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A rant sorry. I object to subsidising the fat cats spec. housing companies. Where is the opposition when you need them? At the party.


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13 minutes ago, Iceverge said:

Just had a quick play with the numbers. 

 

On a 185m2 house walls to move walls from 0.26 to 0.18 would be another 12m3 of EPS beads. About £100/m3 installed. 

 

Your energy consumption would drop from 3421 to 2306kWh/year.  With gas at 8p/kWh and a 90% efficient boiler the difference is conveniently about £100 per year. 

 

Granted @coconutsaregood you plan to die in ten years so the 12 year payback is a little unfair in your case. 

Thank you for the quick calc. interesting direction. Can I say though we must add the extra over cost of a wider cavity, foundations, more land/less room bigger roof more gutter, more cladding, more expensive insulant (not choosing sticky beads) etc. Plus, the ventilation is just got trickier. Pressure to go mechanical and service routine is on the cards.

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I want to see the Government be upfront about the cost of saving the planet. Until some wonder fuel or wonder insulant lands on our doorstep, this change is now increasing the cost of living and making insulants like PIR uneconomical to use. 

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Didn't we hear the same arguements about fitting seatbelts, then catalytic converters, then ABS and airbags, and now stability control to cars.

All we have ended up with is better, cheaper to run, safer cars. Hardly stopped people buying them.

The cost of energy will though.

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27 minutes ago, coconutsaregood said:

I want to see the Government be upfront about the cost of saving the planet. Until some wonder fuel or wonder insulant lands on our doorstep, this change is now increasing the cost of living and making insulants like PIR uneconomical to use. 

 

Thats not likely as estimates vary between £100-200k per household between now and 2050. No government is going to be upfront about that. Its also not feasible without a very substantial reduction in living standard.

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3 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

estimates vary between £100-200k per household

What are those estimates for?

Do they take into account 'oil wars', or for that matter the savings on imports if energy?

How about health benefits?

 

 

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1 hour ago, coconutsaregood said:

thanks for your offer for help, I am in the game (or was in the building game) so designing and costing building is my thing. I was hoping to get a pointer as to the official politics behind the change.

Some of us have been commenting on the dire state of much of the UK housing stock.  Few will disagree with the fact we have to do something to reduce the energy usage of our housing stock. A good step in solving that problem would be stop building poor houses that will also need upgrading.  We sohuld have done this years ago. building standards are only just starting to get close to where they should have been years ago.

 

Someone has already estimated the extra insulation is less than £2000 extra per house.  That's not even 1% extra on the cost of the average house.  That is a small price to pay to get better houses.

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13 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Didn't we hear the same arguements about fitting seatbelts, then catalytic converters, then ABS and airbags, and now stability control to cars.

All we have ended up with is better, cheaper to run, safer cars. Hardly stopped people buying them.

The cost of energy will though.

There is no such thing as a free lunch. I agree, hope, we continue to be better off to continue to afford those goodies, but this change to put into perspective, is an under recovery of building cost of £1000 over a life of 32 years (my partner). So, I will not see full payback. So new house builders can undercut small time builders by thousands per house, so recycling old houses has just got more difficult with 6 months' notice. If we were in Switzerland, we have a referendum on this I like to think.

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1 hour ago, ProDave said:

Some of us have been commenting on the dire state of much of the UK housing stock.  Few will disagree with the fact we have to do something to reduce the energy usage of our housing stock. A good step in solving that problem would be stop building poor houses that will also need upgrading.  We sohuld have done this years ago. building standards are only just starting to get close to where they should have been years ago.

 

Someone has already estimated the extra insulation is less than £2000 extra per house.  That's not even 1% extra on the cost of the average house.  That is a small price to pay to get better houses.

