OT: its midday and its midsummer...but...

[Jack Harry Teesdale]

Mostly electricty is chosen for smaller properties in non gas areas and even then many use oil/propane/solid fuel instead.

[Tim Streater]

Have you done the sums to see what the payback time is?

[jgh]

[citation needed]

I live in a 200+-year-old house and it is stuffed to the gunnels with insulation. The walls are about 23 inches thick solid stone and so uninsulatable, but being 24 inches thick solid stone they are perfectly decent insulators anyway.

And that's before getting to areas where it would be illegal to do any work on the building.

To a first approximation, "all" UK houses *have* been insulated. You're chasing down ever diminishing returns on ever harder and more expensive properties. It's getting near the point where the next step is to brick up everybody's doorways.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

And you think it a good idea to give a country which despises our way of life control over our power supplies?

[T i m]

Funnily I took a call yesterday from someone offering to do a free thermal efficiency survey of my house and suggesting they could spray the inside of my loft with insulating foam.

I questioned the logic, suggesting that eves were open to the outside world to provide ventilation to the roofspace woodwork and therefore I couldn't see how the foam would help?

He thanked me for the information, carried on trying to push for an appointment for the survey and I kept pushing back, suggesting he was wasting his time. He eventually conceded. ;-)

20+ years ago when we had some work done here, one of the things *we chose* to do was have the inside of the flank wall (we are EOT) re plastered with some sort of aerated / thermal plaster? I'm not sure if / how much it helps but it seemed like a 'good idea, given we were re rendering / plastering in any case.

Don't have a flat roof. We had a slated / pitched roof put on the extension to the rear addition in keeping with the rest of the (120+ year old) cottage.

Another similarly EOT aged building went for the external foam cladding but I think it was relatively new and I'm always wary of any of these 'new' solutions re how they work out in the future.

20 years later you find them ripping all similar installations off because they are a fire risk or cause humidity issues and all the woodwork rotting etc. ;-(

Cheers, T i m

[GB]

The only domestic one only produces 18Kw, and it costs £9k. We'd also need a gas boiler to provide peaks. So, the whole installation is very expensive. And, 1/3rd off say half our gas bill isn't going to go very far towards that cost.

The grant (sorry, RHI) is around £6,000 spread over 7 years. That would have gone quite a long way towards making it viable, and I'd then have done some more detailed sums.

[Andrew]

Have you been inside modern appartment tower blocks ?, or even flats builts in the 60's and 70's where gas is not available ?.

[Andrew]

Use your Tesla as a 'battery' ?.

[Tim Streater]

So does that mean that heat pumps are a waste of time, or would be be fairer to say that they should be in new build, but retrofitting is not worth it.

A grant (however it's applied) doen't bring the cost down (except to such as yourself), all it does is hide it. After all, the cost of something is at least a rough proxy for the question: "How much of society's resources weee consumed in making this item?"

[Jack Harry Teesdale]

Yes and i worked on many but as a proportion of the total UK housing stock, they are a drop in the ocean.

[T i m]

It seems they are having second thoughts over them supplying kit for our mobile phone networks.

I'm not sure I trust any country / culture that tortures dogs before eating them (because they think it 'improves the taste') especially re anything involving morals and ethics. ;-(

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

A plumber mate was looking into GSHP and went as far as drilling the holes in his back garden and fitting all the pipes, manifolds and HP.

It was imported directly from China (the idea was to run a sideline business with his mate doing this so wanted to buy direct etc) and the instructions were pretty sparse. I don't think he ever got it working (it was powered up etc) and I think the electricity prices rose, making running the GSHP even less viable.

Luckily he fitted a std CH boiler at the same time. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[GB]

I entirely agree with your sentiment. There's only one (Italian) company making these things, and the market is tiny.

The govt dept produced a report a couple of years ago predicting a market of 200-300k a year of these machines, given the right incentives, and of course that would have brought the price right down.

In principle it's just a big gas fridge, and I was surprised how expensive they are right now.

I'm not sure I've answered your question. I can see a role for incentives, to kick-start the market, but not long term.

[Clive Page]

It's because test cricket has started (and Wimbledon tennis should have) - traditional summer weather in these parts.

[T i m]

I guess any idea that a gas fired power station being 'greener' than a small domestic CH boiler (or more importantly, the average 'greenness' of all the CH boilers still in use across the country today) would lose any / some (all?) green advantage once you include transmission / conversion losses?

Cheers, T i m

[DJC]

'cos when I had my walls replastered I wanted a proper job, not dot and dab plasterboard, nor did I want a room smaller than it already is.

[DJC]

Aha! Lockdown II

>

[DJC]

DON'T The idiot previous owners of this house did that. Which means the tiles are now effectively glued on and impossible to remove to repair or replace without breaking. So a broken tile can only be fixed with a bodged repair. And a new roof would be horrendously expensive as all the tiles would be broken and not reuseable.

Fortunately my roof space remains well ventilated, but that negate the insulation value.

The idiots also had blown fibre installed. There is a reason the nineteenth-century builder tried this new-fangled cavity wall idea on a house very exposed to south-westerly driving rain, and it wasn't insulation.

[charles]

[Snip]

our house was built in 1911, by an old fashioned builder - no cavity and SW facing wall. I totally understand

[T i m]

Quite. I heard they even pull any felt down before they spray the foam?

Quite.

They didn't have water on the brain. ;-)

Similarly, I think someone offered to 'seal' the outside of our solid

9" brick walls with some sort of silicone spray. The BIL (an old skool builder) suggested that would stop the walls 'breathing' and cause even more issues inside?

Cheers, T i m