Electric boilers - effect on power demand of a block of flats

Also while better insulated housing will help, I reckon 3/4 of the  buildings we will inhabit by 2050, the zero carbon date, are already built. We will have a slightly titivated version of what we have now, unless there is a massive housing demolition campaign

A surprising amount can be done to existing housing if there's a will.  Nearly 10 years ago we bought our current house (1910-ish stone built and up north) and the first winter alone it cost me over a £1000 in gas barely taking the chill off the place morning and evening - it would probably been twice that to heat it to a really comfortable level all day. As it was a 'doer-upper' as they say (all the original lime plaster was thoroughly perished and generally in a pretty poor state) it was a strip back to brick/joists level of renovation anyway so relatively easy to incorporate a decent level of thermal insulation (not quite PassivHaus but well in excess of building regs for a new build), triple glazing and so on. True there's a solar thermal panel that helps a bit with the hot water in the summer, and very occasionally a fire in the log burner - but our gas bills are now below £250 for the entire year. That's despite SWMBO now insisting that anything below 21 degrees is far to cold, someone now being in all day, and gas unit prices going up significantly in that time.


It was costly initially (but probably has already paid back the materials costs already) and would have been very very disruptive (but we were stripping the place out anyway) and by chance some of the design features of the original house (like not having internal doors immediately adjacent to external walls and some rooms south facing) helped significantly - but I'm convinced at lot more could be done far more widely than is being done.  It doesn't have to be done all at once of course - if people start to automatically think about adding insulation when for instance they just think about getting walls re-skimmed or when a room is renovated (some bathrooms and kitchens seem to get a major overhaul every decade or two these days) it starts to add up.


   - Andy.

Also while better insulated housing will help, I reckon 3/4 of the  buildings we will inhabit by 2050, the zero carbon date, are already built. We will have a slightly titivated version of what we have now, unless there is a massive housing demolition campaign

A surprising amount can be done to existing housing if there's a will.  Nearly 10 years ago we bought our current house (1910-ish stone built and up north) and the first winter alone it cost me over a £1000 in gas barely taking the chill off the place morning and evening - it would probably been twice that to heat it to a really comfortable level all day. As it was a 'doer-upper' as they say (all the original lime plaster was thoroughly perished and generally in a pretty poor state) it was a strip back to brick/joists level of renovation anyway so relatively easy to incorporate a decent level of thermal insulation (not quite PassivHaus but well in excess of building regs for a new build), triple glazing and so on. True there's a solar thermal panel that helps a bit with the hot water in the summer, and very occasionally a fire in the log burner - but our gas bills are now below £250 for the entire year. That's despite SWMBO now insisting that anything below 21 degrees is far to cold, someone now being in all day, and gas unit prices going up significantly in that time.


It was costly initially (but probably has already paid back the materials costs already) and would have been very very disruptive (but we were stripping the place out anyway) and by chance some of the design features of the original house (like not having internal doors immediately adjacent to external walls and some rooms south facing) helped significantly - but I'm convinced at lot more could be done far more widely than is being done.  It doesn't have to be done all at once of course - if people start to automatically think about adding insulation when for instance they just think about getting walls re-skimmed or when a room is renovated (some bathrooms and kitchens seem to get a major overhaul every decade or two these days) it starts to add up.


   - Andy.