Looks like the party is over....

[Crofter]

1 minute ago, -rick- said:

 

I don't mind that we are finding a way to pay for much needed upgrades, but adding it to the cost of electricity is mad and I agree that the messaging is infuriating. Add the cost to gas an remove the costs from electricity. Average person with gas boiler will pay a bit more, those who are electricity only pay less, EV owners pay less.

 

This government (and the previous one) are fixated on not touching the big ticket items that they end up creating huge amounts of perverse incentives that drag our economy down and pile on hidden costs that put off investments and improvements (unless specifically government backed). The worst thing is that I don't think any of the 5? parties currently competing at similar levels in the polls seem to be offering an alternative.

And the biggest ticket item is the triple lock. But pensioners actually get out and vote, so there's no way any realistic government is going to touch them.

[JamesPa]

1 hour ago, Crofter said:

And the biggest ticket item is the triple lock. But pensioners actually get out and vote, so there's no way any realistic government is going to touch them.

... this one is going to develop into a crisis because the proportion of pensioners is growing as the population gets older.  Eventually something has to give unless we accept higher levels of immigration to bolster the working population, a proposal which is economically sensible but hardly flavour of the month!. 

 

There is no way round the fundamentals though, so it will have to be faced.  Otherwise all that can happen is a steadily increasing tax burden on an ever smaller working population.  Moves to tax unearned income more fairly will of course help a bit with this despite the furore it causes!

 

Unfortunately as you rightly say its political suicide.  How that is resolved escapes me entirely.  I literally cant see a way unless a government that knows its going to lose the next election makes a bold step to get their opponents out of a hole for the long term benefit of the country.

Edited 3 hours ago by JamesPa

[JamesPa]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

At this point my blood starts boiling and steam comes out of my ears.  Several people including the PM have told us electricity prices will come down as we build more wind farms.  This RISE in electricity prices now, shows that to be a LIE and in fact as more wind farms are built and the grid is expanded, those costs are being added to our bills and prices are going UP because of the extra infrastructure updates.

My understanding is that its not quite that simple.  The infrastructure upgrades required are mostly (in cost terms), I am told by someone who should know and who is I believe trustworthy, in the local distribution network and are not to support windfarms but to support electrification more generally.  The same person also tells us that there is on average (over 24 hours) roughly sufficient capacity even in the local network which, if we were to manage use better would vastly reduce the upgrade cost.  But the electricity/infrastructure companies don't want to do this because they want the profits from the upgrades and thus this is what they lobby for  This is, I guess, the inevitable result of privatising a natural monopoly.  I dont know to what extent Government is in a position to change this, given that we rely on private investment for so much of our infrastructure, but I also suspect that the public will help out and thus reduce the total cost by buying batteries and when V2G becomes practical. 

 

Windfarms and solar are an insurance against despots.  Whilst we are dependent on a small number of petro-states for energy they are in a position to control us.  At present they are choosing not to do that, because it suits them to keep us hooked on burning fossil fuels.  They are dead scared of renewables because anyone can generate energy so they lose control.  Nobody in their right mind, IMHO, would remain dependent on a small number of largely despot states for energy once there is an alternative.  Better to invest now while we can, rather then regret it later, at least in my opinion.

[-rick-]

15 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

... this one is going to develop into a crisis because the proportion of pensioners is growing as the population gets older.  Eventually something has to give unless we accept higher levels of immigration to bolster the working population, a proposal which is economically sensible but hardly flavour of the month!. 

 

This £2k cap on tax free pensions saving is going to make this a whole lot worse. The most counter productive policy I've seen for a while. Lowering the rebate for higher earners makes sense. Limiting/taxing contributions from lower earners is madness. I suspect lots of people will end up ceasing pension contributions because of this (losing employer match) and storing up massive problems for the future.

 

15 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

Unfortunately as you rightly say its political suicide.  How that is resolved escapes me entirely.  I literally cant see a way unless a government that knows its going to lose the next election makes a bold step to get their opponents out of a hole for the long term benefit of the country.

 

We are in a hole until some party wins an election on a manifesto commitment to rejoin the EU and take some hard decisions to make that possible. Rejoining won't actually be fast but I'd expect just that decision to help the country lose the basketcase tag from investors and be a turning point when things start improving. Chances of that happening any time soon are very low. 😒

[SteamyTea]

2 hours ago, JamesPa said:

based on a 'leak'.  Was it even a leak or just the newspapers making stuff up to sell their bile?  SAtarting a rumour is dead easy.

The OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) has, apparently, issued an apology for creating the most recent leaks.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cgmn991pz9jo

 

So they should be the OBI from now on.  What a bunch of twats.

