Future Firewood Demand Optimism?

[Billhook]

 

[Woodworks]

I put a meter on our GSHP some years back.

 

It does all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats heating a barn conversion of approx 160 m2 built to comply with 2010 regs

 

From the 31/12/2013 until now its used used 18490 kWh hours of electricity. Thats doing all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats 94 months averaging 197 kWh per month. Take the average cost of electric over that time at say15 pence per kWh? it works out at just under £30 per month.

[Billhook]

2 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

I put a meter on our GSHP some years back.

 

It does all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats heating a barn conversion of approx 160 m2 built to comply with 2010 regs

 

From the 31/12/2013 until now its used used 18490 kWh hours of electricity. Thats doing all our hot water and much of the space heating. Thats 94 months averaging 197 kWh per month. Take the average cost of electric over that time at say15 pence per kWh? it works out at just under £30 per month.

Thanks for that Woodworks, we need more of these details from Arbtalkers  now that the cost of energy is so high so that we can work out a sensible price for firewood

[Puffingbilly413]

We run an ASHP that does hot water all year round and some heating in the winter (we have 2 wood stoves too).

 

It's hard to separate out the cost of running the heat pump from those of the washing machine and dishwasher, which with a young family seem to be eternally on, hammering the electric bill in the process.

 

I reckon we're on about £2-2.5k per year for electric (minimal gas as only have a hob).

 

Given our bills were much lower pre-heat pump (and family demand for electricity otherwise unchanged), it seems the heat pump is seriously expensive to run.

 

It cannot also cope with cold winters (it's in the small print) - it also can't really do heating and hot water simultaneously ie you have to stagger it.

 

If it weren't for the money coming back to us from the RHIP, the ASHP would be too expensive to run.  Ours is 5 years old now, so I'm not sure how much they have improved.  Sounds like GSHP might be more efficient?

Edited October 25, 2021 by Puffingbilly413

[Woodworks]

1 minute ago, Big J said:

 

 

 

The funniest thing I saw recently was a reply to a comment I made on a Guardian article about heat pumps. I raised the issue of insulation, and that we need a lot more of it. A chap replied to me saying that if he insulated his house more then the heat wouldn't be able to get out in summer and he'd overheat. 

 

It really was a Picard faceplant moment. 😆

Its not difficult to see why the UK is in mess is it 😂

 

Completely agree with about the poor levels of insulation in UK homes. There have been grants to help with costs of insulation but take up was not great. We seem to a be a nation who has a very short term view and always want 'jam today' 

[Puffingbilly413]

7 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

Thanks for posting the figures.

 

There is so much misinformation and fear mongering about heat pump systems in the UK at the moment. I think the primary issue is that they serve to highlight just how shocking our insulation levels are here. Of course they aren't going to be economical in your average UK home with average insulation. We insulate our homes like we insulate our cattle sheds. 

 

We have a Swedish friend a few miles away whose parents don't like to visit (Devon) in winter. They are from Mora, which is at the start of the mountain chain that divides Norway and Sweden. The beginning of the wilderness really. And they say they find it uncomfortably cold inside and out here in winter. 

 

It's the driven rain and damp that means we really do need good insulation here. The heat loss from a wet wall is extraordinary. The best way to illustrate this is to stick your hand out of a car window at 50mph when it's cold outside. First do it with a dry hand, then with a wet hand. 

 

I wish more people took the climate in the UK more seriously. We seem to deny that we need proper insulation or heating, and then on the flip side endure weeks and sometimes months without A/C in summer because "it doesn't get that hot in England".

 

The funniest thing I saw recently was a reply to a comment I made on a Guardian article about heat pumps. I raised the issue of insulation, and that we need a lot more of it. A chap replied to me saying that if he insulated his house more then the heat wouldn't be able to get out in summer and he'd overheat. 

 

It really was a Picard faceplant moment. 😆

The insulation point is a good one and certainly is a factor in the winter re money spent on heating.  That said, there have been certain points this summer when I have been glad of the cooler temperature inside an old stone built house.

[Puffingbilly413]

2 minutes ago, Woodworks said:

Its not difficult to see why the UK is in mess is it 😂

 

Completely agree with about the poor levels of insulation in UK homes. There have been grants to help with costs of insulation but take up was not great. We seem to a be a nation who has a very short term view and always want 'jam today' 

I did try to get our loft re-done through one of the grant schemes but when they came round to assess the job, the cost of ripping out the old loft boarding and re-doing it (not that old either) would have fallen on us and we simply couldn't afford to do it at the time so we let it pass.  I think we'll have to revisit the idea though.

[Woodworks]

2 minutes ago, Puffingbilly413 said:

The insulation point is a good one and certainly is a factor in the winter re money spent on heating.  That said, there have been certain points this summer when I have been glad of the cooler temperature inside an old stone built house.

A stone built house with insulation on the outside is the best of all worlds IMO. All the stone is thermal mass so it doesn't fluctuate in temperature quickly. If you insulate the outside (EWI) in the winter all that stone gets warm and stays warm. In summer the insulation slows the walls heating up. And they wall will balance day/night temps

[Woodworks]

3 minutes ago, Puffingbilly413 said:

I did try to get our loft re-done through one of the grant schemes but when they came round to assess the job, the cost of ripping out the old loft boarding and re-doing it (not that old either) would have fallen on us and we simply couldn't afford to do it at the time so we let it pass.  I think we'll have to revisit the idea though.

It's the way to make a HP financially work for you. 

[Billhook]

24 minutes ago, Big J said:

 

Thanks for posting the figures.

 

There is so much misinformation and fear mongering about heat pump systems in the UK at the moment. I think the primary issue is that they serve to highlight just how shocking our insulation levels are here. Of course they aren't going to be economical in your average UK home with average insulation. We insulate our homes like we insulate our cattle sheds. 

 

We have a Swedish friend a few miles away whose parents don't like to visit (Devon) in winter. They are from Mora, which is at the start of the mountain chain that divides Norway and Sweden. The beginning of the wilderness really. And they say they find it uncomfortably cold inside and out here in winter. 

 

It's the driven rain and damp that means we really do need good insulation here. The heat loss from a wet wall is extraordinary. The best way to illustrate this is to stick your hand out of a car window at 50mph when it's cold outside. First do it with a dry hand, then with a wet hand. 

 

I wish more people took the climate in the UK more seriously. We seem to deny that we need proper insulation or heating, and then on the flip side endure weeks and sometimes months without A/C in summer because "it doesn't get that hot in England".

 

The funniest thing I saw recently was a reply to a comment I made on a Guardian article about heat pumps. I raised the issue of insulation, and that we need a lot more of it. A chap replied to me saying that if he insulated his house more then the heat wouldn't be able to get out in summer and he'd overheat. 

 

It really was a Picard faceplant moment. 😆

When I built this house in the 1980s I knew that due to its exposed position that insulation was going to be important so I tripled the fibreglass loft insulation.  Unfortunately the one size fits all building regulations said that I would need fully ventilated eaves.

The result was that in high Winter winds the air came in and went under the insulation and chilled the plasterboard ceilings which then acted like a chiller radiator.

I discovered icynene, a water based breathable foam, unlike the chemical foams I was familiar with on the farm in the potato chitting sheds.  Anyway we filled the loft spaces with it and the result was fantastic, no smell and minimum disruption

The only unpleasant job for me was to mask up and overall up to remove the horrible old fibreglass, much of which had blackened,  and put it all in a farm trailer, which it filled.

 

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