Roger440

Well that keeps things pretty straight forward. No need to bugger around with lime based breathable products. Can you not clean out the cavity and refill with beads? Then add some PIR internally. Will need a decent vapour barrier though. Like many on here, punch some details into this and see at what point interstatialm condensation occures. https://www.ubakus.de/en/r-value-calculator/index.php?

You havent actually told us the wall make up and if you have a DPC etc. This will dictate what you do with regard IWI. But, yes, you do risk interstatial condensation if its not done right. But need to know wall make up. Yes, to the cold bridge. Not much you can do about that unless you insulate those too!

An overlay system will be way better than cutting grooves into the floor. But you do then need to deal with all the knock on consequences of that, odd depth fist step on the stairs being the one i really dont like. Im faced with the exact same choice. Other consequences in my case, include having to replace or re-locate the rear door, as whilst its a new decent insulated door, its so close to the floor, we cant even have a doormat. Easy answer, raise it. Not so easy as the joists for the flat roof are directly above. So either a new door or a lot of buggering about. Which is all cost. Im minded to cut grooves in the exsisting, perfectly good slab. Given the front half is a 150 year old stone cottage with no DPC, a bit of sideways heat loss into the wall is probably no bad thing. As i said earlier, its going to be £5k minium to replace the floor. So 16700 kwh of energy at current prices. Likely life expectancy of me, 25 years. You could if you were feeling keen, (i nearly did this at the last place) cut a sliver of the slab all the way round and replace with insulation. Would be difficult, time consuming and messy, but would cost bugger all if you did it yourself.

Ive said it before, but you dont have "choice" in any meaningful sense of the work when buying a house. Its not like buying a car. Generally there is no house that fits all the criteria, so compromises need to be made. Where it is, surroundings, neighbours, garden etc etc, are things that cannot be changed. So you need to be happy with them. These will all trump the EPC number. You can improve and change that. If the house is next to a motorway, you cant change that. Ive never, for a single second, concerned myself with the EPC. If i tried to buy the kind of place i want AND have a good EPC, id likely never buy anything. Not in my price range anyway. And anyway, the EOC is not worth the paper its written on. Mine was an E (just checked for the first time) jusr shy of a D. Actual performance as bought was more like a G. Insulated plasterboard sir? Excellent, let me tick the box for a few points Lets ignore that the same air is both sides of said insulation, and as per my earlier post said air has an open path to outside. The EPC is the only thing the average buyer has to go on. And its worthless as any kind of guide to running costs. Plus of course, the agents wont get a new one if the old one is still in date. When we put our house in Bucks up for sale earlier this year, it was 8 years since we bought it. So they used that. Since then, its had the old concrete floor on mud pulled up, and replaced with an insulated slab. And a few other things too. Do i care, No. Because it has precisely no effect on anything. Anyone buying that house is buying it for its location and outlook.

Still need the wifi thermostat controller though. Im not a fan of an unattended fan heater though. For saftey reasons that is. Ive got one in the office, but only use it when im in there.

Indeed. But its free. Against, say £1500 for a single split. Not much contest. Ive chucked the real money at the insulation. Though i do meed to sort out the single glazed window. Should probably do what you did, though ill need to modify as frame depth is insufficent to accept a DG unit. But at the money you paid, its a no brainer.

I think, after much google fu, that until i adopt a whole building approach, im going to steal a electric panel rad from one of the unused rooms upstairs in barn, and move it to ther new warm workshop room. As it has no thermostat, i will connect via a wifi thermostat on special from TLC for £44. Job done for now. Said room is pretty well insulated and resonably air tight. So im several hundred up against the alternatives already to spend on electricity.

But as Steamy says, you can achieve huge gains for much less than you are talking about. Sure, it migh be "inefficient" compared to the best possible, but an 70% improvement, for releatively not much money is better than no improvement. If we really wated to do something practical, do an air tightness test on every house. Mark up every hole you find, report to home owner. Seal up the holes with foam, tape, whatever. The energy saving as a nation would be huge! For, essentially, bugger all money. Your all or nothing approach wont achieve anything like the same result. If perfection is the only allowable result, the vast majority of houses will stay exactly as they are. It will only be a small handful of people that contemplate a major refurb. That wont move the dial at all. Its this sort of thinking thats got us to the welsh scheme. A fraction of 1% of houses get £45k lobbed at them. The rest remain as they are. By way of example, the house i bought last year, as ive said, is a thermal catastrophe. However it was even worse than that. I cant put a % fugure on it as i hadnt been here long enough, but the air leaks were staggering. Fixing three transformed it. Soil stck pipe goes through kitchen, up through bedroom and out of roof. Problem was, so seal where it enters the roof. So cold air circulating down, inside boxing in bedroom, under the floorboard of bedroom, and behind the kitchen cupboard as not boxed in at all. The insulated plasterboard in kitchen just stopped at the soil pipe, so that cold air was behind the insulastion as well as in the kitchen. When it was windy, it was like a hurricane in the kitchen. 1 can of squirty foam later. Fixed. Loft hatch. Amusingly, this was insulated, but the gap around it meant a lot of air movement. Was very noticable when on a ladder painting. Beading installed around hatch and expanding foam tape fitted. NO air leak. There a flat roof extension with a colf roof arrangement. Air circulates as you would expect. Sadly the dividing wall to the hall is open to the roof void. So again, outside air circulating behind plaster board. Gap filled with rockwool. Id suggest trhat this is fairly typical. Indeed, based on my observations when looking for a house, not actually that bad at all. Saw plenty worse. To do the above was a days work. The effect, and hence energy saving large.

