No gas boilers in new homes after 2025.

[wc98]

B'stard Child said:

wc98 said:

living in scotland we can sometimes get lots of really cold days. i will plan on burning my local snp mp's fence on those days

Does the local SNP MP not burn?

i was always told never to allow vessels full of gas near a fire

[dvs_dave]

ATG said:

mondeoman said:

And how many acres have you got for the heat pump? Works (maybe) for one off developments, not high density estates or 2bed flat complexes,.

Air source heat pump

As installed in millions of buildings in the UK and around the world already. I have one in my house, again as millions of others around the world do and have for decades now. Air source heat pump (heat & cool) with gas fired backup heat.

Very well established and mature technology around the world. Just hasn’t really ever caught on in the UK domestic market, but is commonplace in the commercial world.

[caziques]

I install underfloor heating in NZ,exclusively with air sourced hot water heat pumps.

Gas central heating is almost unknown and central heating itself is very rare.

If piped gas is available, the standing charges make it expensive - bottled gas isn't much cheaper than electricity.

To be effective an air sourced hot water heat pump needs thermal mass to store energy, if a house design incorporates say a 100mm concrete floor slab, such a system would be better than CO2 producing gas boilers in every house.

Heat pumps are not a simple replacement for a gas boiler(and radiators). Hopefully "heating engineers" won't be involved too much, frequently they know sweet bugger all about how to use heat pumps for cost effective central heating.

[JagLover]

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.

Currently we have the equivalent of every home on a remote development having a diesel generator running, instead of one larger and far more efficient one powering all 100 homes or whatever.

I believe the future lies in individual properties taking far more responsibility for their own electricity needs (solar) yet still being connected to a central power grid.

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.

Gas is 3-4 times cheaper than electricity for the same KWH. While a modern gas boiler isn't completely efficient it is still 90% efficient at turning power into heat. You also haven't factored in transmission losses when looking at the efficiency of the electric alternative.

This is just more virtue signalling nonsense from a government that is not going to be around in 2025 at this rate.

Some background info

https://hoa.org.uk/services/ask-an-expert-2/ask-an...

[brman]

AJL308 said:

Several years ago I heard about a boiler which used what was essentially a microwave oven to heat water rather than gas. It was massively more efficient than gas and would cost pennies per day to run and had next to no moving or wear parts so they were cheap to buy an install. They were going to be made in mongolia or somewhere unusual like that or something.

Unsurprisingly they disappeared from the market so the patents were most likely bought up by BP or something so that they'd never see the light of day.

It would be interesting to see if these resurface over the next few years and who actually starts making them.

Why would you use electricity to heat water to heat the house? Why not just use electric heaters? You cannot get any more efficient than an electric heater......
Plus an normal electric water heater is massively more efficient than a microwave oven so that bit does not make sense either.

I suspect the reason you have not heard of this idea since is because it doesn't make sense, not because of some grand conspiracy.

[pavarotti1980]

Why dont they mandate that all new houses have to have renewable energy systems such as solar panels which would reduce the burden on fossil fuels

[troika]

It’s a tricky one. If new houses were actually built properly, they’d need hardly any heating at all, but this wouldn’t be good for Persimmon shareholders etc. Unless it’s a decent self build or bespoke builder, the quality is generally so poor that most energy is lost anyway.

No doubt it will be a complete cluster ****. My house runs on wood, they’ll be banning me from lighting fires before too long...

[Hosenbugler]

abzmike said:

And that’s the point. At the moment solutions other than gas boilers are not mainstream by any means, and things like ground source heat pumps useless for all but homes that have access to open land. For the Chancellor to stand up today and say boilers in new homes will be outlawed in 5 years is absurd.

Entirely agree, more batst eco nonsense from clueless politicians. The same happened over condensing boilers, legislated on them before the technology was proven. They saved on fuel ok, did not work half the time, installers I knew back then, were tearing their hair out , could not recomend a specific model, as they all broke quickly. Crackers.
As for heatpumps, expensive, costly to install, horrifically complex, as they stand, just not practical. Fact remains gas heating is efficient, reliable, cost effective , removal of it from the market is plain absurd, an equall quality alternative is needed before they are phased out (if they are) not after.

[alangla]

brman said:

Why would you use electricity to heat water to heat the house? Why not just use electric heaters? You cannot get any more efficient than an electric heater......

