Here it is, our 'hotly' anticipated HOME ENERGY SERIES, designed for audience and to be accessible for your friends and family too. Which episodes are you most interested in 1 & 2 on CHEAPER MEASURES, 3 & 4 on GENERATING/STORING ENERGY or 5 & 6 on HEATING?
This is a really important series. At the moment electric cars are still a bit expensive but most people are able to spend a bit more on green electricity and reduce carbon emissions.
I thought the advice on internal versus external wall insulation for solid walls was poor. External insulation while very effective is building disruptive and very expensive. Internal insulation is simple well established and doable by any builder. It can be done selectively one room at a time to optimise cost, for example bedrooms first. The loss of space with a very effective layer of say 50mm of Kingspan is pretty negligible.
Moved into new house with an electric boiler (No Gas) £300pm electricity bill. Changed to an Air Source Heat Pump now £60pm. If it wasn't for this channel not sure I would have been so confident in such a system!
Wow, that's great. Is the house well insulated or leaky? The general advice is that the house needs to be well sealed to work with an ASHP. Is that what you found?
@@michealoflaherty1265 It depends. My ASHP water heater works well because it's in a basement with a 10°C winter temp (at outside temp -30°C). So even though it leaks like a colander, it's just enough to not cause to much resistive heating because of it's underground location.
Martin Owens That makes no sense whatsoever. Your ASHP is within your home, hence you are paying twice for your hot water! You're paying to heat your house, some of which goes into the basement, where you pay again for the electricity that allows your heat pump to suck that heat out of the air and heat your hot water?!
@@michealoflaherty1265 I have an ASHP and it generates heat slowly. So long as the heat energy a heat pump can put in is greater than the heat energy lost an ASHP will eventually warm a space up. The house is well insulated but is held back by the dogs wanting to go in and out all the time letting the cold air in. It's annoying that the door can't just be left open all the time like in the summer 😒 . Its most frustrating when they ask to go out but all they want to do is stick their head out and sniff the air, but I wouldn't want to be without them. They are better than a hot water bottle 😊 even if they are a bed hog.
The government should encourage landlords to be at the forefront of this. Not sure how, prephaps they should implement a tax on rental properties that don't meet the properties EPC potential level, in combination with tax breaks for implementing those improvements.
@@robertcollins1371 apparently, the government are making it illegal to rent out properties with low EPC ratings, and as a landlord myself, I know that the EPC rating system has become tougher. Despite improving our rental property with cavity wall insulation more efficient lighting and a more efficient boiler, the EPC rating went down. (It's still C and the best in the road)
Its all well and good to say only heat when you're in a room, but that only works if you can heat that room rapidly when you want to use it! In my old house with its gas boiler and radiators you could heat the house from cold to pleasant in about an hour. My current home with underfloor heating and an air source heat pump takes days to fully warm floor up. If you find it cold and turn heating up it can take hours to increase the temperature. With an air source and underfloor personally I find it more effective to use heat zones and keep rooms I use a lot warm on thermostats to maintain a reasonable temperature. The heating isn't always on it just comes on to maintain homoeostasis.
Good shout, currently getting setup for an air source heat pump and UFH downstairs. Not having smart thermostats on the radiators upstairs as I can't see how they can be dynamic enough to offset their embodied carbon. A base temp for those rooms is needed and the rest is just adjusting clothing accordingly. No room is going to freeze or change in use often.
I was coming here to say the same thing. I'm in a New build with an air-source heat pump. Temperatures take days to change and cannot go above 21 degrees. We need secondary heaters when it is really cold as the heat pump gets stuck in defrost mode and struggles to heat above 19 degrees...
@@mathewbrianfisher That should not happen if the system has been designed and comissioned properly. It would be interesting to see at which ambient temperature your HP runs on full load. If your HP still has reserve capacity an increasing of the heating curve might help you. Also check that all heating surfaces are working (Thermostats). Heating surfaces capacity depends on temperature and flow. Make sure and check with your installer if the flow rates are set up correctly as per design.
@@mathewbrianfisher What are your outside temps like? It sounds to me your heat pump is underpowered for your load and you might benefit from a different model. I find that given enough time the water coming out of the heat pump can reach low 30 ℃ for central heating on our coldest days of -4 ℃ this is enough to heat our rooms to 20 ℃.
A few years ago I arranged for my mother-in-laws home to be insulated, using a government grant. With no other changes the fuel bill for the house dropped by over 30%. Some 39 years ago I brought a brand new home, built to the very low standards of the time. I immediately had the wall cavities filled with rockwall, and doubled the roof insulation. I used a cheap and cheerful gap sealing tape round the opening windows. About a ayear later I was visite by the Gas company to change my defective meter. Apparently I was using half of the gas that my neighbour, identical house, was using. There was of course nothing wrong with the meter. My conclusion, Insulate and draught proof!
