Green Deal - new jobs insulating 3.5 million homes.

[george [dicegeorge]]

The Green Deal, a Liberal Democrat manifesto commitment, is the Government?s new and radical way of making energy efficiency available to all, whether people own or rent their property.

Liberal Democrat Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Chris Huhne announced today that by 2015 up to 100,000 Green Deal workers could be employed in the effort to upgrade and insulate Britain?s homes.

our outdated housing stock leaks heat and wastes carbon.

Our response is the Green Deal, a radical programme to bring our houses out of the dark ages.

Over the next two years we expect to insulate 3.5 million homes, with a renewed focus on those in fuel poverty - and those who need it most.

Then, from 2012 onwards, energy saving packages worth thousands will be installed in millions of homes, with the capital and interest costs covered by savings on energy bills.

And we will look at how we can apply the Green Deal model to businesses, too ? enabling them to cut carbon, and cut costs.

[Dave Liquorice]

I like that, well into fuel poverty here. But 3.5 million homes in

730 days? Nearly 5,000/day... that's not going to be what this place needs, ie rip out all the uninsulated dry lining, replace with 50 to 100mm celetox or similar, reline and decorate. That's going to be throw a few rolls of loft insulation about and stick in some draught proofing.

More free CFL's? Or perhaps LED lamps? The already announced and progressing swap to "smart metering"?

[js.b1]

Actually 50mm Celotex does very nicely indeed if you look at the calcs. A house insulated with 50mm Celotex on the inside needs only a f@rt lighting every few hours to keep warm.

I find it really stupid that the houses with any solid walls (not just entirely solid wall) are not getting internal insulation grants. I have a suspicion it is so they can be classified as HTH housing and thus cheap prey someday at the street level for Property Developers. I guess that "will create new jobs too" as well as socioeconomic cleansing...

[Dave Liquorice]

I've not done the numbers but I'm not at all surprised. Did the end wall of the lads bedroom with 25mm bonded to plasterboard as it was (probably still is behind the lining) a damp solid external wall. Only two sheets but it made a tremendous difference to the comfort in the room.

I like that idea. 4,000l of oil a year costs a lot. I want to line every square inch of the external walls, including the bits between the floors. Install a large heat bank with inputs from woodburner and solar thermal and the oil boiler and decent sized immersion heaters as well.

I agree and not purely because I'd benefit from such a grant. But it takes a compartively long time and is very disruptive compared to squirting something into a cavity... The former is expensive the latter cheap.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well let's see. What for example, is it worth to YOU to have that done.

Oh purllease.

more pie in the sky twattishness from Huhne. Trying desperately to make windpower work.

What honestly can you do AT THE METER.

smart appliances is far more relevant.

Get the freezer to come on only at night, or when the frequency is above

50hz.Or when its getting dangerously warm..

Same for immersion heaters.

it could be a simple board, that has mains in, mains out, and an override. Cost would be a couple of quid.

her is bags of room to level off demand so that we use less by day, more at night.

Wont make the windmills work of course. There is no load I can think of that I can put on when the wind blows, that I wont want to use just because its flat calm and icy for a week.

Only way to sort THAT one out would be to spend about £30,000 on each house, on a heat pump, a bloody great swimming pool full of boiling water..

[The Natural Philosopher]

That depends entirely on how big the house is, and the boiler size,.

I am fully specced to regs and I still need 10KW continuous at -5C and a

15mph wind to mantain 17C. .

I am not hat paranoid or cynical, but in principle I agree.

Solid walled houses are THE prime candidates for upgrades. The big problem is the building regs. You have to do it to full spec or not at all.

If they relaxed that to 'at least twice as good as it was for a refurb' then instead on 100mm insulation, 10-20mm of celotex would work.

[Dave Liquorice]

f@rt

That is a fart compared to maintaining a similar temp here in similar conditions, the 38kW boiler runs pretty much non-stop...

[Roger Chapman]

Trouble with grants is that even if you can get one the grant comes complete with a rip-off merchant who gets all the benefit and you end up with a job you could diy for less without any grant.

Some time ago I came across information on a product called hempcrete - a mixture of hemp and lime mortar - which apparently has good insulation properties and is hideously green (allegedly negative CO2). Unfortunately at the time all the information I could find was on casting it into blocks for building with and I was looking for some sort of insulated plaster to go on the inside of my solid stone walls.

Having had my interest rekindled by this thread I did a quick search, passing on a video apparently spraying the stuff onto the outside of a building before coming across this:

the inside of a building in Switzerland.

Now that is the sort of diy I could do if only I had a bit more information on the detail but I am not sure what thickness would be needed to satisfy current BRs so perhaps I should wait another ten years for the appropriate section to be consigned to the con-artists bonfire of regulations. ;-)

[YAPH]

Why input from the oil boiler? What does that do for you? Obviously you have to store energy from solar and your wood stove when it's available, but an oil boiler can provide heat when you need it.

[Andy Dingley]

"hat paranoid" ? Is that when you start wearing the tinfoil one?

[Frank Erskine]

[John Stumbles]

Quite like the compost bin one

[Owain]

Internal insulation makes rooms smaller and requires internal redecoration, and causes occupant disruption. This leaves the grant awarding body or the contractor open to large unpredictable costs for reinstatement and possible tenant decant.

External insulation would upset the conservationists. about the only time it is used in large quantities is on pre-fab concrete council houses. Even then, although it raises the insulation to current levels, the concrete walls are still within the thermal envelope and the house 'feels' cold because of the high thermal mass.

Boiler replacement is only available to G rated boilers under a few schemes - those are the very worst back boilers. Giving interest-free loans for boiler replacement of C rated or worse, repayable on the next sale of the property, might help many people - wouldn't cost much in the longer term, and would help boost employment in the meantime.

Owain

[Dave Liquorice]

Yeah if you just have boring concrete, render or bricks. Not so good with random stone and wanting to keep the building looking "in keeping with the area".

Only 8"? Pah! the thinest here are >12". The nice "thermal store" right through the middle of the house and full height/length of the house is 18" thick and yes it does stabilse the house temperature. But never ever let it get cold...

[Dave Liquorice]

heaters

The heat bank would also heat the DHW, so without the wood burner or solar providing enough energy there would be no DHW... The immersions are for back up or possibly connection to a wind turbine. Oil is still cheaper than electricity, just. E7 doesn't work well with solar, unless you could get an "E7" tarrif that gave you the cheap rate from say 1800.

[chris French]

Depends. I don't think I could have got the loft insulation as cheap as the subsided job cost. And I didn't have to do it which isn't fun.

[jgharston]

Ok, I'm a software engineer/programmer. Where's my job?

JGH

[Owain]

In India, probably.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

no. its when teh keboard is wering out again.

[Tony Bryer]

I hope it works out better than the Australian loft insulation programme: