Energy Prices

[CityDave94]

I tend to ignore adverts from gas supplier trying to sell me the idea of getting a smart meter on the assumption it would be more convenient, yet its handing control of how much I have to pay to these greedy c**ts.

You’ve recently sent us your meter reads, so you’ll probably agree that it can be a hassle when you’ve got other things on your plate. Why not upgrade to smart meters and let them do the hard work for you? Smart meters automatically send us your meter reads so you’ll have one less thing to think about. Your readings will always be spot on, which means you’ll only ever pay for the energy you use – and there’ll be no more rough guesstimates when it comes to your energy bills.

It only takes a couple of minutes from reading to entering the numbers on their website and this for something that is very important in maintaining the house each month. Why would it be a hassle and when did it become hard work ffs? 

Sums up the way the world is going wrong in so many ways.

[Honest_Man#1]

British Gas finally forcibly upping my direct debit by 50%, despite being in credit to the tune of two months worth of standard bill value, and being due to finish on the fixed tariff in two months. Went online to reduce it back down and it doesn’t let you set it below the new amount they’ve chosen.

Some time going to be wasted on the phone to them it looks like then. f**k off.

[Thane of Cawdor]

On 03/07/2023 at 05:55, TxRover said:

Nah, just had to spend $8,000 to replace the whole damn air con and heater in the house the ex got in the divorce a couple of years later.

Pay no attention to these cynical dullards   They can't believe that a true Renaissance Man has appeared among them.  Take comfort from the words of Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

 

 

[jimbaxters]

13 minutes ago, Thane of Cawdor said:

Pay no attention to these cynical dullards   They can't believe that a true Renaissance Man has appeared among them.  Take comfort from the words of Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

 

 

Is that Taylor's brother?

[TxRover]

45 minutes ago, Thane of Cawdor said:

Pay no attention to these cynical dullards   They can't believe that a true Renaissance Man has appeared among them.  Take comfort from the words of Jonathan Swift: "When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him."

 

 

“I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements.”

“…with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.”

― John Kennedy Toole

[hk blues]

21 hours ago, TxRover said:

“I really don't have the time to discuss the errors of your value judgements.”

“…with the breakdown of the medieval system, the gods of chaos, lunacy, and bad taste gained ascendancy.”

― John Kennedy Toole

Was he Peter O's brother?

[TxRover]

39 minutes ago, hk blues said:

Was he Peter O's brother?

…perhaps John Lawrence Toole’s…

[diegomarahenry]

I got a survey done for a heat pump last week. My house was built in 1910 (a good year for Scottish football) so it is sandstone, lath & plaster. The boiler is 16 years old and when I looked at a replacement, I was advised that I would get a substantial grant to get the heat pump installed. They said, from as little as £499 with a grant applied. 

Guy came out, had the space to put a heat pump in the garden, the rooms were surveyed and mostly due to the height of the ceilings, All of my radiators needed to be upscaled due to the lower heat emitted from the heat pump source. Some were increasing my 600mm and going from double to triple core.  
No pipework needed replaced due to age or type but 4 out of the 11 radiators would need moved due to the increase in size. 

Because of the age of the house, there is no stopcock from the water supply, it is isolated from the toby in the street. For the installation, I would need to have a stopcock valve fitted to the mains. The mains working pressure is too low and I would need to get Scottish water to increase it. He didn't know if that would cost anything. 

The final quote, not including the work needed carried out before install was £16800. Plus at least 3 rooms needing to be redecorated. The grant is a total of £7000 with a possibility of qualifying for an increase to £9000 if Ayrshire is classed as rural. They also had to advise me that because of the radiators required to heat the rooms, I would need a larger pump. The cost to run this would be significantly higher than I am paying for gas currently. 

It is completely cost prohibitive and I'll just get a new boiler. 

[Duszek]

4 minutes ago, diegomarahenry said:

The grant is £7000 with a possibility of qualifying for an increase to £9000 if Ayrshire is classed as rural.

Happy to confirm that Ayrshire is rural.

[TxRover]

35 minutes ago, diegomarahenry said:

I got a survey done for a heat pump last week. My house was built in 1910 (a good year for Scottish football) so it is sandstone, lath & plaster. The boiler is 16 years old and when I looked at a replacement, I was advised that I would get a substantial grant to get the heat pump installed. They said, from as little as £499 with a grant applied. 

