Energy saving plans

[Feltwell]

First off - *Please* don't take this as the start of an election thread, or God Forbid a B****it thread. We had an election thread started on here by someone a couple of elections ago, in much less polarised times, and that didn't end well.

Regardless of which bunch of idiots / the only people who can save our country (delete as per personal preference!) have proposed it, this kind of thing must have the UPVC industry rubbing their hands in glee.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election-2019-50277461

Of course it's not just about glazing, and I can't really criticise loft insulation or, for the most part, more efficient heating systems. The optimist says the glazing side of things may encourage the development of more historically sensitive options - the pessimist says that outside of conservation areas and listed buildings, it could be the final death knell for old windows & doors as they get replaced with cheap plastic cr@p. Not to mention exterior cladding systems ruining the appearance of old buildings, interior insulation systems meaning the interior joinery bites the dust, etc etc......

 

[Flyfisher]

I also saw that story and was similarly concerned about the implications. In particular, I’m wondering if this ‘scheme’ is going to be compulsory or not, because if it isn’t then I can’t see the economic incentive to make houses more energy efficient if the reduced amount of energy subsequently used is going to be more expensive in order to pay for the works in the first place. I suppose I distrust this sort of ‘social engineering’, mainly because it never properly addresses the underlying problem and is generally just political posturing.

As for ruining our built environment heritage I suspect it’s probably already too late, judging by the sorts of houses/estates/towns springing up all over the country to meet the housing demands of our ever-increasing population. It seems to me that all our environmental issues end up at the door of population, yet it is a subject that is never actually confronted. So while we just plod on with a bit of insulation here, a DG window there, banning plastic bags or whatever is the latest ‘eco-fad’ we completely ignore the fact that it’s over population and rising standards of living that is to root of all problems. That’s not to say rising standards of living are not a good thing, of course they are, but our resources are finite so population growth means decreasing ‘wealth’ (in the broadest sense’) per capita. Of course, we’re well insulated from such issues in the affluent ‘west’, but only at the cost of massive global inequality, itself a huge and largely unmanageable problem that inevitably leads to conflict and strife. And what’s worse is that we don’t have any effective global mechanisms to even begin addressing these issues.

Or perhaps I’m just having a bad day.

 

[Flyfisher]

And another thing.

There are various schemes to encourage the installation of renewable energy systems these days, but as far as I've found while researching such things, they all seem to require the property to be in the 3 or 4 top EPC performance bands.

Am I the only one who thinks that it is actually the least energy efficient houses that would yield the greatest environmental benefits by using renewable energy? For example, a drafty and poorly insulated house heated entirely by solar energy will have a lower carbon footprint that a highly insulated house using fossil fuels for heating. So wouldn't it make more sense, environmentally, to focus these schemes on the less efficient houses first?

Having said that, measuring the energy efficiency of houses can often be irrelevant anyway. I have friends with modern houses who have higher energy bills than us because they choose to live in shorts and tee-shirts all year round and don't even own a decent pullover (OK, slight exaggeration but you know what I mean) and keep every room in the house at 75F, whereas I doubt any of our rooms have ever experienced 75F outside of a heatwave! In other words, it would be better to focus on actual energy consumption rather than 'guesstimate' using proxies such as DG and loft insulation. It's a bit like penalising cars with large engines without taking into account how many miles are driven each year!

Yes, I am having a bad day!

 

[Feltwell]

I agree FF. I nearly always find other's houses too warm for my liking. I spend a reasonable amount of time in hotels for my job, more often than not the first thing I do on going into my room is switch the radiator off and open the window!

Cars with large engines - hmm, that one sits close to home. I have a car with a 4.2 V8 which I cannot possibly justify as being sensible - but - before the green lobby cast me into oblivion, it's converted to run on LPG - the emissions are very, very low indeed, as confirmed at each MOT. I do get cheaper tax - £10 a year cheaper compared to if it was ran just on petrol, woo hoo!! :roll:

 

[plasticpigeon]

I don't like these policies either. I mean loft insulation is a no brainer but I can't imagine there is low hanging fruit there, but once into heating systems and windows, what is the energy payback and how long will it be? It also starts to take away choice which I'm not too keen on, especially when resourceful people can find other ways of reducing heat loss or non sustainable energy usage but there is a one size fits all type policy. Now new homes, that's a different consideration. I am in the situation you describe FF. My energy bills are lower than those of people I know with similar houses despite the old windows and doors as I don't have the heating on permanently and don't have very many electronic/electric devices.

