Heating your house in the future

[jansman]

A neighbour of mine is a builder.He generally works on those big greenfield ‘Executive housing estates”, and he told me he hasn’t built a house with a gas supply to it in nearly five years.Indeed,he has built two bungalows in his garden that are heated by air source heat pumps.So, I wasn’t surprised to see this:

How will we heat homes in zero carbon Britain? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-55948531

And this:

https://consciousnessofsheep.co.uk/2021 ... he-clouds/

[Yorkshire Andy]

Problem is if the whole UK switched to gshp and other electronic sources of heating plus electric cars

Will the grid cope with demand

[The Green Man]

I work in the heating industry, this may be where we are heading eventually but the timescale is well off.
It’s true to say that a lot of new houses are being constructed without mains gas supplies and there is lots of talk of heat pumps, most of these are (currently) being installed in social housing/housing association properties and large properties belonging to very affluent people with a fair amount of land.

How would a heat pump benefit someone living in a terraced street?
I’ve seen projects where streets have a shared one installed but this just isn’t practical for the whole country as it only takes one householder in a street to refuse to cause chaos.

They never seem to mention people refusing to let their old gas boilers go either many will refuse, just look at the smart meter rollout, which is logistically much simpler than replacing a heating system.

Hydrogen may be an alternative in the future but large amounts of pipework would need to be replaced and that’s going to be a massive challenge too.

As mentioned, we currently don’t produce enough electricity to meet the extra demand of replacing petrol/diesel cars and gas boilers with electric alternatives.
My friends wife is a director of a large regional electricity network and they are well aware of the potential future issues around electricity supply but can’t do anything about it as the country isn’t building enough new power plants.

[korolev]

I'm going to be doing a lot of work to my house this year and I'm considering a heat pump rather than a boiler but I need to do a lot more research to see if it's going to pay back.
I'd really like to have a "green" alternative but if it's going to cost too much money or take up too much space (both of which are finite) then I will plump for a gas boiler again.

[jansman]

Problem is if the whole UK switched to gshp and other electronic sources of heating plus electric cars

Will the grid cope with demand

I have read that to replace every petrol/ diesel vehicle in the uk with electric would need ALL the renewables ( wind and solar )that exists in the uk NOW- and then some. To replace every vehicle with electric in the uk would also require ( I read) something akin to 2 years GLOBAL production of lithium and cobalt- which themselves are a finite resource. But I digress.

Chuck in heating ( which is far more important than cars), then I cannot see how it can be achieved, especially if we expect to consume energy as we do now.

[grenfell]

Funny what you can read , i've read figures that say to replace ICE vehicles would require around 10% increase in generating capacity.
But whether we would require 10% or 100% increase is irrelevant. All these figures we read work on the assumption that we are just going to carry on with our lives and lifestyles that we have now and not change anything other than the energy source. It's pie in the sky but then so is the alternative , " the world can't run without ( finite) oil so let's just keep burning it faster than ever" .
Add to that the biggest elephant in the room , population , and we're stuffed.

[Medusa]

I have been thinking about this myself. We have oil heating because the folks before us who bought the house didnt have the gas piped to the house, although its at the end of the drive. United Utilities quoted us £2k to install plus the cost of a boiler many years ago which with 4 kids and only one wage coming in we couldnt afford. We have 2 log burners and mostly free wood which we use to subsidise the oil heating. Our oil boiler is ancient but we have been told by a relative in the industry that it is probably far more reliable than a new one as over the years we have replaced all of the parts fairly cheaply. Thinking about our older age and considering that processing wood and carting it from the shed to the house may not be practical, Im not sure how to progress really. Right now we have a sight glass on our oil tank and therefore have an idea of how much we use and can be frugal if needed as opposed to just cranking the gas heating up. I also love days spent chopping wood and lighting the log burners watching the flames.

[rik_uk3]

I dread to think how much it would cost to heat our house with electricity. Its three story Victorian four bedroom with 10' ceilings in all the ground floor rooms, fully double glazed and insulated. Gas costs me about 25p an hour to keep the whole house warm. Heating one room with a 2Kw fan heater costs 31p an hour.

We are looking at ground source heating but it will depend on what grants are available later this year.

The average small Welsh town is made up of row after row of terraced housing, how are they supposed to charge cars. My son's got his first house now and when he gets home from work he often ends up parked a street away, his own street is bumper to bumper cars so how would people like him charge up. Until there's some quantum leap in battery technology having all electric cars is some pie in the sky day dream.

[Cocotte]

We're getting this:
https://youtu.be/q9DP6v0IW1k
Installed on Monday. Might take a few days.
It's replacing our wood furnace but we had a fireplace put in last week, since our furnace needed electricity for a pump this the best system for us, cheap renewable heat, and a back up wood fire place.

Also it increases the value of the house by 20-30% which covers the cost.

All we need now are solar panels