@swepri get a brush on an extending pole lol
I actually tried that the first month. I can reach maybe 40% of the panels with a 4m pole and it works with dry powdery snow. But now we have a centimeter of ice on the panels, and snow on top of that, so I just gave up. 😳
Sorry for hijacking the thread.
@nsj Interesting to hear how the heat pump/solar panels have reduced your heating costs. A friend of ours is going to have the survey done to see if he qualifies to have the work done and we were thinking of maybe applying too but I have my doubts on whether a heat pump would be up to heating our ancient house (built 1795!!)😃
@nsj That’s pretty much what I was thinking, that insulation would be the key. We’ll stick with our oil fired CH for the present but would seriously think about making the change rather than getting a new boiler if the need arose.👍😃🎸
@brie As others have said, the key to the air source heat pump is insulation. It doesn’t matter how old or new the house is, they just want to see that the house is as insulated as it can be and that it reaches their minimum requirements. Ours didn’t initially pass but they came around and put a load more insulation in to bring it up to scratch. It’s definitely worth doing, I would just go for it.
Our solar panels are doing ok in the winter but we don’t get much ice and snow here, so that is a big help. It’s a nice day today, the sun is out and charging our battery as well as running the house. Very little is being drawn from the grid right now, there is always a tiny bit for some reason.
When these two systems are working together, we feel almost completely off grid now. We don’t feel reliant on market prices of gas, oil or other fossil fuels. We are also considering adding a small wind turbine to one of the out buildings if we think we need it, we get plenty of wind here, it seems crazy not harness it and use it.
It’s the future. 👍
Make guitars, not war 🌍✌️🎸
@boo Does the extra insulation just go in the loft or are we talking about tearing out the walls? Don’t think I could be doing with a major upheaval but then again, we are planning having some redecorating done this year.
@brie They will assess everything to do with insulation and then see where you can improve and/or whether what you have already is adequate. They checked roof in, wall insulation, floor insulation, you name it. Now, it’s not always possible to do everything so don’t think they are going to turn you down just because certain things aren’t in place. We don’t have floor insulation in our timber framed house as we have a mixture of suspended floors and solid concrete floors. We were lucky that a previous owner had installed some Kingspan insulation into the walls so all we needed was a load more attic insulation.
Also they look at your windows and doors, how old they are and how effective they are. They look at what heating system you have in currently and any ventilation through the property.
It sounds really involved but they are just being thorough and they will just write a report at the end of their inspection to see if it’s possible to install immediately or whether certain things need to be rectified first. They do recognise that not everything on the list is possible or feasible for people to do, so not everything on the list necessarily has to be rectified.
With us, they didn’t expect us to jack hammer the concrete floor up to install floor insulation or rip all of our floorboard up. They put that down to an improvement that we could/maybe do in the future. They measure the size of each room and calculate air space and then balance it up with all the insulation. There are plenty of old properties that have air source heat pumps installed so don’t think you don’t stand a chance. If you are in Scotland, they are encouraging people everywhere to have these systems in their homes, it’s a move away from fossil fuels and it helps everyone out in their pocket. Why have another gas boiler that is subject to market forces because of the price of gas production or bottled gas or a tank of oil? These heat pumps are amazing and cheaper to run than any fossil fuel alternative, so why bother with anything else? It’s even better if you invest in solar with battery storage. The heat pump work off electricity and the solar will drive it and everything else in your house instead of drawing it from the grid. Can you imagine not paying a gas bill or an electricity bill? With the solar, there are swings and roundabouts. During the winter, especially in Scotland, there is obviously less daylight, so the panels don’t do a lot. Electricity gets drawn from the grid as normal in the winter with a small amount from the solar panels, so obviously that will come at a cost. However, during the Spring, Summer and Autumn, much more electricity will be generated from the panels and much less from the grid. We have a feed-in tarrif with our energy company that when our panels have fully charged our battery storage, it feeds any overflow into the grid and we get paid for that. It’s only a small amount but if we save that throughout the year, it can offset the cost in the winter.
I think if you choose to have an air source heat pump, it’s crazy not to go the whole hog and have the solar panels to drive it. If not, it will just run off electricity from the grid and you will pay your bill as normal. Whichever way, it’s still worth having the heat pump. It provides all the hot water and all of your central heating. The radiators don’t get as hot as a traditional central heating system because it relies on the insulation of the house to maintain an ambient temperature throughout the whole house.
Your electricity bill will go up a bit if you don’t have the solar but you won’t have a gas bill any more. It’s worth paying that little bit more for electricity to get rid of your gas bill.
In Scotland the air source heat pumps are free with a grant from Home Energy Scotland. 🏴 All the attic insulation, the equipment, radiators, the installation team, everything is free, you don’t pay a penny.
The solar and battery storage you can get on a loan from Home Energy Scotland 🏴
Make guitars, not war 🌍✌️🎸
@boo Wow Boo, thanks for all the info, chapter and verse right enough🤣🤣
You could get a job with those people as a salesman🤣🤣
Seriously though, I think we might give it some thought and at least have an assessment done to see what’s required. Thanks again for sharing your experiences, much appreciated.
👍😃🎸
@brie if you're on a low enough income you can even get most of it done for free. Think it's somewhere about £19500 per year or that. Ours was all free, insulation, vaillant pump and solar. New modern hot water tank etc.
Once you have all that you can still add to it, more insulation, battery storage etc.