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Help please with RHI/GSHP&ASHP - what am I missing?


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I am at risk of sounding like a complete idiot,  but here goes...... 

 

We are building through MBC. Not PH but close. We have plenty of outdoor space to do GSHP and a digger to do the groundworks ourselves. The cost of the kit and installation for ASHP and GSHP is roughly the same. The RHI savings calculated by our engineer and Nuheat come to 15k over 7 years for GSHP and £6.9k over  7 years for ASHP. It seems to be a no brainer to put GSHP in. However, I have been on this forum extensively over the last few weeks and seen many of you did not opt to get certified and claim RHI.  Could I ask why not? I think Jeremy in particular said it was not worth the cost of the certification ( but I might be wrong - can't find the post now). I have double checked these figfigurese on the Govt website and with Nuheat. What am I missing here? Why would someone not try to claim the RHI? 

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My ASHP cost me just under £1K from ebay and self installed.  If I had paid full retail price and paid the (some say over inflated) MCS installers price, then the RHI payments would never have repaid the extra cost.

 

I am sure there is a lot of "creativity" going on. If the RHI claim is done honestly, based on real expected energy usage, then in something like an MBC build, your RHI payments will be a lot lower than you have indicated.

 

The argument against GSHP when I looked at it, was the cost of the collector pipes, manifolds and all the brine to fill it with cost more than the actual GSHP.  then add in the ongoing maintenance (you have to change it every 10 years or so) then it is not worth it for the small increase in efficiency compared to an ASHP.

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Thanks ProDave. I take your point, but if an MCS installer is installing the kit and I can claim that legitimately then why would I not do it,  is sort of my question? The RHI claim is made on the expected usage.  We don't have the expertise to do what you have done then we have no choice but to pay someone and claim the RHI as far as I can see? 16k goes a long way to offsetting our costs. Could I ask from your comment what needs to be changed every 10 years? The pump itself? 

 

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The starting point in your situation is to get a quote for an install that is not going to be subject to the RHI scheme. You may be quite shocked at how much cheaper your install costs become and it will then bring into question the viability of the the scheme. 

 

As an aside I gave up with Nu-Heat as they simply could not get their heads round the low energy requirements of my MBC build (like you near passive) and were massively over specifying the requirement. 

 

I also got MBC to put the UFH pipes in because their cost represented incredibly good value for money. 

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Do you have your design EPC yet? What is the expected kWh per annum?

You say near passive house... When I looked into this it said our unimproved 100m2 house would get £7k rebate given our 14,500kWh/yr EPC. But translating that to a near passive house you would have to have over 900 m2 property to get that sort of heating requirement and level of rhi payment!

 

I'm guessing the MCS consultant is guessing based on similar sized property without really understanding the quality you are building to. But remember the MCS installer does not provide the EPC nor complete the RHI application, so they have no influence on how much payment you actually end up getting.

 

More broadly as to why so many on here hate MCS etc, it took me a while to figure but  basically this is a self build forum and has a general disliking for anything that hampers or restricts the ability of a selfbuilder to do things themselves. See also: NICEIC, G3 checks, F-Gas, DNOs, G99,  architects, professionals, competent person schemes, LPAs, Barack Obama,  etc etc etc. 

 

PS welcome! And very best of luck with the build. 

Edited by joth
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2 minutes ago, joth said:

 

 

More broadly as to why so many on here hate MCS etc, it took me a while to figure but  basically this is a self build forum and has a general disliking for anything that hampers or restricts the ability of a selfbuilder to do things themselves. See also: NICEIC, G3 checks, F-Gas, DNOs, G99,  architects, professionals, competent person schemes, LPAs, Barack Obama,  etc etc etc. 

 

 

 

You left off:

 

Cat Flaps

Letter Boxes

 

:D 

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as has been said the figure of £6.9k for a near passive house sounds completely wrong, i am due to receive my first RHI payment in a couple of weeks but my house is old, with not much insulation, none in the floors, and has an energy requirement of 269 kWh/m2/year, i am due to be getting £295.54 per 1/4 which is a total of £8.3k

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