Clean Heat Market Mechanism to incentivise heat pumps

[joe90]

4 minutes ago, Iceverge said:

Trying to retrofit old houses is a waste of time. With enormous cost you might get an existing houses to enerphit standards. Much cheaper to knock and build a new passivhaus of an economical design. That's where we need to be. 

But many people cannot afford to do that! No VAT on any materials to insulate and if people can reduce their heating load that’s got to be a step in the right direction.

[Roger440]

19 minutes ago, Iceverge said:

If I was dictator for a week I would:

 

 

 

Trying to retrofit old houses is a waste of time. With enormous cost you might get an existing houses to enerphit standards. Much cheaper to knock and build a new passivhaus of an economical design. That's where we need to be. 

 

 

 

You said this before. I asked who would pay for this? You didnt repy.

 

I can insulate my house pretty well for something between £20&30k. (wont be compliant to current regs as thats impossible. Lets just call it £40k for the sake of it. Thats going to make a big difference to my energy costs. 

 

A replacement house is going to cost me a minimum of £200k on a like for like basis.

 

You may well be the dictator, but where is that kind of money coming from? Not from me, thats for sure.

 

It would be a select few (rich) that would take advantage of that planning change.

 

Edited to add, im going to have to live somewhere while i have no house, That comes at a fair cost for the time it takes to build and complete a house. a year? Assuming of course you can find a house to move into. Hint, there not thousands of spare, ready to rent houses.

 

Im not sure you have thought this through..................................

Edited December 21, 2023 by Roger440

[MikeSharp01]

17 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Im not sure you have thought this through.................................

Not sure anybody with any sort of leadership charisma has either. If they had (both Charisma and thought it through) they would probably have risen to the top and we would be following them down the road of really solving the problem. As it is we follow the leaders we have more from a sense of bemused curiosity about what great big; blunders, errors, failures, cock ups and wrong turns they are going to make next than anything else. It's our fault though because as Jefferson said: “The government you elect is the government you deserve.” So to somewhat massage a phrase from classical antiquity 'we are sheep led by donkeys.' Time to become more like the lions and start snacking on the donkeys perhaps.

[Iceverge]

2 hours ago, Roger440 said:

You said this before. I asked who would pay for this? You didn't reply

 

Oh, you personally for the rebuild would still be stuffed@Roger440, sorry. This applies to those who undertake a big renovation of an existing property but a full rebuild cannot be done because someone thinks their leaky pile is nice too look at it or will delay it by years with red tape. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Iceverge]

3 hours ago, joe90 said:

But many people cannot afford to do that! No VAT on any materials to insulate and if people can reduce their heating load that’s got to be a step in the right direction.

 

The trouble with retrofitting is that it runs out of road very quickly and starts to get very expensive.

 

Attic insulation might save 10% of your heating bill for £500. 

 

Then Cavity wall insulation for another 20% for £4k.

 

Then what? Dig out the floors and insulate for £20k maybe with a mountain of destruction? New windows for £20k?

 

MVHR? How exactly without ripping the house apart again?

 

Airtighess.........forget getting down to anything sensibly like 1 ACH. You took great care in your new build with knowledge and dedication to get there. Getting below 5ACH won't happen in most retrofits. 

 

Maybe an ASHP system at £15k. 

 

Redecorate after all this messing and you'll soon have spent £60k+ on an average 150m2 house and probably halved the energy usage. 

 

Where do you go then as you've still got an inefficient building. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited December 22, 2023 by Iceverge

[SteamyTea]

7 hours ago, joe90 said:

No VAT on any materials to insulate and if people can reduce their heating load that’s got to be a step in the right direction.

The manufacturers/retailers/installers would just treat that as a subsidy and increase their prices.

It is what happened during the banking crisis when VAT was reduced.

I would put the VAT up on fossil fuels and add on a carbon tax.

 

4 hours ago, Iceverge said:

The trouble with retrofitting is that it runs out of road very quickly and starts to get very expensive.

It can.

But most houses probably need much simpler fixes to get large gains.

