Ban on gas heating for new UK homes

[culzean]

Improving them is another matter.

It's a can of worms insulating and sealing up a house that was never meant to be like that, especially in the attic.  An old builder friend is dead against cavity wall insulation if the house wasn't built with it in.  Mind you, it's rarely fitted properly (kept away from the outer brick skin) even on new houses.

Filling up the cavity can cause massive problems with damp , we had contractors in our area late 2017 trying to meet their targets   for government retro-fit cavity insulation ( the houses on our estate are about 20 years old and already have sheets of expanded polystyrene half the cavity width ).  We had an extension on the south side of house about 10 years ago and it was insulted with 75mm of rockwool battens ) last winter I decided to check the surface temperature of the internal walls on the fully insulated south side and the older partially insulated north side.  There was 0.2 deg C difference on average colder on north wall ( 1 checked in several places across both walls upstairs and downstairs ). Makes you wonder what difference the blown insulation makes, our neighbour had it done ( 1 of only 3 out 10 houses ) and said it made no difference to their heating bills.  Someone I used to work with had the cavities insulated and suffered horrible condensation and damp patches inside the house, had to buy a dehumidifier to make house liveable again..

[Jocko]

Flats have fewer external surfaces so should be cheaper to improve *although be careful with external insulation).

My flat is a maisonette with three sides of two floors outside walls. The lounge has an area which used to be a veranda, but is now floor to ceiling single glazing. And it is in to the prevailing wind. The problem with a rental property is I am not allowed to do anything internally or externally. I even have to get permission and approval to decorate.

[culzean]

I recall reading, not that long ago, that the UK was going to have Passivhaus regulations by 2016 and part of that was there would no gas in the house.


I'd love to improve our mid-60's house but I think it's got such fundamental construction issues - lots of cold bridges etc - that it needs knocking down and rebuilding.  I wonder who'd like to pay for that?

I've actually been in a Passivhaus near Northwich in Cheshire. It's owned by a friend of a friend and he is a bio chemist of some sort so a clever man. He bought a 3 bedroomed house and used the spare equity from the sale of a larger house to get this property up to Passivhaus standards. The sum of £85,000 seems to spring to mind but I might be wrong here. Anyway, it needs little or no heating. The insulation is on a scale I've never seen before and the windows have absolutely no draughts at all. So much so there has to be some specialised ventilation system. One figure that did stick in mind was that they spent £15 per month on all their energy needs.

Even if heating the house costs £2000 a year, the payback period at present prices is over 40 years, so a good project to prove a point but not good financially - if you bought £85,000 of premium bonds you would get a good return and still have your capital !

The best ventilation system you can fit uses a heat exchanger between outgoing warm air and incoming cool air to save wasting heat.  Air source heat pumps ( reverse cycle air conditioning ) can produce 2 to 3 kw of heat for every 1kw used to drive the pump, and work down to about -5degC IIRC.

[culzean]

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/property/advice/11411880/Could-the-cavity-wall-insulation-scandal-rival-PPI.html

Retrofit cavity wall insulation is a mechanism driven by government to fulfil climate change targets, but the targets for actually installing it have to be met by energy companies, same as badly implemented 'smart' meters.  The people who knocked on our door ( in late 2017 ) told my wife that cavity wall insulation was becoming mandatory in 2018 and you would not be able to sell a house without it,  these were a different company to the ones I told we didn't want it a couple of months earlier.  I wrote to trading standards and our MP complaining about these people's hard sell tactics.

[springswood]

I had the cavity wall insulation done the summer before last and am very happy with it. Mine's a small 1911 Yorkshire stone faced terrace. There's a uneven cavity so blown fibre wasn't an option. These days they do it with squirty foam. Fortunately I'd heard about it from a retired architect I see dog walking who had it done. So when a couple of lads knocked on the door offering it I said yes. Within the hour their mates had 'surveyed' the house - photographed everything on their mobiles. Less than a week later one young man did the job in a morning. So they're not all cowboys - well done for reporting them though.

The result? My bills have come down but they were low to start with (I lined the attic put 100mm of kingspan 6 years ago, no problems and made about as much difference). The big difference is increased comfort. The house isn't cold in the mornings. Most of the untraceable draughts in the kitchen have gone. I can set the heating to switch off earlier. As useful, the heating effects from the sun falling on the walls is reduced so I was able to keep the house comfortable last summer. And no damp - I control it at source, ventilating the kitchen and bathroom as needed and using a dehumidifier to dry clothes.

So just from my point of view the, admittedly poor, payback period isn't the whole story. Then there's the previously ignored costs of gas heating's contribution to climate change. I'm just old enough to remember coal fire and ice on the inside of the bedroom window in the morning in a house built in the 50s. I don't really remember the awful air pollution. The point being things can get both better and less polluting and I'm quite prepared to believe they need to get better still.

