UKH

Hi All, 

I'm after a bit of help as this really isn't  my area of expertise and it all blows my mind a little bit I know there are some helpful people on here but can appreciate this looks like I may have done much research but I find it all so confusing. if people would prefer to point me in the direction of some easy to understand info that would be ace as well. 

I've recently remortgaged to get the kitchen redone and some other bits that I've been putting off for the last 5 years since I bought my house. We've got a gas boiler that's a couple of years old so should be good for at least another 10 years and is well serviced and guaranteed. My father in law thinks when  we redo the floor in the kitchen we should get underfloor electric heating and sack off the two gas radiators in the kitchen (I'm not adverse to this) The whole of the downstairs is open plan (kitchen, dining room and lounge are one big room front to back) in the middle there is a log burner and he thinks we should sack that off and also the one in the room at the front of the house in favour of electric radiators and just keep the boiler for radiators upstairs and hot water (not sure if this is even possible)

I'm reluctant to do this but am open to it if it's a good idea to future proof and move away from gas if it won't cost more in bills over the next 10 years and won't cost a fortune. 

I was just wonderng what people's thoughts are.. Appreciate this is a pretty simplistic description and thanks in advance for any help. 

Cheers

Dan

In reply to Levy_danny:

Don't switch to electric yet.  Electric underfloor (all electric in fact) costs a fortune to run.  You may prefer to go to a heat pump in due course, so you might want to consider wet underfloor while you have the floor up (as this works quite well with a heat pump).

In reply to Neil Williams:

+1

Unless the house is incredibly well insulated I wouldn't consider replacing gas central heating with electric radiators.

Keeping the log burner and sticking wads of £5 notes in it might be cheaper.

In reply to Levy_danny:

Sounds like a terrible idea. Using simple resistive electric heating is much less efficient and costs a huge amount more than gas heating.

Going for underfloor electric heating may have benefits for the room layout not needing wall mounted radiators, but it will definitely cost much more. 

This idea of 'future proofing' sounds very odd. Gas isn't going to suddenly disappear next year (and if it does due to supplies being completely cut off then electricity won't be available either).  If you want to get a 'future' solution then I'd wait until the heat pump industry has matured even further (hopefully with reduced prices and improved designs), and get a heat pump installed - in the future. 

Best reason to get rid of the log burner is to reduce the amount of pollution you subject neighbours to (assuming this is in an urban area not a rural one). Whether they're cost effective for actual heating as opposed to aesthetic purposes depends a bit on how efficient the individual stove is, and where you get your logs, although I think I've read it's generally in the same ballpark as gas, probably slightly cheaper. 

In reply to Levy_danny:

If you are sold on having UFH in the kitchen, you're going to have to go for wet UFH. I have it in mine and it's supremely effective (even on an uninsulated solid wall house). I wouldn't dream of even considering electric UFH, it is ridiculously expensive to run for anything but the smallest rooms.

In reply to Levy_danny:

The fundamental thing to understand is that, unit for unit, electricity is around four times the price of gas.  So if all you do is move from heating with gas to running a simple resistive underfloor electric system, your bill will quadruple.  In the very long term I think this will change and gas will increase relative to electricity (as we add more wind and solar, and gas becomes scarcer) but you're probably looking at decades.

For the medium term, the only realistic way you are going to get off using gas (assuming you don't want to play around with slightly esoteric things like solar thermal or a back boiler in a woodburner) is with a heat pump.  Because this can be in the region of 300% efficient, it more or less cancels out the greater unit cost.  If you can run it on cheap electricity (from solar PV or a night time tariff) then it can be cheaper.

If you don't want to switch to a heat pump just yet, it might not be a crazy idea to fit wet underfloor heating as part of this renovation.  It'll work perfectly well with the existing gas boiler and will be ready for when you do switch.  

In reply to Levy_danny:

He's unutterably, spectacularly wrong. Consider never listening to any of his advice ever again.

Electric underfloor heating is shit, and electric heating is and always will be the most expensive way to heat anywhere.

In reply to Levy_danny:

Agree with everything above about avoiding electric heating at all costs.