@BullShark the house was not sealed completely, but airflow was better controlled, via trickle vents and planned opening of windows. My current house I built with the full works,
I moved into a very large apartment. It was costing £350 a month in electricity. I swapped all the halogen downlighters for LED. Changed the two rather old electric water heaters for new reasonable quality ones. The electricity dropped to £150 a month. IT DOES NOT TAKE A LOT to make that BIG change. It gets exponentially harder as you get lower down - but cutting the first 30% to 50% of your usage is easy.
Hi Barry, this is really interesting and thanks for sharing. Can I ask whether you've had any issues with dampness and mould? Just thinking that all that insulation and draught proofing might restrict airflow into and out of the property.
@@afnankhokhar5578 By Draught proofing I imply also that you control the ventilation, not prevent it. Nowadays I would install a heat recovery ventilation system, to remove the foul/damp air from Kitchens/ Bathrooms and Toilet, whilst providing prewarmed dry air ro living spaces and bedroom. I never had problems with damp at any stage. A cooking tip:- always use lids on top of your cooking pots and the minimum heat level to boil the contents. Simple science tells us that water gets no hotter than 100c as it boils, the excess heat just goes to steam (water vapour) which causes much dampness in most house. Lids on pots also make your gas bill less!
After 55 years in this subject matter and beyond and still working, I really don't as yet know what the best answer is to educating home owners. So may educational channels on this subject some very divisive, other to complex, not sure where this will go, but I have subscribed.
Very good. I would hasten to say that Tim's advice about turning the heating off whereeven and whenever possible was only a panacea between 1920 and 2005.. since then there is absolutely no panacea. Keep up the great programing!
It wasn't even a panacea back then [it never was from an energy point of view; energy (coal, oil, gas or electricity) was just too cheap for people to care about it]
Hoooold it! Not heating rooms that are not in use is a downright dangerous suggestion. Once you go below 15 degrees Celsius, you risk mold when warmer, more humid air from other rooms enters the cold room and creates condensation. Don't do it. Keep the room temperature lower than in used rooms, but high enough to avoid mold.
I thought that mold comes from when there is humid air (carrying water) hitting a surface below the dew point... The humidity condenses into water and the damp creates an environment for mold to grow. So I understand its when you have deltas in temperature and a humid environment. Thats why double glazing sometimes fogs up... cold glass, warm humid air... Feel free to correct me I am a novice in this area.
Capt Shiny houses don't have to be massive for heat not to reach unused rooms. We had a typical Victorian semi, three stories with original staff bedrooms in the roof. With the door at the bottom of the stairs closed these rooms quickly cooled to little more than a few degrees above the outside temperature. Same with the rear bedroom on the first floor which had two outside walls and no cavity.
@@MovieNutter yes you have it right, but the point is that typically-humid 20C internal air will condense around 13 or 14C so you really want to keep all internal surfaces above that critical 14C. So this doesn't require a specially-humid environment - just a normal house with people in it (breathing, cooking, washing). This is why triple glazing is such a good idea, because it never gets colder than that on the inside. and why airtightness is important, because the wet air going into the fabric on the way out will cool to below 14C somewhere in the wall, which is not where you want the water collecting. So anders is right that in a poorly insulated building there is a risk of condensation in the unheated rooms. If the insulation is any good at all then the unheated parts will stay fairly warm.
Be careful filling cavities with insulation. I'm a damp proofer and forever fixing damp in houses that have had the cavity filled. It serves a purpose.
One big issue in the UK is the "Green Levy", it's at about 24% for electricity (plus VAT) whilst for gas the tax is 2% (plus VAT). That means in the UK, based on an electricity price of 18p per kWh, the tax alone is more than 4p per kWh. Whilst for gas, it's about 0.07p per kWh. That mean that just the TAX on electricity costs more than the total price of gas.
@Muppet Keeper - That's a bit of a distraction, though - a bit of a strawman. When the problem we have is an excess of fossil carbon in the air, continuing to burn fossil fuel at any price is the fastest way to make our food extinct. Wait - what? For every 1 degree C average temperature rise, seed production drops 10%. Wheat, soy, corn are all seeds and just the temperature change is enough to reduce our ability to feed ourselves. We're past the 10% loss zone now, are soundly in the 20%, and still have a 30% and 40% reduction baked into our current CO2 levels. Add in floods, drought, and severe storms that global warming also brings and the reductions are even greater. Remember the global drought in the early 2000s where the US, Russia, and China didn't have extra wheat to export? That lack of food is what triggered the "Arab Spring" and the resultant migrations that we're still trying to find a solution for decades later. If you like your daily bread, think twice before burning fossils.
@@RechargeableLithium I think that you may be missing the point - that people are being economically incentivized towards gas, which is currently about zero percent sustainable, and away from electric heating which is provided with a certain amount of sustainability. Of the available options, ground source heat pumps are by far and away the most sustainable option, but the price of electricity vs gas makes it the least attractive financially unless you really know what you are doing. So no, it's not a bit of a strawman, it's actually a core subject of sustainability in the UK.
