Not sure I like the sound of the Gas lobby leaking....
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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I looked into getting a heat pump and even with a grant it's so expensive and I'm not even sure my house can have one. I'm not sure how the government expects people to fund them.
The heatpumps for heating water are crazy expensive at the moment. It makes no sense as they are a lot cheaper in Norway. However an air system with a few zones driven by a heatpump (air to air or ground to air) less than a third of the price installed and will also provide cooling in the summer with the same efficiency and replace all the radiators.
I think we are just being ripped off at the moment for replacements for radiators when air to air works just fine and takes up less house space anyway. Its worth looking into because the 20k heat pumps into water are not paying back in 25 years whereas you can maybe get an air to air to be neutral cost over its expected life time compared to a boiler replacement.
Yeah, it's the water heating that's putting me off. A combi boiler is just so much better for it.
We should be pushing hybrid solutions where the house is heated by heat pumps (which as far as I can tell is just reverse air conditioning), and keep the boiler for hot water.
I'm certainly not going back to a crappy hot water tank, and being unable to have a bath because I did the washing up earlier.
We can't keep burning gas there won't be any in a decades time. We don't have any choice about storage of hot water or heating electrically and using water to store excess energy makes a lot of sense. However take a look at Sunamp they do a phase change material tank like thing which takes less space so you can get the sort of capacity you want.
There is no shortage of gas, we won't run out in a decade. We need to stop using the stuff as much as possible as soon as possible though.
The vast majority of home gas is used over winter for heating. Move that to electricity and the use drops massively. Even more is used in power stations. Right now, even if you switch to heat pumps, you'll be using gas to heat your home and water anyway.
Gas will not run out in the next ten years. Even at doomsayer estimates, we've got 40 years. And we keep finding more and using shale gas and so on. When I was in school, we were told it would run out by the 2010s. We've until then to think about things like upgrading the electric supply to homes and municipal hot water systems.
No matter the heat source. Step one needs to be insulating our homes to reduce the requirement for heating and make some work anyway. Especially heat pumps.
Why doesn't the UK gov have a clear strategy for this? Leaving it to the homeowner in a cost of living crisis and with increasing mortgage costs means the vast majority cant do it alone
I'm not really sure that headline is warranted.. if there are 30,000 grants available, setting a target of installing 60,000 heat pumps seems a little silly.
Really the government needs to get its arse out of its anus and realise that without grants they're utterly unaffordable.. and they barely are with.
Explaining why the government grant offered isn't enough for most people to get one. Was having a conversation with people on here about heat pumps yesterday. Interesting read.
The government should in my view be investing much more to insulating houses, installing heat pumps, and installing solar panels with house batteries. These measures should be within reach of all households.
Solar panels and batteries at the moment are paying back in about 7 years and that is without any government grant, you can potentially get it down to 5 with a bit more risk taken on with not tier 1 kit and installers. Or put another way you pay up front for the next 25 years to pay 8p a KWh (instead of ~35p).
Comparatively I can't make a heatpump do anything but cost more for heating over the next 25 years, it never pays off in its lifetime. An air to air heatpump however should be equivalent to a boiler but they cost about 1/3 of the to water ones which seem to be enormously overpriced compared to other countries that do something similar (Norway).
Bloody tell me about it.
I did a breakdown/digest of the new ECO+ initiative a while back.
And while it was functionally useless for me (no allowance for DIY materials), it was definitely targeting the low hanging fruit (thermostats, loft insulation, CWI, EWI)
....and as tick follows tock, Michael Gove goes on a media round saying we should delay the heat pump plans.
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