DOOM: energy cap again

[DaveB]

you are missing the point, what we should do and I have recommended for years is insulate properties and reduce heating costs. Much of that can be government funded.

if we use less energy we need to import & generate less.

Clearly you weren't recommending it to the right people. Don't you have Boris on speed dial?

I told you so helps no-one at this point. Action by the Govt is needed and it's going to cost money. That fundamentally is the problem, the Govt doesn't want to spend money or interfere in "the market". It goes against their fundamental dogma regardless of who suffers as a result.

[d000hg]

Clearly you weren't recommending it to the right people. Don't you have Boris on speed dial?

I told you so helps no-one at this point. Action by the Govt is needed and it's going to cost money. That fundamentally is the problem, the Govt doesn't want to spend money or interfere in "the market". It goes against their fundamental dogma regardless of who suffers as a result.

In the long game, does improving all this stuff on a house pay for itself when you sell? On that basis, one would be better biting the bullet and doing so as soon as possible - you won't recoup the cost directly but you will get to enjoy the improvements for the time you live their yourself.

I can't imagine we would have paid 20k more if our walls were all insulated but I don't know on average if someone else would. Is it generally worth making improvements before selling, or leaving for the buyer?

[mattster]

It is making solar/heat-pumps start to seem a bit more attractive, even without any incentives/grants. Our house is a leaky sieve but we had previously calculated any heat efficiency improvement costs would take decades to recoup. Material price rises not withstanding, that might be quite different now.

Or we might just live in a single room and burn things. Although that's not too different to last winter.

I did the sums for the last increase, and calculated what we would spend at the new rates if we used the same as last year. Surprisingly, heating was far from the biggest expense, despite not having great insulation in our house. Our new total energy bill is/will be £3800 (before the next increase, anyway). Of that, "only" £1200 is gas, and by roughly backing out what we use for gas over summer vs winter, I'd say about £900 is heating and the rest hot water/cooking. A whopping £2600 is electricity, which really surprised me. The upshot for us is that, since we have plucked most of the low-hanging insulation gains, something like solar + battery would seem to make much more sense than insulation (£20k + to make a big difference now IMO, max saving ~£500 year) and definitely better than heat pumps - which may be twice as efficient as gas boilers but use an energy source that costs 3x as much!

I think solar + battery at, say, £15k could realistically save you £2k+ per year (more from this autumn). A pretty decent rate of return by any measure and you'd hope it would add at least some value to the house as well. A big enough battery (backup generator?) to get off grid entirely would be ideal, as they are really shafting us with the standing charges now.

[d000hg]

A whopping £2600 is electricity, which really surprised me. The upshot for us is that, since we have plucked most of the low-hanging insulation gains, something like solar + battery would seem to make much more sense than insulation (£20k + to make a big difference now IMO, max saving ~£500 year) and definitely better than heat pumps - which may be twice as efficient as gas boilers but use an energy source that costs 3x as much!

Did you figure out where the demand is coming from because that does seem unusual. Do you have electric water heaters, hot tub, large aquarium, crypto mine or something unusual, even an electric fire?
I would imagine you already have LEDs since it's getting increasingly difficult to avoid them, you don't have an EV?

Our annual kWh usage for electricity and gas respectively is about 5800 and 47000 (meter reading change * 11.2) so you can imagine how screwed we are about to be

[vetran]

Clearly you weren't recommending it to the right people. Don't you have Boris on speed dial?

I told you so helps no-one at this point. Action by the Govt is needed and it's going to cost money. That fundamentally is the problem, the Govt doesn't want to spend money or interfere in "the market". It goes against their fundamental dogma regardless of who suffers as a result.

no but will meet up with him for a glass of Bolly next lockdown.

Yep it costs money £1k for a house.

https://www.mybuilder.com/pricing-gu...sulation-costs

saving £480 a year.

when I had it done at the last house it took 2 guys about 3 hours so the price would go down if it was ramped up.

[mattster]

Did you figure out where the demand is coming from because that does seem unusual. Do you have electric water heaters, hot tub, large aquarium, crypto mine or something unusual, even an electric fire?
I would imagine you already have LEDs since it's getting increasingly difficult to avoid them, you don't have an EV?

