Starting over with a house - what would you go for for central heating and water heating?

[KindleMum]

We are buying a house that has totally charmed us but needs major modernisation. Much of the house has not been upgraded since the 1960s. It currently does not have gas installed. It has 1960s underfloor heating downstairs and v old huge storage heaters upstairs. And a small immersion heater.

We plan to rewire entirely and also want to upgrade plumbing as necessary in order to get good pressure and not have that annoying thing where someone turns on a tap elsewhere in the house and the tap/shower you're using stops or goes cold or dribbles. We'll be adding in one or two ensuites, refitting kitchen and family bathroom and installing gas.

We haven't yet had the opinion of an electrician on the underfloor heating but as it's over 50 years old I'm expecting it not to pass current safety regs and as we're doing so much to the house, now would seem to be the time to put in a new heating system. I would have to do something about the upstairs heating anyway as the heaters take up far too much space.

What would you do? What I know about plumbing could be written on the back of a matchbox. We're also pretty ignorant on current running costs as we've been overseas for a few years and were in employer accommodation so they paid the bills and we never even saw the bill. And the costs would have been different there anyway to the UK.

I'm thinking gas central heating and vertical rads. What's the most economical? What do I need to do to have enough hot water at decent pressure for a house of 4? Any extra requirements I should tell the plumber when he comes to quote? I had fancied keeping/upgrading the underfloor heating but everyone I speak to is very negative about it taking far too long to heat up and cool down.

Advice, experience and opinions all welcome. TIA.

I have gas fired 'wet' underfloor heating throughout the downstairs and love it, together with a megaflo for hot water. I would recommend both.

It does take a while to warm the floors up but you can't treat it like radiators and expect to heat a room up in 20 minutes. For example, on cold mornings you have to programme it to come on well before you get up, then switch off, and for the rest of the day you will have the benefit of (free) slow heat release from the warm floors. It's brilliant being able to put the furniture where I want to, and cheaper too. It takes a while to get used to but the feeling of warm floors is unbeatable imo! (I think 'taking too long to cool down' is a strange reason to object to a heating system by the way!) We control each room's temp with an individual thermostat so it's very adjustable.

when we replumbed our house we switched to all mains pressure - no roof tanks - and fitted solar thermal panels that feed the 240 litre tank and produce all of our hot water in summer and half of it in the winter
boiler is vaillant gas
would have loved underfloor heating but not possible in the old parts of our house

ogre - fair point ! Too slow to cool down is an odd complaint but it is honestly what the people I know in rl with underfloor heating told me! I really liked the idea of underfloor heating as I hate the appearance of radiators and the way they dictate furniture placement too (one of the things I like about the house we're buying is that it has no fireplaces whatsoever , I hate them as again, they control the arrangement of the room and with CH usually have no purpose). But when I asked the friends who have it, they were really negative about it.

I think having to plan ages in advance when to turn on the heating could be a problem for us though as we don't keep particularly regular "at home" hours as DH works away sometimes and keeps very different hours depending on whether he's working home or away. I'm currently a SAHM with a toddler so we're in and out of the house at different times every day. How long does it actually take to warm the room?

Talk - aren't solar panels enormously expensive? Our EPC says they would cost £17k to install and would save us £215 per annum. Really doesn't seem worth it?

Solar thermal, not PV - my kit (panel, tank, controllers) came to just under £3,000
www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Generating-energy/Choosing-a-renewable-technology/Solar-water-heating
and my figures have been nearer £200 saving per year compared with my bills before it was installed

by the way, PV is much cheaper than that now. A friend just had her array fitted for £8k : zero electric bills for her now.

Ah, the EPC did say PV. The EPC was only done last week though so if they're that wrong on the prices, I'd be annoyed! Thanks. I'm impressed your friend;s got her bills to zero.

I'd quite like to recycle water to flush the loo, like they do a lot in Germany but I've never seen it done here.

