Gas (and other energy) outlook

[Moxi]

Openspaceman,

We have a 3 bed stone cottage 84m square meters of floor space, over 500mm loft insulation 300mm external wall insulation, old double glazed windows and door and a very old concrete floor laid direct to ground with no dpm that we know of. There’s draughts here and there that I am slowly addressing as I get access and as I often note we generally live with upstairs bedroom windows opened by an inch unless it’s blowing a westerly gale when we close it because of the noise rather than cold.

The epc is rated at D because we heat via wood and lpg but the energy to heat is just over 6,000kWh and just over 2,000kWh for DHW.

The epc says I could save £70 per year by insulating the floor which it estimates would cost £4,000 to £6,000 so I won’t be doing that unless I have to dig out the floor for other more structural reasons.

I am trying to get a heat geek engineer to assess my place for a heat pump and I don’t envisage the floor being an issue at all.

Moxi

[GarethC]

Dissenting voice alert. Insulate only where straightforward and cost effective, then install a renewable heating system. If it works well, great. If it doesn't, only then go to the expense and disruption of further insulation.

[AE-NMidlands]

Dissenting voice alert. Insulate only where straightforward and cost effective, then install a renewable heating system. If it works well, great. If it doesn't, only then go to the expense and disruption of further insulation.

or even "draught-proof first" - then insulate, then the rest!

[resybaby]

Please don't get annoyed at my comment, I'm fully behind reducing energy consumption, and improving insulation etc, but we have to move away from burning FF's asap. HP's are almost certainly the best choice, whilst also reducing the energy needed, be it to heat an inefficient, or efficient home. But of course I'm simply haggling over the lesser of two evils, the best choice is improve the property, whilst switching to a HP sized appropriately for the reduced heating needs.
[/quote]


Not at all annoyed Mart, kicking ideas around with the same goal in mind is how things progress, and each set or circumstances is different. My preference for insulation is its a 'cough up once fit and forget non dodgable' improvement that saves both finance (so allowing people to further improve other things, like HP whilst being adequately warm) as well as ff by reducing the demand to burn so many. No headache required buddy, both are win wins to me

[resybaby]

Openspaceman

This was the EPC for my house when we bought it. The clot who calculated it did a pizz poor job - he didnt notice the windows were 28mm DG (how i dont know) nor the cavity wall insulation despite the usual tell tale holes in the brickwork and it seeping out at the top of each gable wall top within the loft! So clearly our score should have been higher than the one he gave.



In essence two old ladies lived in the house. It was heated by multiple modern wall mounted panel heatersmon an Eco7 tariff - that the barmy occupants used in the daytime so paying an overly expensive bill anyway. I think it said something like £2500 to heat the house back in 2011 on the EPC.
So i had to do something pretty sharpish.

As a Gas Engineer, id have bunged in a mains gas central heating system (sorry guys), as that has been my trade for decades, however no gas in the street i live in. So alternative was LPg or OiL, neither of which im certificsted for, so together with a full rads/pipe system it would have cost a lot of money to install from scratch. So we looked at biomass, and found my nice Stuv stove and went down that route, and i have to say if we could have gas id most certainly not want it anymore.

The walls are rendered 100mm outside block, 2" cavity (filled) 100mm thermolite type cinder internal blocks, then plaster. I fitted insulation internally to that and plasterboard. Double plasterboarded the ceilings (as artexed and likely asbestos fibres so not removing that) then skimmed the whole house - have skimmed a few house refurbs over the years but it still took me over a fortnight of hard graft.

Had to lift sockets a few inches up the walls, so the existing cables were l9ng enough to come through the 'thicker' wall, as all cable came down from the loft. New wider window boards (needed changing anyway) so quite a lot of work.

Reason for doing it?

That scary former owners electricity bill (imagine that now at current rates) the EPC score, and also im quite handy so can do all this myself and enjoy it hugely, done a few houses up and prefer to go back to 'bare brick' to make sure i uncover and correct any covered up nasties.

No idea whwre my EPC will be now, bit id be very disappointed with anything less than a good B.

[Joeboy]

Openspaceman

This was the EPC for my house when we bought it. The clot who calculated it did a pizz poor job - he didnt notice the windows were 28mm DG (how i dont know) nor the cavity wall insulation despite the usual tell tale holes in the brickwork and it seeping out at the top of each gable wall top within the loft! So clearly our score should have been higher than the one he gave.



In essence two old ladies lived in the house. It was heated by multiple modern wall mounted panel heatersmon an Eco7 tariff - that the barmy occupants used in the daytime so paying an overly expensive bill anyway. I think it said something like £2500 to heat the house back in 2011 on the EPC.
So i had to do something pretty sharpish.

As a Gas Engineer, id have bunged in a mains gas central heating system (sorry guys), as that has been my trade for decades, however no gas in the street i live in. So alternative was LPg or OiL, neither of which im certificsted for, so together with a full rads/pipe system it would have cost a lot of money to install from scratch. So we looked at biomass, and found my nice Stuv stove and went down that route, and i have to say if we could have gas id most certainly not want it anymore.

The walls are rendered 100mm outside block, 2" cavity (filled) 100mm thermolite type cinder internal blocks, then plaster. I fitted insulation internally to that and plasterboard. Double plasterboarded the ceilings (as artexed and likely asbestos fibres so not removing that) then skimmed the whole house - have skimmed a few house refurbs over the years but it still took me over a fortnight of hard graft.

Had to lift sockets a few inches up the walls, so the existing cables were l9ng enough to come through the 'thicker' wall, as all cable came down from the loft. New wider window boards (needed changing anyway) so quite a lot of work.

Reason for doing it?