Our annual kWh usage for electricity and gas respectively is about 5800 and 47000 (meter reading change * 11.2) so you can imagine how screwed we are about to be

Is it unusual? I don't know really. We both work from home and I never switch my PCs off. Other than that, we have two young kids and it seems like 2-3x washing machine cycles a day, but rarely tumble dry (more so in winter of course). All LEDs, and some electric underfloor heating in one bathroom, electric oven, kettle, microwave, 2 TVs, very occasional use of electric radiator in garden office. I have got the sense from talking to others that we are in the normal ballpark. This total reflected at, from memory, 28p per kwh and about £250 a year standing charge so puts us about 8400kwh per year.

You seem to use an awful lot of gas? We totalled 21k kwh last year - gas combi boiler, 4 bed house.

[d000hg]

Is it unusual? I don't know really. We both work from home and I never switch my PCs off. Other than that, we have two young kids and it seems like 2-3x washing machine cycles a day, but rarely tumble dry (more so in winter of course). All LEDs, and some electric underfloor heating in one bathroom, electric oven, kettle, microwave, 2 TVs, very occasional use of electric radiator in garden office. I have got the sense from talking to others that we are in the normal ballpark. This total reflected at, from memory, 28p per kwh and about £250 a year standing charge so puts us about 8400kwh per year.

Maybe not then - it's substantially more than us but there's only 2 of us here.

You seem to use an awful lot of gas? We totalled 21k kwh last year - gas combi boiler, 4 bed house.

Gas combi boiler but it's a large detached Victorian house with solid brick walls, uninsulated floors and predominantly single glazed sash windows. I don't think it had even had central heating before the mid-90s, period house with a fireplace in every room.
And this is after we fit smart radiator valves so we can turn the heating off more easily to rooms we don't use, it was worse than that for the previous owners - when we first moved in and tried to change suppliers, they told us they couldn't put us on a normal tariff:

We’ve just discovered that your home is classified as a ‘large site’. That means it uses more than 73,200kWh of gas a year, which is the upper limit for a domestic property.

That's right, the previous owners were burning over 70kWh of gas every year.

[mattster]

That's right, the previous owners were burning over 70kWh of gas every year.

Wow - OK! My Dad is in a similar position. Although not detatched, it is Victorian with single glazed (and super draughty) windows throughout. Luckily he is on a good pension.

With only two of you, and perhaps not in all day every day (at least one of us is), then the electric probably makes sense. What it does drive home is that everyone's situation is likely to be different, so well worth digging into those numbers and finding out what you really use. For you, insulation/double glazing probably makes more sense but unfortunately once the easy stuff is done it does get rather expensive.

[d000hg]

We initially thought replacing some windows was an obvious one but it turns out with solid brick walls, not so much - especially if you don't want PVC (fortunately we are not listed). The thermal efficiency of a solid double-brick wall is basically the same as a double glazed window pane so by replacing the windows, all we're doing is making them as thermally efficient as our walls! And there are also issues with removing all the draughts causing knock-on problems with condensation and so on.

In reality we will simply insulate each room as we re-decorate but if these energy prices are here to stay, we might want to push on with this a bit faster.
The other thing is that our main social area is the coldest part of the house - north side, solid concrete floor, etc. We should probably redecorate another reception room and move into that!

[eek]

The other thing is that our main social area is the coldest part of the house - north side, solid concrete floor, etc. We should probably redecorate another reception room and move into that!

That was my plan but Mrs Eek vetoed it.

New plan is to wait to Youfibre connect up the street (won't be long as they were doing the phase 1 installation work this week) and when that's installed (to the office or garage) gut the front room (including the floor) and insulate it.

Edit my other discovers have been:-

1) intel cpu's are way more energy efficient than AMD at idle so by switching to an i9 from a ryzen 3900x I reduce the home server's power requirements by 40w or a 1kwh a day.
2) The condenser tumble dryer has been replaced by a heat pump version. That should save £100 or so a year given that electricity is now 28p per kwh rather than the 8p it was when we got the thing (estimate based on quoted energy usage rather than real life as it only arrived this morning).