 

[-rick-]

8 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

The OBR (Office for Budget Responsibility) has, apparently, issued an apology for creating the most recent leaks.

 

The leak today is different from the previous one. Someone hit publish too soon with apparently little damage other than taking the wind out of Reeves sails. From the politics reporters I follow, the leaks prior to this have been a deliberate policy by some in government as a way of seeing what will fly and whoever is responsible should be fired for the damage theyve done.

[JamesPa]

17 minutes ago, -rick- said:

This £2k cap on tax free pensions saving is going to make this a whole lot worse. The most counter productive policy I've seen for a while. Lowering the rebate for higher earners makes sense. Limiting/taxing contributions from lower earners is madness. I suspect lots of people will end up ceasing pension contributions because of this (losing employer match) and storing up massive problems for the future.

I think you have misunderstood this.  It applies to pension contributions by salary sacrifice only and what she said is that they would receive the same treatment as any other pension contributions.  The devil is in the detail but I think this targets more wealthy people eg bankers bonusses

[ProDave]

19 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

Windfarms and solar are an insurance against despots.  Whilst we are dependent on a small number of petro-states for energy they are in a position to control us.

We have no concept of energy security.  If we did, we would not have crucified our oil and gas industry and we would be drilling all we have got to use our own to see us through until renewables make it largely redundant.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, -rick- said:

The leak today is different from the previous one.

Yes, but it is a good place to start looking for a leak.

 

 

[-rick-]

3 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

I think you have misunderstood this.  It applies to pension contributions by salary sacrifice only and what she said is that they would receive the same treatment as any other pension contributions.  The devil is in the detail but I think this targets more wealthy people eg bankers bonusses

 

I was under the impression that this was how a lot of private/company pensions work. Certainly how it was done in my last job.

[ProDave]

52 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

... this one is going to develop into a crisis because the proportion of pensioners is growing as the population gets older.  Eventually something has to give unless we accept higher levels of immigration to bolster the working population, a proposal which is economically sensible but hardly flavour of the month!. 

Lack of long term planning.  It was entirely predictable that post war baby boomers are now well and truly beyond reproductive age now and the opposite of boom is bust.  But nobody thought of investing something during that boom time to fund the old age of those boomers.

[BotusBuild]

33 minutes ago, ProDave said:

we would be drilling all we have got

It seems they are on to this - 

 

More North Sea drilling to be allowed in new Labour plan

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r9gyjkky0o

[JohnMo]

9 minutes ago, BotusBuild said:

It seems they are on to this - 

 

More North Sea drilling to be allowed in new Labour plan

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0r9gyjkky0o

Not to any scale, drilling to tie back just keep existing facilities ticking over for longer.  There is loads of oil out there and routing pipe back to existing back to an existing facility may not be easy or cost effective.

 

It's playing at it

[Marvin]

37 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Lack of long term planning.  It was entirely predictable that post war baby boomers are now well and truly beyond reproductive age now and the opposite of boom is bust.  But nobody thought of investing something during that boom time to fund the old age of those boomers.

Worse than that we spent more than we had whilst selling the countries inheritance!  Now going forward we will inherit just a debt... 

[JamesPa]

51 minutes ago, ProDave said:

We have no concept of energy security.  If we did, we would not have crucified our oil and gas industry and we would be drilling all we have got to use our own to see us through until renewables make it largely redundant.

I would go totally the other way on this.  You have a very limited amount of an essential resource which others currently supply freely.  Save yours until you really need it!

[Roger440]

1 hour ago, JamesPa said:

... this one is going to develop into a crisis because the proportion of pensioners is growing as the population gets older.  Eventually something has to give unless we accept higher levels of immigration to bolster the working population, a proposal which is economically sensible but hardly flavour of the month!. 

 

There is no way round the fundamentals though, so it will have to be faced.  Otherwise all that can happen is a steadily increasing tax burden on an ever smaller working population.  Moves to tax unearned income more fairly will of course help a bit with this despite the furore it causes!

 

Unfortunately as you rightly say its political suicide.  How that is resolved escapes me entirely.  I literally cant see a way unless a government that knows its going to lose the next election makes a bold step to get their opponents out of a hole for the long term benefit of the country.

 

It can only end one way. Bankruptcy.

 

Its surely only a case of when, rather than if. Though they are very good at kicking the can down the road.

 

And then of course, under IMF control, the government will be forced to make the necessary cuts. And, of course sell off government assests at knockdown prices. To them.

 

 

[JamesPa]

54 minutes ago, -rick- said:

was under the impression that this was how a lot of private/company pensions work. Certainly how it was done in my last job.

