Heat pump latest government offers

[PeterW]

9 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

They should make a government backed installer scheme, with a rigorous training and certification stage, such that to train as a registered government approved installer, you need to pass a difficult exam.

You mean like Gas Safe..?? Which is now turning into a nightmare as they changed the certification from a 2 day ACOPS training to 2 courses and 2 years experience ..!!

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, IanR said:

 

I believe the 2022 Building Regs require Energy Loss calcs to be done for the "low temp" heating system. (haven't read the detail and am going by the headlines)

 

I wonder if the Home Owner will be able to rely on the Professional Indemnity Insurance of who ever does the heat loss calcs, if they prove to have under estimated the heating requirement and led to the incorrect size HP being installed.

The SAP assessment for my house, which was done with knowledge of the building construction, actual UW window figures and actual air tightness test results, estimated my heating usage at nearly 3 times what it actually is in practice.  Jeremy's simple heat loss spreadsheet gave a far more accurate prediction.  It's a good job I did not wait for that to choose my heat pump or I would probably have fitted a bigger heat pump.

[Ferdinand]

Will a shift to ASHPs remove the need for an annual safety check?

 

I don't have one for my fridge, which is an ASHP running backwards I am told ...

[ProDave]

6 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Will a shift to ASHPs remove the need for an annual safety check?

 

I don't have one for my fridge, which is an ASHP running backwards I am told ...

There is no mandatory need for a check on a heat pump but some manufacturers warranties may require it,.

 

An unvented hot water cylinder rewires an annual check regardless of heat source.

[PeterW]

7 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Will a shift to ASHPs remove the need for an annual safety check?

 

I don't have one for my fridge, which is an ASHP running backwards I am told ...

its the G3 check on the UVC (if fitted) that is more important 

[Ferdinand]

10 hours ago, Mr Punter said:

The best comment I read was

 

"I am a house builder and install air source heat pumps. They work very well with Under Floor Heating in our superbly insulated new homes, but they will not work well with radiators or old poorly insulated homes."

 

It is about right I think.

 

Probably.

 

However within a very few years most homes will be EPC C or above.

 

The median home is already EPC 65-67 approx, which is a high D. That compares to something like a 53 a bit over a decade ago. In terms of loft insulation, 2G and so on, we are moving into the "filling in the gaps" and "topping up" stage.

 

We complain about the RDSAP model, with some justification, but most houses are normal rather than BH-normal, and it seems to work better for those afaics. And it was not deemed acceptable to pay more for Energy Reports. And remember that (I think) this is still more or less standardised across the EU. We have to use what we have, unless there is a decent alternative or supplement available.

 

Ferdinand

[Ferdinand]

2 minutes ago, PeterW said:

its the G3 check on the UVC (if fitted) that is more important 

 

Thought so.

 

Can those UVC checks be avoided completely?

 

Cynical head says that some will be recommending them to keep the work.

[IanR]

11 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The SAP assessment for my house, which was done with knowledge of the building construction, actual UW window figures and actual air tightness test results, estimated my heating usage at nearly 3 times what it actually is in practice.  Jeremy's simple heat loss spreadsheet gave a far more accurate prediction.  It's a good job I did not wait for that to choose my heat pump or I would probably have fitted a bigger heat pump.

 

I had a similar experience with the SAP calcs, although the over-estimating is handy for RHI, so I didn't argue to hard.

 

But, MCS Installs don't use SAP for their heat loss calcs (as far as I know), at least for me they came up with more accurate calcs than did the SAP chap. Still over-estimated a little, but that's not surprising as I make the most of solar gain.

 

PHPP was the closest, with Jeremy's spreadsheet a close second.

[ProDave]

1 minute ago, Ferdinand said:

 

Thought so.

 

Can those be avoided completely?

Fit a vented water cylinder fed from a header tank and put up with poor hot water pressure.

[PeterW]

1 hour ago, Ferdinand said:

Can those UVC checks be avoided completely?

Not really as not servicing a pressure vessel safety system is a recipe for failure .. should only be £50 or so anyway. 

[Adsibob]

2 hours ago, PeterW said:

You mean like Gas Safe..?? Which is now turning into a nightmare as they changed the certification from a 2 day ACOPS training to 2 courses and 2 years experience ..!!

I guess. There's nothing like real world experience in my view. That's why apprenticeships are so important. Have trainee HP specifiers and installers working under the tutelage of a seasoned pro for 6 months at least before letting them out on their own. Or separate the industry into specifiers and installers... but apprenticeships still essential in my view.