Re-glasing my old timber windows was about £20 a window, the old 8mm gap panes were blown, so cost the same to put 16mm gap ones in.  Was not enough frame area to worry about thermally.  And I have nicer looking windows compared to my neighbour's plastic framed ones.

I would think that most 'leaky' houses have one or two major leaks, not hundreds.

 

 

[dpmiller]

10 hours ago, Roger440 said:

 

Didnt know they exsisted either. 

 

Sadly though, fumes inside an almost air tight room probably not good for my health. 

 

Shame, as theres a 1200 litre red disel tank the other side of the wall!

those small diesel IR heaters are great for working on front of, not so good for heating a space. They do run very clean, moreso on kero. But for heating the air you'll not beat the rocket heater type. There are even a few that have a flued combustion chamber so no emissions in the room

 

I recently treated myself to one of the boxed chinese caraven heater jobbies and it's very good. 8kW, sips fuel, haven't even bothered piping the exhaust

[Roger440]

5 hours ago, Iceverge said:

 

The trouble with retrofitting is that it runs out of road very quickly and starts to get very expensive.

 

Attic insulation might save 10% of your heating bill for £500. 

 

Then Cavity wall insulation for another 20% for £4k.

 

Then what? Dig out the floors and insulate for £20k maybe with a mountain of destruction? New windows for £20k?

 

MVHR? How exactly without ripping the house apart again?

 

Airtighess.........forget getting down to anything sensibly like 1 ACH. You took great care in your new build with knowledge and dedication to get there. Getting below 5ACH won't happen in most retrofits. 

 

Maybe an ASHP system at £15k. 

 

Redecorate after all this messing and you'll soon have spent £60k+ on an average 150m2 house and probably halved the energy usage. 

 

Where do you go then as you've still got an inefficient building. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

But as Steamy says, you can achieve huge gains for much less than you are talking about.

 

Sure, it migh be "inefficient" compared to the best possible, but an 70% improvement, for releatively not much money is better than no improvement. 

 

If we really wated to do something practical, do an air tightness test on every house. Mark up every hole you find, report to home owner. Seal up the holes with foam, tape, whatever. The energy saving as a nation would be huge! For, essentially, bugger all money.

 

Your all or nothing approach wont achieve anything like the same result. If perfection is the only allowable result, the vast majority of houses will stay exactly as they are. It will only be a small handful of people that contemplate a major refurb. That wont move the dial at all. Its this sort of thinking thats got us to the welsh scheme. A fraction of 1% of houses get £45k lobbed at them. The rest remain as they are.

 

By way of example, the house i bought last year, as ive said, is a thermal catastrophe. However it was even worse than that. I cant put a % fugure on it as i hadnt been here long enough, but the air leaks were staggering. 

 

Fixing three transformed it.

 

Soil stck pipe goes through kitchen, up through bedroom and out of roof. Problem was, so seal where it enters the roof. So cold air circulating down, inside boxing in bedroom, under the floorboard of bedroom, and behind the kitchen cupboard as not boxed in at all. The insulated plasterboard in kitchen just stopped at the soil pipe, so that cold air was behind the insulastion as well as in the kitchen. When it was windy, it was like a hurricane in the kitchen. 1 can of squirty foam later. Fixed.

 

Loft hatch. Amusingly, this was insulated, but the gap around it meant a lot of air movement. Was very noticable when on a ladder painting. Beading installed around hatch and expanding foam tape fitted. NO air leak.

 

There a flat roof extension with a colf roof arrangement. Air circulates as you would expect. Sadly the dividing wall to the hall is open to the roof void. So again, outside air circulating behind plaster board. Gap filled with rockwool.

 

Id suggest trhat this is fairly typical. Indeed, based on my observations when looking for a house, not actually that bad at all. Saw plenty worse.

 

To do the above was a days work. The effect, and hence energy saving large.

