The idea of insulating the walls has exposed a flaw in the government’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) scheme: the more energy you require to heat your house, the greater your potential returns (assuming you use a renewable heat source such as GSHP). This is counter-productive, as we should be encouraging home-owners to insulate heavily first. For example, say it costs £10k for me to insulate the walls through internal cladding. This reduces the size of the heat pump required, which means I get less payments from the government, over 23 years, possibly losing me £40k in revenue. If my increase in heating costs is £20k because I chose not to insulate, I’d still be financially better off. Of course, it’s not just about the financials, but it’s what drives most people’s behaviour, so if the government want to see a reduction in energy consumption, they’d do well to revise their ideas.
Archive for June, 2010
Insulating the walls a bad idea???
June 30, 2010Hellifield Peel and their GSHP
June 29, 2010A brilliant episode of Grand Designs showed a family bring a 12th century castle back to life. At times it seems impossible and I had to hide behind the sofa. The result however is fabulous and a testament to what is possible. One part of the show that had always left me wondering was the Ground Source Heat Pump – how effective had it been for them? Installed throughout, the system was to be used to provide the hot water and heating (there was no gas and they wanted to avoid oil, just like us). I was delighted then to find a video of Francis the owner talk about his experiences of living through 2 winters with the GSHP. Running a bed and breakfast there’s clearly an important demand for decent heating and hot water, and he claimed the GSHP did an admirable job providing these. You can see the video here: http://www.iceenergy.co.uk/hellifield-peel—c4-grand-designs-winner-_238/. This is just the kind of comfort I need before finalizing the heating system…
Hellifield castle uses a GSHP
Grand Designs helps set expectations
June 22, 2010My wife and I like to watch Grand Designs to remind ourselves that the project will be very stressful, that it will overrun in time and money and that we should steer clear of trying to manage the project ourselves. This sets our expectations, and hopefully will make for a more enjoyable project.
kevin mccloud - our messenger
Ground Source Heat Pump in an old house
June 18, 2010So here’s the dilemma. The house is old, badly insulated and without many options to improve it. Will a GSHP with under-floor heating be sufficient to warm the house in a cold winter? Or should we design in an auxiliary system – a traditional central heating system? There’s no gas in the area, so it would need to be oil presumably which I know is very expensive and rather out of sync with our goal of making an old house as environmentally friendly as possible.
We’d rather not have radiators all over the place, and like the idea of relying solely on GSHP (with the pump powered by our solar panels) but are we going to find ourselves freezing cold? We’ll have a few wood-buring stoves downstairs, so these rooms should be OK. But what about upstairs? My dad’s going to have a go at some sums. Anyone know how we should approach this?
See the oil tank? Alas, it's empty 