To help you put a figure on the pain it causes, we have a small 2 bedroom annex on our house which is heated entirely electrically.  Fortunately it's only used by guests, but they regularly use £15/day of electricity and with the price cap rise that's coming in October I can see it getting close to £30/day this winter.  That's to heat 4 small rooms, a hall and a small bathroom.

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

You phrased that little bluntly, but spot on

In reply to Levy_danny:

As others have suggested, wet underfloor heating is the way to future proof your house, connect it to your gas boiler now and probably a heat pump in the future. Heat pumps won't work well with your existing radiators, would normally be too small, but gas boiler would be fine with either. The other mooted suggestions for house heating, district heating (reasonable idea but requires more governmentspending tham recent recent governments have been comfortable with) and hydrogen (crap idea that is unlikely to reduce co2), would also both work with wet ufh

In reply to Levy_danny:

My opinions.

1. Now is not a time to spend borrowed money replacing serviceable stuff with lots of life in it.  Let alone the level of extra disruption to the building works, bringing in one or more additional teams with their addition calendar constraints (busier than normal) and supply chain problems (worse than normal).
2. Unless a house is super well insulated, pure electric heating makes no sense financially.  Whilst we have a lot of fossil fuels in the generation mix it’s not going to be particularly green.
3. You’d have to be mad to get rid of a serviceable wood burner going in to a winter riding in on the coattails of this year’s disruptions to fuel supplies.  I doubt the disruption of the invasion of ukraine has bottomed out yet.  War and instability aside, neighbours of ours who didn’t have a log burner found their house got down to 3°C on the third day of the storm Arwen blackout.  Some people didn’t get power back for 11 days.

> I'm reluctant to do this but am open to it if it's a good idea to future proof and move away from gas if it won't cost more in bills over the next 10 years and won't cost a fortune. 

Insulation and MVHR ventilation is the way forwards, not replacing one energy intensive source of heating with another.  

A cheaper way to remove kitchen radiators is fan driven, hot water based heater units that go in the voids under the kitchen units.  By getting more heat out (fan driven) they give a lower return water temperature giving better efficiency cor a modern condensing boiler than convective radiators, and unlike UFH you don’t have to dig the floor up, and you still reclaim the area blocked by the convective radiators.

Juat going to dangle it out there but seems like your father in law isn’t basing his suggestions on much rational sense, unless it’s purely about the appearance and/or function of the space.  Edit: Should have read the thread first; Longsufferingropeholder said what I’m thinking, but today I am practicing my self-moderation for unrelated reasons…

Edit 2 - this is the sort of under unit thing I mean - https://kitchenheaters.co.uk/product/kph-1500-classic

In reply to Levy_danny:

Hi all 

thanks so much for the advice I really appreciate it and it has confirmed what my very uneducated estimation of the situation was. 

Just to clarify I wasn’t intending to remove the log burner but it was more highlighting what we have as is, in relation to the suggestion of getting electric radiators in the downstairs rooms. 

this is probably another superbly naive question but if I were to get an expert in to talk about this sort of stuff who would I ask? A plumber or someone else haha.

once again thanks so much for everyone’s thoughtful and insightful answers I really appreciate them!

Dan

In reply to Levy_danny:

UKC

In reply to wintertree:

+1 on the kickspace heaters for the kitchen, nothing like having warm air blowing over your bare toes in the depths of winter.

In reply to Levy_danny:

I really wouldn't go electric. even if gas disappears and we all start heating with electric we'll still be heating water that can be used to distribute heat around the home.

The only issue with water underfloor heating is floor height. You really need good insulation underneath and you need to 2-3 inches of concrete on top so it's a case of breaking out the old floor and re-laying it. Saying this, I always wish I'd taken the plunge when I was doing my kitchen. It's an even bigger job to do after you've spent a fortune installing a new kitchen.

If the current radiators are old or imposing you could consider replacing them with modern smaller equivalents. Old radiators without heat exchanger fins are quite poor at getting the heat out compared to modern models. Otherwise you could look at "designer" radiators and make a feature out of a tall but narrow vertical radiator. And finally, if you have a long length of straight wall you could consider something like the discreet heat "Thermaskirt", a radiator built into a radiator.

And, before you even consider heating the space, consider the insulation. If you can sort out where you lose heat you can consider using smaller rads etc.

