Rethinking the mindset for mass retrofit - a provocative idea

[Radian]

3 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

and I suspect most of the houses are larger, two occupancy places i.e. retired people.

 

You can't of heard about the housing crisis then. Those retired people have 'kids' in their 30's also living at home + their kids 😉

[markocosic]

10 minutes ago, S2D2 said:

Many retrofit situations will have rads dating from before loft, wall and window insulation were upgraded, and the rads were probably oversized initially.  I wouldn't be at all surprised if, closer to the truth, is that existing rads will be sufficient in many, perhaps most cases at say 55C flow temp

 

Absolutely.

 

If they're not it's easy to swap single panel for double panel in man situations.

 

Hackjob properties are your main issue. Anything that's been extended is invariably bodged. If it's a virgin Barratt build from the 80s that's have caivty beads, or an ex council house that's unmolested other than the conversion from a coal fire to gas central heating, and then double glazed lot insulated and cavity blown, you're probably good to go

[SteamyTea]

6 minutes ago, Radian said:

You can't of heard about the housing crisis then

Your right, no housing crisis down here at all.

 

I still think that the majority of the houses in that study will be larger than average and more under occupied.

And even if they are not, the goodness of fit is still reasonable for a very poor bit of descriptive statistical presentation.

Edited April 27, 2023 by SteamyTea

[sharpener]

4 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

Im on oil. So no meter. So no easy way to tell. I can tell you annualmconsumption, but thats not really useful

 

But, not that many oil installs, so i guess only a minor issue.

 

 

 

Not that difficult. My oil tank has a sight glass which I read quite frequently. When I embarked on this heat pump journey I had winter readings which equated to 6kW continuous input round the clock (and about 2kW for the Aga, which heats the kitchen and by extension the master bedroom above, the MVHR system also recovers some heat from the flue).

 

Armed with this info I spent a lot of time discussing what I wanted with a firm who appeared to be sympathetic to my aims, but in the end would only quote on an MCS-procedure basis so I stopped dealing with them.

[JamesPa]

10 hours ago, markocosic said:

19 hours ago, JamesPa said:

1)What do we have to do to either ensure they have the skills, or subdivide the job so they can do it with the skills they have?

2)What changes to regulation are needed to alter the market so they are included not excluded?

 

1) Attract higher calibre, numerate / literate folks into the industry by paying good money and eliminating the bovine excrement. (having to compete with fly-by-nights; having to waste time chasing/qualifying leads and completing non value add tasks) You don't actually want this job to be a low paid job just right now. It should be very possible/common to make six figures aged 25 to get the people you need fully bought in. Drop the rates later once they're hooked. In this respect it's a good idea to let te folks willing to pay £10k pay £10k right now.

 

2) Kill the MCS stranglehold. That eliminates the fly-by-night grant chasers AND a good chunk of non value add tasks. You keep the requirements (e.g. the technical requirements with regards noise for permitted development) but make it the job of planners to enforce planning conditions (e.g. please prove it's adequately quiet, where here are the requirements lifted from the old MCS standards, and if you meet them them it's deemed fine, but you don't need to partake in the rest of the MCS charade)

 

Relax a few planning conditions too. They're asking for units to be too small. It should be permissible to have both a heat pump and an air conditioner. There shouldn't be stupid restrictions on siting R290 propane units near to doorways whilst it's still ok to keep two 15 kg propane cylinders inside your house.

 

Also

 

3) Look at communal ground arrays / hybrid arrays (substation gets a low temp air source heat pump on top that tops up a ground loop which nearby houses rent access to for £X per year and chuck a shoebox water:water heat pump in the kitchen to drawn from and feed the existing heating system; laying your LV cable reinforcement and FTTP at the same time as you lay the ground loop)

 

4) Quit subsidising new natural gas connections and subsidising marginal gas supply costs by moving the carbon taxes from electricity onto gas and moving the welfare taxes from electricity to central government and by requiring price transparency on the bills. (distribution and metering cost more than the electricity; historically)

 

5) Make use of / abuse advertising standards privileges / editorial accuracy requirements to kill the hydrogen nonsense; to kill the hit job articles; etc.