@@antontaylor4530 This only makes sense to you because you appear to be fixated on the pseudoscience of 'economics'. Keep in mind that the basic foundation of that belief system requires unlimited growth on an infinite planet. Continuing to fixate on the non-issue of how the gas industry prices their products (or how politicians, 'lubricated' by the fossil industry, keeps one from devoting their brain power to the actual problem and actual solutions. To put it more simply: It's the difference between price and value. Gas, even at a lower price, is still a poor value. The real key in this vid - the thing that let's one completely side-step the price of ANY energy source - is the way efficiency makes them all moot. Here's two extremes. First is Passivhaus. This is a fairly high tech construction or retrofit process of deep insulation, air tightness, passive solar gain/rejection, computerized heat recovery ventilation, zoning, on-demand how water, and the rest - and as the gent in the video suggested - these buildings are capable of being heated most of the year by the humans living in them. When the need for space heating is reduced so much, it doesn't matter how much gas or electric costs. On another extreme is an Earthship. This is a passive solar building that directly uses the Earth as the heat storage mechanism - no ground source heat pump intermediary is necessary. These buildings don't need heat recovery ventilators because they're well ventilated naturally without energy. They don't have or need HVAC equipment. A greenhouse area is heated, hot air rises through vents in the roof, and replacement air comes in the north side of the building through tubes in the ground - warm in winter and cool in summer. Most buildings use a small amount of gas - maybe 75-100 quid a year - for a gas hob and an on-demand water heater for the cloudy days that reduce gain from the solar thermal panels. The hob can be induction, however, and the on-demand heater can run from biogas. Two extremes that accomplish the same mission: Comfort without energy consumption.
I got my plumber to swap all ours out when we had problems with the boiler. Sure it was extra money but cheaper than doing it as s standalone visit. Once you have the right fitting they are dead easy to swap, I've since changed all mine to Tado, they have paid themselves back many times over since.
We've got ducted gas heating in our home, and Kiwi's love their ducted heating whether it be gas or heat pump. The thing I miss with the radiators that we had in our old home, is being able to individually control the temperature of each room, and having radiant heat directly in the room. Our current system has 2 zones, upstairs and downstairs, which means there really isn't any control over the temperature.
you might be able to put duct-valves into every room and regulate where the heating is going that way. But that might have a long tail to it since if most rooms are closed the (i assume) fixed air supply gets shoved into the remaning few rooms etc. But might be worth thinking about / consulting someone to get the individual room control back (might save a good amount of energy)
Don't heat if you don't use a room only works if you can thermally isolate each room - otherwise heat energy will leak from the rest of the house into the "unheated" room. Also if you don't heat when you are at work, then you run the risk of condensation and mould build-up. Maybe the right message is to turn down the heat when you are not at home, rather than turning it off?! If you hermetically seal you home as Tim describes, then you again run the risk of condensation and mould UNLESS you have an air management system to remove the humidity. Important to get the right message across.
Hi Robert, Dan & gang, I'm enjoying the home series so far. We had Solar PV installed just over 3 years ago, around about the same time that Robert updated his solar PV installation. In the 3 years since the system was installed it's generated just over 18MW. It would be good to know just how many MWs Fully Charged subscribers have generated in total.
Great stuff… as well as insulated walls, on the weather side of the house we also have pine wood cladding inside which works superbly well and looks nice too. Plus, apart from the odd coat of varnish we don’t need to decorate it… bonus!!
This series is exactly what I'm looking for! Have so much to do in our new (80's built) home, and wanted a general guide as to what order to tackle things. Thanks FCS
Just about to become house people after being flat people for 9 years. It's a late 80s build and feel more at sea than ever after watching this series as to what to expect, and how to try and transition it from gas to electric within our limited budget. Knowing where to start feels half the battle
Bit disappointed by the lack of detail. You could do an hour long episode just on insulation, with some example homes having suspended floor insulation, cavity wall or external wall insulation, loft insulation added. The rough costs and how much difference it made to the CO2 and energy bills over a year. Pros and cons of different materials, airtightness membranes, etc.
We have to cover the whole subject in 110 minutes, this is designed much like our 'Maddie Goes Electric' series to be accessible and to enable people to start down a path. We could talk about each subject for hours but we had to start somewhere for our consumer audience. If there's demand we will drill down on all of these topics.
@@fullychargedshow it's a great introduction! I really hope you'll also do the "HOME ENERGY Extended Director's Cut" with an hour+ per episode and show in detail how we can upgrade all our old housing stock in this country :D
@@fullychargedshow You could do a whole show on loft insulation. The different types, pros and cons, best practice when laying it. Any potential issues like reduced air flow in the loft causing damp etc. That would be really useful.
I feel a bit sad to see Tim say the same things as I have been saying for over thirty years now (early/mid '80-s) [both professionally and privately] Basically it comes down to "Turn/switch off what you're not using" This phrase has even more impact when applied in "industry" where "wasteful" behaviour is even more prevalent....
@@teeRpee Hi Tim, just a quick question on making your home air tight. We have a solid 9" brick house that all ready has damp problems. Would this make it more prone to damp? It's not rising damp.