In reply to chris_r:

Not a bad suggestion!dIt's difficult to find people that know their stuff with this, who don't have a commercial incentive to flog you and install their preferred solution.

An energy survey would be a good place to start but the EPC / SAP methodology is severely limited. Best looking for an energy surveyor/auditor with decent experience of whole house low carbon refits. I'd want to see lots of examples of their work, and all the relevant bells and whistles on the website (professional trade associations etc) before parting with any money 

You could also check out AECB and their members

In reply to Levy_danny:

Ask a plumber, you'll get a plumbing based answer.

Ask an electrician if theyre quiet, you may get an electrical answer, though few sparks want to go near installing the stuff beyond providing a supply. So they dont care really. If you get one who does care, theyll probably look at you funny and say speak to a heating engineer.

Dont forget electric mats are quite temperamental with respect to installation and hot spots caused by air spaces and insulating furniture on top. 

Solar/ heat pump people - youll get a wet based heating system with a heat pump capability. 

Builder - will give you the plumbers answer, probably, or just give you the plumber. 

Tiler - wont care but easier for them is electric. Cos you just trowel the adhesive over it, dont ya?

Personally, as an electrician, Im planning on a wet UFH system for my house with the correct pipes for a heat pump when I get round to redoing the boiler etc or the future progresses. Until then itll be boiler fed. 
I did think about a log burner/ back boiler linked in but its just too much complication imo for the set up/ layout/ lifestyle I have. 

In reply to AukWalk: 

Hmmm. What if it is an efficient ‘wood burner’ and the correct fuel is used to reduce emissions? I don’t see any sense or reason for someone to get rid of a log burner.

The majority of people who surround us are self centred and selfish anyway, as seen by behaviour in shops/covid guidance breaking during this pandemic.

So, why should log burners be the pariah oh heating homes if used to guidance??

Its very certain that all the money spent on renewables is of no current use for demand or we wouldn’t have a shortage??

If you’re going down that route, then I want formula one stopped, no more flights anywhere and everyone riding a bike instead of driving.

Rave on!

In reply to Dave the Rave:

Same reason smoking around other people is annoying. 

They are proven to release high amounts of particulate pollution, and are an annoyance for neighbours. Not as big an issue if it's a modern burner and they are using properly dried wood, but even then it's not great and gas is much cleaner. It doesn't have significant utility value to make up for the downsides in urban areas where other people will suffer.

Not sure what people following covid guidance or renewables have got to do with it. It's still a negative impact on people that live nearby who have no say in what gets put in the air. 

Key differences to F1, flights, and driving are that the impact from a single stove on nearby people is much higher than any of those other sources, and particularly in the case of flying and driving they have a significant usefulness. F1 courses don't tend to be near people's houses, and I suspect actually produce pretty low levels of pollution outside the course boundaries so not a great comparison.

Despite the relatively low number of people using wood burners, they produce more small particle pollution in the UK than all road transport. And that's almost all in residential areas.

I admit it's a personal issue for me because a house near me has a wood burner of some kind going most of the winter and it's really annoying to have the house & any laundry hanging outside smelling of stale smoke when the wind blows our direction, plus the knowledge that we'll end up breathing in some of the very visible smoke coming out of the chimney.

I'm well aware that a 'zero' approach is not always desirable and taking a puritanical approach to all particulate pollution wouldn't be a good idea. But for me wood burning stoves in urban areas are simply a liability not worth the meagre benefits the offer their owners and should either be banned, or be subject to much more stringent monitoring and emission filtering than they currently are. I would argue that getting rid of them voluntarily is the public spirited thing to do.

In rural areas the calculation might be a bit different because your particulate pollution is less likely to be blowing into other people's houses. 

In reply to AukWalk:

Or leaving your fossil fuel car running in the winter to warm up??

Well a few in our street have burners, some burn wood, some burn coal or smokeless. There IS NO smell issue. Oh yeah. I remember some particulate paper set in Turkey or somewhere with folk burning anything they could get their hands on , NOT, kiln dried logs etc. Have you a paper for smokeless fuel ot kiln dried logs emissions?

