ripoff for new boiler

[Mossdog]

Chris Skidmore, the author of the following report openly admits that "the lack of anticipatory investment in the electricity grid… would beset the roll out of heat pumps’.

https://assets.publishing.service.go...ent-review.pdf

I refer to Prof Kelly's report in an earlier email, which shows how Skidmore grossly under-estimates the nature of the task if heat pumps (and their like) are deemed to be the way ahead for the UK (spoilers: it's we don't generate enough 'lecky and never will with so-called renewables, certainly not for the shift to electricity saturated life-styles; we don't have the infrastructure to deliver said electricity, even if we had it (literally blow a fuse!!); we don't have the engineers, tech staff, raw materials (steel, copper, and other rare earth metals needed); we don't have enough electrical components or the industrial capacity (no pun intended) even if we were to scoop up all of the world's capacitors etc.

Then there is the issue of insulation. Heat pumps are only effective in well-insulated buildings. As the International Energy Agency (IEA) points out, ‘households that add a heat pump without improving efficiency in parallel [through insulation]… can nearly triple their peak demand during winter’. As Net-Zero zealots usually like to remind us, Britain’s homes are draughty and leaky, with less than half having cavity or solid-wall insulation. Installing this insulation will impose yet another big cost on households (i.e ordinary people).
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But they work in Scandinavia! Ummm...Homes in Scandinavia are generally of more modern construction than those in the UK, with the UK having the oldest housing stock in Europe with 38% built before 1946 compared to 24% in Germany and Sweden. see link below

https://www.tado.com/gb-en/press/uk-...ean-neighbours

https://files.bregroup.com/bre-co-uk...in_-Europe.pdf

Heat pumps are only a good idea in the minds of Net Zero ideologues. Ordinary households have little to gain from their rollout. That's why in the Uk they've received a very frosty reception from ordinary people and why the Government(s) have had to resort to threats, fear tactics and blunt coercion.

[molehill]

And if you are lucky enough to live in one of the 1/2 million beautiful listed buildings in England and Wales, you won’t even be allowed to install double glazing, draught proof front doors etc. etc.
Probably not great for installing insulation if you have a little bat living in your roof either.

[Graham Breeze]

I've just had a new 2600 litre oil tank fitted (thumb-nose-to-Swedish Doomgoblin). We had to wait a few weeks as they local company that installed the tank are inundated with requests. It seems quite a few are also from properties that have decided to take out their Air Sourced heat pumps.

I'm just a simple engineer - but if heat pumps are so great wouldn't we (intelligent people that we all are) have all installed them by now and British Gas (in its various manifestations) would have disappeared into oblivion along with, say, manufacturers of wooden car wheels?

[Llani Boy]

What make of oil boiler are you considering installing?

A Worcester Bosch Heatslave 18/25kw Greenstar Combi. Not cheap but the 7 year warranty favours my choice.

[anthonykay]

A Worcester Bosch Heatslave 18/25kw Greenstar Combi. Not cheap but the 7 year warranty favours my choice.

I have been concerned about our gas bill for some years (even before the recent steep increase in prices). Our gas boiler is nearly 20 years old, but working OK. Two years ago we had a salesman visit, and he recommended a Greenstar Combi, but we were warned that we may have the problem with a Combi that when someone is having a shower, and someone else turns on the hot tap in the kitchen, the shower may go cold. I thought we could be well enough organised to avoid this, but the rest of the family disagreed (we currently have my son and his girlfriend living here most of the time).

More recently, we had our house assessed for installing an air-source heat pump (and taking advantage of the grants available to help with the cost). The assessors got as far as taking a detailed view of the house from Google satellite view, and deciding that there was nowhere suitable to locate it. Nevertheless, I do agree with Marco that heat pumps are the way to go: it must make more sense to just move heat around than to generate it by burning stuff. I trust that the technology will in due course improve enough so that heat pumps can be deployed much more widely.

Climate change is real, and we do need to take steps to minimise it. This fact is not altered by the stupidity of some governments in the ways they propose to approach Net Zero; for example, electric vehicles are likely to create more problems than they solve (as indicated by some posts above). Renewable electricity generation does need to be maximised, even though there will always be a requirement for some backup. And while people living in remote locations like Upper Teesdale are always likely to need cars to get around, it is daft that anyone is driving around major cities as a single person in a car; other European countries have sorted out their urban transport systems; why can't we?

[Witton Park]

I have been concerned about our gas bill for some years (even before the recent steep increase in prices). Our gas boiler is nearly 20 years old, but working OK. Two years ago we had a salesman visit, and he recommended a Greenstar Combi, but we were warned that we may have the problem with a Combi that when someone is having a shower, and someone else turns on the hot tap in the kitchen, the shower may go cold. I thought we could be well enough organised to avoid this, but the rest of the family disagreed (we currently have my son and his girlfriend living here most of the time).