 

6) Take a chill pill. AC in cars is ubiquitous. Let people do AC in houses more easily. Don't mandate that in order to receive grant funding the heat pump must deliver heat AND hot water. Chop the available grant to £1k and apply the condition that it's a packaged/tested solution with a  sCOP of 5 or above. It's pish easy to install A2A units in this ball park. They work. People will rave about them.

 

So now we are beginning to get somewhere.

 

The only one of these I would question is the first, not because I don't think that good plumbers should be well paid, nor because I don't think we should attract higher paid more talented people to the industry, but because I cant see that trying to recruit a whole load of people who currently know nothing about plumbing and electrics will yield enough in a short enough time to hit the target (it may be a longer term strategy though). 

 

I am more than ever convinced we have to use the existing workforce, local plumbers and electricians.  They currently deliver 1.6M boilers a year, when they could be delivering 1.6M heat pumps.  So the solution here needs a bit more thought and is, I suspect, a combination of

 

• training
• simplification, eg using some of the ideas @johnmo has posted
• some sort of 'system consultant/system architect role/function which works out the difficult things in cases which need it (and are paid as @markocosic suggests.  We do this in the building industry (builders are separate from architects and structural engineers, and are separately contracted by the customer), why not in heating too?

Is there any reason not to do it this way, rather than expecting everyone 'on the job' to be ace heating designers?  And even if there is a reason, is the alternative Im suggesting good enough that its a preferable/practical way to achieve the volume we need?

 

 

[JamesPa]

10 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

That looks a pretty good statistical fit to me considering the 'rules' say that a heating system has to cope with almost all the worse scenarios.

As it is all at the lower end of the scale, a double of very little i.e. estimated at 10 to 30 MWh and the actual is 10 to 10 MWh seems pretty reasonable, especially considering that it includes DHW and I suspect most of the houses are larger, two occupancy places i.e. retired people.

Not really, a factor of 2 or more oversizing/undersizing means that completely the wrong unit is chosen.  Oversizing in particular leads to excess cost, the unit itself is more expensive, it wont modulate down so you need to fit a buffer, because you have fitted a buffer (doubtless badly) you get poor performance, it wont modulate down to the 6kW you can get through the existing 22mm pipes to the DGW cylinder, so you have to swap those out.  Lots of very bad knock on effects.  

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, JamesPa said:

Oversizing in particular leads to excess cost, the unit itself is more expensive, it wont modulate down so you need to fit a buffer, because you have fitted a buffer (doubtless badly) you get poor performance, it wont modulate down to the 6kW you can get through the existing 22mm pipes to the DGW cylinder, so you have to swap those out.

Lots of assumption there.  The premise seems to be that the system is badly designed.

 

Without looking at the source data it is hard to tell what is really going on.

[JamesPa]

7 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

The premise seems to be that the system is badly designed.

Not at all.  There are multiple reasons why estimated load is likely to exceed actual load.  These include unaccounted for fabric upgrades and over estimation of ventilation loss as well as 'margins' added to ensure that the system is big enough to cover uncertainties.  I wouldn't necessarily characterise this as bad design, just design uncertainties which, inevitably, lead to margins being added in to cover them.  I grant that some is bad design and some is doubtless usage patterns, but Im far from convinced its mostly bad design.

 

My own estimates for my house come out at 11kW, using MCS assumptions and the best estimates I have of the fabric improvements (which I put in, but don't necessarily have the specs for).  The measured load is 7.5kW.  I don't think that difference is 'bad' design, its a design uncertainty.

 

[SteamyTea]

16 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

its a design uncertainty.

You are starting to sound like a statistician 

[markocosic]

31 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

The only one of these I would question is the first, not because I don't think that good plumbers should be well paid, nor because I don't think we should attract higher paid more talented people to the industry, but because I cant see that trying to recruit a whole load of people who currently know nothing about plumbing and electrics will yield enough in a short enough time to hit the target (it may be a longer term strategy though). 