You said this before. I asked who would pay for this? You didnt repy. I can insulate my house pretty well for something between £20&30k. (wont be compliant to current regs as thats impossible. Lets just call it £40k for the sake of it. Thats going to make a big difference to my energy costs. A replacement house is going to cost me a minimum of £200k on a like for like basis. You may well be the dictator, but where is that kind of money coming from? Not from me, thats for sure. It would be a select few (rich) that would take advantage of that planning change. Edited to add, im going to have to live somewhere while i have no house, That comes at a fair cost for the time it takes to build and complete a house. a year? Assuming of course you can find a house to move into. Hint, there not thousands of spare, ready to rent houses. Im not sure you have thought this through..................................

Quite. My point entirely.

Assuming thats an outcome, which it would seem is possible, do you really think we can stop it. By buggering around with heat pumps in the UK? Really? We are 1% of the problem. If thats whats going to happen, we wont stop that. We will need to build a wall or relocate stuff. Refer to my investment suggestion. Though it will make us poor also, so cant imagine that will happen either.

And the only way to cover taking that risk on attaching stuff to used heating systems is either, replace everything, or jack up the price to cover those risks and inevitable call backs. Im not sure i see any reason why anyone should take that risk and responsibiluty for no reward. Bankruptcy is the only assured outcome if you do. Back to Daves "expensive" systems.

Sorry, Incoming electrical supply. theres already a house plus a big workshop attached to it. Rather marginal. A unique issue to me ill admit. Theres no way it would support heat pumps on both workshop and house. Unless i come up with some wheeze to manage the load of the workshop equipment V heating. Probably best ignore that aspect for the purpuses of the thread. Maybe i should resurrect my barn heating thread.

You answerred your own question! Grants. The end. MCS, just a cartel. More free money. All of which shows, no one in control is interested in the environmental aspect. Just how much money they can extract from the public purse and anyone else that wants to play the game. I dont know how you work out there no price penalty on a new installation though? Whilst my house is pre-existing, the workshop isnt. Still cheaper with oil, primarily as the capital cost is lower. Although in my case, the incoming supply is an additional factor. £17k + VAT to sort out. Which makes oil a no brainer. ASHP is more expensive to start with before you add £17k!! Just nuts. Bulk of which is non contestable work.

If i take little old me, i need to spend a hefty 5 figure sum. That i dont otherwise need to spend. I will need a car too. Another hefty 5 figure sum. The governments own, very loose estimates are £100 to 200K additional expenditure per household between now and 2050 to get to net zero. I dont have that kind of money to spare. Maybe others do. Good for them. I wasnt that smart. Maybe those smarter people can pay for my new heating, insulation and car? No? I thought not. Im not sure how your "moving capital" helps me or the average man on the clapham omnibus avoid that hit. And its direct affect on my life and living standards. Im all ears how i can do all those things without being worse off?

We could get on with it. But for no purpose as most countries wont. The planet is populated with humans. How humans behave is pretty well understood. The outcome is inevitable. Ive no idea how you get people to be voluntarily significantly poorer be some future far off unclear, uncertain benefit. But no, i dont believe we can stop it now. If we even ever could.

We cant deal with both. Most of the world will just carry on. We will just spend a huge amount of money to have no measurable effect. Focus on the consequences that are inevitable to some degree.

Didnt know they exsisted either. Sadly though, fumes inside an almost air tight room probably not good for my health. Shame, as theres a 1200 litre red disel tank the other side of the wall!

Hmmmm. Hadnt thought of that. Interesting.

No. We should be investing on dealing with the consequences of the inevitable. The idea that we can stop what will happen is for the birds. Eventually reality will set in, but again, it will likely be too late.

In my reply to your earlier post on this, it wont make an iota of difference what we do. My finances are limited. Ill wait for someone else to pay for me. Yes, of course, it will come from taxation, but as everyone else is on the bandwagon, im not paying tax for others to have a new system fitted and then pay again myself. If others feel the need/can afford, crack on. For me it would be north of £20k even doing a lot myself. Can buy about 25000 litres of oil for that. Circa 9kWh per litres. And no hard work. Currenmtly using about 1600 litres a year for heating and hot water in the house.

Agreed. The IR heater is no use in this scenario. No ToU tarrif here! So not an option sadly. Plus, ideally i want to be able to dial up extra heat remotely. Even though i said id never do that. Thats more tech than i want really.

Id be very happy with one too. But the price, not so much. They seem to have clamped down on self install unless its R290. Ie, you have to provide evidence who is going to do it. Getting someone in, makes it unviable financially as it more than doubles the cost. If i could do it myself as some here have done in the past i probably would. As someone on here who's name escapes me, had some difficulty getting his R290 system re-gassed as the certified engineers all ran away. But it is the only self install option.77If i could get an R32 system to install myself, i probably would.

Having done this at my last place, ive priced up doing it here. Even with me doing the bulk of the work, id be looking at best part of £5K to dig out, insulate anmd reinstate concrete. £5k buys you an awful lot of energy loss. If you have space, fit an overlay system, if not, just cut grooves in exsisting for the UFH. These guys will rent you the tool: https://www.boels.com/en-gb/hire/underfloor-heating-chaser-230-v/p/35221

I need a "stable" temp and humidity as all my stuff thats susceptible to corrosion will be in there. I aim to sit it at 12c except when im in it. So something like that isnt really suitable. Ive got a 3kw infrared heater i could use sitting in a box, but isnt really the right answser. i guess exc Insulation is OK. 100 mmPIR on walls. But 2 windows, one single glazed. Ceiling has an air gap (sealed) and 50mm PIR with office above. And a pair of double office doors into the main unheated part of workshop. It not to bad in there thermally except the doors and one window. Bit limited on doors as i need to retain the flat floor so i can wheel stuff in and out.