More recently, we had our house assessed for installing an air-source heat pump (and taking advantage of the grants available to help with the cost). The assessors got as far as taking a detailed view of the house from Google satellite view, and deciding that there was nowhere suitable to locate it. Nevertheless, I do agree with Marco that heat pumps are the way to go: it must make more sense to just move heat around than to generate it by burning stuff. I trust that the technology will in due course improve enough so that heat pumps can be deployed much more widely.

Climate change is real, and we do need to take steps to minimise it. This fact is not altered by the stupidity of some governments in the ways they propose to approach Net Zero; for example, electric vehicles are likely to create more problems than they solve (as indicated by some posts above). Renewable electricity generation does need to be maximised, even though there will always be a requirement for some backup. And while people living in remote locations like Upper Teesdale are always likely to need cars to get around, it is daft that anyone is driving around major cities as a single person in a car; other European countries have sorted out their urban transport systems; why can't we?

we just moved to a new build with a combi for the first time.

No issues at all, 3 full time residents but at times 7 of us in here.

In fact it works far better and our bills are down, because we don't have that "I'll just put the water on for a bath"
You just heat it as you need it and as much as you need.

"climate change is real...."

The idea we can minimise it is a faith without any real substance.

So can't we just bury the hatchet and accept we need to clean up our act in general terms without all this self-flagellation crap?

As Mossdog points out up top, even if we could act like the planet's thermostat, our infrastructure is so neglected and we keep making "cart before horse" errors that in a decade, there'll be a hell of a lot of errors to clear up.

[Witton Park]

and there are big grants for domestic installations

and if there weren't, no one would consider them.

And who gets them?

The middle class or wealthier.

This isn't like in the 60s/70s when they had grants for the working class folk living in terraced houses.

It's appalling and immoral.

Same with EVs.

[Llani Boy]

I have been concerned about our gas bill for some years (even before the recent steep increase in prices). Our gas boiler is nearly 20 years old, but working OK. Two years ago we had a salesman visit, and he recommended a Greenstar Combi, but we were warned that we may have the problem with a Combi that when someone is having a shower, and someone else turns on the hot tap in the kitchen, the shower may go cold. I thought we could be well enough organised to avoid this, but the rest of the family disagreed (we currently have my son and his girlfriend living here most of the time).

My current boiler is a Worcester Heatslave 20/25 and I know it is at least 25 years old as it was here when we moved in. There is always plenty of hot water and the only thing that happens if someone turns a hot tap on whilst I am showering is that the pressure drops a little and I shout "turn the ****ing tap off"!

My choice of new boiler, I am told, is just a modern, more efficient version of what I already have and one of the installers who is giving me a quote did ask about the quantity of hot water we use at once and if need be an additional tank could be fitted if required.

It is going to be an expensive do overall as regulations have changed over 25 years and as the boiler is located in the garage a different flue arrangement, inline filters, and fire safety gadgets are required.
All for the good no doubt as currently a copper pipe runs along the ground directly from the tank, gravity feeding the oil straight into the back of the boiler!

[Mossdog]

A Worcester Bosch Heatslave 18/25kw Greenstar Combi. Not cheap but the 7 year warranty favours my choice.

Cheers LLani. I've checked out their website too. We have a boiler in the byre so I'm wondering about their external Danesmoor version. They do a 'utility' one as well. However, I note above your's is in the garage, but no issues with being out of the house obviously.

I do smile that the marketing folks at WB call their product HeatSLAVE. I wonder if they've given up on selling oil boilers to the eco pearl-clutchers who might be triggered into a hissy-fit by that name. Perhaps they realise that they're marketing to a rural set of good ol' squirrel shootin', grits eatin', boys, y'all. YEEEHAAA.

[Mossdog]

I have some friends who live in a Swedish wood-framed house, imported and built in the 1990s. The house relies on a heat exchange system and triple glazing and is extremely energy efficient. They have a back-up mains gas CH system, but rarely need to use it (the live in mid-Wales).

The system works like this. The solar heat from the triple glazing warms the interior of their home, even in winter, and with the house being effectively hermetically sealed (expensive high quality doors and window seals), the warm air in the house (also warmed by bodies) goes to a heat exchanger in the roof space (electric pump) that A. warms the cold air being sucked into the house, by using the warm air going out, and B. also dehumidifies the warm air too. Very effective and widely used in Sweden and Germany (see Haf Haus), but relatively expensive. No heat pumps needed, but could presumedly be utilised too.

Other friends live in the midlands and 30 years ago started to build eco-project of highly insulated, only solar heated, terrace houses. No electricity needed, but again they rely on triple glazing (from a Swedish company). They visited us this summer, but they too have over the years trialled a series of heat pumps as their centre has an experimental eco-engineering element/consultancy (including to major house building UK companies). They didn't generally recommend heat pumps for most GB homes either for all of the above reasons.