 

 

How difficult do you think "plumbing and electrics" are?

 

If the job pays the wage to attract folks of the right calibre they're up to speed on all they need to know to survey/design/install within 6 months / within the first season. A year at worst.

 

Say they're 20 now because they left school at 18 rather than 16 and spent a year enjoying casual work before deciding that they'd like real money.

 

The next five years are working out how to make money by doing the jobs quicker. A job every fortnight for £5k profit a fortnight rather than a job every month for £2.5k profit a month.

 

They're now 25 and on six figures by working their backsides off.

 

The next five to ten years are working out how to train their labouring minded schoolmates up to do the site work; to train their estate agent minded schoolmates up to go out and sell; and move away from the tools onto a desk / working out how to scale the business by the time they're 35.

 

They have to do this as the margins trend towards £1-2k per install. And by the time they retire and it's like for like swaps of heat pumps the margins will be peanuts but that's ok because they're experts in the everyday business operations / processes.

 

 

Why do I think the majority of boiler bashers are wholly unsuitable?

 

Training stubborn know-it-all 50 year olds / motivating comfortable have-it-all 50 year olds who fit gas boilers to do anything different isn't a lost cause but it's a lousy use of resources. They're difficult. They're not motivated. There's no way they'll start out on £30k today with the potential to make £100k in a few years by working hard because they make far more than that now and they don't intend to work hard later. Mainly they think they know everything though.

 

Training low-calibre folks that just about how to drive a van that says British Gas on the side and service gas boilers to fit heat pumps is also a lousy use of resources. Partly because they probably can't. Partly because that initial investment doesn't compound because they're not capable of growing a business off the back of it. Many of those who work for this type of firm today were hired because their employer knows they're incapable of leaving. Not capable or motivated enough to go out and run their own firm. Invest the minimum possible amount in a marginally capable employee fairly safe in the knowledge that they'll stick in the job for life.

[markocosic]

52 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

Is there any reason not to do it this way, rather than expecting everyone 'on the job' to be ace heating designers?

 

The designers need to have a clue. The designers gain a clue by doing the job before they move into design.

 

 

Per response above I expect the higher calibre installers of today to rapidly move into desk jockey roles, supervising and directing an army of their classmates, within a decade of their starting out.

 

 

It's daft to invest in training the bottom of the hierarchy and expect them to be in a position to teach others. They'll be following instructions their entire lives. Best case you're training one person.

 

 

It's equally daft to invest in training princesses sat in ivory towers and expect them to have a clue what a pipe looks like in the real world.

 

e.g. Octopus Energy software princesses managing to do three surveys and arranging for the equipment to be delivered only for their subcontracted installed to exclaim "FFS did you even measure the size of the cupboard vs this cylinder; and FFS did you not think this old hose with a one-pipe gravity system might need a repipe or were you too busy reading from your magic app that said no microbore, check, therefore all is good; etc"

 

You learn this stuff with grit under your nails and the skin of your knuckles left under a floorboard somewhere.

[JamesPa]

1 hour ago, markocosic said:

How difficult do you think "plumbing and electrics" are?

 

If the job pays the wage to attract folks of the right calibre they're up to speed on all they need to know to survey/design/install within 6 months / within the first season. A year at worst.

 

Say they're 20 now because they left school at 18 rather than 16 and spent a year enjoying casual work before deciding that they'd like real money.

 

The next five years are working out how to make money by doing the jobs quicker. A job every fortnight for £5k profit a fortnight rather than a job every month for £2.5k profit a month.

 

They're now 25 and on six figures by working their backsides off.

I sort of agree and sort of disagree.  Why? several reasons

 

1. I don't think it is fair to 'write off' all our 50 year old plumbers and electricians as you appear to do.  There are plenty of 50 year olds who are still keen to learn new skills and to work hard.  They also know some of the 'tricks of the trade' which a years practical experience wont necessarily teach them.  So IMHO excluding the more mature part of the existing workforce is a mistake (and unlawful!)

