No gas boilers in new homes after 2025.

[Alucidnation]

rodericb said:

Max_Torque said:

DOH! where's the face palm .gif when you need it!

Of course Heat pumps work! Have you got a car? see that little button that looks like a snow flake on the dash? Have you ever pushed it? I've driven cars in Death Valley at 52 degC (yes 52!!) and inside the Arctic Circle at minus 38 degC, and the HVAC worked on both those occasions! Now of course, you car, which uses an Air Source system has the advantage that it moves at speed through the heat exchange medium, unlike your house, but luckily that's easily fixed with some fans!

Commercial A/C systems work, and work well: ie:



The only issue is that the majority of our existing domestic houses are not (yet) designed to easily integrate such a unit, but there is no reason they couldn't do so (plenty of room in your loft for example)

And the other thing you miss is that there is actually a very large "free lunch" when it comes to heating and cooling things, which is that to do so we only need to MOVE heat energy and not to actually convert heat from some other form, meaning systems like phase change A/C systems can have a Coefficient of Performance (CoP) greater than 1 ie they can MOVE more energy than they consume (think of it as like a wheel barrow, that allows a human to move an object heavier than they can actually lift)

A gas boiler works by burning a fuel, creating heat energy, that is then released into your house at the same rate (for any given room temp) as it escapes to the outside

A heat pump simply acts to push that energy back in again at the same rate it escapes, it is not "creating" any additional heat energy, and hence can be up to 4 times more efficient (energy consumed vs energy moved) ie have a CoP up to 4




(as to Solar panels being a scam, well, let just say watch out for that meteorite eh..... /dinosaur..... ;-) )

edgy. Anyway, do you use reverse cycle air conditioners much there in the UK to heat buildings? They require careful placement and other measures to prevent them from freezing up.

Nearly all heat pump systems should have an automatic defrost cycle built in.

[JagLover]

Gary C said:

mjb1 said:

Utterly bonkers. The electricity companies are quids in here, my guess is that they've got to the government somehow. Backhanders from the electricity companies.

Except that the generation business (unless your in older wind with the large CFD's) is struggling with very low prices.

The electricity market has been distorted to support green development (you can argue that either way) but to say 'electricity companies are quids in' doesn't describe what I see day in day out.

The goal of the green crowd has always been power rationing. The more you bring these restrictions forward the more you can create artificial shortages to justify rationing.

I suspect, as with Covid-19, Boris has just been captured by another group of advisors who can use him as a useful idiot.

[Jim the Sunderer]

Sounds like to stave off global warming they're making heat unaffordable for the poor.

[JagLover]

Jim the Sunderer said:

Sounds like to stave off global warming they're making heat unaffordable for the poor.

I doubt many of those in charge genuinely care about it. If they were why shut down British industry to import the same products from abroad, mainly China?

https://airqualitynews.com/2020/04/20/almost-50-of...

Britain's CO2 emissions have plummeted since 1990 on the official data, but barely fallen once you factor in CO2 on imported goods.

Its just a convenient tool. The Eco Communist engineer a power shortage to justify power rationing. The rich help themselves to environmental subsidies. Those who get shafted are the ordinary consumers paying the inflated power bills.

[Biker 1]

I've been involved in installing a couple of air source heat pumps recently. They work extremely well, appear to be reliable & cheap to run.

However, there are several issues:

1. Noise: gas boilers hum gently & even at night are not really an issue. ASHP fans are noisy buggers, so location is critical
2. National Grid capacity: is there sufficient capacity, before one even allows for the looming electric car charging points everywhere?
3. Retro fitting: how does one fit ASHP units to high rise flats, or blocks with shared boilers? Small block near me has a shared gas boiler located in the attic - there is limited space even for the current gas boiler & I have no idea if its even possible to mount an ASHP compressor unit on a pitched/tiled roof, 4 storeys up..........

[Pan Pan Pan]

Pan Pan Pan said:

Tuna said:

Nickgnome said:

Sheepshanks said:

herewego said:

This is going to have to be extended to the rest of the housing stock though and he's shying away from this elephant which he must know should have been addressed decades ago.