 

[Roger440]

9 minutes ago, dpmiller said:

those small diesel IR heaters are great for working on front of, not so good for heating a space. They do run very clean, moreso on kero. But for heating the air you'll not beat the rocket heater type. There are even a few that have a flued combustion chamber so no emissions in the room

 

I recently treated myself to one of the boxed chinese caraven heater jobbies and it's very good. 8kW, sips fuel, haven't even bothered piping the exhaust

 

I think, after much google fu, that until i adopt a whole building approach, im going to steal a electric panel rad from one of the unused rooms upstairs in barn, and move it to ther new warm workshop room. As it has no thermostat, i will connect via a wifi thermostat on special from TLC for £44. Job done for now.

 

Said room is pretty well insulated and resonably air tight. So im several hundred up against the alternatives already to spend on electricity.

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

electric panel rad

They are brilliant for heating air, at roof level.

[Beelbeebub]

5 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

 

I think, after much google fu, that until i adopt a whole building approach, im going to steal a electric panel rad from one of the unused rooms upstairs in barn, and move it to ther new warm workshop room. As it has no thermostat, i will connect via a wifi thermostat on special from TLC for £44. Job done for now.

 

Said room is pretty well insulated and resonably air tight. So im several hundred up against the alternatives already to spend on electricity.

Gonna be hard to compete on upfront cost with that solution

 

[Roger440]

1 minute ago, SteamyTea said:

They are brilliant for heating air, at roof level.

 

Indeed. But its free. Against, say £1500 for a single split. Not much contest. 

 

Ive chucked the real money at the insulation. 

 

Though i do meed to sort out the single glazed window. Should probably do what you did, though ill need to modify as frame depth is insufficent to accept a DG unit. But at the money you paid, its a no brainer.

[SteamyTea]

11 minutes ago, Roger440 said:

Against, say £1500 for a single split. Not much contest. 

Or a 20 quid fan heater at ground level.

[Roger440]

4 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Or a 20 quid fan heater at ground level.

 

Still need the wifi thermostat controller though.

 

Im not a fan of an unattended fan heater though. For saftey reasons that is. Ive got one in the office, but only use it when im in there.

[ProDave]

The thing that still staggers me, is the housing market takes almost no account of the quality or performance of a house.  By that I mean people pay just as much for an old leaky house with a dreadful EPC as they do for a better more modern house, and then when they move in complain at the heating cost.

 

I have said for a long time, I would not want to own a house with an EPC worse than C.  But I have no intention of moving from here.  Having built our present house it would be almost impossible to move to anything comparable, apart from of course doing another self build.

[joe90]

51 minutes ago, ProDave said:

The thing that still staggers me, is the housing market takes almost no account of the quality or performance of a house. 

Don’t I know it, when my build was valued for the divorce NO account of its build quality and insulation was taken into account 🤯

[JohnMo]

Seems most important aspect of house pricing is how many bedrooms, doesn't matter if you can't fit a full size bed in there, as long as it classed as bedroom. 

[billt]

2 hours ago, ProDave said:

The thing that still staggers me, is the housing market takes almost no account of the quality or performance of a house.  By that I mean people pay just as much for an old leaky house with a dreadful EPC as they do for a better more modern house, and then when they move in complain at the heating cost.

 

I have said for a long time, I would not want to own a house with an EPC worse than C.  But I have no intention of moving from here.  Having built our present house it would be almost impossible to move to anything comparable, apart from of course doing another self build.

 

Simple, most people don't have a huge choice in the houses they buy. They are limited by money, area and availability. Despite complaints about energy costs, they are still fairly cheap so, if you can afford to buy a house you're unlikely to be troubled much by energy use.

 

Location, location, location is still most important to most people.

 

We're an example of that. For nearly 30 years we lived in an old characterful house in an idyllic location. I spent a lot of effort to improve its performance and it wasn't too bad when we left.

 

For various reasons we decided to move 4 years ago and spent a lot of time looking around the county for a new house, including looking at building plots (I've always wanted to build a house). There were very, very few houses and no plots which met our desires. In the end we bought a house which filled most of our wants (close to town centre, trees and greenery visible, flat garden, no stairs). Bear in mind that there are 2 of us so we have to compromise!

