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.

I believe it is possible to have a heat recovery system using water temperature differentials @NeverDropYourMooncup . Our family business is in heat transfer and my father (nearing his 90th birthday) who lives in an 18th century harbourside cottage talked to DH about the notion some 25 years ago. It would have been expensive to design and install even then, and as mains gas was relatively cheap, I understand he decided against pursuing the concept further in view of his age.

heat pumps do work how they are supposed to, the problem is old, un insulated houses cant keep the heat they produce in. Its a slow and steady on all the time heat as opposed to fast heat when you need it that oil and gas produce.

If your losing heat faster than heat pump can generate it , then im not sure how that can be classed as green/ efficient ?

most of the housing stock in this country are not designed for heat pumps to work efficiently, double glazing and loft insulation are nowhere near enough.

But why not look into hydro-power as it sounds as if you live in an old water mill @NeverDropYourMooncup. Plenty of those around, both small and industrial, generating energy to power your home and supplying surplus to the grid.

We had to change our very old LPG boiler about 4 years ago to a new combi, and with the changes in pipework/water tanks, it cost us around £6k. We want to change/move our tank from Calor but due to the new regs, there's only one place it can go and that's under the drive which we have to take up (new tarmac), dig a tank in and then change all the pipework to the house. Quotes have come in at around £6 to £8 for this as well.

Several villagers have gone down the GSHP route and the general opinion is that it's not worth the cost or effort. It's raised often during parish council meetings.

My best friend has exactly the same issue. Wanted to upgrade windows and doors, external and internal. No, you can't do that. Even though many of them were already changed in the last hundred years, but the original central house is Tudor, so you can't change anything, even stuff that has already been changed, because you have to be able to see the progression of that change! Madness, because by that logic, why can't you change it now, for future generations to marvel at further changes!

She did manage to get the roof done, but with original tiles, cost her an absolute fortune. House is still cold though.

I like in a newish bungalow in a very rural location with an ASHP, if they had installed correctly and filled gaps it would be ok. I back it up with solid fuel. The insulation levels of even new houses in the uk isn’t good enough.

Listed buildings can have secondary glazing and insulation but you do have to do battle with the listed building officer and state how it will be installed without damaging original features.

I do understand why they are banning oil boilers as the flues near ground level cause a significant amount of air pollution, in a nearby village in winter all that can be smelt in the Main Street is oil boiler fumes.

Of course we have to reduce emissions to net zero (though the UK contribution is dwarfed by what is needed from China and the USA) but the Tories' attempts to shove almost all the cost onto homeowners at short notice is going to be played out at the ballot box. Where is the planning?

From what I can tell the cost of the battery alone on that install is 4K.

With his running costs at 50% that of mains gas, it would take 10 years alone to recover the cost of the battery vs mains gas. Let alone the fitting of the pump, which I guess he can't really give a price on because he did all the work himself.

Now to be fair it is not competing against mains gas because he doesn't have that, but still there is a long recovery time there.

Then look at the house. Its 700 sq feet, one wall is shared so is well insulated. The other is well insulated by an extension with cavity walls, so really only half a solid walled stone cottage.

My guess is if you actually costed up the price of the install (and by that I mean a full professional install not a DIY job) then the cost would look ludicrous vs. the value of the house. I'm going to take a random guess at 10k for the install plus the battery. I'd be surprised if the house was worth 100k.

I can't question how close your guesstimate on the installation is @GasPanic, but I'd agree the property's value probably doesn't merit that level of investment.

We had an EPC done a couple of years ago, because they were introduced since we bought in 1997, and the recommendations suggested would have cost over £25k, to go from a low D... to a higher D rating. OTOH, I am not entirely convinced by the basis on which EPC ratings are calculated.

I think you might want to try and understand how heat pumps work. Your freezer is a heat pump.

I'm not sure we can gain any efficiency of cost if we had to change fuel supplies, (aside from which we own an acre of woodland to offset anyway) we currently spend £600/year on oil and 600/year on electricity and we have solar. Our road is always the first to be put on generators in case of issues because the local supply can't cope..

