No gas boilers in new homes after 2025.

[rxe]

REALIST123 said:

I have a 300m2 15 roomed house out in the Country. No mains gas, oil fired boiler when we moved in in 2010.


The UF is run from 8am to 5pm during winter and the water is heated during the night. The radiators are put on if needed, not that often.

We pay about £16/1700 a year for all of our electricity which does everything, we have nothing else. It even pumps our water from a bore and runs our biodisc digester 24/7.

We were lucky in some ways; the UF was already in and it's important with a HP. We got full grant on the RHI scheme and when our payments end we'll have had £17k + back of our £20k cost.

Those numbers illustrate the problem - it cost about the same to heat and power a 4 bedroom house in London, built to Victorian standards of energy efficiency. The only nod to modernity was double glazing, which was expensive because doing double glazing in sash windows that doesn’t look entirely st isn’t easy.

When we moved out of London and did major work on a “project house” we looked at all the options.

GSHP was technically the best option, but was something like £50k for external work.
ASHP was weaker technically, £18k for the external work. It’s worth noting that all of the ASHPs that worked in low temperatures simply used conventional resistive heating as soon as it got much below zero. (Was true 4 years ago, might have changed)

In the end we went with underfloor heating in all of the tiled areas downstairs, powered by an electric boiler. The annual bill for running the boiler is about £300, so the GSHP option would have taken about 2 centuries to break even. The ASHP would have merely taken 50 years - and that assumes they’re powered by unicorn farts rather than leccy.

Solar PV was well worth it, with a payback of less than a decade, mainly subsidy driven. We did have the roof in bits already, which made the install trivial.

As an aside - rainwater collection - don’t bother. The worst investment I ever made, saves about £50 a year, and costs 10x more than that in broken pumps and general maintenance.

A lot of the base load is covered by wood, and the house is pretty well made. I can’t stand being in a sealed house with a heat recovery system, and as we have two dogs, the doors are opened every 10 minutes.... Gas bill - £100 a year propane cylinder for the cooker. Electric - about £1200 a year all in, then we get an £800 subsidy back. Winner. Wood, loads, but I chainsaw work saves on the gym membership.

[austinsmirk]

just to clarify my social housing comments gentleman.

yes, old electric storage heaters are pretty rubbish. I get people struggle with them.


I'm talking about brand new, state of the art new build houses, fully fitted with solar panels, intelligent air source, electric heating etc.

Trust me, even with officers sitting and nursing and guiding people, you can't get them to use them as they should.

and yes they've had to be ripped out en-masse.

I can't begin to tell you how frequent it is to see any form of air flow- in/out, covered, blocked...... trickle vents to windows taped over- extractors in bathrooms taped over/fuses removed- even properly installed de-humidifiers (in attics usually)- all turned off/blocked and so on.

honestly its like fresh air is a bad thing.


one huge issue is that of utilities and payment- virtually no one is on a DD- so its tokens. so the concept of leaving something on, to operate properly is an alien one. "I can see a light, thus its costing me money, thus I turn it off".

[markcoznottz]

JagLover said:

monkfish1 said:

Here is how it will pan out in the real world:

Most houses will get built with ASHP as there isn't any other sensible cost effective option for the average new build with almost no garden.

ASHP system will be specced on the basis of the houses "designed thermal efficency and air tightness".

All good so far............

House gets built. The big boys, and quite a lot of the smaller ones cant build a house to the required thermal and air tightness specs to save their lives. After all, no ones checking what goes on.

Home owner moves in.

Doesnt understand what that noisy heat recovery and ventilation system is that will also be in these new houses. Turns it of, opens window, because thats what people have always done.

Winter arrives, house is crap thermally, because it not even close to the design, ASHP doesnt work well at -5, definitely doesnt work well when house leaks heat. Owners wife is freezing, so owner goes to screwfix to buy electric heaters to plug in to help.

Electricity demand jumps up just as electricity demand is already at peak!

Owner says his heating is st.

Screwfix make a mint selling electric heaters.

House builders dont care because the house is sold.

Lets come back in winter 2025 and see how close i am to reality. Maybe i can get a gold star

carbon emissions go up, but Hammond doesn't care as he has already p*ssed off to the world of energy "consultancy".

