heat pumps anyone ?

That's what happened here. It's also been quite successful. What has helped prevent it going yucky in the cavity is that the bricks used here need a thermic lance to penetrate.

The way governments do, you mean?

LOL.

Satellite images show it’s still got the original roof, but the people that bought it fitted a gas boiler in the loft, so that might have helped things to keep dry.

I left a 4” gap between the insulation and the eves, in a loft where there was plenty of natural ventilation.

The loft didn’t combust.

Every aspect of that house was draughty, but I was surprised at the dampness of the loft.

In that case I’ll resist fitting an ASHP and the required loft and cavity insulation.

My hot water has been heated to about 37C for 25 years, so it feels just right when showering with hot water only. No problems so far. Exposure to Legionella generates immunity, and it could be that I'm immune. It's been around for centuries and is even in rain in small amounts, but only became a problem when we started sanitising hot water systems, so this could be due to stopping regular exposure we used to get.

(I did crank the temperature up much higher when my elderly parents used to come and stay at Christmas.)

I'd love to install my own (just like I did my own condensing boiler back before they were mandatory), but currently no grants are available for that, so it's totally uneconomic. Same with solar panels and batteries.

So you've *got* to heat it all the time. Including when you're at work and when you go out for the day. And when you are in bed and don't need as high a temperature as you are under a nice warm duvet or next to a nice warm bed partner.

Since most domestic HWC's are copper, there is an intrinsic biocidal effect from the copper.

I suspect Charles got his from a building with a wet aircon system that had not been treated properly. Swimming pools and Hot Tubs on display at garden centres are other places where you are more at risk.

My first house had a BAxi Bermuda back boiler with a gravity

ROFL !!!.

Like f*ck they have. DG perhaps and a bit more loft insulation but the millions of houses built during the

Huge numbers were built with nasty 9 inch hollow block upper walls clad on the outside with timber or plastic and with scant attempt at making the junction between those horrid blocks and the cavity walls thus allowing astonishing air leakage. This practice only ended in the early 1980's when building regs were improved (AFAIK).

Most people spent their excess income on holidays, cars and luxury living because gas was so CHEAP. People happily played poker to buy 'character properties' (= solid walls and awful thermal characteristics).

Isn't the cat or dog on top ?

Read wt I wrote. As much as *possible* You cannot insulate a slab floor in contact with the ground. Or a solid brick wall without reducing the room size or having very complex external insuation

That doesn't alter the fact that as far as is possible economically most people have insulated their homes.

They don't insulate rented properties or ones where the cost of insulation exceeds the Of course in an ideal world all those victoran terraces on the street should be torn down and replaced with polystyrene blocks sheathed with brick and a car port with EV charging.

How you gonna achieve that?

As far as regs go, fuel costs were not an issue in the 1980s. Only when Renewable energy came along did prices spiral out of control

Take your head out of your arse and realise the real world is not as full of s*it, but it is nonetheless the one we have to live in.

That's odd, did exactly that in my 1976 semi. I dug out the *screed* (about 80mm) and put down 70mm celotex between battens topped with 18mm t&G hardwood flooring.

Like f*ck they have. Hardly any houses built in the 60's and 70's have effective insulation except for mine and those where external insulation has been applied in addition to the existing cavity wall insulation.

Google "John Prescott Pathfinder Project"

F*ck off idiot. So-called green tariffs (which have NEVER been added to gas bills) are only a small part of the global energy pricing.

Maybe you should take your head out of your arse and lookup how Britains North Sea Gas and Oil supply has dwindled since the mid noughties. Now we have to pay world prices.

correct. And a gust of wind blew water vapour into the street below.

If a gas boiler is correctly sized and can modulate down to match the heat loss then it will not be switching on and off. It could sit there all day exactly matching the heat loss.

What some people seem to be doing is comparing a badly designed system with a oversize boiler, which was common practice, with a better designed system that more closely matches the heat loss of the house.

The incoming water is treated so as long as there is an adequate exchange of old with new water then the risks are low.

An alternative would be a thermal store where fresh mains water is warmed before use. Need a big one if you are not blending in cold water.

Agreed.

Disruption is a huge variable, especially for internal works. And it extends to the cost of disruption (carpets and decoration, services, anything fitted like kitchens and bathrooms). Trust in the contractor also matters, not helped by the 'cowboy' reputation of many trades - retrofit just the latest. There's a lot of research that evidences these things.

And doors - about double the heat loss per m2. Solid walls a huge challenge, along with the moisture management of older homes.

Also, a big chunk of the retrofit process for older (pre-1919 say) homes involves assessing 'significance', and protecting facades, heritage, traditional materials etc. It can be done, but takes retrofit of many older homes way outside any economic rationale. Then you have to tack on the behavioural factors, industry standards/performance . . .

Other countries incentivise by offering tax breaks to landlords for example. In the UK we seem to have been stuck in a rut since 1979: market forces first. Until the problem reaches critical, when the state might step in and do something substantial. And strange as it might seem, the housing system isn't yet critical.

I don't think it's quite that stark - maintaining a decent background temperature is important though. And this will be undermined considerably without decent insulation.