@@stephengeary6382 Yes you're absolutely right. I deal with condensation in homes professionally and simply making your home more and more air tight is a recipe for mould. Especially if you have a family living in your home.
fabulous series Robert, I look forward to the rest of them, I live in centre of Canada where the winters are 5 months long and as cold as they are long, temps will reach -35 celsius at times plus windchill on those January days , heating for us in Natural gas and electric forced air furnaces, gas being the most common and cheapest by 25% or more, I am looking to reinstate in 2022 from the outside of my home starting with removing the Stucco , wire and plywood exterior walls, and having spray foam latex closed cell foam insulation installed professionally and will not be required to use any vapour barrier on the inside wall prior to the foam being applied to my house, the foam is just that efficient at filling in the gaps and cracks, then reapply the exterior with new plywood sheeting a house rap, usually Tyvek and wire and stucco again, so the return on investment is 10 years and my combined heating/electrical bill will almost half itself after this is complete, another very good new product is high r-value hot tub covers, i had just a regular cheap one that came with mine and replaced it last year, and i run this hot tub year round and only shuts down twice a year to change water and a good clean before winter and the new cover was $525 Canadian , it uses marine grade products and says me almost 40% monthly in the 3 coldest months and your water is not escaping through evaporation anywhere near as much, the shower head thing here has been a big push by the utility company for 5/10 yrs and offered a water savings kit free for a single family dwelling, i got one right away and it was delivered to your door, was worth about $100.00 and it helps out, my home like yours is not new , built in 1954 so yes in need of upgrades its not bad right now i pay monthly amount of $168.00 month / 12 equal payments ,just easier to budget this way that is both gas and electric
Yes, thermal efficiency of buildings needs to be improved, better insulation, windows, doors, cutting out heat loss from leaks. However, what about ventilation? Air tight/passive houses require a HVR system to recirculate the air which is installed in the walls, floors and ceilings. Or else lack of ventialtion will cause mould, condensation build up and sometimes health issues.
He did mention airtightness (before insulation) in fact, but it could have been emphasised that both are really important. Everyone knows about insulation. Air-tightness rarely get mentioned.
Nothing against making your house more and more airtight, BUT it is important to mention that this also increases the need for ventilation of the building so that used air gets out and fresh air gets in, if possible with a central ventilation system with heat scavenging but if that's not possible the next best thing would probably be decentralized ventilation systems so you always got fresh air in your house the mold and bacteria can't spread there.
@@Lee5p33dy Actually no... its an odd answer on the face of it... but its better to have the house totally sealed and then have a controlled way of bringing in fresh air. This way the air can be warmed/cooled/cleaned/dehumidified before it comes in. The problem with having a leaky house is that the air leaks in through bad places (through insulation or basement or plumbing fittings). I air sealed my attic a few years back and I was shocked at the impact it had.
@FullyChargedShow I would be glad to learn any technology that would replace an Air Conditioner, like cool the interiors on a Hot Sunny Day. Being an Indian I never felt UK summers were hot but would still be interested to know about such technologies.
Bear in mind too that an aerated shower head makes no difference whatsoever to an electric shower, since this uses a constant amount of electricity. Tried it, sent it back.
@@mateybloke It was one from EcoCamel. No matter what the blurb says, it is physically impossible to save energy by changing the shower head on an electric shower since the energy usage is simply governed by the amount of electricity put in, which is constant. It might give you a nicer feeling shower potentially but it categorically will not, and cannot, save you money. Hope this helps
@@mateybloke You're welcome! Make sure you buy the non-E version that has a flow restrictor in as that's how you can save money. Should work nicely for you :)
Really looking forward to watching the up and coming episodes. We're putting in solar at the end of the month, but our heat, hot water and hob are all gas. I've just investigated switching the heating from ducted gas to ducted heat pump, but the costs are prohibitively expensive, so it won't be something we will be doing in the next 10 years.
@@briankavanagh7191 around 8K, installed used panels myself and heatpumps get subsidised in the Netherlands. Cant compare it with gas since i rebuilt the house when i bought it. The money is better off in the house then it would be on a bank anyways
I concur with some of the comments below. It is a very good idea to have episodes dedicated to this sort of subject however it does require clarification on the possible makes/models, how they work and what the overall costs would be. I live in New Zealand and I am currently looking at a brand new build, brick & tile. So insulation in walls and ceiling space is a given and the only source of heating that we could have for the winter months is a Heat Pump. However the heat pump will likely be in the living room and does not get to the rest of the house so not a great way of providing heating. Also central heating is far too expensive here and as you have highlighted is something that we should move away from.
What about heat exchanging on the water that comes out of your shower? it could be used to warm incoming cool water that's going into the heating ? Or perhaps it could be passed near the air-source heat pump to keep it in its optimal operating range?
Not sure there is a device for showers with hot water supply, but they do exist for electrically heated showers - I guess that pre-heating cold water supplier is easier (just a heat exchanger) than hot water (would need a heat pump). I got some results from Google with "shower waste heat recovery".