Same as chris huhne and his biomass jobs. It's this kind of st which makes people question wether the whole thing is a scam, jobs for the boys. Brings it into disrepute.

[Rivenink]

Good policy if....

We massively invest in Nuclear fission now, and in Fusion to replace it.

30 year plan needed.

[Tuna]

Lord Marylebone said:

Producing electricity centrally in vast quantities and then using it to heat individual homes is far more efficient from a fuel/emissions point of view than having millions of gas boilers heating individual homes.

...
My new house that I’m building will be as energy efficient as practical, and I am looking into alternative electric-powered heating systems rather than gas.

I'm not sure you're correct on this one. Transmission losses on electrical distribution are huge - one of the reasons why electricity costs approximately three times as much as gas per kwh delivered to your home. Most electrically based heating systems bring energy efficiency back into line with gas heating at best. This move will have a serious effect on heating costs for many home owners.

From a raw cost point of view, your best bet is renewable fuel burning in your home - an efficient log burner or batch burner and thermal store - and sustainable fuels are carbon neutral.

Interestingly there is a report coming out that says the UK's carbon emissions are now the lowest the've been since 1888 - nearly a century and a half ago. That's pretty impressive and shows just how much we have achieved lately.

[alangla]

austinsmirk said:

one huge issue is that of utilities and payment- virtually no one is on a DD- so its tokens. so the concept of leaving something on, to operate properly is an alien one. "I can see a light, thus its costing me money, thus I turn it off".

Which is a situation that, unfortunately, is only going to get worse with the proliferation of smart meters constantly measuring consumption without providing any context to the usage.

[Nickgnome]

Tuna said:

Lord Marylebone said:

Producing electricity centrally in vast quantities and then using it to heat individual homes is far more efficient from a fuel/emissions point of view than having millions of gas boilers heating individual homes.

...
My new house that I’m building will be as energy efficient as practical, and I am looking into alternative electric-powered heating systems rather than gas.

I'm not sure you're correct on this one. Transmission losses on electrical distribution are huge - one of the reasons why electricity costs approximately three times as much as gas per kwh delivered to your home. Most electrically based heating systems bring energy efficiency back into line with gas heating at best. This move will have a serious effect on heating costs for many home owners.

From a raw cost point of view, your best bet is renewable fuel burning in your home - an efficient log burner or batch burner and thermal store - and sustainable fuels are carbon neutral.

Interestingly there is a report coming out that says the UK's carbon emissions are now the lowest the've been since 1888 - nearly a century and a half ago. That's pretty impressive and shows just how much we have achieved lately.

The OP stated That the proposed legislation is for New build homes post 2025.

There is absolutely no reason that new houses cannot be built with sufficient air tightness and insulation that they require minimal or no heating.

Heat recovery ventilation will be required but fresh air load is minimal.

You are correct with transmission losses but gas infrastructure is not inexpensive particularly capex.

There is of course still a HWS load requirement.

I wonder if they could use the existing domestic gas network for anything. Fibre perhaps.

[eldar]

Nickgnome said:

I wonder if they could use the existing domestic gas network for anything. Fibre perhaps.

National grid run fibre through the HV conductors - they are hollow. Gas perhaps to the premises.

[fido]

Nickgnome said:

£6,000 are you serious. Are you heating the whole street?

That was the cost of converting an old 70s back boiler to a Megaflow with all the bells and whistles.

[Tuna]

Nickgnome said:

The OP stated That the proposed legislation is for New build homes post 2025.

There is absolutely no reason that new houses cannot be built with sufficient air tightness and insulation that they require minimal or no heating.

Heat recovery ventilation will be required but fresh air load is minimal.

We built a low energy, high air tightness house a decade ago, with HRV and all the energy efficient bells and whistles. The observation is that all of the last few decades improvements in energy efficiency (Part L) for mainstream houses seem to have been achieved by improvements in quality control, and basic design tweaks. Most builders aren't doing anything significantly different from what they were in the 80's. Our house was (and still is) an exception to the way the vast majority of properties are built.

So moving to HRV would actually involve a big change in what they do - and builders are quite resistant to that sort of change. Most improvements in Part L have been incremental rather than revolutionary.