Guy came out, had the space to put a heat pump in the garden, the rooms were surveyed and mostly due to the height of the ceilings, All of my radiators needed to be upscaled due to the lower heat emitted from the heat pump source. Some were increasing my 600mm and going from double to triple core.  
No pipework needed replaced due to age or type but 4 out of the 11 radiators would need moved due to the increase in size. 

Because of the age of the house, there is no stopcock from the water supply, it is isolated from the toby in the street. For the installation, I would need to have a stopcock valve fitted to the mains. The mains working pressure is too low and I would need to get Scottish water to increase it. He didn't know if that would cost anything. 

The final quote, not including the work needed carried out before install was £16800. Plus at least 3 rooms needing to be redecorated. The grant is a total of £7000 with a possibility of qualifying for an increase to £9000 if Ayrshire is classed as rural. They also had to advise me that because of the radiators required to heat the rooms, I would need a larger pump. The cost to run this would be significantly higher than I am paying for gas currently. 

It is completely cost prohibitive and I'll just get a new boiler. 

A refreshing story of honestly and competence. Too often some lad would diddle the numbers to make it look appealing then then, wham.

[diegomarahenry]

2 hours ago, TxRover said:

A refreshing story of honestly and competence. Too often some lad would diddle the numbers to make it look appealing then then, wham.

The person who put me down the heat pump route probably gets a commission for surveys booked,

The “from as little as £499” is very misleading. I would assume that would apply to a 1 bedroom, downstairs flat, built after 2010 where no radiators of pipes needed changed.  £499 to over £7k is some leap.

The guy doing the survey was fully engaged the whole way through, when he gave me the quote and I said I’d wouldn’t move forward with it, he said that the most sensible way forward was a hydrogen ready gas boiler.

In the unlikely event of the hydrogen network being up and running in the lifespan of a new boiler, they just need to change the injectors. 

 

[Shadow Play]

6 hours ago, diegomarahenry said:

I got a survey done for a heat pump last week. My house was built in 1910 (a good year for Scottish football) so it is sandstone, lath & plaster. The boiler is 16 years old and when I looked at a replacement, I was advised that I would get a substantial grant to get the heat pump installed. They said, from as little as £499 with a grant applied. 

Guy came out, had the space to put a heat pump in the garden, the rooms were surveyed and mostly due to the height of the ceilings, All of my radiators needed to be upscaled due to the lower heat emitted from the heat pump source. Some were increasing my 600mm and going from double to triple core.  
No pipework needed replaced due to age or type but 4 out of the 11 radiators would need moved due to the increase in size. 

Because of the age of the house, there is no stopcock from the water supply, it is isolated from the toby in the street. For the installation, I would need to have a stopcock valve fitted to the mains. The mains working pressure is too low and I would need to get Scottish water to increase it. He didn't know if that would cost anything. 

The final quote, not including the work needed carried out before install was £16800. Plus at least 3 rooms needing to be redecorated. The grant is a total of £7000 with a possibility of qualifying for an increase to £9000 if Ayrshire is classed as rural. They also had to advise me that because of the radiators required to heat the rooms, I would need a larger pump. The cost to run this would be significantly higher than I am paying for gas currently. 

It is completely cost prohibitive and I'll just get a new boiler. 

From what I can gather heat pumps only really work if you have an extremely well insulated and air tight home.  If you do have the luxury of having such a home you will require little heat to keep it at a comfortable temperature with any solar gain often being enough to heat the home. 

I struggle to see the cost benefits of heat pumps.

[Zetterlund]

6 hours ago, diegomarahenry said:

I got a survey done for a heat pump last week. My house was built in 1910 (a good year for Scottish football) so it is sandstone, lath & plaster. The boiler is 16 years old and when I looked at a replacement, I was advised that I would get a substantial grant to get the heat pump installed. They said, from as little as £499 with a grant applied. 

Guy came out, had the space to put a heat pump in the garden, the rooms were surveyed and mostly due to the height of the ceilings, All of my radiators needed to be upscaled due to the lower heat emitted from the heat pump source. Some were increasing my 600mm and going from double to triple core.  
No pipework needed replaced due to age or type but 4 out of the 11 radiators would need moved due to the increase in size. 