Again, PROVE that it is? 
re. Peoples selfishness during covid. I didn’t want positive people wandering around putting covid up my nose but they did.

re. Renewables. There’s not enough power hence it’s gone up. If I can’t afford to keep warm this winter then I’m going to be selfish and burn a bit of legal fuel.

What? You what? Hahaha. So why are there now 50 mph limits and less popping up in built up areas? To reduce air pollution. It’s not some persons stove they’re slowing for.

. >F1 courses don't tend to be near people's houses, and I suspect actually produce pretty low levels of pollution outside the course boundaries so not a great comparison.

You for real? It’s the flying of the cars/racers all over the planet that’s the issue.

Papers from a non biased author to pull to pieces please, or light my fire with.

Well if your indoor heating and insulation is so efficient dry your washing inside? Sorry, you might get some damp up yer nose.

Gone walk dog. Back in an hour or so 

In reply to Dave the Rave:

They are significant sources of particulate emissions, and we're beginning to realise that this is a major problem.  Don't get me wrong - I have a woodburner myself, but I'm in a rural location with few neighbours.  I'm also careful to use very dry fuel, and even then I would hesitate to light it on a windless day.  I would not have one in an urban context.

They also need to be used carefully, and I'm sorry to say that lots of people don't do this, and just burn any old rubbish at far too low a temperature.  I've spent some time trying to persuade my dad that, if you can still see smoke from the chimney 20 minutes after lighting, then you're doing it wrong...

How do you reckon that?  Every kWh that comes from wind, PV or hydro is a kWh of gas that we didn't need to import!

I mean, up to a point you're right.

In reply to Dave the Rave:

You just seem to be bringing up loads of unrelated red herrings and getting personal rather than actually addressing what I said.

I'm sorry people put covid up your nose during covid but I don't really see how that has anything to do with this unless you're arguing that two wrongs make a right. 

Great, I don't have an breakdown of F1 logistics to hand. You have proved... What? 

You are right that the 50mph limits on some urban roads are not for stoves. But as I explained stoves are an issue too. Because they can produce pollution too, as I explained. 

As for proving that particulate pollution is an issue, how about you just go an read like any report on the subject from a reputable source in the past decade.

You also seem to be unaware of the health impacts of mould in the house, which is what you will get if you dry clothes inside with no windows open to stop smoke getting in. Even if that weren't the case it's an inconvenience and negative impact you seem to be dismissing just because you don't care personally. 

Not sure why you're being like this, possibly you have a wood burning stove yourself in an urban area and feel attacked? I don't mean to attack you personally, I just think I've made a fair point and you aren't engaging with it fairly. Maybe not much point replying further.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

Probably need a new thread to avoid hi jacking this one.

I think I understand the particle issue Jamie, and only use kiln dried or smokeless fuel now that I’ve used all my coal from the open fire.

Is there a particle issue with smokeless fuel, or just non kiln or properly dried wood?

Surely it can’t be advocated that you need to live rurally to have a log burner/multifuel stove? There are other forms of heat such as oil etc? If I lived in a city with an open fire and couldn’t afford the gas and electric heating, Inwould burn anything in order to warm the home. Isn’t it a human right to be warm?

I agree. 

My point is that the spend on the renewables has failed to meet the demand when the fossilised, imported portion has been reduced by current events. Yes, I agree that the renewables that are there have reduced some need to import, but it’s still left us with a big shortfall and potentially people being cold and killed this year.

What is the renewable impact in the south of England where the bulk of the population is and most energy used? I must admit I haven’t been below Stoke for many years, but I’ve never seen a wind farm around there. Any plans for hydro on the south coast or rows of windmills on the Mendips/ cliffs of Dover/ Cotswolds/Cornish coast?

Ive gone full Keegan here! Rave on

In reply to Levy_danny:

Replace boiler a few months before the cut off date and run gas until 2045. I've got air source heat pump, solar thermal, PV. Still get 400 quid electric bills in winter. Watch some youtube videos and install the underfloor heating pipes yourself, it's piss easy. Just need a plumber to hook up the manifold and control unit, should only take a day. My 2p's worth...

You don't need to pour concrete if you have a timber floor, you can take the boards up, insulate between the timbers leaving the ventilation gap below and replace the boards with t g chipboard. There are kits for this. If it's concrete you can lose 6-8 inches of floor height depending on the room size or smash the old concrete out.  

