Forum menu
We'd like to get some (independent) advice on energy efficiency and future proofing to create a bit of a work/investment plan for the next decade or so.
Things like:-
how much solar panel we could get on our south(ish) facing rooves (covered in dormers and Veluxes), what it would cost, payback time etc. What about batteries?
Boilers/CH - we're currently on a gas combi/microbore CH plumbing, which works fine as far as it goes, but as we both WFH, we're generally far from warm most of the winter as we don't have the heating on during the day.
We've done most of the obvious insulation stuff, but what have we missed? Is it worthwhile replacing some of the older double glazed units?
Its a 1920s stone clad semi-, so its never going to be a Passivhaus, ASHP feels like its not an immediately suitable solution, but could it be...?
Is this the kind of thing that Heatgeeks do? I don't want it to be just about heating, more about the overall building efficiency and I want someone who's not going to be invested in selling me specific products.
South Yorkshire if any one has personal recommendations...?
Thanks!
First check the government portal for the energy efficiency of your home:
This will give you some quick pointers on items to improve (although that will be based on the standards at the time)
Check with your current energy provider as they may offer an assessment (OVO do)
Solar - You're only going to generate during the day, but your consumption will be 24/7, so for it to be effective you really need a battery.
Check your current usage as if its for "general" stuff (lights, computers, washing, fridge, etc) use you may only be using 5-10khw per day.
At that level its unlikely that it will have a reasonable payback, unless you use it to charge a car or run your heating system.
ASHP work very differently to gas boilers.
Its more a low constant heat, so you generally have to run it 24/7, rather than firing it up on a cold evening.
Your home will be to be appropriately insulated, potentially bigger radiators, along with a change in your habits around usage
(especially if you're currently not putting the heating on during the day)
Thanks Chew - yes i'm aware of most of that.
I'd like to get rather more detailed though. ie - we could have Xm2 of solar panel, which based on the energy density of the panels, roof aspects and allowing for average cloud levels will generate YkWh of electricity, which we can store in a battery of Z capacity. The whole lot will cost £abcd, giving a payback time of A years.
To then add in ASHP and modifications to the house to make one work efficiently will cost £efgh, but can be offset by £ijk/year by having the solar panels generating the electricity.
We've been in the house 15 years this year. I'm hoping to be carried out of it in a wooden box in 30+ years, by which time many things will have changed, but I doubt energy costs will have decreased!. As an example, the bolier, which whiilst currently in good shape, predates us, so whilst not "old" is definitely middle aged. I'd like to have a plan in place that's better than "same again" when it does start getting ropey.
It's a fairly easy spreadsheet to process.
Makemyhousegreen has a good Google maps based roof calculator.
Use pvgis to work out what you can generate for a given size -and it's proven it's self to be accurate for me and many others on here
Solar made sense when our usage was only 10kwh AVE usage with a payback of 6-7 years 5 years ago at much lower electricity prices.
Now we use more electricity due to EV and moving to electricsolar thermal hot water our bill is less than it was then and the cost per unit is about double......
I figured the same as you . I'll probably leave here in a box and energy prices are only going one way currently
We have since added batteries for convenience - although the night rate octopus go has helped justify those significantly......but they mostly come into their own for load shifting gto cheap rate tariff rather than storing generated solar. Solar thermal in a self sufficiency drive and reduce oil consumption. As well as a shit load of insulation and a PIV