What are retrofit options for someone with 90-100m² ‘hard to treat’ home, concerned about rising gas prices and the planet? Installing a heat pump is single largest measure for lowering the carbon footprint, but how soon to fit one on retrofit journey? #retrofit#heatpumps 1/
Doing nothing on fabric or gas means bills will escalate
and there is a serious risk that such a home will have lower resale value in the future. By starting to think about retrofit, home owners might do things they have put off for years, like clearing the loft. /2
Getting off gas early prioritises planet, without bills needing to rise.
Install ASHP early alongside
Limited fabric measures, such as loft insulation to modern std; seals / brushes for doors / sash windows for drafts (and cavity wall insulation added if applicable) 3/
Further pragmatic fabric measures lower heat demand and bills
Install slightly cheaper ASHP alongside
Pragmatic window measures and for one or two rooms, additional measures for cold walls or floors where possible and might add localised MVHR
4/
More fabric measures reduce bills, but can delay getting off gas
Install ASHP late after
Extensive and often disruptive retrofit measures to many rooms, including Double or triple glazed new windows throughout and Insulation for some floors and walls & extensive MVHR. 5/
Further fabric measures very difficult to justify
Install ASHP very late
Extensive/disruptive project such as (often inapplicable to older houses)
Removing problematic fabric & replacing with energy efficient materials for walls, floors and windows. External cladding etc. 6/
For those wanting to get off gas and do pragmatic retrofit, so the bills stay about the same, then options B or C are best. Striving for deep retrofit will take years for most householders and is not without risks because fabric skills very difficult to scale-up 7/
I would argue, scaling up a heat pump industry is far easier than a PAS2035/PAS2030 compliant fabric industry.
Too often the fabric measures are discussed without the practicalities associated with disruption, and cost. 7/7
On the 'without bills needing to rise' (after fitting ASHP) - this may surprise many who have succumbed to the many myths around heat pumps (and esp. ASHPs) - here is the explanation of why …
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Fed up of having to send complaints to the #BBC on its negative coverage on heat pumps to individual programmes, I have written to the Director General, Tim Davie. I haven't pulled my punches. #heatpumps#retrofit#heating#falsebalance
He should know, being the Co-founder of Amadeus Capital Partners, and writing a book on technology sovereignty.
He said Government efforts to reverse Nexperia’s takeover of Newport Wafer Fab would achieve exactly the opposite of what is desired: technology independence. 2/
Semiconductor sovereignty will be achieved by China, US and EU. China has the money and talent so it is only a matter of time.
Whereas Britain “is a minnow and will always be a minnow”. BREXIT was the greatest loss of sovereignty since 1066.
3/
- To be a companion, not a blueprint, for a community group
- Provide practices and tools that are practical and accessible
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- Helps ensure a diversity of views and approaches – technology, history, the arts, culture
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The EPC tool produced by Elmhurst @consultancy_elm and others makes no provision for larger properties using cascade heat pumps for larger properties. In fact, it only allows for very basic system specn.(such Air to Water, Air to Air, etc.). @BRE_Group 1/
Contrasting with gas boilers, where it allows the surveyor to specify the precise model being used on the SAP database.
It results in ludicrously high bill estimates for larger properties, because they are still assuming you are only using one heat pump that can’t cope. 2/
Hence the energy demand can’t be met a single heat pump and the flawed 'algorithm' appears to assume that the rest is delivered by direct electricity at a SCOP of 1:1. Instead of the reality (bills coming down) it massively inflates the projected running costs. 3/
Soil carbon is important but it is staggering that both Minette Batters and Prince Charles have made unchallenged statements on @BBCr4today : That some farms are already carbon neutral and that soils could take up 70% of the world's emissions 1/
This is all in an effort to promote sustainable livestock farming. Like Graham Harvey in his book ‘Grass-Fed Nation’ they have been seduced by the claims of Allan Savory; but these have been thoroughly debunked by the Food Climate Research Network oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/repo… 2/
The fallacy rests on a confusion between fast and slow carbon cycles, between carbon stocks and flows, which with a little bit of naive maths creates a myth that now permeates the NFU’s PR on the future of farming. We need better soil health to stop carbon release … 3/
@mskathleenquinn I have never made it there and maybe never will, but nuclear weapons changed my life in different way. In 1981, Professor Mike Pentz, who led the formation of the OU science department, founded Scientists Against Nuclear Arms (SANA). I was at Bristol Uni. doing a Post Doc. 1/
@mskathleenquinn I went to hear him speak. What an amazing speaker he was; I signed up on the spot. Within a months it seemed I was on the National Coordinating Committee. It kind of killed my passion for science, something I'd been in love with since a young boy. I left research 2/
@mskathleenquinn I went into the world of industry and in my spare time spent a lot of the 80s working in the background helping to develop tools for the anti-nuclear movement (like a Program to assess impact of nuclear attacks run on an Amstrad PCW 8256, given free to local authorities). 3/