How do I bathroom / kitchen / extension? etc.

the popularity of ASHP in more extreme climates than ours suggests there are no intrinsic issues with them

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This is obtainable for the vast majority of working people in this country.

Cheers folks, didn't really understand all that ACH stuff.
Would love to go Passive house but its a hierarchy of needs vs money trade off, hopefully some day and could design a way to hide something in the garden rather than have something daft on the roof for all to see.

I bought a Bosch washing machine second hand.

I can see why the owner wanted to get rid. It was like a bucking bronco. The original fitters had forgotten to fit the feet and level it.

The Bosch website was actually really good for sourcing everything I needed to sort it.

what an odd comment

first - we're in a thread full of high priced reno recommendations.

second - what is obtainable/realistic is a shifting dial, influenced by a range of economic and policy levers. We need to first decide on what is necessary and good (which this undeniably is) and then decide how to get there.

third - i never claimed the way i'm going about this is the best way for most people to do it

fourth - do you pop into someone's 10k superbike build with snide comments about how it's unaffordable for most people?

Do you think ASHP is unobtainable for people here in the UK but seemingly fine for people in others countries like Italy or Lithuania? Or is it just the way I've gone about using an architect, etc?

Don't get me wrong, every ASHP I've ever seen is ugly af. If affordable Ground-source is the way to go but it is damned expensive.

In terms of unobtainable I dont think it is, but the actual costs in regards to getting it and making it right are a lot more than people think. As much as an alternate for boilers I just dont think it is the one and its not just a straight retro fit compared to a boiler.

I haven't done the training yet but have investigated it a lot in terms if its worth doing and right now up here I would say its not.

This is really interesting. UK housing stock is so much worse insulated and draughtproofed than northern Europe. That will take a lot of fixing, but it shows what is possible.

I tried to persuade my parents, who have just bought a bungalow that is pretty warm and well insulated to consider a heat pump, but they didn't find the right tradespeople and got persuaded to get another gas boiler. I'm sure their place would have been ideal, but I now realise I'd need to have done the research and found the right installers.

Can every just chill?
The cost for one rooms worth of cool air is 1500 but I don’t want the ugly box.
So, there you go.

Oh good unintended pun.

I'd suspect that those properties in the colder climates were probably better insulated to start with.

Definitely.
We also heat our rental apartment with a vintage gas boiler.

it's either going be ASHP, heat networks, or hydrogen retrofit

I'm not convinced by the latter two for different reasons so for me it's a question of when, not if for ASHP. That of course might not change the calculus for whether it's right for you as a professional, though. FWIW I've heard HeatGeek is a very good training course for this stuff.

More widely it's not great for the UK how behind the workforce is on this stuff. I tried to have a discussion with the last two plumber/heat guys we had round about wanting to set my boiler at 50c flow temp now I have large k33 rads installed. They both looked at me funny, but the boiler actually condenses now and runs much more efficiently, and the house still stays warm!

probably, yep. But again, those are political (and sometimes personal) decisions. That doesn't change the fact that we need to retrofit our existing housing stock and set better standards for newbuilds too.

I'll see if I can find a picture of that sexy expensive looking one I saw in Switzerland!

Looked something like this.
Probably as expensive as a loft extension.

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Still ugly.
Agree on what @gillies says. UK probably same as Germany in broad terms as our policies regarding renewables are stupid.
House we live in has a boiler per apartment, and that's pretty standard in Berlin.
Long way to go, and feels like we haven't really started.

Having seen houses being built in Finland I would agree, the walls were thick and fully insulated with some form of block insulation.

I don’t think there are intrinsic issues with them, just cost:benefit being misunderstood/missold to people.

They aren’t as energy efficient as people hope they will be, and for lots of people they want to do something more environmentally conscious, but price / money saving is a big factor.

Your top 5 countries will have different housing stock and energy prices which will affect the cost:benefit analysis for consumers there.

Of course housing stock differs. My point is - this can (and must) change.

Before 1972, tenements here in Glasgow never had an indoor toilet. But that didn't mean we just decided that it wasn't for us. We adapted.

Agree. But I think people would switch quicker if there were economic as well as environmental benefits. Installers/government schemes etc recognise that but don’t provide enough incentives and overstate the financial benefits.

I think it’ll be hydrogen for a start, the manufacturers are already having the boilers ready for a hydrogen blend in the gas.

The issue with hydrogen is it’s expensive as fuck to make.

ASHP works great in a new super insulated house but for a retrofit I’d say it’s negligible because of the costs associated with it.

Not to mention how can the government throw enough money at every house to get one, it’s not possible and if they do it just attracts the same worst cunts that batter the units in make the grant money and fuck off when the shit hits the fan.

An important question is whether the available evidence supports a case for heating homes with
hydrogen. This paper reviews independent analyses on the use of hydrogen for space and how
water heating. Independent in this context is defined as “not carried out by or on behalf of a
specific industry (e.g. gas, oil, electricity, heat pumps, boiler manufacturers)”. The review
includes a total of 32 studies carried out at international, regional, national, state and city-level
by a wide range of different organisations including universities, research institutes, intergovernmental organisations such as the IPCC2 and the IEA1 and consulting firms. Industry-
funded studies have been excluded because such studies are often carried out on behalf of industry groups in order to support a position that suits their vested interests. This is not to say
that there are no robust analyses funded by industry but for the purpose of this review of
independent evidence they have been excluded.
The evidence assessment shows that the widespread use of hydrogen for heating is not supported
by any of the 32 studies identified in this review. Instead, existing independent research so far
suggests that, compared to other alternatives such as heat pumps, solar thermal and district heating, hydrogen use for domestic heating is less economic, less efficient, more resource intensive, and associated with larger environmental impacts.

Source - http://www.janrosenow.com/uploads/4/7/1/2/4712328/is_heating_homes_with_hydrogen_all_but_a_pipe_dream_final.pdfo

Had new landing carpet and stairs runner fitted today, the fitter was telling he how bored he is of fitting mid grey carpets