[Adsibob]

2 hours ago, IanR said:

 

PHPP was the closest, with Jeremy's spreadsheet a close second.

What's "PHPP"?

[IanR]

2 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

What's "PHPP"?

 

The Passive House Planning Package.

Energy loss/gain calculator for PH Design

[Carrerahill]

Watch the prices rise £5K now.

 

I remember the grants for insulation came out, insulations prices about quadrupled overnight, it never recovered. 

 

Make these things cheap, don't give out grants and subsidies. Just drive the prices down.

 

No tax on green tech etc. etc. 

 

Grants just line the pockets of contractors and manufacturers.

 

 

Edited October 20, 2021 by Carrerahill

[markc]

6 minutes ago, Carrerahill said:

Watch the prices rise £5K now.

 

I remember the grants for insulation came out, insulations prices about quadrupled overnight, it never recovered. 

 

Make these things cheap, don't give out grants and subsidies. Just drive the prices down.

 

No tax on green tech etc. etc. 

 

Grants just line the pockets of contractors and manufacturers.

 

 

100% agree

[IanR]

But this is a reduction in grant available for heat pumps.

 

RHI offers more in most cases, and significantly more. I believe the new grant may well not be available for new builds either - certainly after 2025, and quite possibly from April 2022. Legislation is being used to tackle new builds. 

 

 

[Andehh]

Anyone heard anything about the grant being available for self builds? 

 

I'm still struggling to find any thing definitive! 

[joth]

46 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

There's nothing like real world experience in my view. That's why apprenticeships are so important.

It'd be great, but I suspect completely impractical in this instance.

1. There's next to no established large scale installers to run the apprenticeships.

2. Apprentice route is a generational training program, but we need new installers now, not in a generation's time (see 1)

3. The tech is still rapidly evolving and the government policy far from stable, requires an industry training network to support continuous learning, not just someone to pick up established skills on the job, as are passed down from their grandfather's generation.

 

Insurance backed guarantee on the design+install is a fascinating suggestion. It's exactly one of the things an MCS certified install and RHI mandate, is it not?

 

[MikeSharp01]

6 minutes ago, joth said:

Insurance backed guarantee on the design+install is a fascinating suggestion.

I was thinking of a guarantee of performance not the actual install, the challenge being to get the insurance industry to somewhat control standards as it would be in their interest.

[gravelrash]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

That is basically what they did with the MCS.

It could be argued about the level of training to bring a pipe fitter up to the standard of a real engineer.  That usually takes 3 years at university.

 

 

But the degree qualified engineer rarely has the ability to carry out manual tasks. Ask one to machine components by hand and assemble the product without a technician. 

[oldkettle]

On 19/10/2021 at 12:21, epsilonGreedy said:

I find myself in the unusual position of articulating the climate alarmist position.

 

If we accept the consensus view on global warming then by the end of the century sea levels could be 1 to 2m higher and the temperature 2 to 4 degrees higher than the pre industrial era. The alarmists also believe such a world will be ravaged by more extreme weather with hurricanes, fires, droughts, floods and agricultural failures on a biblical scale. Such a world would likely see 100's of millions of humans dying early in life and billions living in misery. The BBC wants me to believe the sky will catch fire as the world spontaneously combusts.

 

Given such an outlook IB actions are rational. Based on current CO2 emission reduction progress we are unlikely to see net zero CO2 emissions eliminated within 50 years and global CO2 PPM will rocket towards 500. An emergency UK national insulation programme is the most effective route to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030. 

 

On balance which is more important, the death of a stroke victim or millions of avoidable deaths by the end of the century?

 

I hope there is a healthy share of sarcasm or tongue in cheek in this message.

 

Because of course anybody can persuade him/herself that the second coming is near and we are all going to die. Surprisingly, we still have a chance to decide for ourselves whether to agree with this or not. So the alternative is to say

1) yes, the latest IPCC report does mention a specific projected interval for a temperature rise (one might notice that 8 degree BS has all but disappeared).

2) yes, this will likely mean the sea level is going to rise somewhat more and there may be some other unpleasant changes with varying degrees of the likelihood.