@Ariela, if you are already coppicing your woodland and airdrying the timber, then your carbon footprint is lower than 99% of the UK. If topping it up in very cold snaps with oil and electricity is needed, then your costs are reasonably affordable. Truthfully, your road gets put on generators because the system knows you have skills and resources to cope. Our village is similar. Somebody's Landie goes up the hill to grit the road. There is no mains gas supply but power outages are common enough that we all have flat top woodburners so we can heat water etc. And most people have camping gear because it's a low income area, and camping is the holiday default setting. So we camp indoors in our own houses when infrastructure collapses. And if we don't get a hot shower for a week: it's not life-threatening.

If your house is literally over a stream @NeverDropYourMooncup , then you should be using the flow to power the house. It's old, but resilient, and as long as the stream slows, you should be harnessing it to generate green power for your home.

Sorry, poor typing. Old tech... and the stream flows........ as you were.

I did not know that.
Article about it in Ireland, 2021.

That article still says they’re recommending fabric improvements and radiator upgrades if you’re running on HVO so the same argument many take against when suggesting an ASHP. The price of HVO is likely to be much more than oil due to limited supply so the incentive to do what you can with your rural home to reduce heat loss will be that much greater. We’ve been wasting resources up to now just because they’re cheap so the incentive to minimise wasn’t there. Same with running oversized condensing gas boilers at high flow temperatures instead of designing systems properly.

Another off grid option if you want higher temperature, fast acting output (for leakier houses) and lower cost are air to air heat pumps. My brother has one as they’re off grid in Herefordshire and it supplies two indoor air con size units. It’s the sole heating for a 160m2 bungalow and cost them £5k all in (no grant).

But a custom designed power system like that would cost a stupid amount of money.

We don’t have the man power to convert these houses into heat efficient homes. We bought a 5 bed semi rural house which had a ASHP, electric boiler, solar panels and spray foam insulation in the loft.

The solar panel control box isn’t working so we can’t harness any of the power the panels may be generating. No electrical company will touch it cause it’s not their problem (they don’t want to know) so we’d be looking at buying a whole new a system.

The ASHP was installed without upgrading the rads/pipes etc in the house so our first quarter electric cost was £836 Dec-Feb 2017.

The spray foam insulation has made our house unmortageable with 5 lenders.

Every company that installed this stuff has gone bust cause there was very little regulation with installing and maintaining these types of systems.

We’re back on oil (tank was left in situ) and plan to stay on it for as long as possible.

Actually @GasPanic, when besieged Gorazde was cut off from the grid during the Bosnian war in the mid-1990s, the town rigged up floating platforms and secured them to the bridges over the River Drina, fitted them with wooden waterwheels driven by scavenged car alternators and then fed the power generated via cable. The story, with picture, is to be found in The Knowledge: How to Rebuild our World after an Apocalypse by Lewis Dartnell (2014); it's interesting reading and won New Scientist's Book of the Year.

I sympathise with you @Rantypanties . It's criminal how many failed and defective, even dangerous, installations there are by dodgy contractors who just walk away scot-free.

It is good they are getting rid of them. We have heat pump and its so toasty. x

Yeah but is it efficient? In cost and heat output compared to oil ? That will be the problem for many. I’m sure many will find that they cannot heat the house enough with a heat pump and it’s costing them a lot more to basically be colder.

this country will never reach net zero, everyone wants to be green but when it starts costing more for no extra benefit then it’s not so good.

People need to spend money on insulation first. this is a bigger prioirty than days out and weekends away though x

Good luck with that. To insulate an older property properly to bring it up to where it needs to be for heat pumps to work effectively and efficiently , you need to completely rip it apart and start from scratch. Just putting double glazing and loft insulation in is nowhere near enough. Where is all the money going to come from for millions of homeowners to do this ?

for people to want to switch to electric heating then the cost of electricity is going to have to drop drastically which is only possible by producing it from our own renewables , And I can’t see the power companies doing that any time soon .

Blimey! I hadn't heard this! We're not allowed an LPG tank due to thatch and not allowed a heat pump due to listed building. So what the bloody hell do they expect us to do? There will never be mains gas to our village, it's too small.

Electric heating?