In reply to AukWalk:

I’ve no personal issues with you Auk, I just disagree. Have a good evening.

This isn’t a final dig, but yes we had a big mould problem in our kiddies bedroom. The problem was that she’s in the outside corner room of a semi detached property. It’s a box room and tiny, so, to make space we constructed a raised bed with storage space underneath. Big mistake. No airflow. I smashed out all the woodwork and just left it raised on metal struts on the wall. Thoroughly cleaned the walls with mould remover, and painted with anti mould paint. Then, I bought a dehumidifier which has been excellent. No mould all winter and we dry clothes in the front room in front of the multifuel!

Gouranga! Rave on

Press like for anymore antimould DIY tips 

In reply to AukWalk:

I've read quite a bit about the emissions from wood burning stoves but one thing which I haven't seen factored into the assessment is how much wood burning stoves are used.

I have to declare an interest here as we have a stove – its a multifuel one rather than a wood burner – and when it is on it produces a lot of heat.

We have gas central heating and as the winters in our bit of the of England haven't been really cold for ages, our stove hasn't been lit for at least three years. When it was in more frequent use it wasn't used daily and for well over six months of each year, not at all.

I realise in colder area stoves will get more use but I suspect for many of the estimated 8% of homes that have wood burning stoves they are rarely used.

I accept when in use, especially if wet wood is used, wood burning stoves emit more particles than correctly tuned diesel vehicles.

It seems unlikely the total emissions of the relatively few and in frequently wood burning stoves would exceed that of the around 12 million diesel cars and HGVs many of which are used on a daily basis.

Dave

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

Resistive electric heating allows you to heat one space at a time for minimal capital outlay. In all other regards it's shit but it's not automatically more expensuve to run than a simple poorly controlled gas central heating system if that is heating dead space.

OP: electric underfloor is stupid. Inly makes sense in bathrooms with really well defined and brief daily uses where it is easy to fit, can be run on a timer, feels nice and the floor is small so it's pretty cheap to heat. 

Jk

In reply to Dave the Rave:

Burning any solid fuel is going to release particulate matter up your chimney, because here will always be some of the fuel that's not properly burned and converted to CO2.  The hotter you burn it, the better the combustion, and the lower the particulate emissions.  But no domestic woodburner will eliminate this totally.  

The science is still coming on, and the papers I have read do rather lump all woodburning in as if it were all equal; really, it's plain that there is a significant difference between burning bone dry logs in a good airtight stove and burning smouldering damp rubbish on an open fire!  

I think that's reasonable, yes.  If I had an urban house I would not now fit a woodburner.  I don't plan to ever move again, but if I did move to an urban house with a stove already installed I would think very hard before lighting it.

It is unreasonable for anyone to be cold.  But any vaguely modern urban house is going to have electricity, and almost certainly gas, and (unless you have a free source of logs) they're going to be cheaper options anyway.

So perhaps Dave shouldn't have 'cut the green crap' and ought to have cracked on with expanding renewable options, rather than bringing onshore wind to a full stop and destroying the domestic PV market by killing off the FiT.  We could easily have been almost weaned off imported fossil fuel by now.

My house exports more energy than it imports overall - that's taking care of my hot water, heating, and charging my car, with quite a bit left over.  We should be doing this on a grand scale.

That's not the renewables' fault!

Well, electricity travels along cables (!) so the generation doesn't need to be right next to the demand!  And anyway, there is a fair bit of wind and solar down here.  Just not enough.  Yet.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

I understand that now , thank you for explaining

It seems that I understood that. Thanks

Would you think more than twice if you were cold, with no other forms of generating heat ?

Fences and pallets. 

Who was Dave and what green crap did he cut? If he burns that I’m reporting him

Youre advocating or suggesting that we sell energy from your (our) houses back to the TeivoS State?? How daring and entrepreneurial !

Perhaps candles at the Wakes?

That’s handy  Perhaps you all need a fair bit more renewable down there or all reduce your demands on the system. )

Nos da

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

This is where my agreement weakens. I'm just not convinced that installing solar panels a handful at a time at inflated retail prices is the way the treasury (or anyone tbh) should be paying for the necessary move to renewables. We never built tiny thermal power stations in every house. Should just crack on with the big schemes, and somehow legislate to admit that the every affected local community's sudden and extreme interest in newts when a new site is proposed is ultimately doing more harm to wildlife than if they stfu and got out of the way.