Because of the age of the house, there is no stopcock from the water supply, it is isolated from the toby in the street. For the installation, I would need to have a stopcock valve fitted to the mains. The mains working pressure is too low and I would need to get Scottish water to increase it. He didn't know if that would cost anything. 

The final quote, not including the work needed carried out before install was £16800. Plus at least 3 rooms needing to be redecorated. The grant is a total of £7000 with a possibility of qualifying for an increase to £9000 if Ayrshire is classed as rural. They also had to advise me that because of the radiators required to heat the rooms, I would need a larger pump. The cost to run this would be significantly higher than I am paying for gas currently. 

It is completely cost prohibitive and I'll just get a new boiler. 

It sounds like things were at least done properly and the correct decision was made in the end. Heat pumps are definitely not suitable for all homes, or if the home can be made suitable it's at great expense as you discovered.

Heat pumps wouldn't be feasible at all for the vast majority of people without the government grants. Thinking of the smallest & most straightforward jobs I've done, you could just about sneak into the £7500 bracket if it was for heating only and didn't include a hot water tank. But plenty of people are paying £16k+, in many cases not to save money or lower bills but simply to feel that they're 'doing the right thing'. These are obviously people with plenty of cash sitting around.

[Todd_is_God]

1 hour ago, Shadow Play said:

I struggle to see the cost benefits of heat pumps.

Really?

As with most "green" nonsense, the benefit is for those pushing the green technology.

For the regular man on the street there is no benefit.

[Caledonian1]

8 hours ago, diegomarahenry said:

I got a survey done for a heat pump last week. My house was built in 1910 (a good year for Scottish football) so it is sandstone, lath & plaster. The boiler is 16 years old and when I looked at a replacement, I was advised that I would get a substantial grant to get the heat pump installed. They said, from as little as £499 with a grant applied. 

Guy came out, had the space to put a heat pump in the garden, the rooms were surveyed and mostly due to the height of the ceilings, All of my radiators needed to be upscaled due to the lower heat emitted from the heat pump source. Some were increasing my 600mm and going from double to triple core.  
No pipework needed replaced due to age or type but 4 out of the 11 radiators would need moved due to the increase in size. 

Because of the age of the house, there is no stopcock from the water supply, it is isolated from the toby in the street. For the installation, I would need to have a stopcock valve fitted to the mains. The mains working pressure is too low and I would need to get Scottish water to increase it. He didn't know if that would cost anything. 

The final quote, not including the work needed carried out before install was £16800. Plus at least 3 rooms needing to be redecorated. The grant is a total of £7000 with a possibility of qualifying for an increase to £9000 if Ayrshire is classed as rural. They also had to advise me that because of the radiators required to heat the rooms, I would need a larger pump. The cost to run this would be significantly higher than I am paying for gas currently. 

It is completely cost prohibitive and I'll just get a new boiler. 

I got a heat pump 2 years ago and part of my house is from 1876 - the extension is 2 years old though .  I had to replace all radiators (or new ones compatible with heat pump in extension)  The overall bill was near £13k but at the time I got a £10k Scottish Government loan which I only discovered the other day is payable in twelve years (originally thought it was 10 years)  However you also have to factor in RHI payments - I get these every quarter for seven years and they amount to pretty much twice the amount that I pay back for the loan each year.  That is a great deal - they are indexed linked too and have increased quite a bot in the last year (whilst my monthly loan repayments remain the same for the twelve years.

It is true to say that the heat pump works a lot better in the extension where the insulation is far superior.  I have underfloor heating downstairs which works well and never have to put on the radiator in the upstairs bedroom (probably more down to the amount of glass that I have - gets really warm even in winter.)

I am going to make improvements to the older part of the house soon which will help with heat pump efficiency there - new front door as can pretty much see through existing one will be a good start.

Edited July 11, 2023 by Caledonian1

[lichtgilphead]

23 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Really?

As with most "green" nonsense, the benefit is for those pushing the green technology.

For the regular man on the street there is no benefit.

Can't agree there. There's no mains gas where I stay, so I would either have had to put a calor or kerosene tank in the garden or go for an all-electric heating system (Having been brought up in a house with coal fires, I didn't want to go back to the hassle of burning stuff)

We had storage heaters and panel heaters in the house, and ran a convector heater in the living room in the evening. During winter, the greyhounds had to wear pyjamas indoors all day. The house was built in 1990, and had 10 cm of insulation in the loft.

