Gas boilers to be banned

roddydogs

You should of course have added "new builds from 2025" to the post heading.Click bait anyone?

OldMusicGuy

We are moving in to a new build house later this year/early next (build starts April/May time). We discussed this because we plan to stay in the house at least 20 years (if we don't die/get too old...). We have decided to go for an induction hob rather than gas because these are very viable alternatives. However, we will stick with gas CH because the alternatives (like ground source heat pumps) are still evolving and there's not a clear and obvious choice yet.

spadoosh

roddydogs wrote: »

You should of course have added "new builds from 2025" to the post heading.Click bait anyone?

You mean someone set up a post to discuss something wants people to click on that thread to discuss it? Crazy mofo's

EachPenny

James_Green_1982 wrote: »

There is a communal heating system in Dyffryn Newport I believe. Plus quite a few incineration systems in Europe. The rubbish is being burned anyway.

Mmmm... perhaps seek some user views after several years of operation?
....http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/x-ray/2009/06/newport-heating.shtml

And £4,000,000 is a lot to pay for a new boiler... even if the cost is shared between 900 homes (£4444 to be exact, less the contribution from the school)
https://www.newportcityhomes.com/httpportalnewportcityhomescomyour-home/httpportalnewportcityhomescomyour-homerent-and-other-charges/httpportalnewportcityhomescomyour-homerent-and-other-chargesheating-charges/
That's just the cost of the boiler, don't forget all the pumps, pipes, meters(?), admin etc. In a communal system the users are unlikely to be hit with a large bill for a new boiler, but the service charge will be set to accumulate funds (i.e. profit) to pay for future replacement of equipment

Also, bear in mind this system is using biomass. Incinerating rubbish is a completely different thing requiring higher (monitored) temperatures and very careful control over the materials that go into the incinerator. And then disposal of the ash produced as hazardous waste.

Incineration of household waste for communal heating is only feasible if you are building an estate of several thousand new homes, or are building an incinerator anyway and can cheaply pipe some waste heat to nearby housing.

James_Green_1982 wrote: »

Worth remembering that individual gas supply to houses can be dangerous.

Also worth remembering that a lot of people prefer to cook with gas and the Government's proposal isn't just doing away with gas boilers, new homes will also be electric cooking only (no mains gas).

Which makes me wonder whether there will be a business opportunity for installing bottle gas/LPG gas hobs. (which are potentially more 'dangerous' than mains connections)

EachPenny

spadoosh wrote: »

You mean someone set up a post to discuss something wants people to click on that thread to discuss it? Crazy mofo's

To be fair to the OP, the currently announced plan is only for new builds from 2025.

But government regulations usually have a habit of growing to cover the replacement of equipment in existing buildings in due course.

So when the capital cost of heat pumps (or whatever) starts to fall, regulations will be made to require retrofitting of non-gas heating in homes as and when the existing boiler is life-expired (which won't be long with modern combi boilers).

The other factor is that without the new-build market the volume of gas boilers sold will start to decline which if normal market considerations apply will result in the cost of gas boilers going up. It may be that the economics of replacing a gas boiler with the 'green' alternative favour the 'green' alternative without regulations being required. Which is something the Government would be quite happy about, even if people are still paying more than they need to in order to replace their heating system.

Slinky

pinkteapot wrote: »

And there's an older house available which has a biomass boiler - don't really know anything about those...

I have a friend selling a house with a biomass boiler. She's quite a strong woman but struggles lifting the bags of pellets into the boiler on her own.

spirit

You would have thought that HRH would have got on board with green energy wouldn't you?


but he hasn't here (my sister has just bought here and I'm considering it) they have gas boilers in the houses - not sure about in apartments.
https://nansledan.com/

Cakeguts

Here is district heating in Lerwick. https://www.sheap-ltd.co.uk/how-it-works They have to import rubbish and it only heats 1000 homes so not very many.

James_Green_1982

DaftyDuck wrote: »

Use your own wood, as I do, and all those RHI payments vanish. ,

old house

Even if you have your own woodland, that wood isn't really ''free'' - because:

1. You could be selling that wood to someone else.
2. You could be selling your labour to someone else - instead of collecting the wood.
3. You could sell the woodland.

So there's an opportunity cost there.

Even if you just take the wood from someone else's woodland - number 2 still applies.

ProDave

As usual in this country we lag behind, do things as they always have and need to be forced to improve. I have a low opinion of mass market house builders as generally speaking they want to do the minimum they can to scrape through building regulations (which in themselves are not very high) and often not even meeting them. As long as the great unwashed keep buying what they churn out, they have no incentive to build truly better, truly low energy homes.

I say all this speaking as a self builder living in my not quite finished new house. It is built to passive house levels of insulation and air tightness (though not certified as a passive house) and heated with an air source heat pump and under floor heating. The house is so well insulated it has just a 5KW ASHP, which is roughly twice the size it actually needs to be but that is the smallest generally made.

So far this winter (bear in mind we are in the Highlands) our heating bill is under £200

The extra insulation did not add much to the cost. The improved air tightness was mostly just getting the detail right. And we spent more to get good quality triple glazed windows.

The other big improvement is a centralised Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery unit. That removes the need for several individual holes in the building for extract fans, and efficiently provides a well ventilated building without just shoving all the heat from that exhaust air straight out through a hole in the wall.

I cannot for the life of me understand why most folk are just happy to pay £1000 or more per year on heating and mostly ignore the EPC rating and energy costs when buying a new house. Nobody will buy a fridge unless it is an A++ energy rating, so why are consumers not refusing to buy any new house that does not have an EPC rating of A? But we have the ridiculous situation that if I were to market my house as an "ECO house" it would probably be worth less than an "ordinary" one in spite of it's low running costs.

As to heat pumps being noisy. No they are not. There is no noise inside the house that is audible. The outside unit does make some noise, but a whole lot less noise than the burner roar that the oil fired boiler in out last house used to make, and that was audible inside the house as well as outside.