Heat pumps vs Gas boilers

csgohan4

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58959045

How much will it save in reality? We don't all have solar panels to reduce our electric burden from having these big units outside nor the space to either.

Another gimmick to appease the greener people?

The maintenance costs and initial sink in costs are not chicken change either

Doozergirl

It'll reduce carbon emissions but it won't save money.   We need more   happening to help drive the price down of ASHPs.  
 

I calculated that it would take two decades to pay of solar panels on our house - with batteries.   A max saving of £400 a year (at the time) 

With an ASHP, the investment was going to be £20k.  Even at 300% efficiency, with electric at 6 times the price per unit of gas, it would have cost twice as much to run straight from the grid.

We already spent a fortune on the fabric of the building, making it airtight, highly insulated and installing mechanical heat recovery.    The ASHP was just a step too far.

No older house is going to run an ASHP effectively without upgrades to the building fabric first.  

Anyone not putting insulation on their walls whilst renovating their house is insane.   People trying to hold 120 year old plaster to walls with willpower - pointless.  The energy savings in future of the upgrades will be far larger than they are now.  

csgohan4

So in essence a gimmick by HMG, 90k doesn't cover much of the population and at £450mil cost, that's a large overhead, perhaps better to fund better Fit tariffs/ solar panel use or increase Gas storage

Section62

csgohan4 said:

How much will it save in reality? We don't all have solar panels to reduce our electric burden from having these big units outside nor the space to either.

It isn't about saving money, it is about meeting the purity test of "we don't burn gas/coal/oil here".

It is also about moving emissions from the point of use (esp. the cities) to points of production where there isn't a population to suffer the health effects.

I've been saying (on here) for some time that people need to think really carefully about converting to a combi because the future of domestic gas heating isn't looking that great.  Even without an outright ban, the cheapness of mains gas wasn't sustainable.

The announcement isn't just about £5k for heat pumps.  There's a lot more detail behind the headline.  In places where people don't have the space for heatpumps (esp. in high density developments) communal and district heating is going to be one of the answers.

I'd agree with the suggestion that it would be madness not to maximise insulation when doing any renovation/extension work - I'd go further, and suggest people should think about creating space within the footprint of their home where the internal and external units of an ASHP could be installed as unobtrusively as possible.  For now that space could be used for general storage, but preparing to accommodate some bulky 'boxes' in the future would be wise IMV.

-taff

I went to see a heating engineer expert blokey, I laid out all my plans for green energy. He told me not to bother, the fabric of the building was such that it would just cost too much and be too much of a faff to install given the age and construction of the building so we are down to, wet underfloor heating in the proposed new bit, an unvented tank, a system boiler and one that I want particularly, an air conditioning unit for the bedroom. And a charge point for an electric car.

Out went MHVR, solar panels, solar battery...For the same reasons Doozer specified.

On a new build, where you can control the insulation and air tightness, these things may make sense if the cost can be recouped and the infrastructure is such that repair and cost of use is feasible. If not, retrofitting something to a leaky air house is not going to work very well.

Doozergirl

Gas storage isn't going to reduce emissions though, nor are feed in tariffs. 

We do need to minimise consumption, which is why heat pumps are a jolly good idea.  It's just that they're not financially viable for the average home whilst gas is still available and they're not insulated and airtight enough.    They just don't reach temperature high enough to combat the heat escaping an average house.  All houses need ventilation, but that needs to be managed, rather than the average house which just leaks and/or purposely extracts warm air straight out of the house. 

We need better building regulations standards NOW for new builds.  Net zero carbon was supposed to happen by 2016, but was quashed by Cameron.  As long as your mates are making massive profits building 'lego houses', nothing really matters.  I'd rather have a lego house, actually.  It's far better engineered than the average developer home and the walls will be straight, at least.  

daveyjp

Exactly.  This needs to start with changes to building regs applicable to all new properties.

Retrofitting heat pumps isn't practical for millions of homes. 

Section62

daveyjp said:

Retrofitting heat pumps isn't practical for millions of homes. 

Banning leaded petrol wasn't practical for millions of cars.

Banning diesel (now) wouldn't be practical for millions of vehicles.


The issue isn't about changing every single one, but instead phasing the change in and doing the ones that can be done.


Also, more people will be using electricity to directly heat their homes, no heat pump needed for them.

Niv

I have oil heating and my house is over 400 years old. I cant see that ASHP is a remote goer for me, apart from the insulation issue I do not have gas so presumably do not qualify for the grant.

rob7475

The UK has a massive stock of houses that are over 100 years old (mine included). Insulating these old houses to a high enough degree for an ASHP to work effectively is going to be difficult. You'd end up needing to double the size of your radiators to get the output needed to keep the house warm.

Many older homes aren't suitable for cavity wall insulation which only realistically leaves external wall insulation. I've seen many homes that have had this installed and the colour is fading badly after 10 years. I wouldn't dream of covering my 100 year old brickwork up with insulationt that's going to neeed replacing / repainting regularly.

I don't think heat pumps are the answer we're looking for. I remember the electric companies trying to push them 15 years ago with grants for free installation. They didn't take off then, so what's changed?

Maybe we need to look at how we distribute the heat created from our gas boilers more efficiently to minimise consumption. For example, I have a plinth heater in my kitchen which runs from the central heating but is on it's own zone for termperature control. The plinth heater is essentially a very small radiator with a fan to convect the heat into the room. This heats my very large kitchen much faster than any of my radiators can heat the other rooms. Maybe incorporating some silent fans into smaller radiators could be a way forward.

prowla

I don't have a place where I could fit a heat pump, so i guess I'm out!