Electricity direct debit was £220/month, and the house was cold.

After installation of the heat pump , the electricity went down to £90/month. and the house is warm. I then had to improve the insulation in the loft to get the RHI money, but that's bringing in over £300/quarter at the moment.  Even with the electricity price rises, we are still paying significantly less on our direct debit in 2023 than we were in February 2019.

Maybe the lack of mains gas means I'm not a "regular man on the street", but it was a no-brainer for me, especially as the heat pump runs 24/7, and I now work mainly from home - god knows what the bills would have been with the previous "central heating"

 

[diegomarahenry]

47 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

Really?

As with most "green" nonsense, the benefit is for those pushing the green technology.

For the regular man on the street there is no benefit.

If it had made sense for me to get it I would have, but I get the impression that energy companies supplying heat pumps are taking in to account the grants on offer and simply upping the price of the system so that in effect, you are still paying for the full system and they are trousering the grant money. 

near enough £17k is a huge amount of money for the majority of the population, so is £7k outlay. The potential saving on gas could take the lifetime of the pump to level out. 

[diegomarahenry]

31 minutes ago, Caledonian1 said:

I got a heat pump 2 years ago and part of my house is from 1876 - the extension is 2 years old though .  I had to replace all radiators (or new ones compatible with heat pump in extension)  The overall bill was near £13k but at the time I got a £10k Scottish Government loan which I only discovered the other day is payable in twelve years (originally thought it was 10 years)  However you also have to factor in RHI payments - I get these every quarter for seven years and they amount to pretty much twice the amount that I pay back for the loan each year.  That is a great deal - they are indexed linked too and have increased quite a bot in the last year (whilst my monthly loan repayments remain the same for the twelve years.

It is true to say that the heat pump works a lot better in the extension where the insulation is far superior.  I have underfloor heating downstairs which works well and never have to put on the radiator in the upstairs bedroom (probably more down to the amount of glass that I have - gets really warm even in winter.)

I am going to make improvements to the older part of the house soon which will help with heat pump efficiency there - new front door as can pretty much see through existing one will be a good start.

That all sounds like a lot of cost around the install to make it work. I just couldn't justify it. My boiler cupboard was too small to fit the water tank, the cupboard that housed my old water tank was too small also, they were going to have to put it in a large walk in cupboard I have in my hallway so I would lose a lot of storage in my house. Where the external pump could go, I have two air vents, they would have to be bricked up and new openings made. 

The grant may also have depended on me having the full floor of my house insulated which I could have maybe got a different grant for. 

It was going to be a massive inconvenience and cost me more money in bills than I currently pay. 

[Todd_is_God]

2 hours ago, lichtgilphead said:

Maybe the lack of mains gas means I'm not a "regular man on the street", but it was a no-brainer for me, especially as the heat pump runs 24/7

I'd agree with this caveat, actually. I can see the mid to long term benefit of retrofitting heat pumps where gas central heating is not an option, but that isn't really the point I was making.

[Caledonian1]

9 hours ago, diegomarahenry said:

That all sounds like a lot of cost around the install to make it work. I just couldn't justify it. My boiler cupboard was too small to fit the water tank, the cupboard that housed my old water tank was too small also, they were going to have to put it in a large walk in cupboard I have in my hallway so I would lose a lot of storage in my house. Where the external pump could go, I have two air vents, they would have to be bricked up and new openings made. 

The grant may also have depended on me having the full floor of my house insulated which I could have maybe got a different grant for. 

It was going to be a massive inconvenience and cost me more money in bills than I currently pay. 

Perhaps it is a lot of cost to replace radiators get new hot water tank etc (ensure radiators in every room - there wasnt before) but definitely worth it to get the RHI payments - currently they are £480 per quarter so £1920 per year and therefore £13,440 over the seven year period that they are payable. 

Vast majority of my costs for all this work and the heat pump are on the £10,000 Scottish Government loan which is repayable ovr twelve years. 

Oh and my electric bills have not gone up significantly either - and thats despite having a couple of Ukrainians living in the old part of the house (they don't do cold)

I do have a woodburner in my living room but that is only really on at weekends and when I want the room to be toasty rather than comfortable. - majority of my wood comes from debris (branches, fence posts etc) washed up after floods