[Jocko]

Loft insulation is not an option for me either. I live on the top two stories. The building originally had a flat, concrete roof, but about 30 years ago they added a pitched roof on top of that. But there is no access into the enclosed space.
The woman down stairs from me is moving out because the house is so cold (another private tenant) The council properties in the complex have all had double glazing fitted, and are currently in the process of having new, efficient, Fischer storage heaters installed. Just the poor private tenants that are left to suffer!

[culzean]

To do a proper survey the contractors are supposed to poke a boroscope into the cavities to see what condition they are in and if there are any problems ( wall ties bridged with fallen mortar etc.) another problem with retro-fit insulation is if it blocks airbricks and stops ventilation to under the floors, that is when dry and wet rot start attacking the wood. The contractors who came around by us certainly never looked in the cavity first and their hard sell tactics were completely wrong,  they suggested that the builders who constructed our houses were guilty of not insulating the cavities when they build the houses ( wrong,  they did it to the standards of the time - built 20 years ago and they fitted polystyrene boards about 30mm thick into the cavity,  which still left room for airflow - I do not know where the blown insulation would have gone and it would undoubtedly have blocked the airbricks ).  I know what is already in our cavities because when we had the extension built they had to disturb existing walls.  As I said having checked the inside wall temperature and finding such an insignificant ( 0.2 degC ) difference between a north facing original wall and a south facing wall with 75mm of carefully installed rockwool battens I am very happy that the cowboy retro-fit blown insulation was completely unnecessary and potentially very harmful.

I have seen programs where people have gone to extreme lengths to reduce heat loss,  including fitting massive thick expanded polystyrene boards over all windows and doors at night ( don't know where they keep them in the daytime), filling the loft with fibreglass and insulating the rafters and lining walls with insulation inside and on outer walls ( apparently insulation cladding on the outside of walls is by far the most effective).

The best and by far tha most cost-effective thing most people could do to reduce heating bills is to get a dehumidifier with humistat set to about 50 to 55% to keep the walls dry,  this increases the insulation value of the walls and makes the whole house more comfortable,  and because the walls are dry the heating also does not have to supply extra heat to evaporate the damp in walls every time it comes on. The dehumidifier passes the 180watts or so that it takes to run the motor back into the room as heat and also gains heat due to reclaiming the heat it initially took to evaporate the water back and this warms the air it blows back into room  ( this is the same mechanism that boosts the efficiency of a gas condensing boiler when it is in condensing mode, by about 15 to 20%).  A dehumidifier is also the cheapest way of drying washing indoors.

EBAC make some very good models,  and made in UK  ( County Durham).  Our first Ebac lasted over 10 years,  still worked but got a bit noisy,  our second one ( 180watt 20 litres a day - 3850e ) is about 5 years old and no problems.  After the initial drying of the house when you first run a dehumidifier ( when it may remove 6 or 7 litres a day for first week ) it will hardly run after - ours is in smart mode and probably runs max 4 hours a day and removes about 0.5 to 1 litre a day except when drying washing 

[Rory]

The best ventilation system you can fit uses a heat exchanger between outgoing warm air and incoming cool air to save wasting heat.

And now sentiment is turning against those - you can never fully get rid of the background noise of the fans which some peeople just can't live with, and it's very difficult (even at significant cost) to keep the systems clean so they harbour nasty things and are being being blamed for sick building syndrome.

A colleague in Sweden told me they've largely stopped fitting them there.

There are fully passive (no fans) versions but they need complex contruction with tall 'chimneys' etc and you've still got the cleaning issue.

[peteo48]

I recall reading, not that long ago, that the UK was going to have Passivhaus regulations by 2016 and part of that was there would no gas in the house.


I'd love to improve our mid-60's house but I think it's got such fundamental construction issues - lots of cold bridges etc - that it needs knocking down and rebuilding.  I wonder who'd like to pay for that?

I've actually been in a Passivhaus near Northwich in Cheshire. It's owned by a friend of a friend and he is a bio chemist of some sort so a clever man. He bought a 3 bedroomed house and used the spare equity from the sale of a larger house to get this property up to Passivhaus standards. The sum of £85,000 seems to spring to mind but I might be wrong here. Anyway, it needs little or no heating. The insulation is on a scale I've never seen before and the windows have absolutely no draughts at all. So much so there has to be some specialised ventilation system. One figure that did stick in mind was that they spent £15 per month on all their energy needs.

Even if heating the house costs £2000 a year, the payback period at present prices is over 40 years, so a good project to prove a point but not good financially - if you bought £85,000 of premium bonds you would get a good return and still have your capital !

