Roger440

Some will give you battery helth as opposed to charge. But in many cases, you will need to be able to "find it" through a menu on a car you are not familiar with. Some you will need an OBD scanner. The general car buying public are not going to rock up at the dealership with an OBD scanner, much less have a clue how to use it. As i said, its a barrier, been identified as such, but no action is proposed. On a boat, i guess its a bit simler, but none of it is simple to the layman. Im at leasdt technically minded, but i find the whole thing perplexing. Sure, if you are in a position to just pay someone for a turnkey installation, thats great, but i cant pay that kind of money. To me, with the 4,5kw array i have on a pallet, ignoring payback, id like to install it, make it much bigger, heat up water for heating, and if i had an EV. maybe charge that too, and discharge back to house. Sounds simple enough when said like that. Try understanding how that would all work, never mind put it together. If i had to pay to have it done, its a complete non starter. But, i would contest your statement, its the cheapest option. It just isnt. Maybe you should start a thread on your battery set up. Sounds too good to be true.

That was me. Niether of those cars is close to capable of a 200 mile round trip commute. If my wife cant get back home from work, what will i do for dinner? These are imporrtant questions! The other issue at the sub £5k end is battery condition. If its very poor or defective, the car is scrap. Which can be a problem if you can only just afford £5k in the first place. I note that the HOL commitee report picks up on this and talks about some industry standards such that the consumer isnt buying a dud. Sure, you can by a dud ICE too, but theres little on those thats likely to scrap the car for a single fault. But the report was correct, its a barrier to ownership further down the food chain. That would be main concern. And ive spent 20 years in the trade, including 15 running an automotive workshop. As a consumer, i dont have the confidence that i can establish that what im buying isnt just scrap looking for a mug to buy it at his level of the market. The reality is, another corsa is the best solution.

Its viable But dont underestimate how crap you will be with a digger first time out. Creating a neat level trench isnt as easy as a good operator will make it look. And if your trench is all over the place, you will munch up a load of extra concrete. Ive done a lot of diggering. Not sure even now i could do "nice" trnches for foundations.

Are we talking about these guys: https://www.russellwindowsystems.co.uk/services/

A slower, sensible transfer to new, less polluting technologies. That doesnt involve chucking billions of taxpayer cash to try and artifically force the pace. With many such schemes ultimately failing and / or delivering results well short of what was intended. With the ridiculous target of fitting heat pumps to everything by 2030 being a great example. Not going to happen, cant happen, as we discussed before.

I dont know the answers, but as i need to buy a front door, im hoping you get some. Like you, i will need to fit myself. Nice drawing you have done there.

Good work. Im lacking any independant water supply. Ours is more unreliable than the electricity. Maybe, one day, they will replace the asbestos mains, rather than keep repairing them. I live in hope. Given where i am, i cant imagine i need to do down far to find water. Maybe about 2 inches 😂

I agree, no reason not to start moving away from oil. But the pace and the cost and all the problems that will cause will be on a scale not seen before. Thats where i have a problem. Im pretty sure target after target will get put back. As ive said, many times, id love to have done what you have done. It just wasnt to be. Ref EV's im still intrigued by how the caravan sector, a market thats very much alive and well, will deal with a world that essentiallly will eliminate that pastime. There was certainly no sign of change at the show at the NEC last week.

I dont know if im not good at explaining myself? Im also amazed at your optimisim and belief. Especially of politicians. Mind boggling frankly. I didnt say do nothing is acceptable. I said that doing nothing much is what will happen, at a global level. The difference between us, is im a realist, you are an optimist. I dont find it depressing, indeed, there is a small risk im may be pleasantly surprised. You will be disappointed. All that said, i still say we should be spending these vast sums (that we dont even have) on protecting ourselves from climate change, not a futile attempt to prevent it. Which is very different from the corner you seek to paint me into, of doing nothing. Eventually, when reality sets in, and the effects are well and truly here, them im sure we will pivot to that. Sadly, by then, we will have spaffed everything we have, and more, having tried to prevent it.

Oh, i believe mandatory restrictions, additional costs and all the rest of it will happen. Millions will be impoverished. For the majority, life will be worse. For a small handful, they will enrich themselves of the back of everyone else. Most of this group couldnt care less about people on environment. I get it. im convinced that will happen. Just as you seem to be. Though you seem to welcome it, whereas i dont. I dont think any societal good can come from it. Im saying that it wont change anything at a climate level. And ill be proven right in due course.

I appreciate my view wont be popular, especially here. Im very confident i will be proven right over the long term. The idea that some ASHP's and EV's will make the slightest difference, and that you believe it too, i struggle with tbh. Deep down, surely you know its all futille? A large chunk of the world just isntinterested. Even our own PM says one thing and does another. Nothing happens. Life rolls on.

Generator is the obvious answer Ive got a diesel 5 Kva unit. You can get an auto switch over panel too, so kicks in automatically in the event of loss of power. Not sure what the load of an ASHP is, but i guess it would run most. Whatever else i do, i wouldnt get rid of my oil boiler, even if its not the primary heating source. That needs a tiny amount of power to keep it functioning. Im not "prepping", but im certainly not planning on being cold when the blackouts come. Anyone that all electric is just more vunerable.

ie, none of our actions will make any difference to what happens to the climate. Whats coming is coming. All you would do is impoverish people, and achieve little else other than line the pockets of the energy companies and/or government.

If we were using that oil ourselves, and not importing it, it wouldnt be so bad, but we wont see any of it. All sold on the open market Contrary to the total lies about it from the PM

Deliberately putting people into financial hardship or poverty is never the right thing to do. And for what? Something that will ultimately make no tangible difference to anything.

