Mandatory heat pumps

[dan_b]

This is good - Washington State legislates for all new builds to have heat pumps.

https://electrek.co/2022/11/09/heat-pum ... ton-state/

[Stinsy]

One of the things that infuriates me the most is that new-builds in the UK are still going up with gas boilers.

[dan_b]

Agree - new builds in the UK are just baking in low quality, inefficient buildings with an expensive energy dependency for several hundred years. Awful.

[Mr Gus]

Wonder who gets the manilla "boiler bunga" to keep that rolling.

[marshman]

One of the things that infuriates me the most is that new-builds in the UK are still going up with gas boilers.

If the powers that be were serious then they would ban "conventional" radiators in new builds and mandate underfloor heating with heatpump. Also a domestic hotwater tank, battery storage for peak shaving along with PV where practicable. None of which would add much % wise to the overall cost.

[Stinsy]

One of the things that infuriates me the most is that new-builds in the UK are still going up with gas boilers.

If the powers that be were serious then they would ban "conventional" radiators in new builds and mandate underfloor heating with heatpump. Also a domestic hotwater tank, battery storage for peak shaving along with PV where practicable. None of which would add much % wise to the overall cost.

My father first started using underfloor heating in the 1980's in the houses he was building -so over 35 years ago - he was only a small operator building one or two houses a year - but he maintained underfloor was quicker and easier to fit over all than radiators, and all the people that bought the houses said how much more comfortable and cheaper to heat they were than their old houses with radiators. His first install was in 1984 and was a retrofit in the house we are currently living in.

I've said before that every new-build should have 1kWp of solar and 2.4kWh of battery per bedroom.

And I agree super-insulated slabs with UFH should also be standard. Let us not forget that these gas boilers they're currently installing in new-builds will be combis that have no DHW tank (and therefore no space for one) and will be accompanied with microbore and teeny rads that are utterly unsuited to later HP retrofit...

[Oldgreybeard]

My father first started using underfloor heating in the 1980's in the houses he was building -so over 35 years ago - he was only a small operator building one or two houses a year - but he maintained underfloor was quicker and easier to fit over all than radiators, and all the people that bought the houses said how much more comfortable and cheaper to heat they were than their old houses with radiators. His first install was in 1984 and was a retrofit in the house we are currently living in.

I'd second this. Our ground floor is a load bearing concrete slab, a so-called "passive slab foundation", that sits on top of 300mm of foam insulation (the foam is load bearing, carries the entire weight of the house). The slab is 100mm thick (except around the edges where it's 200mm thick) and has steel reinforcement mesh embedded in the middle. Adding UFH pipes to this was a doddle, took around half a day to lay and cable tie all the pipes to the mesh before the concrete was poured. I was left with six UFH pipes poking up next to where the heat pump pipes were going to come into the house. Took me less than a day to install the heat pump and connect the UFH and heat pump pipes up to a manifold.

Apart from working well, a bit like a giant storage heater (means we can run the heat pump only during the off-peak period) the big advantage is not having any restrictions on where to put furniture etc. We find the whole house stays at a very even and comfortable temperature. The floor doesn't ever really get that warm, either, it usually sits somewhere between 23°C and 24°C when the heating's on, but that's more than enough to keep the house at around 21.5°C or so.

[Djs63]

Heat pumps are excellent

[marshman]

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[spread-tee]

All good points, but remember the bean counters are in charge, say no more.

Desp