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

I think my village ( just by the mendips) would be energy positive in the summer if all of our roofs had sensible levels of solar cells fitted - I’d prefer that then we get too many more fields lost to Solar farms at a time when the cost of food is skyrocketing.

I appreciate its not the cheapest option, but that does not make it a bad one - this green transition is going to be pretty spendy.

In reply to Dr.S at work:

https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2021.659175/full

In reply to Dr.S at work:

The problem with solar PV arrays on roofs is the downstream issue of roof maintenance & repair. Roof finishes tend to get damaged during installation (in my experience of large solar arrays on aluminium roofs) and the damage doesn't become apparent until some time later. Difficult to prove who did what 2-3 years later. Anyone considering a domestic array should certainly own the installation and not be drawn to one of the roof rental type schemes.

The other issue with PVs is end of life disposal; PVs contain cadmium telluride and an industry to dispose of spent PVs will need to develop - rarely does decommissioning cost get factored in to PV investment decision making.

In reply to blurty:

The roof issue happened to my mum with leaks about 3 years after installation and this was a bog-standard (in SE England) concrete tile roof. The support brackets for the panels need to be correctly flashed and tiled. It was repaired easily by a roofer, but the issue seems to be that many panel installers aren't originally roofers or aren't greatly interested in doing a good roofing job. If you can somehow find panel installers who are also decent roofers, that would be important

In reply to CantClimbTom:

This was another thing on the long list of reasons why I took the money I could have spent putting solar panels on our roof and invested it in somebody else's solar panels someplace else. The returns pay the better part of our leccy bill so I get all the benefits apart from the virtue signalling to the neighbourhood. But they'd have to be at the back of the house anyway so even that's marginal.

In reply to Dave the Rave:

I don't see that as a very likely scenario.  Any house in an urban context is going to be on the electricity grid, and practically all will be on the gas grid.  So why will they be without the capacity to generate heat?  I don't believe there will be massive blackouts this winter.

Or are you talking about a scenario in which your gas has been cut off for non payment?  I accept there will be some households, which already have a woodburner or open fireplace, in which they are struggling to pay the gas bill.  That's a political problem and we should be doing much much more to keep gas affordable.  If I were in charge, there'd be a sliding cost of energy - the first few thousand units would be cheap (so everyone can afford the basic requirements) and then they'd become more expensive.

Pallets - fair enough, I use them as firestarters, but they burn up in seconds so you're going to need a lot of pallets to keep you going!  Fence panels are an absolute no, because treated wood releases some pretty horrific chemicals.

You see, I'm just not sure if you're taking the piss or not any more.  David Cameron.

Well, no.  The National Grid.  Hardly the soviet.

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

Mmm.  PV scales down to house size better than pretty much any other form of generation, because you can size the inverter to match.  Yes, we had to subsidise it with the FiT because retail prices were too high, but that actively brought the retail price down dramatically and also stimulated lots of research into better panels.  I think it was a necessary step.  If Cameron hadn't cut it, the FiT was going to become unnecessary in a couple of years (it was at 40p when it started, down to 10p when I got it, and was heading steadily towards zero) and we'd have been at a point where we had a sizable thriving PV industry and it had become cost neutral or even cost positive to do it.  Instead they all went out of business, installation costs went back up significantly, and it's still not financially viable to put PV on your roof.

Admittedly there are some roofs out there which should never have had PV installed.  Our village hall has a 4kWp system right underneath a lovely mature oak tree.  And it's true that the installation cost is smaller for big ground based schemes, which we need much more of.  Co-grazing with sheep works perfectly well.  My parish council is fighting like hell to stop a solar farm going in just up the road, alongside the A34.  Maddening.

In reply to blurty:

I hear this argument from time to time.  It's a long way off: PV panels degrade around 1% a year, so in a century my 5.7kWp array will still be generating a useful 2.1kWp.  Why would we go to the expense of taking them down while they're still useful?

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

interesting, thanks!