EPCs are generally written by somebody who has 'been on a short course to be an EPC assessor' they give a basic overview and that is it. Seek proper advice from a professional rather relying on them for sensible guides. Often the recommendations are at best generic at worst a load of tosh.
Best one I've seen recommended a wind turbine and solar panels on an e/w facing shaded terrace in the middle of a city

Wonky - I wasn't impressed with the EPC chap - we accompanied him as we'd arranged it on behalf of the vendor. He was scathing on the subject of their roof insulation which had been recently installed by whoever does those things for old people. Predicted the energy bills as triple what they've shown us. And it's snowed a lot here lately so I took the chance to monitor their roof during the snow period and it retained as much or more snow on the roof as any house in the street and that was with the house being heated all day every day as they're at home and cold and can pay the bills. I can't see the insulation can be that bad if the snow's not melting.

Who are the best professionals to get insulation advice from though? Builders? Electricians?

For a start I'd have a look at the Energy savings trust website
www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Insulation which will give you an overview.
Tbh is a difficult one to get straightforward advice on and is a personal bugbear of mine as it's the basis for any energy efficiency measures (ps I'm an architect and I can get ranty on the subject so I apologise in advance)
It is hard to get good quality advice on this subject as most people want to sell you their product not give you an overview of the options. If you start with the energy savings trust website you can evaluate what you have/ want and see what options are available.
Websites like
www.cse.org.uk/ can give you advice too
www.greenbuildingstore.co.uk/
Sells but also offers advice
www.greenspec.co.uk/ tells you what products
Depending on where you are there may also be businesses that can do an assessment and make recommendations specific to your house if you don't feel confident doing it yourself.

Thanks Wonky, I'll try those. Don't mind you being ranty! The house we're buying is a little "quirky" as it was built by an architect for himself and I've been really annoyed at how the professionals happily announce themselves unable to judge anything about the house (like is this a supporting wall or can I take it out) because it's "architect-built". What's the point of being a surveyor and an engineer if you can't assess anything that isn't utterly standard? They still want to get paid though.

and you are up against houses like ours that have chunks signed off by building control that I know for a fact are severely deficient ....
BC assumed that there would be insulation in the roof rather than checking ...
we had to build an external insulated green roof to make the room usable as taking down the ceiling was a nightmare thought

A 1960's house with UFH probably has an uninsulated concrete floor. Short of digging it up, you will not be able to put wet UFH in. The old heating cables might still be in good condition, but will be expensive to run unless you have an Economy 7 type electricity tariff, or plenty of PV solar panels.

If the floors need to come up because of, for example, heave, cracks or slag content, you may as well insulate and add wet UFH while doing it. Otherwise it will be uneconomic.

It will have cavity walls, which should be insulated unless there is some severe problem with the walls of your house preventing it.

Loft insulation should now be ten inches deep.

If it has wooden windows they are probably rotten.

It might need a new roof.

I strongly recommend running a new plastic incoming water supply pipe all the way to the pavement stopcock or water meter (you will probably have to pay the water co an exhorbitant amount to connect it unless there is lead piping and they replace theirs at the same time you replace yours, or you change from unmetered to metered, and have your trench ready dug and your new pipe ready to connect when they dig the hole.

A 25mm plastic pipe will usually give good flow, but 32mm pipe is even better, costs not much more, and is the same amount of work to lay.

With a big water pipe you can have a pressurised water cylinder such as a Megaflo, which I would usually recommend over a combi, unless you have a small home with only one person wanting to turn on a hot tap at any time. Get a System Boiler which also has less to go wrong than a combi. You will not need any pipes or tanks in the loft.

The electrical cables with probably be PVC and still safe, but the lighting circuits will probably have no earth, all the accessories will be out of date and possibly worn out, and there will be far too few socket outlets, so you may as well have a complete new installation. Rewiring a house costs the same as buying a second hand car. Ask the installer to quote for RCBOs (he will know what that means unless he is very ignorant) and dedicated circuits for the kitchen and the utility room.

