Beelbeebub

Capital cost and install issues (bigger pipes, larger buffer) and poorer performance in milder conditions due to the part load in spring/autumn being too low for the HP to run effectively. The "cost" of oversizing gas boiler has always been marginal. A few hundred quid more for the unit and that's it. So we have always put much bigger boiler in than we need. With HPs the install and running costs of being too big are much higher.

Direct heating is rubbish. But so is oversizing the HP system. The MCS rules tend to oversize the HPs. There are many anecdotes (not data I know) of people being quoted much larger HPs than they probably need. Especially when they are marginal on a 10kw machine and so get bumped up to the 12 or 14kw machine which is often 2fan therefore bigger, noiser, need all the primaries up sizing etc etc. If thry could just go with the slightly smaller machine and know there is, if it gets really cold the option of easily hitting the "use direct - it costs more!" button rather than unpacking the fan heaters and those oil filled rads that might save a significant amount on install and probably won't be used as the MCS calcs assume pretty warm inside temps on the coldest night. In reality, people will probably accept their house is at 19C or 18c for the one or two nights a year it happens and never prod the button. Of course we would need some control to prevent unscrupulous installers basically fitting the cheapest system and a whacking great 9k "backup heat~" that is on all the time! And therin lies the difficulty.

Local plumber should be able to disconnect the UFH for you. IIRC most have shut off valves just before the manifold. Turn those. Then disconnect (after depressurising) the Manifold from the isolators. Put some temporary caps on the system) probably vaccum put the water from the UFH pipe to avoid freezing. Take the fuse out of the switched fuse spur. System deactivated. Then get the MCS lot in.

Just on the subject of resistance heaters. Can't backup heaters be used to boost the temp for the few very cold days? A standard immersion adds 2-3kw, which is and additional 20% for a 10kw system. If the 10kwnis enough for 90% of the days, the additonal 20% hearing power for a few days a year, maybe, should be enough.

The Green deal was crap for a numner of reasons, but some sort of payback mechanism via saved money on bills isn't a daft idea. You get lower bills for no upfront money. Heck, maybe we go away from energy companies providing just gas or electric and they provide heat. You pay per kwh heat delivered. How they generate that heat is up to them - direct electric, storage heaters, gas boiler, heat pump. Then the companies are taxed on co2 emissions per kwh delivered. The more gCo2 the higher the tax. So energy companies will be imcenticised to install and maintain an efficient system.

Which takes us nearly vs k to the beginning. The goal is to make it cheaper to stay warm in a world where gas prices will rise and we want to reduce our co2 output Insulation is one line of attack. As you say, loft insulation is an.easy win. There are still. A.significant number of houses with less insulation than thry could have As you say after that options get harder. The challenge is two sided. Cost (and who pays), disruption/difficulty (inidong issues like planning, conservation areas etc) The op was about focusing on electrically heated homes. Switching to a HP, probably air to air will drop the bills by well over half. Probably over 2/3, and cost less than most other measures, and be minimally disruptive. We do need to explore options to pay. We. Could offset with a charge when the house is sold. "we fit this now and the 8k will be charged when the house is sold". We could just straight up pay. We could add a charge to the bills. Point is, switching an electric home a HP has more benefits than a gas home, lower co2, lower electric demand, lower bills and typically less cost.

Which is my point. The *current* system, which is set up to reward inspectors who sign of any old crap and punish those that insist on the job being done properly, isn't fit for purpose. The incentive structure is wrong. It needs to be redone so the incentives are to follow the regulations.

