Keeping your home warm / heating / energy crisis / insulation etc

Look great, absolutely shite if you want that room warm tho

Just had some great success draught proofing an extremely awkward (opens outwards!) wooden door that is also a bit warped with some silicone door seal tape.

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My family has moved into a big house and realised they can't really afford to heat it as it stands. They have some cash to spend in improvements, but mostly seem interested in getting solar and cache batteries, whilst heating the house with plug in electric heaters. Intuitively I feel like they should look to improving insulation and using the gas central heating. I've no numbers to back any of this up. It just feels like the better idea in the long run (they don't think they'll live here for longer than 20 years)

Does anyone recommend a service where people come round and look at all your stuff and assess what would be best to do? They won't listen to me but they may listen to someone like that. They're in Leicester rather than London (or they wouldn't have bought a big house) but I would appreciate knowing ball park how much such a service would cost.

They gave an EPC but don't seem that interested in it.

We are in Gloucestershire and used these guys who were brilliant. Obviously they won’t help where your family are, but maybe they could point you in the right direction?

https://severnwye.org.uk/my-home/home-energy-surveys/

Their concept is mad!

they're going to bankrupt themselves if they think they can run plug in heaters off solar.

Bonkers ‘idea’. Ruinously expensive to heat a large house using any kind of direct electric heating.

Get a heat pump off Octopus/British Gas with the £7.5K grant, run it via the Tomato Energy tariff that gives 6 hours of 5p/kWh leccy per day.

How does a fan heater compare to those oil filled radiators? It's for using to take the edge off the cold when I'm working from home, so just me in one room with the door shut.

The radiators look pretty big compared to the fan heater. Is there some mid sized option?

Normally you improve the building envelope first, although that's tricky if you have a difficult shape, planning restrictions, or lots of external walls.

Cheapest method is to improve/heat one room (lounge) and slowly work through the rest as time/money allows.

The EPC usually gives guidance on what to improve, if they have a recent one of those. They should if they’ve just bought the house.

Solar in effect is a completely separate piece to the energy puzzle. When you need most heating there’s likely to be least solar and vice versa.

The Octopus prices seem very good and upgrading radiators is included in it. But insulation is key to it being efficient (from my understanding).

Retrofit coordinator if they want an informed opinion and someone to help plan works. They do vary a bit in expertise so try and get recommendations or speak to them first.

Are you using Tomato? First I’ve heard of them but 5p/kWh is insane!!

Just switched to Tomato from Octopus, switchover date is today so I'll keep you posted!

Looking to load-shift dishwasher, washer-dryer and partially the heat pump, to the 1am-6am 5p period.

Tomato update: went live today. I scheduled a full dishwasher load, full washing machine and tumble dryer loads, hot water tank reheat, and gentle heating boost from heat pump.

Leccy used so far today (midnight till 10am): 15kWh.
Cost for this period on Tomato: £1.45
What this would have cost today on previous Octopus Tracker tariff: £4.50

They’ll probably go bust in a couple of months…

I thought today was expensive on Octopus tracker (32p/kWh) tomorrow it is 37p/kWh!

How does a fan heater compare to those oil filled radiators? It's for using to take the edge off the cold when I'm working from home, so just me in one room with the door shut.

I got a little 700w radiator. Brought my office room up by about 3 degrees in an hour of full on, assume it will start to click on and off after that. In the bigger living room it has brought it up by about 1 degree in an hour (but the thermostat is the other side of the room) but assume that once the proper heating clicks on that should help it get up to temperature.

700W at 24p/kwh is 17p per hour which seems pretty reasonable.

It doesn't give the quick blast of heat that a fan heater does but they seemed much less efficient.

It doesn't give the quick blast of heat that a fan heater does but they seemed much less efficient.

Any direct electric resistive heater will be 100% efficient. Fan heaters slightly less so, as they need to drive fans as well as the element.

A fan heater will heat up the air much quicker, but will be doing fuck all very quickly once turned off.

An oil radiator will have a load of thermal mass acting as a buffer, and will continue to release heat energy long after the element turns off.

Both will impart the exact same amount of heat energy into a space, for an equivalent amount of energy consumption, only the way you experience this energy as a human over time may vary.

Fair point, but the 2kw fan heater probably overshot the temperature rather than the slow increase from the 700w so more cost-effective may be a better phrasing.

the way you experience this energy as a human over time may vary.

This human receives radiant heat far more beneficially than ambient heat, for the same joules.

Agile has about six hours of £1/kWh tomorrow!

Grey, calm and cold.

It's effed up. Looks like I switched away from Octopus at just the right time 😬

In more Tomato Energy news: yesterday's bill for me was £4.26 for 30kWh usage, including dishwasher, washing machine, tumble dryer, full hot water tank, heating the entire house constantly to 21C, cooking 3 meals etc (electric only, gas-free here). If I'd stayed on Octopus Tracker, the bill would have been over £10.

Same here. This is why a well-insulated building just 'feels' so much nicer compared to an uninsulated solid brick equivalent, even if the air inside is at the same temperature. The surfaces and objects will be warmer, less temperature differential between them and your body, less radiant heat transfer from your skin and flesh to plaster and brick.

Half of my house is still completely uninsulated, solid Victorian brick. Moving from the well-insulated and airtight new extension and loft, to the old areas, feels like a night and day difference in comfort, even though the air temperature is always the same 21-22C throughout the entire house.

IMO fan heaters make the room feel stuffy, and noisy, an oil filled electric rad is the way to go.

Do you just heat your hot water tank over night. We get cheap rate 0000 to 0800 so I've had it only allowed on during those hours.