You are forgetting that enrolment into a pension became compulsory some years ago so that won't count as salary sacrifice.

 

Salary sacrifice is widely used to reward high paid people who can afford it.  It's a tax dodge (actually I think an employers ni dodge) which is now rightly imho being closed.  

Edited 2 hours ago by JamesPa

[Roger440]

3 hours ago, ProDave said:

There has been a lot of "poor" reporting in the last few days.  One being the energy price cap is increasing very slightly, about 25p to most households.  BUT hold on, the main stream news does not drill down into details.  It turns out gas prices are going DOWN 5% while electricity prices are going UP 5%.  That is hardly what you want to convince people to switch from gas to electricity is it?

 

But it gets worse.  Why is this happening?  Well gas is going down to reflect the drop in wholesale prices.  So why is electricity going UP?  That apparently is because of all the network upgrade spending so the grid can cope with all the new wind farms and increased electricity demand.

 

At this point my blood starts boiling and steam comes out of my ears.  Several people including the PM have told us electricity prices will come down as we build more wind farms.  This RISE in electricity prices now, shows that to be a LIE and in fact as more wind farms are built and the grid is expanded, those costs are being added to our bills and prices are going UP because of the extra infrastructure updates.

 

Don't you just hate it when we are fed miss information?

 

Its happening because it is what they want.

 

I found that looking at what they do, rather than what they say works well. Saying and doing rarely match.

 

Ive said it before, as you know, but electricity prices are only going one way. Simply because they cant come down based on actions or lack thereof.

 

 

 

[-rick-]

34 minutes ago, JamesPa said:

You are forgetting that enrolment into a pension became compulsory some years ago so that won't count as salary sacrifice.

 

Now done some reading and agree this doesn't seem like such a big deal. I think I was misremembering (not even sure what my last company did would count as sacrifice).

[JamesPa]

1 hour ago, Marvin said:

Worse than that we spent more than we had whilst selling the countries inheritance!  Now going forward we will inherit just a debt... 

..., and that pretty much sums up the policies embraced by the baby boomers, who are also BTW predominantly nimbys (sofaik) that stop almost anything happening like eg building houses that people desperately need, or infrastructure the country needs.  They also cancelled defined benefit pensions (whilst still cheerfully collecting them for themselves) and voted heavily to leave the EU, which pretty much everyone now accepts has done the UK serious economic harm.  They now benefit from the triple lock whilst arguing aggressively against any tax rises.  Their views also dominate what much of the media say.

 

For the avoidance of doubt I am ashamed to say I am a baby boomer  (albeit without the defined benefit pension).  I am proud also to say I didn't support much of the above.  The upshot of that is, if budgets penalise that group (within reason) to benefit others in society, I cant morally oppose it even though its contrary to my personal interests.

Edited 40 minutes ago by JamesPa

[Gus Potter]

On 24/11/2025 at 12:04, -rick- said:

I was hoping my comments would solicit others to speak up as I don't have practical experience on this. I'm open to being convinced but I would like to see some detail to back up your argument.

I'll try here to give a bit more info. I can see why you may think I'm being a bit rough, but with 40 years experience in the construction industry I've seen stuff, not all good. But some designs are very elegant, clever and you'll often see these cropping up on Build Hub first. 

 

What makes a bad designer is someone who thinks they know it all. I don't and one great learning resource for me is Buildhub. As a member of BH you really have access to a lot of clever folk who are innovative. 

 

I'll try add some detail. Remember though you can ask ten different designers and you'll get ten different answers. Your job is to work out what best suits you. My own view in design is to provide Clients with information so they can make an informed judgement. If they don't take my advise then that does not mean the job is going to be a disaster! 

 

On 24/11/2025 at 12:04, -rick- said:

Just to be clear, my understanding of this statement is that one part of the building may end up higher/lower than other parts. You are not saying you expect a crack with a step of 25mm in the middle of the slab.

Call this differential settlement. To avoid one big crack we design the building with movement joints in the external walls and try to position these so we get more cracks but smaller ones. Then we need to make sure our internal walls are not introducing stiff points that stop the external walls from moving about. 

 

In doing so we have to consider the Architectural constraints as SE's.

 

Then just as we feel we are getting somewhere in the design we have underfloor heating that often needs to be zoned.

 

There is a heirarchy in the design process. We are mixing up all sorts of different materials that repsond in different ways and then asking a builder to execute all of that at a reasonable price while taking cognisance of air tighness and ensuring the cold bridges are built as the design. 