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

The trend for farmland is going over to bifacial panels which are mounted vertically which allows normal agricultural activity with little loss of area. Cheaper to install and don't need much cleaning. There's a 5MW array been built near me.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

This, near(ish) me:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-hampshire-61170550  

The reason for opposing it? Locals are afraid that in 40 years' time, having had something on the site will potentially make it easier to get permission to build houses on it than if it were kept as greenfield. IN FORTY YEARS. It'll be under the bloody sea in forty years if we don't do something somewhere.

50MW of clean energy, right by an ideal existing grid connection, and visible to vanishingly few people. But nope. Might make it easier to get permission to build houses there in 40 f***ing years, so nope.

I guess they didn't manage to find any newts so they also threw in some tenuous bullshit about Roman archaeology, miles away from the nearest Roman settlement. Dicks.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

I don't think this is true. I had a quote 2 years ago that would payback in 13 years. £12,500 for 5.25kWp system. FiT of 9.8p here. The cost of the panels / inverter etc. has come down so much the old mantra of 'only fit enough to supply your baseload because exporting doesn't payback' no longer applies - Our daytime load was low (fridgefreezer + freezer full time) but the best option was to fit as many panels as possible (5.25KWp) to export as much as possible. It is sunny here and a decent site like the house I had at the time would yield 1,175.38 kWh/kWp, the vast majority of which would be exported.

 > I hear this argument from time to time.  It's a long way off: PV panels degrade around 1% a year, so in a century my 5.7kWp array will still be generating a useful 2.1kWp.  Why would we go to the expense of taking them down while they're still useful?

My quote used panels with a guaranteed 93% output @25 years, so a much better deterioration rate. Sunpower Maxeon 3. They even guarantee 88% at 40 years now! Expensive, but the lack of deterioration apparently justifies the extra expense.

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

Not where I live it isn't! Electric is 8.57/20.67p cheap/peak, gas is 16.4p per unit flat rate. The joys of having to import butane/propane for your gas supply .

I wonder how long the mainland UK 4x ratio will hold for? Has it changed this year with the rise in fossil fuel prices?

In reply to Levy_danny:

Do you need the wall space? How much is it going to cost to rip up the floor and insulate it? Even if you insulate under a wooden floor (like I did in my kitchen)* it will still lose a lot more heat than heating the air in the room with rads. The plinth heaters recommended upthread would appear to be the most sensible solution if you're hell-bent of removing the rads. In terms of futureproofing and prepping for a heatpump, the key is massive radiator surface area. I don't know how good the plinth units are with low water temperatures in them.

*We needed the wall space for units because the kitchen had 2 doors and a tall window using up a lot of it, and the small rad under the window didn't provide enough heat to heat the room on its own. So we kingspanned between the floor joists and fitted Warmup electric wire heating in the floor area (not under the units). We'd only use it to take the chill off the tiles in the mornings because cooking tended to give enough heat. However in the end we found wearing slippers meant we didn't really need the underfloor heating at all and we just used the rad.

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

That's a different one to the one near me, but a depressingly similar story.  Frankly given the way that the green belt is being chewed up around Oxford, I'd prefer that they covered it in panels because then they won't be able to cover it in houses!

In reply to Toerag:

There's no FiT at all in mainland UK any more.  All we get is export of around 5p/kWh.  It will pay back, eventually, but you're looking at more than 20 years unless you can self consume a lot of it.

I had a feeling that the 1%/year figure was pessimistic (or possibly just outdated).  So your numbers suggest a 'half life' of about 500 years!

Ah - yeah, that will change things somewhat.

Apparently not much.  That ratio is called the spark rate, and I'm told it's holding fairly constant in the UK, and will do for some time to come, because so much of our electricity is gas based.

In reply to Longsufferingropeholder:

get an electric car and incessantly tell all your neighbours about it. Problem solved

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

Ouch! It's not technically a FiT here either, it's export like yours. Ours is linked to the price the power company here can generate at, they normally import as much power from France via submarine cable cheaper but the cable can't supply all the winter load. A 5p export would massively increase my payback period.

In reply to Levy_danny:

Electric rads bad idea.

Electric UFH only good for warming tiles, not heating spaces. 