Cars are really quite simple. Remove the barriers and people will buy them. Currently, for many, there are significant barriers. Primary being cost. One wonders why the barriers are not being removed. Instead we do bonkers things like allow company directors tax advantages for buying huge overpowered, overwight, high performance cars. Whilst the average man on the street gets nothing. At all. Leaving EV's well out of reach. Ive looked at replacing the wifes ageing corsa with something newer. Budget circa £5k. Needs to do a 200 mile trip for the once/twice a week commute. There is nothing, not even close. If i spend 4 times that, then maybe. Preaching and lecturing about moving to EV's will achieve nothing as long as the massive cost disparity exsists. Theres a reason autotrader is awash with lused uxury / high performance EV's.

Can certainly be done. Not much frame visible though. 30mm all round. Amazing how much bulkier windows have become over the years.

What i meant, and i think Dave did too, is there is no sensibly priced solutions. Ive spent hours researching how to insulate the place. Ive pretty much got a plan on what to do. I know how to do and think ive mitigated the risks associated with doing so. It just doesnt come close to making sense. financially. Bear in mind that if i did as suggested, i would have to do it without BC approval, as if i informed them, the cost and complexity would spiral out of control. If i paid someone else to do the work, and do it with BC sign off, we would be into 6 figures. So, if you want an answer to your question, consider something other than an all or nothing approach. If all the EPC g houses moved to an E, that would be a significant saving. But the "system" doesnt allow it unless you go "rogue" and simply do it anyway. As ive said before, i believe we should be preparing for the effects of climate change. You wont stop it, certainly not by the piddling measures we as a nation are taking. Do not confuse that with denial.

Can i add some insulation round the frame. Yes. I could. Not sure how you envisage that would look?

I think your maths might be a touch off. 10 x 20 = 200, not 2000 Have i properly calculated? No. i havent. However, they are already UPVC, apart from front door. And look something like 18mm. Looking at the frames, which are very slender, i cant see any realistic way of putting something deeper in there. So, sensibly, yes, i should replce the blown units. Low cost, and gets me back to how they should be. But thats going to have almost no appreciable effect on the overall cost. My costings were done based on replacing with new units. Because thats the only way to make any worthwhile gains. Which will be into 5 figures for the whole house.

Ive done the easy wins. Roof already well insulated, too well as it happens as they have stuffed it down to the eaves blocking air flow. I need to resolve that, but that will actually make it worse! Lower part of roof off to resolve. Plugged all the obvious air leaks, with one big one to do, but that requires removal of part of the roof, so needs to wait until summer. Whilst i can bugger about on an adhoc basis, thats not going to be as good. That said, even if i did it in one hit, despite the eye watering cost, it still wouldnt meet current regs. So my energy requirement whilst substantially reduced will still be significant. Which is why payback is essentially impossible. Fortunately, the house is warm and cosy, better than i could have hoped for, so any program of insulation is unlikely to change things much from a comfort point of view, though UFH would be a useful gain as i do miss that. But my £30-40K doesnt include digging up the floor, just either overlay, or cuting grooves in the exsisting floor. As ProDave observes, nobody has come up with a solution for older houses. I doubt anyone will either. My double glazing is early eighties, some with blown units. Even replacing these makes no economic sense. Theres a lot of glazing for a small house. It will never payback. If i leave things as they are, im doing, roughly, 2000 lites of oil a year. Best case, i halve that. So now a 1000 litres. In round numbers its £1 a litre. So my investment of £30-40K at best nets me a £1000 a year saving on energy costs. Doesnt take a rocket scientist to see that it doesnt make any sense at any level. There are millions of houses in the same position. Id have loved to have built a house. But the planning system simply doesnt permit what i want, so no option but to buy an exsisting house. Though, realistically, i could probably never have funded such a venture.

See previous post. Im not talking new build. Wish i was, because id have achieved building my own house. Sadly that dream has long since been abandoned and evaporated. Hats of to those, like yoursef that made it happen.

I posted before, but to properly insulate my house, even doing it myself, is circa £30-40K. That just makes no economic sense. I (likely) wont live long enough (20 years) to break even with the reduced fuel costs. Plus i need to have that to spend, up front, in one hit. New build is an entirely different proposition.

Do you not think your post is somewhat hypocritical? You have decided the reasons that "other" people (who you know almost nothing about, or their circumstances) are not spending their hard earned on your favoured technologies, whilst at the same time not having adopted any of them yourself and in the case of the car, justifying to (yourself?) why you dont need to. As ive posted before, financially, insulation, ASHP or electric car, simply dont stack up finanicially. If you are fortunate enough that you dont need to consider if something makes economic sense and can press on anyway, then thats excellent for you. But dont presume that everyone else is in the same position. Nor, that even if it does stack up, that they can afford the very significant up front costs that come with all of those things i mention.

It IS my power if i generate it. To do so requires considerable investment. By me. I have no desire to assist octopus, a company who have, behind closed doors and publically, lobbied and sought to distort the energy market to increase their sales and hence profits by increasing costs to customers who may not use them. Morally, im afraid that doesnt sit well with me. If you are OK with that, good for you. Im happy to help society. But thats not who is being helped. The beneficiaries will be the power companies and government. Both corrupt. (have they changed how pricing including renewables is dealt with? No? Thats right. Got to keep the profits up.) With the government being the biggest threat to my way of life, livelihood and well being. Far more so than any risks that climate change may represent. If they had the citizens best interests at heart, that would be different, but they dont.