Lots of good and sensible stuff here. In future episodes I hope you have a look at possible solutions for the unlucky people like me - we moved into a large house (for our multi generational household) which has 3 phase electricity. I cannot find an energy supplier who will fit a three phase smart meter so at present no way to get any compensation for exported solar energy. So 2/3 of my excess solar power goes back to the grid with no reward. 1/3 of my excess is diverted to a hot water tank so at least that is OK but the solar diverter and immersion heater operate on a single phase (and our 300l tank only has one heating element anyway). We try and turn on high power items when we have solar available, but this is tricky and difficult to manage in an efficient manner. Three phase battery solutions are incredibly expensive and at present make no sense for any return on cost. I do have a home brewed solution I am thinking of trying - using another solar diverter (on a different phase from my immersion heater) to power a storage heater in the main living area in the house. This to my mind would make a sensible and fairly inexpensive way to use excess energy from another phase at least.
I reckon your best bet would be a Electric Vehicle, as and when you get to that point, and divert excess PV to it. But that presupposes you are not using the EV to commute to work, otherwise it won't be at home when the sun shines!
@@ecok I have an electric vehicle, but the charger runs at 3.6 or 7kW which is much more than is available even at maximum solar output (three phase inverter from a 5.4kW max solar system equals under 2kW per phase) so nearly all the time it is cheaper to charge using night rate mains electricity! It is mad and infuriating. The meter charges me when I am using power on one phase but generating masses on another phase. It takes no account of the net value, it only looks at what is being delivered on each phase.
I know I could get a Zappi charger which would give variable rate charging to maximise my solar without using grid power, but I have an aging Nissan Leaf and would need to buy another charger when I next change my car. I am saving my grant for when I am able to upgrade my car.
@@JulianToler Useful to learn, thank you, I feel your frustration. My wife and I seek to be very Eco, but there are so many obstacles in our way too ...
This sealing your house up is all well and good until summer. Our homes become dangerous heat traps.. Our home is 2007 detached it got double cavity insulation and double glazing AAA rated . Insulated suspended floors. We current use more energy cooling and circulating air than we do warning the home. Our home is way to hot.
Sounds lovely but now get a plumber to quote for fitting say 6 TRVs etc. Unfortunately many houses in the U.K aren’t suitable to have cavities injected with insulation. Please check carefully to see if cavity insulation is appropriate to the area/type of house you live in.
The aerated shower heads are actually free from your water company if you ask for one. And I've also seen them at Lidl for £15, so no idea where the £100 comes from! Other than that is all good advice! I'd add that most pb is badly fitted dot dab. Knock it off and fit polystyrene or celotex backed plasterboard. But only if you're competent at DIY
I have been waiting a long time for was for some information about new energy efficiency solutions for the home. At the first Fully Charged Live I was told to fit a better gas boiler (I don't have gas). Things haven't improved much, this information is at least 30 years old Looks like the first thing I need to do is buy a bigger house. None of the options shown in this introduction will fit in my flat 😯
An energy efficient home is more comfortable and saves money in the long run. Added insulation, triple glaze windows, energy efficient doors, energy efficient heating and cooling systems, energy efficient appliances, LED lighting, smart thermostats, solar panels combined with battery storage and a electric vehicle charger in the garage or car park. People are too focused on the short term costs and miss out on long term savings and comfort. Blower door testing and air sealing are under appreciated tools.Even if you have money to burn you should not waste it. Climate Change will impact everyone. Leave a better future for your children and grandchildren. Join in and speak up for the future of the planet.
Great intro to the home series with some really useful tips on where to start and the order in which one will likely see the best return on investment. Great series and really looking forward to the next episodes and cracking on with seriously improving the energy efficiency of my old house. Thank you - this will really make a difference and proves a lot of improvements are within reach..!
Looking forward to this series. Are you planning on covering cooling as well? For other parts of the 🌎 from the UK, cooling of a living space is very important, as well as de/humidification. I guess thermal / environmental control, rather than just heating...
Better insulation will help with keeping the house cool in Summer too. And if also install Air-Con then need much smaller unit, and less running cost, if house is well insulated. For anyone in their forever-home the upfront capital cost of insulation is probably more easily found.
Insulation is essential, but I don't think houses should be airtight. It creates stale air which isn't good for your health, and makes modern houses stifling. My 2011 built house is very well insulated, but in the summer it is unbearably hot, and it's lack of natural air flow means it has to have a built-in ventilation system running 24 hours a day. The ventilation machine itself has been replaced after 8 years, and become landfill itself.
"The cheapest energy you can have is the energy you don't use" SO TRUE. "Insulation before installation" is another maxim that I swear by. In winter, I dress with a thermal underlayer and RARELY require space heating. I am my own heater, regulated by outer layers, beanies and fingerless thermal gloves!
Great to see a Home Energy Series, because buying a plug in vehicle is pretty easy really compared to making your house energy efficient. Living in the tropics I have different problems to when I lived I the UK, but the fundamentals are the same. If you design a house to be off-grid and climate appropriate (why do houses look basically the same all around the world) you end up with a house that looks completely different to most houses and you get the "ugly house" comments. Yes I live in an ugly house, but it is off-grid: EcoHouseThailand
Sadly our old stone house with 3 foot thick walls is not really able to be retrofitted with insulation. We added another layer of loft insulation and replaced the windows with double glazing. The house has no gas mains and is heated with electric storage heaters. Its expensive and cant heat the house up at all. Last winter the bills were insane and we were still bundled up in heaps of clothes. what do we do in that situation?
