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

Not really been using the heating but have been putting the gas fire on at night as its chilly still here and absolutely not summer.

Heating went off mid April and won't be back on til end of October/early November.
If it gets chilly, a jumper and/or a blanket will suffice.

At least it’s the advertised 20 degrees today. Lovely.

I find temperatures over 18°c uncomfortable

Yeh heating is off and window vents are now open, blanket if feeling chilly on the sofa

Just paid my gas from June last year to now. About£310 for heating, hot water and cooking. Is that low? I turned the flow rate right down in the winter. Radiators were tepid. Finally got my money's worth from my D-1A heavy flying trousers. 2 bed flat, top floor, heat coming up from the two floors below. A fairly thick-walled Victorian mansion block with flats either side.

Thats a lot of people’s monthly energy bill for a cold winter month.

That's good. I was very anxious about the subject last year when the shit hit the fan.

seen some forecasts this week that say energy prices will remain volatile until next decade.

Makes me feel better about spending a shed load of money on EWI, new rads and windows etc.

3-bed mid-terrace up north, new boiler, don't use gas for cooking, with British Gas - £1100 or so for that period.

Heating was generally set to 18 over the winter.

we're buying as house that has an old back boiler fitted.
I'd like to move away from gas and get an air source heat pump, can I upgrade to this system bit by bit, or do I need to rip everything out at once and put in new floors/windows/radiators at the same time?
I can't really afford that yet, so I guess I should buy a new combi boiler instead first while I save up the cash....

You’ll only get the £5k gov grant if you have an EPC with no recommendation of loft or wall insulation.

ASHPs are only really efficient to run with a fairly well insulated house, big rads and in a perfect world UFH. They work in almost any home but won’t be cheap to run without optimisation.

BUS grant now at £7500
Octopus now quoting fixed cost upgrades (with Daikin HP and water cylinders)
They also announced their in-house ASHP and ‘friends’

Still cant see most people buying into it even with the extra 2.5k.

Most people would need to build a new house to make it work.

The Octopus ASHP 'Cosy 6' claims higher water temps so no pipe work changes would be needed, which is interesting.

Nonsense.

yeah it sucks. boo heat pumps.

Could have done with that extra 2.5k

Nonsense

Which bit?

Very impressive to design and manufacture and entirely new ASHP.

Obviously makes sense for retro-fit but it’s a shame to put the emphasis on higher flow temps rather than more efficiency.

Energy company introduces energy sink ...

Must be a catch I guess. You can’t become the second biggest energy supplier in the UK just by being good

If its designed in UK and looks vaguely like an upturned bin. Its probably linked with >>
http://www.red-limited.com/

That's actually very smart. They've just extended the coefficient of performance by cooling the compressor. It's only 10% less efficient (2.7x not 3x) at higher temperatures.

Avoiding new pipework/better insulated homes means heat pumps can scale sooner.

Customers can still improve their home at a later date to reap double the rewards (less energy used and improved efficiency on the energy you still use).