A load of hot air?

[mattster]

We have land so (I assume) could get a GSHP but I believe they are an absolute fortune.

The government is going to have to get serious with either the carrot or the stick if they want many people to pay £30k to save perhaps £500 p.a. Unfortunately it looks like they are going with the latter - or "market forces" as they like to call it. With a ten year payback, maybe you'll start to get the uptake. Rooftop solar was more or less killed by similar - you're looking at 20+ years realistically to make your money back on current feed in tariffs.

[xoggoth]

Apart from high cost, the biggest problem may be the noise. You won't be able to sit in your garden without hearing a constant hum.

Better if people stopped being so wasteful. At my art thing today all the windows were open but nobody had bothered to turn the radiators off. You go into town in the evening and see big empty office blocks with all the lights on. And why not just put some woolly trousers and a jumper on instead of turning up the heating?

[Mordac]

With them being in the news again, has anyone got a heat pump - inherited one or had one installed?
Pretty sure my house is unsuitable but it's looking like the writing is on the wall... surely a whole demographic of houses will be untenable.

The cost will put most people off even if they do have the space for a covered enclosure in the garden (which I don't). And they seem to be forgetting that the grid is pretty stretched now, and they want 30 million electric cars and a similar number of electric heat pumps by 2035. I don't know where all this new electricity is coming from, and more to the point, neither do the morons pushing these gimmicks. It won't be Boris's problem though, as he and Princess Nut Nuts will be miles away from No.10 when the brown stuff hits the fan...

[d000hg]

We only just had a pretty massive cable link installed to Norway. And those offshore wind farms are only getting bigger, what was that story on BBC that the largest turbines individual power X thousand houses?

I do not see the scientific community being too concerned about limited supply and so on. They're quick to criticise the government normally so perhaps someone has done their sums. Modern houses really need very little heating in the UK.

[ns1]

Modern houses really need very little heating in the UK.

Yes but most of the houses in the UK ain't modern.

[SimonMac]

I really don't understand this government's obsession with heat pumps

Put simply, if you can power a HP with 100% renewable electricity, irrespective of how efficient the system is the government can say they have eliminated carbon from heating

[Gibbon]

Modern houses really need very little heating in the UK.

That's cos most are shoeboxes. A proper contractor's house takes some heating, and mine's only a year old.

[d000hg]

Put simply, if you can power a HP with 100% renewable electricity, irrespective of how efficient the system is the government can say they have eliminated carbon from heating

A big IF obviously. And means we are solely and totally dependent on the Grid for all our energy, rather than the inherent backup of dual-fuel. I don't think we've ever had a gas outage, whereas everyone gets the odd powercut... in the future a power failure in winter will mean a village has no heat as well as no light.

Glad we have a couple of log-burners really.

[d000hg]

That's cos most are shoeboxes. A proper contractor's house takes some heating, and mine's only a year old.

Pretty sure big new houses have to meet the same regs. You just have the equivalent of 3-4 shoeboxes surely
Whereas we have single-pane wooden sash windows, solid brick walls and chimney flues in every room. So that's going to be fun... maybe we need to get our building Listed so we gain exemptions!

[Gibbon]

Pretty sure big new houses have to meet the same regs. You just have the equivalent of 3-4 shoeboxes surely
Whereas we have single-pane wooden sash windows, solid brick walls and chimney flues in every room. So that's going to be fun... maybe we need to get our building Listed so we gain exemptions!

It's fairly bespoke so they seem get around some of the stuff, a lot of glass, top half timber framed and at 3000 sqft fairly big ( I have a lot of books). Yes all the insulation etc and pressure tested for regs. I used to have an old house, all those condensation spots were awful, especially on north walls, front door straight into lounge!