Finally Home Series, I mean there's just NO point to watch about EV because they're way to expensive (spoiler alert: not everyone on this planet is rich) But hey, maybe be we can do something about our house's.
Cars are cheaper than a deep retrofit on the whole, unless you DIY it. Both it's much easier to spread the cost over a number of years with houses as there are lots of things to do, and so long as you have a good plan, they can be done one by one.
Don't see how a thermostatic tap is any different than filling a bath with hot and adding cold. The source of the hot water (if it's direct from your combi boiler or from a tank) is still being heated to the the same temperature and mixed with cold in the tap. No? You'd be looking at heating your water to a lower temp to begin with to save carbon. I'd say this is an easy and completely free measure with a combi boiler, just turn it down to 50 degrees or something. More difficult with a cylinder due to legionella rules, but still possible.
Yes, hot water should be 60 C to keep the bugs away. That said, having separate cold and hot water taps would look a bit old fashioned, I think my grandmother had it in her house built in the 1930s.
I have a 3 kW solar & a 4.8 kW storage battery (all paid off) from mid March to mid of sept I mainly run on my own renewable energy all while still receiving the old solar fit payments that easily pays for the gas & electric that I do use from the grid & it also pays for the fuel in my Toyota hybrid. That I don’t pay road tax & only fill up once a month. I have a gas combi boiler with Hive control. Ive changed my kitchen sink tap to a electric tap, I’ve change my gas cooker to a double electric oven and I use the smaller top oven to cook & also use a Philips Air dryer to cook in half the time. Which I can use my solar & storage battery to run them. I also got rid of my gas fire that I hardly used and insulated the chimney and bricked it up & replaced with a electric fire that I do not use. But use the led fire effect 24/7. That runs off my solar & storage battery 24/7. I am in the process of changing my bath to a electric shower with a eco water shower head saver. Leaving only my bathroom sink & my radiators on my gas combi boiler. Even looking at putting a electric water tap on the bathroom sink. I want to get rid of my gas supply completely. So I can use what I save on my standing charges & gas charges to help pay also side my solar fit payments for when I do use grid electric. So I am looking at adding a Eddie system & a mixology water tank. So I can use my excess solar to heat the water up and use the water tank as a heat battery. Which means I will send less solar back to the grid. Meaning I literally get paid to generate, store & use my own renewable energy. I also want to add a small wind turbine from alpha 311 ltd. (Late 2022 available) possible two. So I can produce my own renewable energy 24/7 -365 days a year. As solar is less efficient in the winter months. But adding a small home wind turbine will make up for it. I believe small very energy efficient small home wind turbines are the missing link for people who want to run on on their own renewable energy all year round. A wind turbine can top up the storage battery 24/7. I have led lighting throughout my home. My shed runs on its own solar lighting. All my garden tools are battery operated & so is my Hoover. My loft is insulated & has flooring & I am adding solid insulation between the rafters. So I have a complete triangle of insulation in the roof. Last bit not least I would like to add more solar and then get a electric vehicle with bi directional charging when the prices match that of their fossil fuel & hybrid counterparts .which there is no excuse for them to be now. But I have plenty to do before I need to change my hybrid. But I will not by another hybrid or fossil fuel vehicle ever again and manage with my hybrid for now….
Hopefully UK regs have moved on since I bought my house 16 years ago. Thing I wanted (and was willing to pay extra for); Super-insulated kit - Nope Triple glazing - Nope Heat recovery system - Nope Air or Ground-source heating - Nope Unfortunately I had no choice in the builder if I wanted to be on this estate. Needlessly to say they were lazy, shoddy and late as they had no competition. Not having gas on this side of town I suppose I should be thankful that I am not lumbered with storage heating. Now if only the 2 oil suppliers here would allow us to set up a fuel club...
the regs are still pretty useless and the housebuilders squeal like stuck pigs when any sort of improvement is suggested. If we are to get serious on carbon dioxied reduction, we should be building new to passiv house standards from now on( all those wasted years makes me weep...) and also retrofitting the older properties.
There's been a copy'n'paste response to a number of people saying that this all has to fit in 110 minutes. Why? The beauty of the internet is that you are not limited by scheduling. The idea that you can meaningfully guide people in 110 minutes on such a big subject looks like a big ask. It is only the first episode, so it is maybe unfair to judge based on this alone, but my worry is that the rest of the series is more of the same. Interviews talking in generalities, with the occasional product plugs.
Because this is YT and average watch time is 7 minutes. This is an introductory series across the whole home energy subject for consumers. Not an in-depth deep dive into each topic. Our episodes average out at 17 mins each. If we were on terrestrial TV and had budgets to match we could do even more.
@@fullychargedshow Playing to "averages" makes you... well... average. You can always add a 5-minute summary at the end with a time-stamp for executive types. But for individuals looking for solutions for their own homes, we are gonna need detailed DIY. If you don't give them what they need, they won't watch. And that is why averages don't tell you anything useful.
