Air source heat pump problems

Mutton_Geoff

ripplyuk said:

An electric blanket and an eiderdown on the bed is the cheapest way to stay cozy at night. A vintage eiderdown is best. You can get them on eBay. 

Have you been reading the Daily Mash today 

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/lifestyle/electric-blankets-and-other-things-old-people-werent-wrong-about-20221214229210

Murphybear

Mutton_Geoff said:

ripplyuk said:

An electric blanket and an eiderdown on the bed is the cheapest way to stay cozy at night. A vintage eiderdown is best. You can get them on eBay. 

Have you been reading the Daily Mash today 

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/lifestyle/electric-blankets-and-other-things-old-people-werent-wrong-about-20221214229210

I have a silk duvet which is great in the summer and winter.  If I am cold I have a heated pad rather than not electric blanket.  

ripplyuk

@Mutton_Geoff I hadn’t seen that but now I’m wishing I’d held onto mine. I could have got a better price. They’ll all be buying them now 😅

LHW99

Dry-lining with insulated plasterboard definately works. We had that done in a 1950's extension on a much older cottage. Also worth checking whether the pointing on the outside walls is good, as if it is failing, you will get drafts coming through the stonework

hayley54321

Mrcsmrs said:

Came here to post something similar and have learnt a few things from your thread so thank you. Can’t help much as we don’t have any answers yet but we’ve had the ASHP stuff down as low as we can and luckily we have an oil fired Rayburn for cooking at one end of the house and a wood burner at the other. That said our usage is still costing us £1000 a month plus. But the place is a barn conversion and has an EPC of D, with no gas and only the electric to heat the water too. We have solar and get about £2300 a year back on that but we’ve still been shocked at just how bad the bills here are. We only moved in 2 years ago so it’s been a steep learning curve.  

Interested to try to work out how we could improve the EPC though. Might have to look into this. 

It's awful isn't it? The feeling of paying a fortune for electricity compared to everyone else,yet getting nothing back for it is miserable. Our thermostat is set to 12 now,which is making life pretty uncomfortable. How big is your place and in which part of the UK,if you don't mind me and asking?

hayley54321

Mutton_Geoff said:

For comparison, I live in a 4 bed open plan modern new build. My ASHP is using 65kwhr per day to heat the house & water. The heating is on 24 hours a day. Cost £12 a day over last 10 days (got a fixed rate of 18p for leccy).

Can I please ask what temperature you have your thermostat at,and if you vary it much through the day / night? That's a fantastic fixed rate,lucky you!

ProDave

Sorry to come back and sound like I am rubbing it in, but the problem is not the ASHP per se but poorly insulated properties and a spell of cold weather which many parts of the UK are not used to.

My ASHP has used 13kWh per day (about £4) to heat my house over the last 10 days of this cold snap, and being in the north of Scotland it is even colder here than many other placed.

Eventually people are going to wake up, read and digest the EPC before buying or renting a property, and if it is poor with high energy costs then pay less for the property.

There are also plenty of people complaining at paying very high daily costs to heat their houses with a gas boiler at the moment.

moneysaver

ProDave said:

Eventually people are going to wake up, read and digest the EPC before buying or renting a property, and if it is poor with high energy costs then pay less for the property.

There are also plenty of people complaining at paying very high daily costs to heat their houses with a gas boiler at the moment.

You are spot on. I have been looking at buying another house for a while now & have started  looking at the EPC for each property, but the energy efficient ones are few & far between.

It is going to be a long slog for me to even get one with a C rating, not easy.

Moneysaver

anselld

ProDave said:

Sorry to come back and sound like I am rubbing it in, but the problem is not the ASHP per se but poorly insulated properties and a spell of cold weather which many parts of the UK are not used to.

My ASHP has used 13kWh per day (about £4) to heat my house over the last 10 days of this cold snap, and being in the north of Scotland it is even colder here than many other placed.

Eventually people are going to wake up, read and digest the EPC before buying or renting a property, and if it is poor with high energy costs then pay less for the property.

There are also plenty of people complaining at paying very high daily costs to heat their houses with a gas boiler at the moment.

It is none-the-less and issue that ASHP technology is barely adequate to cope with a cold snap and will only do so in the best insulated properties.  Better insulation is always a good thing regardless of the energy source, but a source where the performance drops significantly just when you need most heat is certainly "a problem" in my book.  I had a new boiler last year and considered air-source and ground-source as alternatives but they are both poor alternatives to gas.  There is a long was to go before the technology will compete in anything but rural areas.

hayley54321

ProDave said:

Sorry to come back and sound like I am rubbing it in, but the problem is not the ASHP per se but poorly insulated properties and a spell of cold weather which many parts of the UK are not used to.

My ASHP has used 13kWh per day (about £4) to heat my house over the last 10 days of this cold snap, and being in the north of Scotland it is even colder here than many other placed.

Eventually people are going to wake up, read and digest the EPC before buying or renting a property, and if it is poor with high energy costs then pay less for the property.

There are also plenty of people complaining at paying very high daily costs to heat their houses with a gas boiler at the moment.

We absolutely would,though as someone else mentioned,being able to find / afford one with a great EPC is going to be very difficult. It seems like D and E was commonplace amongst the many many properties we viewed. It's also difficult to take it too literally because our last house had a terrible EPC too but really was no big hassle to keep warm with storage heaters and a log burner