I do wonder about that - our crap built mid-60's house is full of cold bridges and other fundamental problems. I can't see much being done with it, short of flattening it and rebuilding.

It is possible to insulate the externally then clad or render. Not a cheap solution though but still generally less than a rebuild.

It would help if the tax regime was changed to be beneficial to those who upgrade the thermal performance of their property.

There have been attempts to do this regularly over the last few decades. They always fail because:

• There are no 'repeatable' options - our housing stock is so varied that the moment you come up with a solution for one build type, you're faced with houses that it just doesn't work for.
• The cost of refurb is a huge multiple of the annual savings. This is made worse for the 'worst case' housing stock because the occupants usually change their behaviour when efficient heating becomes available, negating a huge chunk of the cost savings.
• Aesthetically, the alterations do not look good
• Any serious improvement in thermal efficiency is massively disruptive.

My company was involved in a research project in conjunction with Nottingham University in whch one of the test houses was built as a 1960`s house, on which various upgrades to its thermal performance were added and the evaluated over time, So I would have to agree with all your points above. Upgrades were possible but most were very expensive to apply and certainly outside the financial scope of many families even where grants were provided.
The Fuel factor in the latest Approved Document L shows Gas at 100, and electricity at 1.55 for both on Grid and off grid sources. which means that under current generation systems it is given as being over half as bad again, as a gas fired system.
Do a heat loss calc on a gas fired dwelling, and do nothing else, but change the main heating from gas to electricity, and it wipes out its energy rating. requiring substantial upgrades to its fabric insulation, and air permeability figure, to pull it back into compliance.

[98elise]

rodericb said:

Max_Torque said:

DOH! where's the face palm .gif when you need it!

Of course Heat pumps work! Have you got a car? see that little button that looks like a snow flake on the dash? Have you ever pushed it? I've driven cars in Death Valley at 52 degC (yes 52!!) and inside the Arctic Circle at minus 38 degC, and the HVAC worked on both those occasions! Now of course, you car, which uses an Air Source system has the advantage that it moves at speed through the heat exchange medium, unlike your house, but luckily that's easily fixed with some fans!

Commercial A/C systems work, and work well: ie:



The only issue is that the majority of our existing domestic houses are not (yet) designed to easily integrate such a unit, but there is no reason they couldn't do so (plenty of room in your loft for example)

And the other thing you miss is that there is actually a very large "free lunch" when it comes to heating and cooling things, which is that to do so we only need to MOVE heat energy and not to actually convert heat from some other form, meaning systems like phase change A/C systems can have a Coefficient of Performance (CoP) greater than 1 ie they can MOVE more energy than they consume (think of it as like a wheel barrow, that allows a human to move an object heavier than they can actually lift)

A gas boiler works by burning a fuel, creating heat energy, that is then released into your house at the same rate (for any given room temp) as it escapes to the outside

A heat pump simply acts to push that energy back in again at the same rate it escapes, it is not "creating" any additional heat energy, and hence can be up to 4 times more efficient (energy consumed vs energy moved) ie have a CoP up to 4




(as to Solar panels being a scam, well, let just say watch out for that meteorite eh..... /dinosaur..... ;-) )

edgy. Anyway, do you use reverse cycle air conditioners much there in the UK to heat buildings? They require careful placement and other measures to prevent them from freezing up.

Pretty much any home A/C other than portable units are actually heat pumps so will heat and cool. That includes the DIY kits you can buy. A few PH members have done their own.

Obviously they are common in office/commercial settings.

[Tuna]

Biker 1 said:

I've been involved in installing a couple of air source heat pumps recently. They work extremely well, appear to be reliable & cheap to run.

