How will old houses be heated in 20 years time?

bobfredbob

The MPs frequently talk of carbon neutral and stopping new properties having gas boilers.  They keep delaying the cut-off, but they did pass that law/EU treaty about carbon neutral.

New houses are insulated and so can probably have ASHP/UFH.  At some point, gas prices will be even higher to encourage other people to install them in existing homes.

But, what about those of us in 100-year old small mid-terraces with air bricks, suspended floors, no cavity walls?

There's no way my house could be heated in winter with radiators at 30C, or even 50C--I've tried: it takes a long time to reach the temperature and the room feels cold even when it is at the temperature, so we then have to have the thermostat higher.  There are limited ways of economically insulating such old houses.  So how will heating and hot water work?

I mainly ask because we're thinking of an extension and don't want to find out in ten years that we should've had work done while the floors were up such as wiring for an electric combi (how will they work? New fusebox and new mains supply?); or we should've added water mains pipework and left plenty of room for unvented cylinders and perhaps a separate circuit for an ASHP and so then need to rip up all the floors, and then find we need overflow condensate drainage so then have to dig up the garden...

I imagine our extension will have water UFH even though I hear it takes a very long time to heat a room, just so we're prepared in the one room.

(We've been through a lot hassle when our previous very old boiler broke and don't want hassle again if we can plan ahead).

Thanks for any thoughts.

Ectophile

You'd bankrupt yourself trying to pay the bills for an electric combi boiler.

I think the only viable choices are going to be ASHP, GSHP (ground source heat pump, for people with a big enough garden), or night storage heaters.

Bear in mind that an ASHP is intended to be run 24 hours a day.  So when you say it takes a long time to heat up your room with radiators turned down, that's perfectly normal.  Bigger radiators would also help.

Plus people are going to have to spend money improving the insulation in their homes.  The UK housing stock is terrible in that respect compared with other countries in Northern Europe.

Edit: there's also talk of switching over to hydrogen in place of natural gas.  That would be a big job converting appliances over, but we've done it before with the switch from town gas to natural gas.

tacpot12

Ectophile is correct that insulation is a must, and not just insulation, improvements in draughtproofing and replacement of doors and some windows will be needed. It's going to be an expensive time. It would be as well to insulate sooner rather than later - if disruptive work needs to be done, you might as well do it sooner, and reap the rewards. If only I could persuade my OH on this!

I think ASHPs are going to be the dominant form of heating even for old houses. They can get the water up to 50+ degrees C and an immersion heater can be used to boost this. Anyone looking to get into a lucrative trade should look at Air Conditioning since this is the basis for ASHPs. I don't think the insulation industry is going to be quite as lucrative as the insulation ends up being hidden and there is a lot of work involved to made good after it has gone in. 

Mickey666

There are two issues here - environmental and financial.  Environmentally, a poorly insulated house is only a problem if it uses fossil fuels for heating.  If it uses 'green' energy - as we're all supposed to be using by 2050 or whenever it is - then being inefficient, ie using more energy for a given heat, is not a problem as far as the environment is concerned.

For most people, the issue will be financial.  The world seems to be moving towards electricity as it's primary way of moving energy around and to generate all that electricity in a sustainable way.  Which is environmentally a good thing but there seems to be little or no sign that all this 'green' electricity is going to be cheaper.  

So we seem set on a course towards higher energy charges in the future, which will pervade every aspect of our lives and the economy.  As mentioned above, there will be no technical problem building electric combi boilers (or whatever) but it's looking like they are going to be very expensive to actually use.  It's going to be interesting to see how governments react to ever increasing green energy costs when the country is sitting on centuries-worth of nasty, dirty coal.  Perhapps nuclear fusion will save us all . . . . just as it has been promising for the past 50 years but always seeming to be a tantalising 20 years away.

Cardew

https://www.which.co.uk/news/2020/12/gas-boilers-banned-in-new-builds-from-2025-what-does-this-mean-for-you/

OP makes several good points, and whilst improving insulation is obviously a high priority there is only so much you can do with non-cavity walls and suspended floors; silk purse sow's ear

Personally I think gas CH will be around for the next 40 years for older houses.