 

Now all that is a big ask! This can be achieve but along the way you always find you have to make compromises. There is no "perfect design" in practice. 

 

That is one reason I ecourage more loops as it lets us introduce more movement joints in the floor if we need to. 

 

On 24/11/2025 at 12:04, -rick- said:

The UFH pipes are designed to deal with this. Plastic has some flexibility. There are installation details you need to install around movement joints, etc. Plastic won't handle sharp cracks with significant movement but expansion/contraction measured in mm per m will be fine

This is a really good question and observation. Here is a basic explanation about concrete with some numbers. When designing say a concrete slab, could be a first floor slab or a ground bearing slab. The first thing we want to ensure is that it does not fall down or in the case of a ground floor slab suddenly fail. Call this designing for safety.

 

The next thing is that we want to know how concrete shrinks.

 

There are two main types of shrinkage. When you first pour it we get what's called plastic shrinkage. This is the phase where all the chemical components in the concrete are reacting to "make" the concrete. Now your UFH pipes are in the slab so the plastic shrinkage can start to introduce tensile stress in the UFH pipes at this stage. 

 

Next we have drying shrinkage. The concrete dries out and this causes it to shrink more. Again more tensile stress. But in all cases the shrinkage causes "micro cracks" and all these induce tensile stress in the UFH pipes. They can cope with this.

 

Now we know about the above so as concrete designers, even for screeds we ask ourselves.. can we put a number on that.. and yes we can. The starting point is to say lets design our concrete so no cracks exceed 0.3 mm. For say an ICF basement wall where the ground water is at ground level our starting point is 0.2mm. 

 

Now for UFH design we can do a big slab / screed with lots of rebar / fibres, to control this shrinkage, or smaller, movement jointed slabs with no reinforcement. This is more practical and achievable given my earlier point. It also means we can use self levelling scredd and so on. 

 

To sumarise. Yes you are correct to say that UFH pipes can tolerate shrinkage but they are absolutely not able to tolerate potentially 5 - 15mm of stretching over a localised area. 

On 24/11/2025 at 12:04, -rick- said:

Sure, please take me through a scenario where a surveyor sees a problem that leads to a significant reduction (>5%) in the value of the house where that problem would have been prevented by installing extra UFH loops.

Ok. The surveyor turns up, values the house on the basis that the heating works, they make this clear. You move in and say on day two you find the house is not warm enough. You call someone like @Nickfromwales who really knows his stuff. He crawls over it, provides an evidenced report that says... it does not work, and never will work well enough to comply with the building regs. So as a consumer you have been sold a pup.

 

Nick then says in his report. Ah, to fix this you have a number of options.. none are going to be cheep. You can open up stuff and put in some supplementary radators, but that will mean opening up walls and possibly floors. Then you need to reinstate, make good, alter the boiler plumbing, add more components and find space for the radiators. Or you can start digging up floors to try and find the problem. 

 

Now that is going to be expensive! But UFH is becoming more main stream. At some point the RICS and insurers are going to say to their members.. look we really need to be taking this risk into account as we are supposed to be giving professional advice that keeps up with the times. We can't just keep saying to folks and thier lenders.. you have 7 days to report a problem with the heating. 

 

I'll stand by my point.. if your heating does not work as sold then expect at least a 5% write down. 

 

On 24/11/2025 at 12:04, -rick- said:

The point I'm trying to make is that I'm not at all convinced that having an extra loop solves any of the issues you mentioned and that it comes with downsides. The likelihood of a spare loop being in just the right place to adequately cover for another failed loop is not high. If you install lots of short loops vs fewer long loops then you are adding quite an extra cost and potential efficiency loss/design complexity (how do you route all those pipes from the manifold without causing overheating?) and my argument is that this doesn't seem justified by the risk of loop failure.

 

You counter my points well. Yes, there is more conjestion at the manifolds. As I said earleir there is not perfect solution. But I always come back to this. What buried in the floor is "forever". Once you get the pipes out the floor you can change the controls and boiler mechanics to suit the technology as it develops, or you can just stick with simple stupid. 

On 24/11/2025 at 12:04, -rick- said:

AC fan coil installed high up

Ok so say you want to run your pipes in cooling mode. In the UK the weather can change rapidly. The thing about the UK is that the sun can be full on, but go 50 miles up the road its a dull day. Your weather compensation is not going to help you here. The solar gain can be rapid, thus you need ability to cool rapidly. This supports my approach towards redundancy. 

 

Ok I've had a go at responding to some of your points. Main thing is to have fun at this stage and enjoy the design process. One main reason is that when you have finished you can look back and say quietly to yourself. I made a bloody good job of that!