2. I don't think enough younger people will go into plumbing and electricals fast enough to meet our needs.  Its (sadly) a cultural mismatch for much of the UK which has (again sadly) developed an anti-engineering, anti maths, anti- 'practical work' mindset.

3. I cant see a real-world mechanism to generate the opportunities for these younger people fast enough without massive government intervention.  With the current government that just isn't going to happen.  Another government might make a different choice, but that depends on the voters!

 

Perhaps the 'how' (to grow an adequately skilled workforce quickly) is a separate debate.  We both (and others on this forum) agree we need an adequately skilled workforce, which is a good start in itself.  My gut feel is that we need a combo of the ideas you have promoted and ideas which use the existing workforce.  I also think there might be mileage in attracting people from other fields of engineering, maybe even retired people!.  Design of a CH system retrofit is a system engineering task.  Of course it needs some practical plumbing experience so you know what is easy and what is hard, but its fundamentally putting together reasonably well specified components using a combination of analysis, engineering judgement and experience to create a cost effective solution to a problem.  I would reckon that many of those on this forum with an engineering background, and who have also done some plumbing even if its only DiY, could do it with probably a months training or less.  Come to think of it that's exactly what they are doing but are frustrated that the industry and regulation conspire not to deliver what they want.  Why not, I say.  Back to - my gut feel is that we need a combo of the ideas you have promoted and ideas which use the existing workforce. 

 

BTW I do agree with

 

53 minutes ago, markocosic said:

The designers need to have a clue. The designers gain a clue by doing the job before they move into design.

 

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by JamesPa

[JamesPa]

1 hour ago, SteamyTea said:

You are starting to sound like a statistician 

I was trying to be generous to/understanding of the designers!

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, JamesPa said:

I was trying to be generous to/understanding of the designers!

It does raise an interesting point about the hardware.

Take may house, very small heating load, a 4 kW ASHP is way to large, but that is probably the smallest there is.

So as I mentioned earlier, at the lower end of the scale, there are limitations that cannot be overcome easily.

Very large buffers/thermal stores are the only real solution, but not an easy sell to someone with a small house.

[ProDave]

Re the skillset of electricians / plumbers.

 

I come from a generation when we all did proper 4 or 5 year apprenticeships.  That is largely a thing of the past now and the skills I see in practice seem to reflect that backward step.  

 

It dismays me how often I come across a plain ordinary gas or oil boiler heating system that has never been wired properly right from the install and has never been working properly.  Clearly there are a lot of people out there that do this sort of work, totally unaware that they are not doing it right.

 

To put this right I just know any new scheme is going to come with a requirement for the installer to do another course and get another "ticket" to say he is competent to do it.  Well that counts me out then, I am not expecting to work a lot longer so I would see the time and money spent on that as poor value for the short return I would get from it.

 

I still think the answer lies in making the equipment simple enough for the existing installers rather than trying to educate enough installers quickly enough to install more complex kit.

 

Re weather compensation, you would think it possible to build in some software so a new installed ASHP could learn the environment it was installed in, work out how much heat imput results in how much temperature rise compared to outside temperature, and auto tune the weather compensation.  That would be a big step forwards.

[JamesPa]

4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

It does raise an interesting point about the hardware.

Take may house, very small heating load, a 4 kW ASHP is way to large, but that is probably the smallest there is.

So as I mentioned earlier, at the lower end of the scale, there are limitations that cannot be overcome easily.

Very large buffers/thermal stores are the only real solution, but not an easy sell to someone with a small house.

Quite possibly true.

 

However, with all due consideration to those who live in either super-insulated or otherwise low-load houses, these don't matter much in the grand scheme of things.  We can tolerate a small percentage of low thermal load houses continuing to burn fossil fuels for the next 20 years if thats what they want to do, because the contribution to greenhouse gas emissions is small.