Wet UFH very good, but depending on the construction of the floor, it starts at very expensive, then goes up from there. There could be lots of knock-on costs too, as it's way more involved than just chucking pipes under the floor, to do it properly. 

Radiators are cheapest option, and effective, and will not be getting ripped out of houses any time soon. 

More likely to see hydrogen powered boilers than heat pumps being the next thing I think, but am no expert. 

Matt

In reply to Levy_danny:

Hi all, so much useful information to take in here I really appreciate it. Got a timber floor in the kitchen area so wet underfloor is appealing but from a basic look I think the cost may be prohibitive. I’m leaning towards just upgrading the radiators for now and then seeing where we’re at in 10 years (if we haven’t moved) 

In reply to Levy_danny:

Our wet UFH cost £6.5k - it was a low profile system that only raised the floor by 15mm.  

Is it a solid timber floor laid upon a screed, or floating on rafters above a void?

In reply 

Some company wants to install a solar farm near me in a few large fields. About half a mile from there, in the last 12 months, someone installed an even larger area of industrial units. I think that the local council, or government, should grant permission for industrial units on the proviso that they fill the roofs with solar panels. These could supply the units and the grid. It would probably mean stronger roofs but, suck it up.

A few miles from me is a new Amazon building. The roof area is immense, loads of football pitches or green fields and totally empty.

In reply to Levy_danny:

We converted a garage into a room about 10 years ago.  The original house had an oil boiler with radiators.  We got an underfloor heating kit for the new bit.  It was basically a big jigsaw made out of large panels on insulation with a channel cut out.  We laid the panels, threaded the flexible pipe through the channel, laid the second half of the panels on top, then the wood flooring was laid on top.

The pipe was connected to a supplied manifold which attached to the boiler (this bit looked a bit complex, so the plumber did that bit.)

Its been working with no problems ever since.  I love it and wish the rest of my house had underfloor heating.  

In reply to Baz P:

Exactly.  Factories, warehouses, agricultural barns.  Giant, shade free roofs. It’s madness to replace forest or agriculture with solar arrays and to build dead, solar free roofs atop buildings that themselves displace forest or agriculture.  It’s a double hit to productive land, representing increased CO2 emissions over putting the solar on those suitable, giant roofs.

In reply to Baz P:

I see Amazon adverts on telly telling us how big they are solar power.

Oh yes, advertising = Bullshit = Amazon.

In reply to Levy_danny:

I would never recommend an electric heater over a central heating radiator. Electric heaters are insanely expensive to run. A 2kw heater uses the same amount of electricity as if you were boiling a kettle constantly. Keep the central heating radiators.

On underfloor heating, I have both. Electric in an outbuilding and wet in the house. Which one you go for depends on the floor size.

For example if you're redoing an ensuite bathroom then electric UFH would work as it should be timed to be on when you're in there. If you have limited wall space and a small area it will work.

If you have a large area or the entire floor of your house wet UFH will be cheaper to run, but it is more expensive to install.

Not knowing the size of your kitchen, or future plans for your house I can't really advise. Apart from don't get electric heaters

In reply to Jamie Wakeham:

The OP may also wish to consider floor insulation, especially if UFH is being installed on a screed, otherwise you may be spending a lot of money heating the ground beneath your house. Obviously there is a cost to this in raising the floor level and the knock on effect that has (both in practical and regulatory terms), but IMHO just about any amount of floor insulation is substantially better than zero.

In reply to wintertree:

Even better is the fact that the business inside the building will invariably be wanting to use the power when it's being generated. So you a) eliminate transmission losses b) reduce the need for peaking FF generation c) reduce the need for power storage d) reduce the load on the distribution network.  Our post office here has a 200kWp array on their roof and a fleet of eNV200 vans to recharge from it, they must save themselves loads of money.

In reply to Toerag:

Saving money yes, but with the vehicles being used all day when the solar will be generating it's not as ideal as it would appear.

In reply to gethin_allen:

They're virtually all back in by 11am.

In reply to Levy_danny:

You want wet underfloor heating. It will work with your existing gas boiler and with an electric heat pump at a future date if desired.

You no longer need to bury chunky pipes in 2 to 3 inches of sand & cement screed. There are low profile systems available at 15mm thick (assuming you have a solid floor).