As long as they're meeting Part L requirements, shifting from Gas to Electricity for heating will involve much higher bills regardless of how energy efficient the house is. Gas is just cheaper per kWh of energy it provides. And builders don't actually care (or tell you) much about how much your house will cost to run - they just care about meeting the regs and adding the features that make people buy.

Nickgnome said:

You are correct with transmission losses but gas infrastructure is not inexpensive particularly capex.

There is of course still a HWS load requirement.

I wonder if they could use the existing domestic gas network for anything. Fibre perhaps.

All good points.

[anonymous-user]

Tuna said:

Transmission losses on electrical distribution are huge

I'm not total sure i'd call 7 to 11 % "huge". Significant, yes, huge? No.

(that is the average uk grid loss for domestic properties which have the highest step down ratio as they operate at the lowest grid voltage (240VAC)

Tuna said:

- one of the reasons why electricity costs approximately three times as much as gas per kwh delivered to your home.

I don't think that is the reason tbh. The reason electricity is more expensive per kWh than gas is because it is 'one more step' down the chain of energy conversion and so you are paying someone else to do that conversion and maintain the equipment and plant that does that conversion.


The big win from moving to electric heating, be that via phase change heat transfer systems (air and ground source heat pumps) or via direct resistive heating, is that your heating is now agnostic to the actual source of the energy. A gas boiler burns gas, that's it, and realistically you can't make or store gas at home, (how ever many curries you eat.... ;-) ) But an electric system can source its power from anywhere or anything that provides electricity. You can have some solar panels and some batteries, (even use your EV as you storage....) and you can significantly reduce both your total draw on the grid, but also and just as importantly, decide when you are going to draw from the grid or any other source. That "load leveling" and "energy trading" capability opens up a massive future potential that simply does not exist with our gas based architecture!

[normalbloke]

eldar said:

Nickgnome said:

I wonder if they could use the existing domestic gas network for anything. Fibre perhaps.

National grid run fibre through the HV conductors - they are hollow. Gas perhaps to the premises.

Where did you hear that? I believe it to be tosh. Would love some evidence.

[Tuna]

Max_Torque said:

Tuna said:

Transmission losses on electrical distribution are huge

I'm not total sure i'd call 7 to 11 % "huge". Significant, yes, huge? No.

(that is the average uk grid loss for domestic properties which have the highest step down ratio as they operate at the lowest grid voltage (240VAC)

Tuna said:

- one of the reasons why electricity costs approximately three times as much as gas per kwh delivered to your home.

I don't think that is the reason tbh. The reason electricity is more expensive per kWh than gas is because it is 'one more step' down the chain of energy conversion and so you are paying someone else to do that conversion and maintain the equipment and plant that does that conversion.

I did say one of the reasons

Max_Torque said:

The big win from moving to electric heating, be that via phase change heat transfer systems (air and ground source heat pumps) or via direct resistive heating, is that your heating is now agnostic to the actual source of the energy. A gas boiler burns gas, that's it, and realistically you can't make or store gas at home, (how ever many curries you eat.... ;-) ) But an electric system can source its power from anywhere or anything that provides electricity. You can have some solar panels and some batteries, (even use your EV as you storage....) and you can significantly reduce both your total draw on the grid, but also and just as importantly, decide when you are going to draw from the grid or any other source. That "load leveling" and "energy trading" capability opens up a massive future potential that simply does not exist with our gas based architecture!

You're right about the flexibility, but rather like the early renewable scene, I'm nervous of some of the technologies being touted. We seem to go through cycles of "cool new solutions" that get put into homes and then get ripped out again by the next owners. I'd rather see new technologies brought in by making the economics work (subsidies, technology investment, tax breaks etc) than by removing access to stuff that 'just works'.

Edited by Tuna on Saturday 16th March 09:51

[Tootles the Taxi]

It's all very well saying that new build homes will be up to the latest spec and will be insulated to within an inch of their lives, but people don't like to live in sealed boxes. They open windows & doors and go in and out of the house.

Solar panels are a rip-off akin only to double glazing in the 1970s and timeshare in the 1980s. No-one can afford to pay for the panels outright, so they put them on credit, with the expectation that the Feed in Tariff payments they'll get from selling energy back to the supplier will cover the cost of the loan ... but it doesn't. They are only good for about 8 years before they start to degrade and the inverters fail after about 4 years. The installers regularly liquidate themselves and set up again as a different company to avoid having to fix all the crap systems they've installed shoddily, leaving the lenders to pick up the tab for 'mis-selling' under consumer credit legislation.