[ProDave]

7 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

It does raise an interesting point about the hardware.

Take may house, very small heating load, a 4 kW ASHP is way to large, but that is probably the smallest there is.

 

No problem.  the heat loss from my house at +20 inside, -10 outside is a little over 2kW

 

A 5kW ASHP works fine.  It does not need to be on all the time (it needs to spend some time heating DHW) and it seems to modulate down enough.  Agreed a 10kW unit would be too big.

[JamesPa]

9 minutes ago, ProDave said:

I still think the answer lies in making the equipment simple enough for the existing installers rather than trying to educate enough installers quickly enough to install more complex kit.

 

Re weather compensation, you would think it possible to build in some software so a new installed ASHP could learn the environment it was installed in, work out how much heat imput results in how much temperature rise compared to outside temperature, and auto tune the weather compensation.  That would be a big step forwards.

Yes definitely.  But only part of the solution.  The other part of the problem is the heating system re-engineering, and in particular the (current)  overestimating of the demand and the unnecessary replacement of much perfectly good kit.  Until this is also fixed prices cant come down to the 4-5K target needed to achieve the volume.  So, as @markocosic implies/states, we need to address this also.  That requires a different mindset to the current 'rip it all out and start again' mindset and also is more skilled at the design stage (but ultimately much less difficult and cheaper at the implementation stage.  I think this is the crux of the technical (as opposed to regulatory) problem, and its different from house to house, albeit there are similarities which can be exploited many of which have been discussed above. 

 

Its getting close to the point where a summary of this thread, and in particular the common ground, is needed!

Edited April 28, 2023 by JamesPa

[JamesPa]

13 hours ago, markocosic said:

See also PV diverters and house batteries. Dumbest not-even-zero-sum investment ever for UK plc.

 

Partly agreed (albeit off-topic).  Batteries may eventually have some load-management value, albeit by the time the installed base of batteries has grown to the point it can make any significant contribution, the load management function will hopefully be performed by electric cars. 

 

For what its worth the solar installers around where I live currently pretty much refuse to fit solar panels without also fitting batteries.  One was even brazen enough, when challenged, to admit that this was because the margins on batteries were higher.  Another MCS closed shop stitch up!

Edited April 28, 2023 by JamesPa

[sharpener]

23 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

Agreed (albeit off-topic).  For what its worth the solar installers around where I live currently pretty much refuse to fit solar panels without also fitting batteries.  One was even brazen enough, when challenged, to admit that this was because the margins on batteries were higher.  Another MCS closed shop stitch up!

 

Yes, once again they go for what is on trend and then only the low-hanging fruit.

 

I spent 6 months of last year trying to find someone to fit 8 more panels. My "mistake" was to fit my own Victron battery system first. I lost count of how many people I told I do not need/want/intend to buy an inverter but no-one was prepared to install the panels on their own because of (they said) warranty implications But I think also because of the thin margins on the panels when the profit on cheapo Chinese battery hybrid systems is much better.

 

 

Edited April 28, 2023 by sharpener

[Roger440]

14 hours ago, sharpener said:

 

Not that difficult. My oil tank has a sight glass which I read quite frequently. When I embarked on this heat pump journey I had winter readings which equated to 6kW continuous input round the clock (and about 2kW for the Aga, which heats the kitchen and by extension the master bedroom above, the MVHR system also recovers some heat from the flue).

 

Armed with this info I spent a lot of time discussing what I wanted with a firm who appeared to be sympathetic to my aims, but in the end would only quote on an MCS-procedure basis so I stopped dealing with them.

 

Yes, but we are talking about mass market installation. Whilst you might go through that excerise, nobody else will. 

 

The average man in the strett will ring an installer for a quote, and expect to get one. Not do oil consumption checks over a couple of months. Thats exactly the kind of thing that needs to be avoided and is the purpose of the thread.