I bought a heat pump tumble dryer a year or so ago. Costs a fraction of what an electrically heated one would cost to run, though it was more expensive to buy.
Heat pumps are definitely efficient, but the domestic heating ones seem to be astronomically expensive. I looked at the deal EOn are offering and it was about £7-10k for the pump & installation, the payback was based largely on getting government grants to offset a lot of the capital plus the cheaper running costs.
Once the prices come down, I'm definitely interested though. I've seen some blocks of flats already fitted with them, so they're definitely making inroads in the domestic newbuild market.

One question though - are they as noisy as a normal air conditioning heat exchanger or can they run silent?

[markcoznottz]

Surely a byproduct of the climate change act 2008? You know, that important bit of legislation pushed through by a Marxist whose family hates the uk, and the dim offspring of aristocracy. Only three mp's votes against. It's now legally binding.

[BoRED S2upid]

mondeoman said:

Heat pumps? Htc are they going to get a big enough and efficient enough heat pump to run a block of 2bed flats in Central London.?

They will need to dig up half of London to sink the massive heat pumps that would need!

[Baby Shark doo doo doo doo]

My wife rented a flat for a while that was all electric. She couldn't afford to heat it over winter.

Probably ok in warmer countries, but we're not getting the warmer temperatures that Ed 'Stone Tablet' Miliband promised would offset the increase in energy costs.

[Earthdweller]

Lord Marylebone said:

My only surprise is that it’s taken this long.

It seems ludicrous that almost every home has a gas boiler burning for hours every day spewing out exhaust gasses.

Piped gas .... mmmm

I dream of such a thing

I have a tank of heating oil and stoves burning turf/wood/coal and if get one in Politicians

[rxe]

There's elements of sense in this, but the implementation will inevitably be insane.

Burning gas to make electricity in power stations which you then reduce to heat in a house is nuts. The best CCGT stations out there are 60-something % efficient. The best boilers are 90% efficient. You're better off burning the gas in the home. Doesn't matter if you're using electric fires or boilers, burning fuel in a power station to ultimately make heat is thermodynamically wasteful. Laws of physics and all that.

ASHPs - great until it is really cold. Which is of course when you need the heat. As an instrument for blunting fuel bills, they're fine (but the sums really don't add up), but as a sole source of heat in the UK climate - no. We looked at this when we rebuilt the house, and the projected savings happened many years after the theoretical lifespan of the kit (or indeed, me)

GSHPs - need loads of space or big holes in the ground. Not a great idea for new builds unless they have some sort of district heating.

Solar PV - works well for generating hot water. We have a 4kW array (about as big as you can have on a domestic meter, and for 4 months of the year, it fails to generate enough to even heat a tank of water. For 5 months of the year it does all the hot water. For about 3 months of the year, it does the hot water and delivers surplus, which we capture by running everything at midday. Not the silver bullet everyone thinks it is, but at least is economically viable.

[JagLover]

rxe said:

GSHPs - need loads of space or big holes in the ground. Not a great idea for new builds unless they have some sort of district heating.

This

Most modern houses have a postage stamp for a garden. I would need at least a ten times larger garden for some of the ones I've seen on Grand Designs.

and, if we are looking at generating all this electricity centrally, then capacity is falling, while we are already going to be increasing demand through electric cars.

[Ayahuasca]

Good time to invest into companies that manufacture the new tech?

[elster]

I'm in France and it has been here for a little bit that fossil fuel isn't used on new builds.

I install heat pumps primarily. A new build 100m2 with underfloor heating needs 6kw, so fit a 4kw heat pump. Cost of running for a year is less than 500€.

All that needs to be done is insulate a new build and put underfloor heating in.

[rev-erend]

BlackLabel said:

Gas boilers will be replaced by low-carbon heating systems in all new homes built after 2025 in an attempt to tackle the escalating climate crisis, Philip Hammond has said. In his spring statement, the chancellor said new properties would use alternative systems, such as heat pumps, to help the UK reduce its carbon emissions.

Hammond lives in my village .. might just pop round to his house and see if he has a central heating outlet exhaust

[Grandad Gaz]

Air conditioning units are the way forward.

Cheap to run, plus with the added benefit of cold air in the summer!

[fido]

Groan. I've just spanked 6 big ones on a new system boiler. I suppose I could still add on supplementary heat sources - have a large enough garden for ground source.