I totally agree with your sentiments, but we are not Germany, and I knew 60-year life houses need 60-year cost in use doctrine applied just to save fuel never mind the planet. But democracy is clearly not working it behaves like shares in the stock exchange, suppose to reflect the future but really has not got a clue. So, this change to me is unfair to those trying to make use of recycled shells of a house that cost more to run and economically impossible to fix to comply, sympathetically. Throwing insulation at a house is not the simple answer, I am afraid to say here of all places. Improvements in U-value levels is the result of the relationship between the cost of energy and the lowering cost of producing thermal insulation of last 30 years or so. In recent years insulation prices has spiked, not helped with government price pumping with vote winning policies.

 

The fact is if gas increased and stayed at around 10p/kWh then I'll breakeven in 30 years with these new regulations. So do I hope of high gas prices to make it worthwhile. Is the government going to keep the high gas price to save the planet? Because that is a real solution to the problem.

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I think the simple answer is Money talks The large spec builders create lots of jobs and government revenue 

 

Spec builders are supposed to air test 1-7 homes This simply doesn’t happen

With most being carried out as a desktop study 

It’s years since I last saw an Aires being carried out 

 

I think most accept that gas boilers won’t be fazed out in the next couple of years Probably for self builders But not for the mass market 

More likely they will run a small percentage of Hydrogen and re labeled 

 

If I’m wrong and the government does bring in a total ban on gas  in new builds and pier stations The fall in demand should force gas prices down 😂😂

 

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54 minutes ago, nod said:

The fall in demand should force gas prices down

Or not.

When demand drops for a product or service, the fixed overheads become the dominating price factor, this can cause prices to rise, and perversely, people often pay that higher price.

Why people have been paying above list price for an almost new second hand car, and £3.20 for an artisan coffee.

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10 hours ago, coconutsaregood said:

but this change to put into perspective, is an under recovery of building cost of £1000 over a life of 32 years (my partner).

£1000 over 32 years id £31.25 per year.  So are you saying if you spend an extra £1000 on insulation you don't expect it to save you £32 per year?

 

I have a theory about houses, that one day, buyers will actually wake up to the EPC rating and realise a modern house with an EPC A will cost a lot less to run and be a lot more comfortable than a Victorian pile with an EPC G, and they might actually pay a higher price for the better house.

 

Clearly if you think the cost of insulation is too high, then the cost of energy is still too low.

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20 minutes ago, ProDave said:

 

I have a theory about houses, that one day, buyers will actually wake up to the EPC rating and realise a modern house with an EPC A will cost a lot less to run and be a lot more comfortable than a Victorian pile with an EPC G, and they might actually pay a higher price for the better house.


HERE HERE!! 👍

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29 minutes ago, ProDave said:

 

 

I have a theory about houses, that one day, buyers will actually wake up to the EPC rating and realise a modern house with an EPC A will cost a lot less to run and be a lot more comfortable than a Victorian pile with an EPC G, and they might actually pay a higher price for the better house.

 

 


What would that make a Victorian EnerPHit worth? ;)

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5 minutes ago, jayc89 said:

What would that make a Victorian EnerPHit worth

Depends where it is.

 

Odd how we have calls from the press, and the general public, to nationalise the energy companies. 

Why don't we nationalise all housing?

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20 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Why don't we nationalise all housing?

 

Goodness me, what, and consider our houses to be homes rather than pure investment vehicles? I don't know what the world would come to.

 

But more seriously, I think this thread demonstrates how our thinking has changed so much that the purchase and upgrade of insulation boils down to a mere economic decision. Do people make this same calculation when spunking tens of thousands on bathrooms and kitchens? Priorities are all wrong I think but as a bit of an oddball, when I started designing my extension/renovation/build, the first thing that came to my mind was how I could achieve a comfortable, warm and healthy home.

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1 minute ago, SimonD said:

Do people make this same calculation when spunking tens of thousands on bathrooms and kitchens?

No. Form becomes the main thing, function is totally forgotten about.

There is also a huge amount of post purchase rationalisation.

Interestingly, I noticed that my Mother, who owned a posh restaurant 40 years ago, does all her prep and serving in a 4 foot ² area. I work in the same manner.