Air mass heat pumps don't work. Full stop.

It's a racket and the government are charlatans who only care about getting elected again.

[garagewidow]

Tootles the Taxi said:

It's all very well saying that new build homes will be up to the latest spec and will be insulated to within an inch of their lives, but people don't like to live in sealed boxes. They open windows & doors and go in and out of the house.

Solar panels are a rip-off akin only to double glazing in the 1970s and timeshare in the 1980s. No-one can afford to pay for the panels outright, so they put them on credit, with the expectation that the Feed in Tariff payments they'll get from selling energy back to the supplier will cover the cost of the loan ... but it doesn't. They are only good for about 8 years before they start to degrade and the inverters fail after about 4 years. The installers regularly liquidate themselves and set up again as a different company to avoid having to fix all the crap systems they've installed shoddily, leaving the lenders to pick up the tab for 'mis-selling' under consumer credit legislation.

Air mass heat pumps don't work. Full stop.

It's a racket and the government are charlatans who only care about getting elected again.

^Exactly this.

There is no free lunch when it comes to consuming energy.

[FiF]

A question, so let's say no gas boilers in new homes, hobs less of an issue.

What will this do to availability of gas boilers for repairs and refurbishment? And where next?

Also how much has govt spent on this campaign to get folks to replace old boilers with new higher efficiency boilers? If you had an old back boiler system that can take a bit of effort and disruption.

Are they then going to start a campaign to get folks to switch off gas onto electric? Spending more of our money? Because in older housing stock that's not easy nor cheap especially if you go for AS/GS. Done it in Sweden, converted a house to GSHP, drilled down into the rock, but that was starting with a place that was insulated to bugger in the first place.

Yes I understand and appreciate the argument about problem with gas is that you can only burn it, whereas electricity can come from a number of sources. Yet pointing out the background of encouraging this, along with push for electric cars, all in a background where a string of successive governments have utterly failed to sort out our strategy on electrical energy security, see long running thread.

It all smacks of another round in the well intentioned but not fully thought through meddling. Ooh petrol bad, must gave diesel, ooh diesel bad must have next sexy shiny thing. All along pissing our taxes away.

[98elise]

Tootles the Taxi said:

Air mass heat pumps don't work. Full stop.

bks. We've got about 1000 across the commercial estate we manage and they work

[anonymous-user]

98elise said:

Tootles the Taxi said:

Air mass heat pumps don't work. Full stop.

bks. We've got about 1000 across the commercial estate we manage and they work

Just to be clear because terminology can be confusing ..... you’re talking about Air Source Heat Pumps when you say Air MASS heat pumps?

[Nickgnome]

fido said:

That was the cost of converting an old 70s back boiler to a Megaflow with all the bells and whistles.

Ah so not just the boiler.

I can understand the cost now.

[Nickgnome]

Tootles the Taxi said:

It's all very well saying that new build homes will be up to the latest spec and will be insulated to within an inch of their lives, but people don't like to live in sealed boxes. They open windows & doors and go in and out of the house.

Solar panels are a rip-off akin only to double glazing in the 1970s and timeshare in the 1980s. No-one can afford to pay for the panels outright, so they put them on credit, with the expectation that the Feed in Tariff payments they'll get from selling energy back to the supplier will cover the cost of the loan ... but it doesn't. They are only good for about 8 years before they start to degrade and the inverters fail after about 4 years. The installers regularly liquidate themselves and set up again as a different company to avoid having to fix all the crap systems they've installed shoddily, leaving the lenders to pick up the tab for 'mis-selling' under consumer credit legislation.

Air mass heat pumps don't work. Full stop.

It's a racket and the government are charlatans who only care about getting elected again.

I think your post is an unevidenced rant.

We like plenty of natural vent in the house but don’t run the heating at the same time.

Solar panels are now very inexpensive. If every new house post 2025 had to have a base amount say 1kw then the price will fall further.

Because some trades people act in a dishonest fashion is not a reason to criticise the technology.

Post April this year a new tariff mechanism will be proposed based on actual power sold to the grid.

Assuming you mean Air source Heat Pumps. Can you provide the reports that substantiate your claim please.