However, there are several issues:

1. Noise: gas boilers hum gently & even at night are not really an issue. ASHP fans are noisy buggers, so location is critical
2. National Grid capacity: is there sufficient capacity, before one even allows for the looming electric car charging points everywhere?
3. Retro fitting: how does one fit ASHP units to high rise flats, or blocks with shared boilers? Small block near me has a shared gas boiler located in the attic - there is limited space even for the current gas boiler & I have no idea if its even possible to mount an ASHP compressor unit on a pitched/tiled roof, 4 storeys up..........

If you consider the vast number of terraced houses, and semi-detached, and then consider the size of an ASHP unit, you swiftly run out of options as to where you can place the thing. Just not a credible option for a huge number of properties.

I like the technology but as with much of the energy debate it's one of many answers, not the only answer.

[Evanivitch]

Alucidnation said:

Nearly all heat pump systems should have an automatic defrost cycle built in.

It's strange how big a deal people make about this, and yet heat pumps were common when I was in Sweden and that was below -20C.

[bristolracer]

The other problem with retro fitting other air source/ground source, solar panels and other boiler alternatives is cost.

Anyone over the age of 55 will probably be dead by the time they have recovered their investment.

[catso]

Slightly O/T but when I was renewing my house insurance this year, a well-known insurer that initially offered me insurance declined once they knew we have an oil fired boiler?

So, no oil, no gas - seems we're running out of options.

[Evanivitch]

bristolracer said:

The other problem with retro fitting other air source/ground source, solar panels and other boiler alternatives is cost.

Anyone over the age of 55 will probably be dead by the time they have recovered their investment.

Solar and simple ASHP fits have a payback period of about 11 years. So hardly.

[bristolracer]

Evanivitch said:

bristolracer said:

The other problem with retro fitting other air source/ground source, solar panels and other boiler alternatives is cost.

Anyone over the age of 55 will probably be dead by the time they have recovered their investment.

Solar and simple ASHP fits have a payback period of about 11 years. So hardly.

Does your ashp calculation include all the additional insulation replacement windows etc needed on a typical 1960s house?

People who are older with lower/average incomes in poorer housing stock will not bother.

[aeropilot]

mjb1 said:

The people behind these policies are just utter dimwits. If they really gave a toss about green issues, they'd have made it compulsory for all new homes to have had an appropriate amount of solar panels built into their rooves. That technology has been stable and mature for what, at least 10 years now? They could have brought that into law years ago. It probably would only add a relatively small cost to the build costs of a new home as well. It'd be far cheaper than retrofitting panels to existing houses like we have been doing, and the massive increase in demand and sales volumes would drive the wholesale costs down much lower, and in turn made retrofitting more cost effective for existing homes. I'd have totally supported that

Agreed.

I moved a year ago, into a house built in 2012/3, and all the houses in my small estate were built new with solar panels on the roof. But, my small estate was built by a still family run house building firm not at the budget end of the house building tree.......
From early April to mid Oct, my gas boiler wasn't even switched on, as the solar system provided all my hot water needs.
However, there are 3 new estates being built within 5 miles of me, by more budget minded bigger building companies, and none of these news homes have solar systems on the roofs.

[Biker 1]

Evanivitch said:

Solar and simple ASHP fits have a payback period of about 11 years. So hardly.

I wouldn't believe the payback period! A snake oil salesman did a forecast on a large biomass plant going back around 6 years. He suggested that the owners would be profiteering from the RHI after 7 years, but his projection did not take into account maintenance/cost of very specialist replacement parts, or electricity to run controls/pumps etc. I would be amazed if the client breaks even after 20 years, at which point the boiler will probably need replacing anyway! Not to mention the supply issues & rising costs of wood chips/pellets....

[Evanivitch]

bristolracer said:

Does your ashp calculation include all the additional insulation replacement windows etc needed on a typical 1960s house?

People who are older with lower/average incomes in poorer housing stock will not bother.

Hence why I said simple fit i.e. using existing equipment with only the addition of upsized radiators. Not everyone lives in a 1960s property.

[rxe]

Evanivitch said:

Hence why I said simple fit i.e. using existing equipment with only the addition of upsized radiators. Not everyone lives in a 1960s property.