Two parts here Doing it properly - means making sure any new houses are built to use the minimum energy to stay warm. It's not difficult. Double glazed windows, 400mm loft insulation, 6-8" glass wool (or equiv solid) wall insulation. 8-12" floor insulation. Control air tightness. Ideally use mvhr. Design heating and DHW system for HP. None of those thing increace the cost in the context of house prices (a good chunk of the cost being the land not the build cost). Stop putting up shitty homes. As for retrofit. Harder. But not impossible. We just have to keep plugging away. I can't remember the exact dates but we insulated more lofts and walls in one year (2013 or thereabouts) than the decade after. The government stopped the scheme and installs fell off a cliff. Allow a2a Heatpumps to be subsidised (with limits on cooling) - they are loads cheaper to install and, as a bonus can be installed in parallel with the existing system so the occupant is risking nothing. And while you're at it, get on board with r290 for split a2a systems. Make the regs easier and simpler. Current ones are too onerous given you are worrying about 500g of propane mainly outside a building that is already connected to near unlimited amounts of methane and you sell propane in 20kg bottles for bbqs. Allow subsidies even if you dont convert the DHW system. Makes the job simpler. Make the planning and permitting system faster and simpler.

To ensure that houses are designed and built to the regulations and that the designers and builder dot cut corners to boost profits

Disagree. It's an important function. But it has been degraded. By just being seen as (and just being) a rubber stamp. Proper building control makes sure houses are designed to meet the regulations and (this is where we fall down now) that they are built to the designs. So if the design calls for wall ties every 5 meters and every 4th course, someone checks this is happening and then your school doesn't fall down. If the specification calls for 300mm of loft insulation, it needs to be there not left in the rolls. You cannot expect a madern building site with contractors, subcontractors and different trades all on piece work to do the job properly. My mate had to fit kitchens when he started (OK 20 years ago)....£120 each kitchen. You bet corners were cut (or not cut as the case may be!). Access hatch in wrong spot - no time to sort that. No time to check waste fittings were tight. Silicone laid down in one go, no finishing. Plugs into plasterboard takes too long, just screw it. Got a 50/50 chance you've connected the hot and cold the right way on.

We don't lack the expertise or even the manpower to build the railway. We lack the political will. To much pissing about with "will they won't they" as every nimby within 50 miles of the route sticks their oar in and people with zero knowledge of railways armchair general the whole bloody thing. Our grid was designed to move electeixiry from the big coal regions to the cities. We built it fast enough. Now we need to build some more transmission lines as our generation has moved. We know what we have to do. We know how to do it quickly and cheaply. But suddenly everyone gets in a lather about some pylons. Then they demand it"s underground, which is more expensive. Then thry demand it goes another route because "it" s digging up my farmland". Which adds cost. Then they complain it"s too expensive and is taking too long.

Th coree problcoree that inspectors are employed by the builders. Builders will choose the inspector who is most compliant. Any inspector who actually says "nope, redo this before i sign off" won't get the job again. Hence the rise of snagging companies. e

The inspectors work for whoever pays them, and that isn't the home owner...... Daft system that leads to Grenfell

Do they really need.to swap the 22mm to the cylinder to 28mm? 28mm pipe can carry 10kw at heatpump dTs And you are having a 10kw (nominal Max) heatpump. But reheating your cylinder at 10kw is going to be less efficient and noise as your HP will be going flat out. But 22mm can carry 6kw. Which is probably right where you want your 10kw HP to run for max efficency and lowest sound. Recharge times for the cylinder will be slower, but is that a major issue? Depending on how the pipe runs are, the repiping might be a grand or more of cost.

What are thry actually providing for the. Money. Heap pump obviously New cylinder? Any new rads? New pipework? Anything weird like the heatpump miles from the house?

Just disconnect the flow & return where they connect to the conservatory manifold and cap them off with a speed fit stop end. Remove the blending valve and pump. Obviously you can't remove the pipes from the floor and it would make sense to leave the manifold in place. Conservatory disconnected. Of course, once everything is fitted and they have gone home some one might reconnect the flow and return to the manifold....

Yeah. I think a core issue (and this cuts across alot in thr UK) we absolutely (as a nation) cannot abide anyone getting something they aren't entitled to (unless it's a PPE contract) We will go to enormous lengths to stop that even if it means preventing those who should be receiving something getting it. So we end up with huge bureaucratic systems dedicated to filtering out every single possible instance non-entitlement. Which often prevents things being done.

100% this. We should have had high level insulation back in 2016, but the new government scrapped it. The other part of the equation is ensuring houses are built to thwt spec and things like loft insulation aren't ommited. The building inspector system needs to be scrapped and moved back to council inspectors who's next job doesn't depend on them signing this one off.