My kitchen is better as I have sink one side and hob the other side. Hers is wedged between the sink and fridge.

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10 hours ago, coconutsaregood said:

but we are not Germany, and I knew 60-year life houses need 60-year cost in use doctrine applied

Where did we get tot he idea that a new built house now would only last 60 years?  I won't be here to see it but I would hope this one lasts longer than that.

 

Though for a long time I have thought my parents old 1930's house (now 90 years old) is long past it's best, with it's poor layout, cold uninsulated solid walls, it would best be knocked down and rebuilt with something ready for another 100 years of much more comfortable and cheaper living?

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2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Or not.

When demand drops for a product or service, the fixed overheads become the dominating price factor, this can cause prices to rise, and perversely, people often pay that higher price.

Why people have been paying above list price for an almost new second hand car, and £3.20 for an artisan coffee.

When demand goes up 

The price go up 

We are screwed either way

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22 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Though for a long time I have thought my parents old 1930's house (now 90 years old) is long past it's best

If we build highly insulated house foundations and then plonked modular designs on them, rebuilding might be a lot easier.

Sensible orientation would have to be considered to take advantage of solar gain/generation.

The Laws of Thermodynamics and Energy Conservation are not going to change, so as we know what to do already, it seems strange that we are not doing it.

If every new building had to have an overall floor U-Value of 0.1 W/m².K, manufacturers would quickly come up with systems that are economical to make and install.

 

Edited by SteamyTea
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13 hours ago, PeterW said:


Ok you need to read the whole of Part L, not just the limiting factors table. The limiting factor is the maximum - a new build will only be passed if it meets the whole unit spec and the overall target emissions values. 
 

With an extension it is different and you may be tacking a well insulated box onto a drafty cow shed - the difference is as a whole it will improve. It’s also very difficult without taking existing structures apart to understand their build up, so the regs use a risk averse approach and assume the existing fabric is poor. 

I had previously understood that there was no point in adding a super insulated extension to a drafty cow shed as the improvement was minimal and I thought there could be problems regarding cold spot condensation forming on surfaces on the rest of the building, a bit like uninsulated window reveals in otherwise well insulated buildings.

 

The only up side for higher insulation in extensions in drafty cow sheds I can see is a minimal heating saving but this may be over many many extensions a year resulting in an overall large saving of fuel.

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18 minutes ago, nod said:

When demand goes up 

The price go up 

We are screwed either way

Not always as it is to do with marginal costs. If Ford made 2 cars, and 2 cars only, they would cost hundreds of millions each, if they make a million, that development cost comes down to about 1000 per vehicle, but if they have to build a new factory to build the 1000001 car in, the unit cost of that car is probably back up into the 100s of millions.

There is a point where the right number of products, and at the right price, is reached. This optimum pricing point can vary during a products lifecycle as there is a 'learning curve' associated with it.

Energy prices are now currently having the learning curve disrupted, there are no real winners in the medium term, regardless of one or two quarter profit figures.

I think as @ProDave said, energy is really still quite cheap. 1 kWh is the ability to move 1 tonne, 1 meter, every second, for an hour. Not many of us would do that for 30p.

MInimum wage is almost a tenner an hour now.

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24 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Interestingly, I noticed that my Mother, who owned a posh restaurant 40 years ago, does all her prep and serving in a 4 foot ² area. I work in the same manner.

My kitchen is better as I have sink one side and hob the other side. Hers is wedged between the sink and fridge.

 

I used to prep and cook 3 courses for up to 120 people in a small galley kitchen on a steam boat on one of the large lakes in Sweden. There were 2 of us working the kitchen and the total area was smaller than both my current and past kitchens. As you say, for working kitchens it's about function, but I personally really like the form of commercial kitchens, maybe  coz I love the process of cooking. My wife doesn't like the commercial form so I wasn't allowed stainless worktops, but I have designed a simple minimalist kitchen for function.

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