That scary former owners electricity bill (imagine that now at current rates) the EPC score, and also im quite handy so can do all this myself and enjoy it hugely, done a few houses up and prefer to go back to 'bare brick' to make sure i uncover and correct any covered up nasties.

No idea whwre my EPC will be now, bit id be very disappointed with anything less than a good B.

From £2.5k down to what now? Interested minds! Also wondering how many members have had CWI fitted and if so, happy?

[Mart]

Please don't get annoyed at my comment, I'm fully behind reducing energy consumption, and improving insulation etc, but we have to move away from burning FF's asap. HP's are almost certainly the best choice, whilst also reducing the energy needed, be it to heat an inefficient, or efficient home. But of course I'm simply haggling over the lesser of two evils, the best choice is improve the property, whilst switching to a HP sized appropriately for the reduced heating needs.

Not at all annoyed Mart, kicking ideas around with the same goal in mind is how things progress, and each set or circumstances is different. My preference for insulation is its a 'cough up once fit and forget non dodgable' improvement that saves both finance (so allowing people to further improve other things, like HP whilst being adequately warm) as well as ff by reducing the demand to burn so many. No headache required buddy, both are win wins to me
[/quote]

Thanks. I think if anything, I was projecting, as I was annoying myself at an apparent argument against insulation. But of course it's only as part of a binary choice, or 'gun to the head' hypothetical choice between energy efficiency and a heatpump. In reality they go hand in hand.

There's also the point that carrying out improvements first, means you can save on the boiler or heatpump install. But the other way round leaves you with an overpowered heat source, and out of pocket.

Again, just playing, but this hypothetical popped up in my mind earlier. Take a pretty poor house with 21,000kWh of GCH & DHW demand, then carry out extensive improvements and reduce it to 9,000kWh pa. Excellent, no complaints.

But, my brain then pointed out that a HP might supply the 21,000kWh(t) from 7,000kWh, ideally from RE (eventually). BUT that actually really annoyed me, setting up some weird feedback loop with lots of but, but, buts.... Quite irrational, but perhaps all the years I've chanted the mantra 'insulate, insulate, insulate', so it just seems wrong on so, so many levels.

But back to reality, and let's cut the demand from 21,000 down to 9,000, then cut that down to 3,000 with the HP, and my brain will reset, and the headache will go.

[resybaby]

Joeboy

Just typed out a long post (do that a lot dont i) and clicked on something and lost it somehow ? ? ?

Anyway, the gist was we are very low users, despite our installations.
Eleccy bill is circa £280/year inc the hated standing charge, so pretty low consumption, everything is based around its eco'ness,
The only heavy use thing is the 10.5kw eleccy shower we use in the winter. In summer we use the excessive PV and imersion on the mains pressured HW system i put in last year (finally).

If i were going to be around a long time, id be 8nterested in a boat type wind turbine (im front line North cornish coast and its always windy) for both a learning thing as well as constant trickle feed into batteries, and would be aiming to go off grid totally if possible. My inverter takes a generator for emergencies although non hooked up, and i could fit more panels.

as it is, im not, borrowed borrowed time already, so the idea is to make the house as efficent and as simple to operate as possible for the wife in her future.

[openspaceman]

Openspaceman,

We have a 3 bed stone cottage 84m square meters of floor space, over 500mm loft insulation 300mm external wall insulation, old double glazed windows and door and a very old concrete floor laid direct to ground with no dpm that we know of. There’s draughts here and there that I am slowly addressing as I get access and as I often note we generally live with upstairs bedroom windows opened by an inch unless it’s blowing a westerly gale when we close it because of the noise rather than cold.

The epc is rated at D because we heat via wood and lpg but the energy to heat is just over 6,000kWh and just over 2,000kWh for DHW.

The epc says I could save £70 per year by insulating the floor which it estimates would cost £4,000 to £6,000 so I won’t be doing that unless I have to dig out the floor for other more structural reasons.

I am trying to get a heat geek engineer to assess my place for a heat pump and I don’t envisage the floor being an issue at all.

Moxi

Similarly our house is only 77m2 2 bed but in sunny Surrey.

It scored epc of C despite having no loft insulation (untrue as 100mm rockwool under attic floor). Some scope for adding to ceiling joists and laying another 100mm but limits headroom. No insulation on the coombed ceiling, which I could add plaster lined celotex and DIY.

Un-insulated solid brick walls that I like for the brickwork, apart for the cost I would be willing to lose 75mm internally.

I would go the heat pump route and buy a cheap EV if I thought Octopus IOG was going to last but the place will be gutted and extended after we are gone so the large investment would be wasted.

I am sold on underfloor heating as a heat store in the screed, running on off peak electricity but wonder if it would need topping up some winter days, estimated cost £10k.

The thing is apart from a few tanks of fuel for the chainsaw and a few trips with the car plus a few tens of hours of my time I don't pay for space heat.

[Joeboy]

Joeboy

Just typed out a long post (do that a lot dont i) and clicked on something and lost it somehow ? ? ?

Anyway, the gist was we are very low users, despite our installations.
Eleccy bill is circa £280/year inc the hated standing charge, so pretty low consumption, everything is based around its eco'ness,
The only heavy use thing is the 10.5kw eleccy shower we use in the winter. In summer we use the excessive PV and imersion on the mains pressured HW system i put in last year (finally).

If i were going to be around a long time, id be 8nterested in a boat type wind turbine (im front line North cornish coast and its always windy) for both a learning thing as well as constant trickle feed into batteries, and would be aiming to go off grid totally if possible. My inverter takes a generator for emergencies although non hooked up, and i could fit more panels.

as it is, im not, borrowed borrowed time already, so the idea is to make the house as efficent and as simple to operate as possible for the wife in her future.

I truly appreciate the time you gave. Cheers!

Don't leave too quick.