 

[Roger440]

2 hours ago, JamesPa said:

Yes definitely.  But only part of the solution.  The other part of the problem is the heating system re-engineering, and in particular the (current)  overestimating of the demand and the unnecessary replacement of much perfectly good kit.  Until this is also fixed prices cant come down to the 4-5K target needed to achieve the volume.  So, as @markocosic implies/states, we need to address this also.  That requires a different mindset to the current 'rip it all out and start again' mindset and also is more skilled at the design stage (but ultimately much less difficult and cheaper at the implementation stage.  I think this is the crux of the technical (as opposed to regulatory) problem, and its different from house to house, albeit there are similarities which can be exploited many of which have been discussed above. 

 

Its getting close to the point where a summary of this thread, and in particular the common ground, is needed!

 

There is something else you have not factored in.

 

If you simply strap a heat pump to an existing system, and assuming the other issues can be overcome, as an installer/supplier, you are taking on a potential significant risk, ie, the existing installation to which you are adding the HP.

 

When it doesnt work, goes wrong etc, that will be the installers fault, regardless of the reality Because you were the last person to touch it, its now your problem. A lot of potential for reputational harm, which from installers view, is to save the customer money.

 

Whilst not in plumbing or heating, been there, go that t shirt!

[JamesPa]

17 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

The average man in the strett will ring an installer for a quote, and expect to get one. Not do oil consumption checks over a couple of months. Thats exactly the kind of thing that needs to be avoided and is the purpose of the thread.

 

Agreed with the first sentence.  Second less so, oil bills/gas bills/smart meter readings can be produced and analysed easily and will give a much more accurate indication than the current theoretical calculations.

[JamesPa]

1 minute ago, Roger440 said:

There is something else you have not factored in.

 

If you simply strap a heat pump to an existing system, and assuming the other issues can be overcome, as an installer/supplier, you are taking on a potential significant risk, ie, the existing installation to which you are adding the HP.

 

When it doesnt work, goes wrong etc, that will be the installers fault, regardless of the reality Because you were the last person to touch it, its now your problem. A lot of potential for reputational harm, which from installers view, is to save the customer money.

 

Whilst not in plumbing or heating, been there, go that t shirt!

Not necessarily.  Builders aren't liable for design mistakes by architects or structural engineers, they are only liable if they fail to follow the instructions.  A reputable builder will always reserve the right to question an architect or structural engineer, a reputable plumber can do the same.  This problem is soluble if it needs to be solved! 

[Roger440]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

Re the skillset of electricians / plumbers.

 

I come from a generation when we all did proper 4 or 5 year apprenticeships.  That is largely a thing of the past now and the skills I see in practice seem to reflect that backward step.  

 

It dismays me how often I come across a plain ordinary gas or oil boiler heating system that has never been wired properly right from the install and has never been working properly.  Clearly there are a lot of people out there that do this sort of work, totally unaware that they are not doing it right.

 

To put this right I just know any new scheme is going to come with a requirement for the installer to do another course and get another "ticket" to say he is competent to do it.  Well that counts me out then, I am not expecting to work a lot longer so I would see the time and money spent on that as poor value for the short return I would get from it.

 

I still think the answer lies in making the equipment simple enough for the existing installers rather than trying to educate enough installers quickly enough to install more complex kit.

 

Re weather compensation, you would think it possible to build in some software so a new installed ASHP could learn the environment it was installed in, work out how much heat imput results in how much temperature rise compared to outside temperature, and auto tune the weather compensation.  That would be a big step forwards.

 

Dave nails it here.

 

Educating lots of people on a complex product just isnt going to fly.

 

Like Dave, i did a proper appenticeship. These were long. Because it takes a long time to learn the necessary skills. Sadly this is very much out of favour these days, especially since Blair decided, and has been perpetuated, that everyone should have a degree, and if you dont, you are a failure at life.

 

Of course, Dave is right again about a course and a ticket. Because someone can make a bunch of cash off that. It will, inevitably force out a significant number of older installers.

 

Ref the WC, i was pondering this earlier in the week. Surely it cannot be beyond the wit of man to have it self learn. This isnt rocket science.