1mo ago

Heat pump as a money trap; the real issue is building regs

www.getsurrey.co.uk 'My heat pump is a money trap as bills four times higher than boiler'

Vahid says his family have been struggling to get his home over 15C and frequently have to have cold showers

I totally feel for this guy. But the real crime here is successive governments that have completely failed in holding the housebuilders to account with tougher specs for new build houses.

Why the hell a 2020 newbuild house needs any space heating at all is beyond me. Should just be passive, with electric heater for the shower.

The big picture is that we are shipping great wealth to fuel-producing countries because politicians are too lazy or corrupt to insist on modern building methods and standards that are properly enforced.

7 comments

Hardly surprising given the money donated to the Tories by the property sector:
https://www.businessinsider.com/more-than-20-of-conservative-party-donations-from-property-sector-2021-7
Not sure how things stack up compared to Labour, but there's most likely still a lot of money being thrown around to make sure builders make as much profit as possible.

This reads like a load of bullshit
- I haven't blocked the Tory press from my newsfeed and it is a constant drizzle of negative stories about EVs, heat pumps and green energy in general (onshore wind turbines and pylons in particular), so I can see why the general public hasn't embraced it. This article has a similar whiff to it.
  
  Pleasingly, most of the comments are people saying theirs if fine. For a change!
- It sounds like the house isn't insulated.

Why the hell a 2020 newbuild house needs any space heating at all is beyond me. Should just be passive, with electric heater for the shower.
Lobbying from Big House. They say it'll raise the cost of new builds but they don't mention the lower running costs. If you factor in the way such measures would kickstart the green home energy industry (with more quality jobs), reduce the cost of such measures thanks to economies of scale and leave us less beholden to the whims of the energy producers, it would be a net gain.
Unfortunately, if Starmer tries it, he'll be hammered with "Keir makes buying a house more expensive" headlines and he is already being given a kicking in the right wing press. However, if he also announced a Green New Deal with improvements to the poorest households he could claw back some favour from the public (and further boost jobs) but where would the money come from? I'd like a few more windfall taxes on energy companies and it'd be popular.

Honestly, this all just seems to stem from the ASHP breaking down, and possibly being undersized in the first place.
If it as having to run on resistive the whole time, then yea, it would cost a blooming fortune.
Building regs on heat retention have also tightened by 20% since 2020, so newer builds should require less to heat them now.
What I don't get though, is that if it was a newbuild, would it not be covered by NHBC's warranty? Which should include the heating system, unless it is already under another warranty.

7 comments