 

We bought a many times extended bungalow with a terrible layout from a heat loss POV and various levels of poor insulation. The EPC was D - 58.

 

We're doing our best to improve the performance, but there will be a limit to what is achievable. The idea of knocking it down to rebuild is an unaffordable joke (although it did cross my mind for a nanosecond).

 

Although I've long tried to reduce our energy consumption of all types other considerations can override that.

Edited December 22, 2023 by billt
Addition

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, ProDave said:

The thing that still staggers me, is the housing market takes almost no account of the quality or performance of a house.  By that I mean people pay just as much for an old leaky house with a dreadful EPC as they do for a better more modern house, and then when they move in complain at the heating cost.

 

I have said for a long time, I would not want to own a house with an EPC worse than C.  But I have no intention of moving from here.  Having built our present house it would be almost impossible to move to anything comparable, apart from of course doing another self build.

 

Ive said it before, but you dont have "choice" in any meaningful sense of the work when buying a house. Its not like buying a car. Generally there is no house that fits all the criteria, so compromises need to be made. Where it is, surroundings, neighbours, garden etc etc, are things that cannot be changed. So you need to be happy with them. These will all trump the EPC number. You can improve and change that. If the house is next to a motorway, you cant change that.

 

Ive never, for a single second, concerned myself with the EPC. If i tried to buy the kind of place i want AND have a good EPC, id likely never buy anything. Not in my price range anyway.

 

And anyway, the EOC is not worth the paper its written on. Mine was an E (just checked for the first time) jusr shy of a D. Actual performance as bought was more like a G.

 

Insulated plasterboard sir? Excellent, let me tick the box for a few points

 

Lets ignore that the same air is both sides of said insulation, and as per my earlier post said air has an open path to outside.

 

The EPC is the only thing the average buyer has to go on. And its worthless as any kind of guide to running costs.

 

Plus of course, the agents wont get a new one if the old one is still in date. When we put our house in Bucks up for sale earlier this year, it was 8 years since we bought it. So they used that. Since then, its had the old concrete floor on mud pulled up, and replaced with an insulated slab. And a few other things too. Do i care, No. Because it has precisely no effect on anything. Anyone buying that house is buying it for its location and outlook.

[billt]

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

Plus of course, the agents wont get a new one if the old one is still in date. When we put our house in Bucks up for sale earlier this year, it was 8 years since we bought it. So they used that. Since then, its had the old concrete floor on mud pulled up, and replaced with an insulated slab. And a few other things too. Do i care, No. Because it has precisely no effect on anything. Anyone buying that house is buying it for its location and outlook.

 

To be fair to estate agents, they have no say in getting an EPC unless there isn't a current one. You are completely free to get a new EPC if you want one, but there's usually not much point in spending money for no return.

[joe90]

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

The EPC is the only thing the average buyer has to go on. And it’s worthless as any kind of guide to running costs.

I so disagree with that, yes it may not be very accurate but it’s a guide. My current place was worked on a number of years ago and BC involved so I know it’s relatively cheap to run but was sold as a 100 year old cottage

 

1 hour ago, Roger440 said:

Ive said it before, but you dont have "choice" in any meaningful sense of the work when buying a house.

Yes I did and would not have bought  it had the fairly recent work not been done.

[Beelbeebub]

Things might be changing with high energy prices but we've never had a tenant ask about running costs.  They are all enthusiastic about the "period features" and "cute stone cottage" andnstuff like that.

 

We are the ones who.raisenrunning costs. I'm upfront about it with prospective tenants - yes they are original Victorian sash windows, not they don't make them like they used, they make them with double glazing now so they don't run with condensation every morning.  Or - these are storage heaters, the worst form of heating, your bills will be high or yes this is stone cottage, it was originally a stables and as such there is no damp course, it has damp and very littoe insulation. You will need to run the boiler a lot or be cold and damp.

 

Does anyone ever take  notice? 

 

Nope