Hardly anyone lives in a suitable new build.

Some friends are building a new house, and they have the option to go GSHP at the design stage. It is fearsomely expensive - looks like about 30 - 40k, which negates about a century of potential energy savings. And the other thing to bear in mind is that these things needs to be running all the time - they are somewhat unsuited to a typical “come home at 6, want the house to be warm” life that most people lead. If you’re in the house all day, you’ll probably win. But the sort of person that goes out to work will win much less.

You absolutely can’t spanner xSHP into an existing system without major (very expensive) changes.

[anonymous-user]

rxe said:

Evanivitch said:

Hence why I said simple fit i.e. using existing equipment with only the addition of upsized radiators. Not everyone lives in a 1960s property.

Hardly anyone lives in a suitable new build.

Some friends are building a new house, and they have the option to go GSHP at the design stage. It is fearsomely expensive - looks like about 30 - 40k, which negates about a century of potential energy savings. And the other thing to bear in mind is that these things needs to be running all the time - they are somewhat unsuited to a typical “come home at 6, want the house to be warm” life that most people lead. If you’re in the house all day, you’ll probably win. But the sort of person that goes out to work will win much less.

You absolutely can’t spanner xSHP into an existing system without major (very expensive) changes.

I'm building a new house at the moment, and at the design stage I was offered all sorts of systems, but ultimately we are just sticking a standard gas boiler in. The cost difference between that and stuff like heat pumps was eye watering and we didn't even consider it.

Plus, the other thing we took into consideration is that the amount of insulation that goes into a new house is massive especially when your architect is trying to get the U value as low as possible. We are fairly confident that our gas bills for heating will be pretty low despite it being a large property.

[Biker 1]

Lord Marylebone said:

I'm building a new house at the moment, and at the design stage I was offered all sorts of systems, but ultimately we are just sticking a standard gas boiler in. The cost difference between that and stuff like heat pumps was eye watering and we didn't even consider it.

Plus, the other thing we took into consideration is that the amount of insulation that goes into a new house is massive especially when your architect is trying to get the U value as low as possible. We are fairly confident that our gas bills for heating will be pretty low despite it being a large property.

My place is 15 years old & has way more insulation than building regulations required at the time. The problem is that it is almost hermetically sealed, so wherever there is the slightest cold bridge, like around windows/doors, mould will almost instantly form, especially in the bathroom. The solution? Leave a couple of windows ajar for ventilation, which of course means that a whole load of energy escapes.....

[Pan Pan Pan]

Lord Marylebone said:

rxe said:

Evanivitch said:

Hence why I said simple fit i.e. using existing equipment with only the addition of upsized radiators. Not everyone lives in a 1960s property.

Hardly anyone lives in a suitable new build.

Some friends are building a new house, and they have the option to go GSHP at the design stage. It is fearsomely expensive - looks like about 30 - 40k, which negates about a century of potential energy savings. And the other thing to bear in mind is that these things needs to be running all the time - they are somewhat unsuited to a typical “come home at 6, want the house to be warm” life that most people lead. If you’re in the house all day, you’ll probably win. But the sort of person that goes out to work will win much less.

You absolutely can’t spanner xSHP into an existing system without major (very expensive) changes.

I'm building a new house at the moment, and at the design stage I was offered all sorts of systems, but ultimately we are just sticking a standard gas boiler in. The cost difference between that and stuff like heat pumps was eye watering and we didn't even consider it.

Plus, the other thing we took into consideration is that the amount of insulation that goes into a new house is massive especially when your architect is trying to get the U value as low as possible. We are fairly confident that our gas bills for heating will be pretty low despite it being a large property.

Larger properties can be quite good in terms of their thermal performance, compared to small dwellings owing to their better exposed surface area, to enclosed volume ratio.
But you are correct under the current Approved Document L with its Government fuel factor of 1 for gas, compared to 1.55 for either on, or off grid electricity. To get an electrically heated home to comply with AD L, will cost more, than exactly the same home, but with a gas heating system..