That's a comprehensive answer, PigletJohn, thanks. The UFH is working well and the bills we've seen are surprisingly low but they are indeed still on Economy 7. But even if the UFH got the all-clear from an electrician I think I'd have concerns that it could break down anytime and that it would be easier and hopefully cheaper to do everything upfront before we move in.

I don't want to move to metered water as I'm assuming that would be more expensive than unmetered for a family of 4? Can they force us to? Are you likely to find lead pipes in a 60s build? Should a local plumber know what the likely charge would be from the water co to connect to their pipes?

The survey said not to raise the floor any further as it could end up above the damp course - I'm guessing insulating it and adding new UFH would put it above the damp course then?

Windows have been done recently and roof is ok

Is gas more economical than electric for heating and hot water? I'm planning to get gas run to the house, it's on the street, just never installed in that house.

I pay three times as much per kWh for electricity.

E7 will not be so much, usually about half price, but still more than gas.

You can email the water co, they will have a standard set of charges.

It is said that as a rule of thumb metering is cheaper if you have fewer people in the house than bedrooms. unless one or more is a teenage girl.

I believe you have the right after a short trial to convert back to unmetered but you must check the terms.

you probably haven't got lead pipes at that age, but peer down the hole at the stop-cock where the front gate used to be before it got paved over. It will probably be in the same position as other similar houses in your street.

Also look at the pipe coming out of the kitchen floor under the sink.

Insulating and rescreeding the floor would add six to ten inches, so is not practical unless you dig out the old floor.

you didn't ask how much a second-hand car costs

That's good advice. I don't know what lead pipe would look like but I'm sure Google will have a picture. Unless the choices are plastic/copper/lead in which case I can tell the difference between those! Thanks.

Any tips on which brands are best for showers? We'll be replacing all the bathware and adding 1 or 2 ensuites. I've had years of rubbish showers in rental places and would love a good, reliable one.

I'm sorry - how much does a secondhand car cost? We have a secondhand Golf so am expecting it to last years yet!

Actually I'm hoping rewiring costs less than a secondhand Golf!

lead pipe is fat, grey, not perfectly straight, and has bulges where it has been jointed to a stopcock or other fitting.

hahahaha, that's the point. For both the cost depends what you can afford, and what you want.

It could cost the same as a second-hand Golf.

I am very fond of Aqualisa showers.

Sometimes you can get last-years models, reduced, from the Aqualisa or Plumbworld website. If not, you can pay pretty well as much as you want. Some are different for high (watermain) or low (water tank) pressure.

What I want is to do it right and not have to do much other than maintenance for the next 20 years! That's the holy grail, isn't it? I'm trying to future-proof where I can in terms of more sockets etc than you think you can possibly use. Doing the bathrooms as if DD was already the teenage prima donna she clearly hopes to be. Don't know what else I can do to future-proof.

I live in fear of choosing the wrong lighting and the Govt or EU banning yet another type of light bulb and my new lighting being ruined. I may be overthinking this now.

I like the idea of the RCBOs - our last employer accommodation turned out to have wiring that was the favourite snack of the local rats and the electrician who came out to do the regular safety check was appalled and said it could catch fire at any time, and we'd never even heard a rat. House had to be completely rewired. So good circuit breakers, smoke alarms and CO2 detectors are on my list.

I don't have an unlimited budget but I prefer to buy right and buy once and generally look for the best value rather than the cheapest. And I buy brand names for reliability, not status. My dad always used to say he didn't have enough money to buy cheap things! Though a lot of cheap stuff has got better since then.

I still hope the rewiring isn't quite as dear as the Golf though. We're in the North so labour costs shouldn't be too bad.

you will make a slight saving by avoiding ultra flashy fashionable accessories, go for simple white moulded by Crabtree or MEM. I used to think MK were the best but they have eroded their reputation by paring down the quality.

If you feel like it you can change to polished brass or diamante sockets later.

Being lazy, I will also be picking sanitaryware based on lack of fancy bits to trap dust! I will look at those brands, thanks.

DD would love pink diamante sockets!