By then Green energy 'will be too cheap to bother with metering'! just like they said about Nuclear energy!

tacpot12

I agree with Mickey666's analysis. How we heat our homes only has a significant environmental impact if we use fossil fuels. Moving to "green" energy essentially means moving towards electricity, and to generating that electricity without using fossil fuels, except in emergencies. Clean electricity can be stored and distributed relatively easily, it can even be converted to hydrogen for very energy intensive applications. If the natural gas supply infrastructure can be converted to carry hydrogen easily, hydrogen might well allow boiler replacements while still keeping the appliance small. Powerful ASHPs (such as might be needed in a poorly insulated home) are large, and in the UK's small homes, a small hydrogen boiler might make a lot of sense.  

Gerry1

tacpot12 said:

Clean electricity can be stored and distributed relatively easily

Really?  Only at Dinorwig or in expensive batteries, and neither process is 100% efficient.  The rest of the post is good.

tacpot12

Gerry1 said:

tacpot12 said:

Clean electricity can be stored and distributed relatively easily

Really?  Only at Dinorwig or in expensive batteries, and neither process is 100% efficient.  The rest of the post is good.

Yes, I would agree that at the moment batteries for distributed storage are expensive, but the price will come down as new technologies become mature. Flow batteries make a lot of sense for storing electricity within the grid itself - think Dinorwig but with an electrically charged liquid rather than rain water. The technology for this is already being trialled at a utility scale in China and the USA; one key advantage for certain flow battery chemistries is that they don't depend on rare metals that are predominantly mined in Russia or China. Large-scale batteries need large amounts of raw materials.

Solar Panel Array sites are a good sites to locate utility scale battery storage as they have space and have the electrical infrastructure to supply power to the grid, and can minimises the losses of electricity traveling to the battery.  

Cardew

tacpot12 said:

I agree with Mickey666's analysis. How we heat our homes only has a significant environmental impact if we use fossil fuels. Moving to "green" energy essentially means moving towards electricity, and to generating that electricity without using fossil fuels, except in emergencies. Clean electricity can be stored and distributed relatively easily, it can even be converted to hydrogen for very energy intensive applications. If the natural gas supply infrastructure can be converted to carry hydrogen easily, hydrogen might well allow boiler replacements while still keeping the appliance small. Powerful ASHPs (such as might be needed in a poorly insulated home) are large, and in the UK's small homes, a small hydrogen boiler might make a lot of sense.  

Whilst undoubtedly green energy/batteries will play an ever more important part in powering UK, there are still days 'when the sun don't shine and the wind don't blow'. I don't think I have seen any predictions where UK ltd could be powered by batteries. particularly in future winters when the gas heating load will be transferred to electricity.

So if no fossil fuels are to be used we will have to rely on that other source of Green Energy - Nuclear power. That will no doubt horrify the Greenham Common ladies and their successors!

A._Badger

Personally, I hope that before 20 years have passed people will have woken up to the political trojan horse that is 'Green' dogma.
Absent which, as the owner of a house that is over 400 years old, I will just have to stuff a bit more newspaper into the cracks in the walls and get back to burning witches. Always assuming we're still allowed to have newspapers, of course. 

Gerry1

What about hydrogen, replacing natural gas?  Presumably it can be generated from electricity and easily stored, so it would enable an almost constant load for the generating industry.  If the demand is low, the sun's shining and/or the wind's blowing, you generate and store it by the bucket-load, but when it's dark and calm the generators meet the demand and Dinorwig et al can make up any shortfall.

Who knows, it might even be possible for hydrogen cars to be topped up at home from the hydrogen gas main using a compressor.  Range anxiety wouldn't be a problem because you'd be able to refuel in a few minutes at a gas station in much the say way you would at a petrol station.

Is all this a real possibility, or am I being too simplistic?  Agreed, we'd have to convert all our cookers and boilers, but we did this quite happily when we switched from town to natural gas half a century ago.