@@DarkMoonDroid I think you’ve gotten lost somewhere. This isn’t a DIY channel, there are plenty of easily accessible resources out there if you want to know how to do a particular aspect. But as they’ve stated it’s not the aim of this series. How about you let them do what they have been successfully doing for some years now, don’t like it? Don’t watch it…
Love it. Well done for simplifying and demystifying the subject for the general public. Anything that spreads the word and gets people on the efficiency journey has to be commended.
Heat pumps are able to do air conditioning as well as heating as long as the inside part is set up properly. If you replace a boiler with a heat pump so that it heat water for radiators then it won't be able to do air conditioning. However, if you replace a forced air furnace that burns gas or uses electricity to create heat with a heat pump then the heat pump can provide air conditioning. An air exchange heat pump is almost the same as an air conditioner that is often hooked up to those forced air furnaces.
@@capitalinventor4823 we don't have heating here - no need, for a few days a year - we heat with the aircon, the question is if there is if a GSHP or ASHP is more efficient then aircon?
@@idodekkers9165 An air source heat pump is an air conditioner that can also run in reverse. If you are able to heat with your air conditioner then you already have an air source heat pump. Ground source heat pumps are going to be more efficient because the pipes are going to be installed in the ground where the temperature is at a constant temperature that works well for both heating and cooling. With an air source heat pump there will be times when you want to cool your building when it's so hot outside that it's difficult for outdoor part of the unit to get rid of heat transferred from inside. (The same thing happens when it's so cold that it's difficult for the outside part of the unit to extract any heat from the outside air.) Of course these times happen right when you most want the unit to work. It then comes down to price. Getting the pipes put in for the ground source heat pump system is expensive and makes those systems much more expensive than air source heat pumps. When I was looking at replacing my furnace back in 2015 an air source heat pump was twice as expensive as a high efficiency furnace and the ground source heat pump was about 2.5 times as expensive as the air source heat pump. I'm sure prices have changed since then.
@@capitalinventor4823 so if I understand correctly, what the heat pump basically does is get the temp outside, lets say 23 and if I want 20 it only cools the difference with electricity?
@@idodekkers9165 A heat pump works exactly like an air conditioner does. This is a simplistic explanation and for a better idea of how these work it would be best to go to Wikipedia and look up heat pumps. If you want to cool your building inside then it will gather heat from the air inside by running the air over some coils containing a cold liquid. The cold liquid takes the heat from the air and heats up until it evaporates. The now gas is transferred outside to the condensing unit (in an air conditioner it's the bit part with the fan, the bigger the fan, the more efficient the system). As the gas is turned back into a liquid heat is released outside. However, if it's really hot outside it may become difficult for the outside air to absorb the heat. For example, if the temperature that the substance in the system condenses at 40 degrees Celsius then it would be easy for the heat to be released on a 20 degree Celsius day but on a day that the temperature is 39 the system is going to have to work a lot harder to get rid of the heat. (I don't know what the real temperatures are, I'm just using some made up examples.) To heat a building it works in reverse. Heat is taken from outside to evaporate the liquid and the substance in the system is condensed back into a liquid inside to release the heat. I know that current systems can work well to in extracting heat from the air down to -5 Celsius and special systems for cold weather regions work down to -20 Celsius. After that one would need a backup source of heat. This isn't a problem in your particular case. When using a ground source heat pump the temperature of the ground is somewhere around 10 degrees Celsius year round so you may see how it would be so much more efficient just because it wouldn't have to deal with the temperature swings. It works exactly the same. Heat pumps are so much more efficient because they are just moving heat energy around and not changing the form of energy. For example, to heat a house with electricity is very efficient. It's 100% efficient because one runs the electricity through a resistor and all of the electricity gets converted to heat. But with a heat pump the electricity is used to move the liquid/gas in the tubes and to run a couple of fans which moves a lot of heat. In ideal circumstances it can be up to 500% efficient and in normal cases it's around 300-400% efficient. (Think of your refrigerator and how little electricity it uses to keep your food cold. It uses a heat pump to remove the heat from inside and puts it outside. On older units there will be coils on the back to get rid of the heat. On newer ones they sometimes use a fan to blow the heat away from underneath. Yes, it does use a small amount of electricity if you think amount how much it would be to keep a similar sized box 20 degrees warmer 24/7 using electricity running through a resistor instead of a heat pump.)
Had to laugh at Tim's point about running a bath. He was absolutely right about it being totally ridiculous to spend all that money on energy to heat up water only to cool it down again with cold water so you don't burn your bum & bunions when you get into the bath. 😅😁😋
That’s an interesting one. In the UK we are told to heat water to 60 degrees to kill Legionella bacteria, but 60 is way too hot to touch. A smarter way to do it is to heat to 48 degrees almost all the time, but then once a fortnight heat to 60 degrees to kill of legionella risks. That all said, in my extensive search of the internet, I can’t find any references to legionaries disease caused by domestic systems.
