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Heat pump advice
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wittynamegoeshere said:We've got no access to gas and no heating system, after the previous owners allowed some scammy electric heater company to chop off all the heating system pipes right up against the concrete floor.Also the concrete floors have sagged quite badly and are uninsulated. So they probably need pulling up and replacing, in which case it's almost no extra effort to include underfloor heating.So we're starting from scratch with nothing and can add underfloor pipes. In our fairly unusual case I'm pretty sure that a heat pump is the answer to our prayers.But... if we had access to gas I'd definitely get gas. If we had an existing system of pipes and radiators I'd consider a heat pump with big fat radiators but would probably end up getting oil just to keep life simple.Ta0
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Lewigreg081281 said:wittynamegoeshere said:We've got no access to gas and no heating system, after the previous owners allowed some scammy electric heater company to chop off all the heating system pipes right up against the concrete floor.Also the concrete floors have sagged quite badly and are uninsulated. So they probably need pulling up and replacing, in which case it's almost no extra effort to include underfloor heating.So we're starting from scratch with nothing and can add underfloor pipes. In our fairly unusual case I'm pretty sure that a heat pump is the answer to our prayers.But... if we had access to gas I'd definitely get gas. If we had an existing system of pipes and radiators I'd consider a heat pump with big fat radiators but would probably end up getting oil just to keep life simple.Ta
One way round itis to use an overlay hot water system, but laid on insulation. It will raise the floor level up by an inch or so.
We have a polypipe overlay wet system over a suspended wooden floor like this -https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bdk3l7-FNRY (other systems are available). If you want a write up on what we've got then just PM me.
Never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers1 -
The new heatpump grant scheme is suggested by Bloomberg to be between £5,000 and £6,000
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-more-money-discarding-gas-173745867.html
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coffeehound said:The new heatpump grant scheme is suggested by Bloomberg to be between £5,000 and £6,000
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-more-money-discarding-gas-173745867.html
Thanks for the link. I'm hoping to get RHI on a heat pump installation at a house I am purchasing but time is getting worryingly short. A supplier I have been talking to thought that grants of about £4k were likely, but an uplift to £5-6k would be very welcome. I presume there would be fewer hops to jump through, regarding monitoring, too.
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wittynamegoeshere said: It's not a trivial job. To do it properly you need to smash out all the existing concrete, dig down, compact hardcore in, sand, then a massive thick block of Celotex or similar, then new concrete. Together with polythene membranes at the right points.
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Treasure the moments that you have. Savour them for as long as you can for they will never come back again.0 -
It's not a trivial job. To do it properly you need to smash out all the existing concrete, dig down, compact hardcore in, sand, then a massive thick block of Celotex or similar, then new concrete. Together with polythene membranes at the right points.They just accept the heat loss on existing concrete and block and beam floors. It is only around 5% and the embedded carbon in replacing the floor would not be repaid in the lifetime of the system.0
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Verdigris said:coffeehound said:The new heatpump grant scheme is suggested by Bloomberg to be between £5,000 and £6,000
https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/britons-more-money-discarding-gas-173745867.html
Thanks for the link. I'm hoping to get RHI on a heat pump installation at a house I am purchasing but time is getting worryingly short. A supplier I have been talking to thought that grants of about £4k were likely, but an uplift to £5-6k would be very welcome. I presume there would be fewer hops to jump through, regarding monitoring, too.0 -
It's quite difficult to find simple figures outside of companies flogging the stuff, who say all kinds of nonsense. They don't care beyond getting paid for fitting the stuff.But I've found one document that states that 125mm of rigid foam insulation for newbuild. That suggests that it's definitely needed and beneficial, I doubt that this would be a requirement if only 5% was wasted without it.0
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Do you have a source for your 5% figure?From a long established underfloor heating supplier. I have also read a figure of 10% quoted, elsewhere. The lower end figure would apply to an "ideal" setup with a low (30-35 degree) flow temperature and a stone/tile floor finish.If you look at an EPC for a concrete floored house the saving from insulating the floor is tiny, compared to the quoted costs. If you have room to apply insulation over the top of the concrete, then great, but mostly it is pretty tight, even with a 22mm build-up.
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Sorry, but I'm assuming that the 5% figure is salesman-spouted rubbish. Building regs wouldn't stipulate 125mm of rigid foam if it was really 5%.The 10% figure is a guesstimate and is for conventional heating, as is the EPC estimate. Once you put the heat source inside the floor it has to change things, massively.With any other form of heating, the floor is the coldest part of the room, as heat rises in air. This is why it's usually pretty low. Heat goes in any direction in a solid, sideways or down if the soil's colder than the floor is - as it would be with underfloor heating.I'll get some proper reputable assessments done based on reality and genuine science, but I'm fully expecting that the sensible answer is to pull the floor up and get some proper insulation in. The only reason heating companies don't state this is that they'd get far fewer installations if this was the case. They care about getting paid for fitting the stuff, they don't care how much your heating bills will be for ever after.0
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