 

BUT on the other hand

 

1) There are no projections of hundreds or tens of millions of deaths in the actual report - this is obvious BS (although of course every year about 10^8 people will die regardless)

2) Anybody who actually cares to have a look at the bloody report  just a little (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar6/wg1/downloads/report/IPCC_AR6_WGI_Full_Report.pdf) will find the details that haven't made it into the "policy summary", i.e. there is no high confidence whatsoever in attributing flooding to the warming - see 11.5, in particular, 11.5.4 for river level and 11.6.4.1 for droughts. Obviously, there are some projections that claim they know ("high confidence") what will happen should the temperature increase another degree. I won't say this is impossible - but won't trust these people. I much prefer to notice that the report does mention the obvious - water management and land use as other contributing factors.

3) anybody who cared to look at the costs will notice that the projected impact of all this nightmare is miniscule in comparison to the one been forced upon as right now: compound growth rate takes care of this.

4) so - and there are incomparably smarter people than I am saying exactly this - it really doesn't look like we must drop FF right now, we just need to be prepared to deal with the consequences. Only morons destroy existing houses before building new ones - ouch, isn't it exactly what the leader of the free world just did in Afghanistan. 

5) We do have alternative solutions for the problems that might be caused by the warming which we must consider before doing something drastic

 

But hey - free money that grows on trees is what everybody needs right now, free lunch for all really worked well in every previous experiment. I can't believe the next one is so likely to hit me again, I thought this stupidity finally ended in 1991 for all but the most incapable of learning from other people's mistakes. 

?

 

[PeterW]

40 minutes ago, joth said:

It'd be great, but I suspect completely impractical in this instance.

1. There's next to no established large scale installers to run the apprenticeships.

2. Apprentice route is a generational training program, but we need new installers now, not in a generation's time (see 1)

3. The tech is still rapidly evolving and the government policy far from stable, requires an industry training network to support continuous learning, not just someone to pick up established skills on the job, as are passed down from their grandfather's generation.

This tech has been around for decades ..! It’s used in every major building programme, every office and hotel etc. 

 

M&E - and specifically air conditioning and refrigeration - is something that is skilled and technical role that is continually evolving. There are big organisations in this space who do offer long term apprenticeship  training and also are reputable. 
 

The issue is that it is being used in small scale deployments and as a replacement for traditional boilers. The problem has become that the ASHP providers are punting their products as boiler replacements and not actually managing the expectations that these are very different beasts. It’s a bit like how combi boilers were punted around as panacea for poor hot water pressure and capacity from “traditional” tank and header, which just replaced it with endless flow but at lower flow rates.
 

What they are not doing is addressing the design issues up front, and like what happens when a proper heat loss calculation isn’t done. Plumbers tend to be creatures of habit, and will fit what they know. They also err on the side of caution, and will overspec a boiler for example as they know they will get a call out if it’s not powerful enough so will over cure. The issue is that ASHP has a power limitation and you’re maxing out at 16kW single phase so they can’t do the usual trick of oversize just in case as they need to go 3 phase and that’s not like going from a 22mm to 28mm gas feed. 
 

The broad issue is that anyone can get “certified” by an ASHP vendor as an installer by going on their courses. I’ve tried (unsuccessfully) to get a couple of the big manufacturers to provide design specific training and got blank looks. They don’t see it as an issue as you “size them according to heat loss” and their training focuses entirely on how to install and then configure the controllers. The troubleshooting for one of them is pretty much limited to RTFM and then call the vendor who sends a new controller out ..!

This is about taking a consumer product to market using a skill base that is not fully understanding the nuances of how to design it correctly in the outset. 

 

 

 

 

[Adsibob]

3 hours ago, Carrerahill said:

Watch the prices rise £5K now.

 

I remember the grants for insulation came out, insulations prices about quadrupled overnight, it never recovered. 

 

Make these things cheap, don't give out grants and subsidies. Just drive the prices down.

 

No tax on green tech etc. etc. 

 

Grants just line the pockets of contractors and manufacturers.

 

 

+1

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, IanR said:

But this is a reduction in grant available for heat pumps.

 

RHI offers more in most cases, and significantly more. I believe the new grant may well not be available for new builds either - certainly after 2025, and quite possibly from April 2022. Legislation is being used to tackle new builds. 

 

 

 

I don't think I would get more, my current EPC being around 89-80 plus a 10kWp solar array which is not added in yet ?.

 

Unless I can persuade them not to notice the solar first time around.

[IanR]

4 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

 

I don't think I would get more, my current EPC being around 89-80 plus a 10kWp solar array which is not added in yet ?.

 

Unless I can persuade them not to notice the solar first time around.

You are probably right. What's your annual space heating energy demand, off your SAP?

I did say "most" cases. But the lower the demand, the less you get with RHI.