years.

I presume you have guessed where I’m heading with this, virtually every house in the road has a looped electric supply cable, ours comes into our garage then loops out to our neighbours, so it’s actually our neighbour who needs to de-loop and have a new supply dug in from the road, not us.   

In the next road to us the tarmac survived about three months before BT ripped through it to lay a new phone duct and replace a box, how long to you think our new foot paths will survive untouched for?

OK, if I were building a new house, I might consider one, but I just don't think that they work with an above average sized period property with period insulation.

Screwfix seems to be the only supplier that is quoting prices - £9k for a 16 kW kit, which includes a hot water cylinder. 

Presumably, diversity comes into it somewhere - our gas boiler would not normally be firing continuously, although we must consider mid-winter. Of course in mid-winter, the COP will be low, perhaps around 2 (if that?) so now we run into real problems.

Back of a fag packet, I may be looking at £50k and a heavily loaded 3-phase supply. It just doesn't add up!

Incidentally, I am sitting here, lightly clothed and with no heating. Quite remarkable for the second half of October.

Chris Pearson: 
 

Jon Steward: 
 

More green madness.

When will it end!

Oh. I know. When the money runs out!

Or the gas runs out.

Or there are no suppliers left. As of yesterday, my supply has been taken over - from a competitive fixed rate to a standard variable one. Problem is that I cannot shop around until the changeover has been completed. ?

There’s at least 50 plus years before gas will run out.