The best ventilation system you can fit uses a heat exchanger between outgoing warm air and incoming cool air to save wasting heat.  Air source heat pumps ( reverse cycle air conditioning ) can produce 2 to 3 kw of heat for every 1kw used to drive the pump, and work down to about -5degC IIRC.

Speaking to the owner he wasn't interested in the financial returns at all. That said, most people would be so it remains a non starter for the majority.

[Rory]

To do a proper survey the contractors are supposed to poke a boroscope into the cavities to see what condition they are in and if there are any problems ( wall ties bridged with fallen mortar etc.)

We've had three sets of people look at ours and none of them would do it.  I told the last lot and they absolutely insisted it would be OK using little sticky balls, but their surveyor, who made a considerable journey to get to us, said no.  Issue is the cavities are too narrow in places.  They also weren't happy about debris in the cavities although they said they could remove that.

The (identical) house next door to us has been done - no issues, and it's noticeably 'cosier' in their house than ours is.

[Rory]

Speaking to the owner he wasn't interested in the financial returns at all. That said, most people would be so it remains a non starter for the majority.

I suppose, like road charging, it could easily be made to be worthwhile by massively increasing fuel costs.   Have to be careful what you wish for!

[culzean]

To do a proper survey the contractors are supposed to poke a boroscope into the cavities to see what condition they are in and if there are any problems ( wall ties bridged with fallen mortar etc.)

We've had three sets of people look at ours and none of them would do it.  I told the last lot and they absolutely insisted it would be OK using little sticky balls, but their surveyor, who made a considerable journey to get to us, said no.  Issue is the cavities are too narrow in places.  They also weren't happy about debris in the cavities although they said they could remove that.

The (identical) house next door to us has been done - no issues, and it's noticeably 'cosier' in their house than ours is.

As I said in previous post a dehumidifier with a humisat can make a massive difference for less than £200 up front and very low running costs (between £50 to £100 a year depending on how your walls are constructed and how much cooking and showering and drying washing indoors you do ). Your home will definitely feel more cosy and be cheaper to heat,  probably the thing with the most instant result and the shortest payback period,  and your windows will not get fogged up and the best thing is your bedding loses that damp feeling and instead of soggy sheets and duvet the bed linen stays nice and crisp....

As for retro-fit cavity wall insulation here is some more info

http://www.askjeff.co.uk/cavity-wall-fill/

A lot of people who have had the bead type insulation have reported ant infestations in the cavities - strange......

[richardfrost]

I think I would jump on the Dehumidifier thing, Culzean, if we did not have our windows open all the time. I mean all the time, there is at least one window open - usually the bathroom. I have the bedroom window open at night. And right now the sun os bearing down into my home office / music studio and so I have the blind down and the window open.

[culzean]

I think I would jump on the Dehumidifier thing, Culzean, if we did not have our windows open all the time. I mean all the time, there is at least one window open - usually the bathroom. I have the bedroom window open at night. And right now the sun os bearing down into my home office / music studio and so I have the blind down and the window open.

In normal circumstances the air outside the house will always have a lower humidity than the air inside, purely because the activities inside the house like boiling a kettle, showering, cooking and just breathing will raise the humidity inside. This is especially true in winter when colder air cannot hold anywhere near the moisture that warmer summer air can.  It is OK to have the bedroom window open as long as the dehumidifier is not in the bedroom and the door is closed. Having a dehumidifier means that you no longer have to open windows to clear condensation out of the house,  because opening windows in winter is very wasteful of heat.    Basically ( and you will already know this Richard with your scientific training) the cold coil of the dehumidifier becomes the coldest spot in the house and the fan blows air over it to condense out the moisture, the air then continues over the warm radiator of the heatpump and collects the energy added to the refrigerant from the condensation of water - so blows warm dry air out.

Refrigerant dehumidifiers work fine down to 5degC and are a lot more energy efficient than the dessicant type,  which will work at a lower temperature ( but when does the inside of your house ever get below 5degC ? ) - the dessicant type have to regenerate the moisture absorbing granules regularly which needs the application of quite a lot of heat to dry it out.

I also find in summer that the house feels cooler and more comfortable with lower humidity than it otherwise would. 

[richardfrost]

Reviving this topic, partly because of the dramatic change in circumstances since this conversation started, and mainly because I am now researching dehumidifiers for my son's house. They bought it 30 months ago and it was clearly redecorated to hide the damp issue. The cavity walls have been filled with something or other and the house is like something from Victorian times now with respect to damp. They have a baby and I really want to get the damp sorted so I think a dehumidifier is the way to go. Anyone else got views on this?