Muppet Keeper I would have thought a system using plate heat exchangers or even a simple coil within a thermal store would avoid the need to heat to 60 altogether, since the water in the cylinder would never contact the domestic hot water?
To me, solar thermal (the evacuated tubes on your roof) makes no sense. Better to use that space for PV panels that can be used to heat the hot water in your tank via an immersion heater and once that water is hot you can use the electricity for other things. With solar thermal, once your water is hot it can do no more.
Looking forward to 5 and 6, air sourced heat pumps etc. Not least - why are they so big? We can't have one fitted to our house it seems as the natural place for one is too close to neighbors.. problem solved if the pump was thinner but they seem to be so big!, how are so many uk houses to fit new tech if their dimensions haven't changed?.
Great start to what promises to be a fantastic series. Looking forward to hearing about the new heating technologies in later episodes!!! I'm off to buy an aerated showerhead!
I’m a heating engineer I fitted solar thermal about 10yrs ago as I’m on oil saved me 100s of pounds I think they should be more popular as you can get them for combi boilers as well
We do all this and then Energy companies make their tariffs higher, so we only boost the economy by spending money on materials and lower our footprint
The diversity of property constructions in this country is vast and wide, but Insulation is by far the most import of all, and I feel you have not given it justices in this series, so I am thinking of covering myself!!!!
Loved the video, we opted to replace our oil boiler with an air source heat pump last year, the technology made it so evident how we were losing energy in our 1930’s house and the need to insulate more which is proving challenge, I wouldn’t go back as despite the increased electricity bill it is still cheaper than oil but we have a way still to go. Looking forward to the rest of the videos.
Be cautious when shutting off rooms in forced air heating/cooling system. Old information was about how many rooms you can safely close off, recent search says don't close any register/vent past 75%. The air resistance can strain the blower motor, also possibly create leaks in ducting. Also, high performance or HEPA filters can strain the motor. I replaced my blower motor, not fun, not cheap, even DIY.
Trv's saved no one anything. They can help with confort. If your external walls are insulated, heat your whole house. Your internal walls aren't insulated so it makes no sense to heat on room but not the one next to it. That's the same as having undersized radiators. Not everything this guy says makes sense.
What annual income is needed to fund this change taking into account other core household expenses and what about old houses and flats ie: flats stone built in the late 1800’s?
Converting existing UK housing stock to Passive House or ENerFit is eye wateringly expensive (if looking solely at "payback"). There are other benefits though: hugely increased comfort, no problem with mould etc in Winter; significant benefit for anyone with respiratory ailments; dramatic reduction in chance of getting winter cough / cold (Wife and I haven't had one in the 6 years since we moved to Passive House, had one every winter before that); benefit to the nation in terms of reduced days off sick (i.e. might well be worthwhile for Government to subsidise, not to mention the reduction in CO2 and balance of payments saving on import of Oil). But I doubt the average person in a 3-bed terraced house would even consider the cost.
There is a major dialogue to be had about using external wall insulation (EWI) and how it changes the look of buildings. There are millions of Victorian & Edwardian homes where this will be an issue. Do we want huge improvements to the thermal efficiency of our housing stock or do we want "heritage" streets - not designed for thermal efficiency?!
Dunno if it is a reasonable answer, but such buildings can have insulation added to the outside and then "faced" to look like the original building. It ain't the original bricks, but it could look much the same. There's one near me (in UK), Victorian, semi-detached, brick bottom half, rendered top half, bay windows; only one side is wrapped with insulation, and you can't tell the difference between the two (luckily there is a downpipe straight down the middle which disguises the fact that one house sticks out a bit more than the other). But historical housing stock is very difficult, and costly, to upgrade. The sooner we stop building new, inadequate, housing stock the less we will have to upgrade!
@@ecok It is an option, but at even more cost. IMHO better to insulate than preserve the look of a terrace of houses. Or knock them down and build passivhaus!
@@TechnologyForFunVideos We built Passive House because it was so very very difficult, and expensive, to upgrade the house we had. And that was a house with good air tightness and was a pretty good starting point. Much harder starting with a draughty old listed building ... but knock down, start again, doesn't feel right either!
You don't put cold water into a bath to cool down the hot water, you do it to achieve an overall volume of water at a certain temperature. The alternative is for the heat source to heat all the water to that temperature itself. If this more energy-efficient, it should be explained as such - not framed as a false statement followed by chortling about the ridiculous things people allegedly do. It comes across as an attempt to hoodwink the unwary. An interesting and informative series though. :)
Can someone please correct me here if I'm wrong. Thank you in advance. I thought the idea of a cavity, particularly in UK weather conditions, is to let air in between the walls to prevent damp moving from one wall to the other. If you fill the cavity with insulation then effectively you have no cavity allowing damp to move from the outside wall to the inside wall of your house. This could potentially cost more to fix than the amount of energy you are saving. Therefore I've always been reluctant to install cavity wall insulation
All new buildings should be built to the Passive House (Passivhaus) standard and all existing buildings retrofitted to the EnerPHit standard, where possible. A Fabric First approach, with renewable (electric) energy, is the silver bullet.
