Boiler Scrappage on the 'Today' Programme

[Roger Mills]

Anyone hear the item about boiler scrappage on the 'Today' Programme at about 8.40 this morning?

Adam Shaw was reporting, and interviewing a bloke called Frazer Winterbottom from the Energy Saving Trust. The interviewee was extolling the virtues of the scheme but couldn't answer *any* of the pertinent questions, like:

• How long will it take to recover the 'embedded' carbon from the manufacturing process? "That is a valid question. I'm sure that someone has looked at that, but I don't have the figures"

More likely that he *did* know the answer, but didn't want to give it because it wouldn't have helped the case!

• How long will it take a householder to recover the installation cost from fuel savings? "It may take quite a while, but boilers can last for a long time - there are boilers out there which are 15 or 25 years old"

There *are* a lot of old boilers out there, still going strong (mine's old enough to vote!) but I doubt very much whether many of the modern 'high tech' boilers will last that long.

When asked how long the scheme would run for, all he could say is that they have enough money for 125,000 vouchers. It shouldn't have been rocket science for him to have said how long that would last at the current take-up rate. I guess that it will last for an embarrassingly long time because he did admit that after an initial surge, applications were coming in at a 'steady' rate with 'some' vouchers being issued every day.

I have to admit that I've been somewhat sceptical about the scheme from the outset, and this interview did nothing to alter my view!

[Huge]

Yep.

Pathetic, wasn't it?

AFAICS, he didn't have any answers. It was, like so much of the AGW nonsense, purely based on faith.

Mine neither.

We shall be keeping our 30 y/o Trianco Stuart oil boiler for the foreseeable future.

[ARWadsworth]

Missed it - thanks for the pointer. It is here for anyone who wants to listen again. 2 hrs 39 minutes in

course the real paybacktime for a homeowner is the point at which they save money not carbon.

Adam

[Andy Cap]

*can*

Now, IF they guaranteed a working boiler for 25 years for the standard service charge, then I might think about taking up the offer, but presently the sums simply don't add up.

Andy C

[Roger Mills]

Agreed. But he wouldn't give a figure for that - only some waffle that boilers lasted a long time - with the implication that it would need a long life before you saw any benefit!

[ARWadsworth]

A financial benefit or a carbon benefit?

The two do not go hand in hand.

Adam

[Phil L]

The whole thing is a scam anyway - £400 'voucher' off the price of a new A rated boiler? - my boiler is A rated and cost me £225 brand new from B&Q about 12 months ago

[ARWadsworth]

What boiler was that?

Adam

[Phil L]

Heatline Vizo 28. It should have been £300 but there was a promotion of some kind and I got £75 off Sedbuk rated it (in 2007) as a 'B', but the handbook I have here has it's efficiency rated at 96.8%, making it an 'A'

[Michael Chare]

[Dave Plowman (News)]

It's off the cost of boiler *and* installation. Which must be carried out by a registered person. After paying, you claim the 400 quid back. Cynical me says the 'registered' person will likely jack up the price where a grant is involved.

[Roger Chapman]

That sounds like the dishonest version of efficiency that Dribble used to be so keen on - the one with a theoretical maximum of about 110%. Add in the excluded latent heat and the efficiency drops to about 88% which would place it in the middle of the B band.

[Roger Mills]

Agreed, but the payback times are probably similar. You save fuel to offset the purchase price, and you save carbon to offset that used in the manufacturing process.

[Phil L]

I don't know for sure what it's rating is - the sedbuk figures are 3 years out of date and the tests were carried out on boilers made a full 2 years before mine - maybe the design changed? - either way, £225 was a bargain

[Phil L]

of that you can be sure.

I installed mine myself in about 4 hours - it was a straight swap for an older, inneficient combi....bit of re-jigging of the pipework involved.

I'm not registered, nor am I even a plumber BTW

[geoff]

In message , Phil L writes

I think Heatline went bust and have just been bailed out

get your spare parts before they go down again

[Tony Bryer]

SEDBUK ratings assume 50% running at full load and 50% running at

30% load, reflecting usage across the heating season. Manufacturers tend to quote the full load bench test figure, i.e. optimum usage.

[Roger Chapman]

I have just had a look at SEDBUK. They have it at 86.8% so that 96.8% is beginning to look more and more like a typo.

[Grimly Curmudgeon]

We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember "Dave Plowman (News)" saying something like:

They *always* do, ime. Similar scheme here for pellet burners, where the price is inflated scandalously. Same thing for insulation grants.

[Derek Geldard]

It happened to my old mum 45 years ago Re: a grant for a dormer roof extension, and the local builders colluded between themselves to produce the 3 quotes the Council required.

Derek.