The ULEZ of rural life

[EffortlessDesmond]

There is a Government proposal to ban replacement oil boilers from 2026. Of course, it's important to shift away from fossil fuels, but this is going to affect rural houses disproportionately. The existing electricity grid is unable to support demand if there's a mass switch to heat pumps, and most villages don't have a gas supply.

Given the £15k installing a heat pump and its ancillaries, versus £4-£6k for a new oil boiler, how many more rural households are going to find themselves old and cold and damp in pursuit of Net Zero? The Countryside Alliance estimates the number at 1.7m.

It has been in several newspapers, yesterday and today, for anyone who hasn't already seen it.

The problem is if net zero is going to be achieved there is no way it can happen with 1.7 million households on oil boilers.

The only way it can be achieved is by forcing people off them at some point.

It is the same for gas, but easier to start with oil because it is more polluting.

People are just going to have to wise up to the fact that net zero is going to be expensive. Very expensive. And someone is going to have to pay for that.

Wtaf? We have been living in/looking at rural houses on oil for years and this is the first I am hearing of this. I knew about the possible gas boiler ban from 2035 but THREE YEARS?

I really don't see how this will ever be possible. A lot of homes on oil will not be and cannot ever be made to be energy efficient enough to support air heat pumps.

I wonder if this is why I have seen several rural newish houses recently that are fully electric? Even with immersion on the water, which felt like a very odd choice.

I did the maths on one of them that might look nice enough to buy. Added up what we spent on oil, wood, kindling, electric over the last 12 months - 3.8k.

The same kWh in purely electric would have equated to 12k.

(It's a big house we live in and we are home all day but it's also an EPC C with stupid underfloor heating that takes ages to warm up/cool down and is very problematic).

I am baffled by this proposal. What on earth do they think the alternative is?

It's another of those proposals that won't happen. You can't force people with no reasonable alternative. Wood fires? No, again, because are high in particulates. Old stone cottages are not compatible nor retro-fittable, with air pumps. You might as well knock them down. I suspect there will be exemptions for listed buildings anyway, of those built before a certain date.

Thing is, if we are to achieve net zero by 2050, we need to start banning replacements round about now. Which is why ICE cars are going soon.

It's boiler replacements that are being banned, not the actually boilers. It's reasonable to assume some of the oil burners going in now will last past 2050.

Are you sure that doesn't apply only to new builds?

It's not just new builds, and the 2026 date refers specifically to banning oil boilers, with gas boilers prohibited after 2035. Kerosene boilers could mostly be retrofitted to burn hydrotreated vegetable oil from waste cooking oil, and publicising this would be cheaper all around.

This suggests that it will cost homeowners £13k to install a heat pump plus 70% increase in running costs overall https://eua.org.uk/future-rural-heating-policy-kept-secret-until-after-local-elections/

Thanks for confirming.

Well they can fuck right off unless the Governments pays me for switching to alternative heating. Luckily I got a new oil boiler last year so it should last as long as I can still get oil.
It's bad enough that we don't have main drains, fibre WiFi, reliable telephone lines, etc. but worth it to live in the countryside. We'll just all revert to woodburners then but - oh - we won't be allowed those either.

Unfortunately that relies on a supply of cheap vegetable oil.

If all the oil burners transition to that, then the price of the oil will shoot up.

Quite apart from the cost and difficulty of retrofitting existing housing stock, there's also the shortage of trained technicians and fitters to install and maintain the preferred heat pump options. There was an R4/Today interview about six weeks ago IIRC, with the head of the trade body who reckoned at least 70,000 new technicians would need to be trained ab initio. Hard to see where they are coming from or being trained to cope with a three-year deadline.

It's very true @GasPanic .

There is the option to switch to LPG which is far less polluting than oil.

We rely on an oil boiler and I’m not that worried.
Not sure I trust a word those arseholes at the Cuntyside Alliance say anyway (they emerged from the British Fieldsports society and mainly bang on about the ‘right’ to murder the local wildlife and blast creatures out of the sky).
Perfectly happy to convert our boiler to run on veg oil as and when necessary - or look into new technology.

The whole thing is ridiculous, not least because heat pumps simply won’t work in a large number of rural housing which tends to be old.

It's difficult for me, because I think heat pumps in rural places where there is no access to mains gas are actually one of the places where they make sense.

However, the flip side is that a lot of rural properties are old and poorly insulated which makes them difficult to use heat pumps in.

The problem is to me that all the emphasis is on the "big ticket" goal of net zero, rather than managing reduced emissions in sensible steps.

For me the first stage in this is ensuring there is an emphasis on bringing rural housing up to the proper insulation standards first, rather than banning oil boilers.

But the net zero target is so close, there is no possibility for this staging. They are going for something unrealistic, which they won't achieve and will cost everyone a fortune, whereas if they were more realistic in focusing on how to reduce emissions rather than the net zero target IMO it would be much more achievable.

@Daftasabroom When we considered LPG, we found ourselves stymied by the requirement for the tank to be situated a minimum 3m distance from the house, and it's boundaries so it would have been difficult to fill and still too close to NDN. However, I may have to reconsider now there are some new options. And I think we also have to look seriously at the Kensa ground source heat pumps being manufactured in Cornwall. Or at least ask for a quotation.

That's a common misconception, even amongst some trades, but there are high temperature heat pumps specifically designed for retrofit into older properties.

Aren't they much less efficient to run and even more expensive to buy though ?

I got a quote from Kensa for ground source of over 30k for the equipment (not installation!). It's a large 5 bed but still...

We're looking at the Vailant Arotherm plus, temperatures up to 75C and CoP up to 5 but normally 3. A bit more expensive but not massively so.

Getting a good reliable company to quote and sort the grants out is a different matter.

I live very rurally, in a Grade II listed cottage. There is no mains gas. Our heating is run by a combination of ground source heat pump, electric heating and wood burners. We are not permitted to have solar panels (which would reduce our reliance on mains electricity for powering our heating) or even double glazing, which could easily be fitted to our house to match what is currently there, but it is considered ‘not in keeping’ with a 450 year old hovel (this is how it is described on English Heritage website!) Our front and back ancient plank doors leak air round all sides - even though we have thick curtains and even tape up some of the doors in winter. We can’t even change the letterbox to one which does not flap in the breeze. We were not permitted to make imperceptible changes to the roof in order to be able to fit insulation.

It is not unreasonable to make moves to reduce polluting ways of heating homes, but banning certain ways of creating heat without permitting modern ways of retaining heat is counterproductive. We cannot retain the ‘charm’ of old rural properties without it imposing a cost on the environment. There has to be a compromise. Many of these property owners would happily fit double glazing and upgrade their doors and roof insulation if they were permitted to do so, but remove the main source of heating from the list of allowable boilers and there’ll be a riot.

A couple of links to older properties fitted with heat pumps. The National Trust have at least 6 properties heated with either air source or ground source heat pumps and as you can imagine they have almost zero insulation and single glazing. Engineers are also finding ASHP actually can work more efficiently in older solid wall properties as they have much greater thermal mass.
https://www.falmouthpacket.co.uk/news/23676499.trelissick-house-cornwall-ground-source-heat-pumps-energy/

Love to see how they'd fit a ground source pump into a cottage literally built over the top of a river. Heat? What heat?

Water source heat pumps can work really well or an air source. Ground source only makes sense for properties with plenty of space or near pre-existing mine shafts like in Cornwall.