One massive policy failure that came back to bite us when gas prices soared is our failure to upgrade our housing stock. Having been through several iterations of the various initiatives - they were all bloody nightmares. Costly, convoluted applications that resulted in inappropriate work carried out to a poor standards - if any work coukd be done at all. We applied for one tenant who was told they would qualify for new windows but the only firm authorised to do the work couldnt fit them on for 18 months and the scheme was only valid for 12.

You can be warm without burning lots of fuel. Insulation. Government's have little say over the cost of gas. The bulk of the cost is the world price. The price of electricity is more malleable. There are the taxes we mentioned as well as the "last generators price for all" structure of the market. Bringing down the price of electricity would be a good thing for everyone. Reducing the demand (Heatpumps and insulation) would help, not onky reduxe the cost to end users of staying warm, but also reduce (to a degree) the price of electricity as the demand shrinks (and yes overall demand will increace as we move. To EVs and more HPs replace gas, but the demand will be less than if we did nothing).

Quote from here https://www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-uks-electricity-was-cleanest-ever-in-2024/ Other key insights from the data include: In 2024, the country generated just 91 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity from fossil fuels – mainly gas, as coal was phased out in September – down from 203TWh in 2014 (-55%). Renewable sources more than doubled from 65TWh in 2014 to 143TWh in 2024 (+122%). Gas-fired power stations remained the UK’s single-largest source of electricity in 2024, generating some 88TWh (28%), just ahead of wind at 84TWh (26%). The remaining sources of electricity in 2024 were nuclear (41TWh, 13%), biomass (40TWh, 13%), imports (33TWh, 11%) and solar (14TWh, 4%). Some 58% of electricity – or 64% excluding imports – came from clean sources, both records, but a long way off the government’s target of at least 95% clean power by 2030. The emissions associated with UK electricity supplies has fallen from 150m tonnes of CO2 (MtCO2) in 2014 to below 40MtCO2 in 2024, down 74%. The reduction in the carbon intensity of electricity means that an electric vehicle (EV) now has lifecycle CO2 savings of 70% over a petrol car, up from only 50% in 2014. Similarly, a household using a heat pump instead of a gas boiler is now cutting its heat-related CO2 emissions by 84% per year, rather than only 45% in 2014. Again to circle back to should we be looking to swap out direct electric for HP systems... Yes, because we would be massively reducing the co2 output from those properties but also, it would reduce the demand for electricity For every home currently on electric you swap to a HP, you can move another 2 similar homes currently on gas to HPs without needing to increace the electric supply at all. If 10% of homes are on direct electric at the moment that means we could end up with 30% of homes on HPs without any additional generation capacity needed. (broad figures)

Just had a look back to my Jan 2018 bills. Gas was. 2.5p Elec was 12p

That report projects that renewable will hit around 300Twh by 2030 and gas will fall to below 50Twh (less than half now) using policies as of June 2024 ie pre Labour. IIRC the tory plans didn't include any onshore wind (cheapest wind source) and labour have said they will remove the defacto ban. I'd say *if* a significant restart of onshore wind can be accompanied by more offshore and solar the the goal of having near zero (gas for backup only) electricity by the early 2030's isn't unrealistic.

the housebuikders won't go on strike. They need to build and sell houses to make money. Plus, with the large number of houses needed it would probably be economic in the long run for a nationised house builder to enter the market. The Gov employs the supply chain from architects to final finishes and ground works. A % is kept for social housing and some sold off. The workforce can be fully employed and nkt subject to boom and bust cycles and as we near the end of the building program thry can transition to maintance of those social houses. The presence of well built reasonably proved homes on the market would act as a moderator on the private builders.

This is the closest I could find, from 2022. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-63023277 "Labour conference: Starmer ambition to get off fossil fuels by 2030" But in the text it's clear that he is referring to electricity generation, and even then he later clarified that fossil fuels may still be required as a backup. I don't think that's an impossible target or one we shouldn't be aiming for. We already have some fossil fuel free days. It's just a case of expanding capacity so they become the norm.