Seems mainly the usual "oh, the horror" followed by inconvenient facts.
Heap pumps can fail to heat your home:
(1) if it poorly insulated (2) if the radiators are under sized
This comes under the "No shit, Sherlock!" banner.
The interesting bit was a claim that if the external temperature is less than 5C then the efficiency drops right off and it becomes cheaper to use gas for heating.
Does this seem a reasonable claim?
It could make a big difference if you lived on the wrong side of the temperature divide which is often seen in the North West.
This is, of course, air source.
I assume (probably wrongly) that new builds will have the scope to install ground source.
historically gas price per kWh has been about 1/3 the electricity price, so on cold days, it's possible gas would be cheaper, will "they" try to decouple electricity prices from gas prices? Will "they" bung fossil taxes onto gas to make it unattractive? Who knows ...
If you search for "ASHP CoP curve" plus various manufacturer names, you'll get the general idea. As well as the outdoor temperature it also depends whether the output is being used for UFH (lower temps) or DHW or radiators (higher temps)
But you need to look at seasonal CoP which sort of averages it out over a year.
You need quite a substantial area to install the slinky type ground loops, so failing that (as I suspect modern density of housing would) you'd be needing a vertical borehole for GSHP.
Greenies like to claim that they are really easy to fit and (almost) can just be swapped for a combi boiler. When people find out this isn't true, the whole project will be thrown into chaos.
For air source the outside unit is very large: much bigger than the air con/fridge units on the side of shops. And noisy, so you can't put it near your neighbours which might mean it'll be in the middle of your garden.
The inside unit is larger too, and you will need a cupboard to accommodate a large water cylinder, perhaps with a cold header tank. People are used to combis that you just hang on the wall somewhere.
Replacing the radiators with larger ones could be disruptive, even more so for underfloor heating.
Insulation will have to be improved. Most people already have double glazing, loft insulation and cavity wall insulation, so it's not clear what you can do. Most properties aren't suitable for external cladding, so you would have to put extra insulation inside the walls and under the floor. This would mean everyone moving out and living in a hotel for two or three weeks and putting their furniture in storage. When they move back in they will find that nothing fits as all the rooms are smaller.
Yes, as there isn't much heat in the air outside to extract.
Ground source will involve digging up the garden (if you have one) to put all the pipes. What if they leak or an overenthusiastic gardener does some "double digging" and hits one?
Have they upgraded regulations for new builds to make them suitable for heat pumps? If they have I expect developers will lobby for them to be watered down.
Unless the houses are *very* well insulated, heat pumps are also inherently inefficient as they have to be on all the time. Unlike gas you can't turn them off when you are at work or go out for the day, or at night when you are under the duvet.
I can see they are a good idea (or will be once we can find a low carbon way to generate electricity), but people are reluctant to think through the practicalities, and prefer to enthuse or glue themselves to roads.
If they do increase the price of gas everyone will freeze to death and they will start subsidising energy as they are at the moment.
I think all these subsidies set a dangerous precedent; previously people have made do and economised; now they expect the Government to pick up the tab. The same with food banks.
I live in West Cumbria in a three bedroomed house that is very well insulated. The radiators warm up quickly from a cold start...depending on outside temperature. The fan unit outside is fairly quiet ~50DbA and cannot be heard in the house. I am not using the immersion heaters, only the heat pump for a sustained water temperature of 50C.
It might be NSS to you, but if you're Mrs Miggins of Mafeking St, Melton Mowbray, with no knowledge of physics or engineering, you just want a central heating system that keeps your home warm in cold weather. And if you spend tens of thousands on something you were told would do that, and it doesn't, then you've been diddled.
They might have the scope but it is still very expensive.
No they wont. I dont consider myself as old, but some people will (born 1964). We didnt have central heating until the mid-70's, in fact few people did, and, we didnt freeze to death. We had a coal fire, and an immersion heater.That was it for the heat, apart from the oven and hob. Ice was on the inside of the single glazed windows in the morning. The vast majority of houses nowadays have far better insulation than in the
70's, ice inside is unheard of now. People will just cut back a little, and only use the minimum of gas to keep one room warm, then, go to bed with more blankets. How do you think poeple in Ukraine are coping? We dont hear any stories of people freezing to death.
Clearly not as the ASHP will run its scheduled 'legionella' cycle weekly or every second week, getting the water above 60 degrees to kill off any legionella bacteria. And, of course, very few domestic cases of legionella have ever been found, and it is a low risk.
Not to my knowledge - in the sense that a good deal more insulating should be done, and there's no requirement for mechanical heat recovery ventilation.
Building Regs changed last year to give lower U values for new builds and extensions etc. They can still go further, as you say, MVHR should be compulsory, and far better insulation is easily done, but, the big house builders still do the bare minimum they can get away with.
Well worth watching that program on C5 catchup to see how badly the roof structure was built (and just how much timber was used) simply to create a 'dormer' bungalow.
And they bought the site without realising that shit does not flow uphill, so an expensive giant 'saniflow' had to be buried in the ground immediately outside the property.
A new build will typically have a 100mm cavity either fully-filled with rockwool batts or have 50mm celotex clamped tightly (if only) to the inner leaf, joints tape with silver tape and a 50mm cavity.
Putting 50mm of celotex inside, plus 9mm PB isn't that bad, apart from the disruption and relocation of switches and sockets.
External wall insulation is probably better. I have seen quite a few '60's houses cladded and they had cavity walls anyway. If you live in a property with 9inch solid walls you *need* to do something, pretending that double glazing and a log burner are adequate is just burying your head in the sand.
2 years from now we will see what Labour have in store. Expect a massive resurgence of home-sellers packs with updated thermal requirements. Some houses are going to be unsaleable, apart from at auction methinks, unless £thousands are invested.
Some Bellway houses were built near me in 2010. In 2017 one had an extension built. It was inches away from a public footpath and when the existing cavity was was broken into to attach the extension, it was obvious that the only insulation inside the existing cavity wall was 1 inch thick EPS just flapping about *loose* inside the cavity. So utterly pointless.
While basically true, one difficulty is that far fewer places have things like open fire places, many will have combi boilers and so no immersion etc, any many younger households may have no memory of what it used to be like and how to survive.
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