I have a mate who is a mechanical engineering professor at Nottingham uni (we started working at the same place at the same time - his career flew and mine didn't!!) who is convinced that electric cars will be the next scandal like dieselgate. This is because of a mix of the energy and materials used to make them, and the energy mix we currently use to generate electricity for the grid (iirc) which makes them less environmentally friendly than a very efficient internal combustion engined car, or so he says. It doesn't sound silly and he is pretty hot on these things and politically driven solutions are often not driven by practical considerations.

 

[88v8]

Remember how Prescott, when he was in charge of whatever it was, wanted to make it a condition of PP that where a house was extended an equivalent square footage had to be upgraded in insulation standard? Sensible. But in the end the (Labour) govt ran away from it, unpopular.

Since then the low hanging fruit of insulation has indeed been eaten, so this 'scheme' is just BS. And yes, as far as our historic built environment is concerned, the damage has long ago been done, starting with bongo wood, then aluminium, then UPVC. The simple fact is that as regards the visuals, most people don't care.

And yes, overpopulation is the key element of climate change, overfishing, habitat loss, and so much more, but even Extinction Rebellion - who seem at heart to be the usual leftie suspects, sadly - don't want to address it. Yes, I did try.
Boris has four children - two too many - and Rees-Mogg has six. Six !!! Thoughtless? Stupid? Selfish? So no point in trying to interest the Conservatives in doing what's required. Yes, I have tried.

Last night I heard the Crackpot, sorry I mean Corbyn, saying that he plans to repeal the most important environmental measure passed by any UK govt this century - the two-child benefit cap. I wonder what Osborne had in mind - is he a closet environmentalist or was he just trying to save money.

Hard for me to feel very engaged in this election. Boris's hubris in not co-operating with Farage will lose them the election, then we'll have the Crackpot, the Communist, and the Nanny Knows Best coalition in power.
And the country covered in nasty little brick breeding boxes to accommodate our immigrant population and their excessive children.

Hmmm, best not to start an election thread.

Ivor

 

[fernicarry]

I saw this as well and it set me off on a rant.

Haven't we had all this before with Green Deal and boiler replacement and the like?

The problem is whenever a scheme is government mandated the rules of engagement become incredibly narrow and you get a one-size-fits-all policy. Or more to the point one size fits few. By necessity is has to be like this otherwise the scheme becomes overwhelmed with exceptions but it blocks those with the ability to think for themselves from taking part in any sensible manner.

The corollary of this is that the job is deskilled to the ultimate level and you get a bunch of cowboys running around paying washers to untrained neds to do the bare amount necessary to qualify for the incentive.

I've just spent literally weeks carefully relaying my loft insulation so that it actually fits where its supposed to fit, you know touches the joists rather than having a 2 inch gap down each side and most importantly raising the loft boards onto legs instead of squashing it all back down to 2mm thick. This isn't even particularly specific to period properties its just doing the job to a good standard of workmanship. Now, times that effort by how ever many residential dwellings there are in the UK.

We saw this with MCS, thankfully now history. Approved products, approved installers. If you get on the approved list then its a license to print money and it amounts to a defacto transfer of wealth from the consumer to the installer via the govt. Not what I thought the Neo-Marxists were about...

I suspect the way we will see this creep in is by a minimum EPC level required to market a property for sale. Just as we already have with rented properties. A good idea in principle but with obvious unintended consequences.

For example, I just had the EPC's renewed on two rentals. For the first the guy didn't even take as much as 5 mins to do it. Ping the laser pointer off the walls in each room and poke his head into the loft, tap a few things into his ipad and off he went. To his credit he got virtually the same answer as when it was last done 10 years earlier. In the other property the floor area had miraculously increased by 10% since the last time, but at least it did pick up a few bonus points from the extra loft insulation (also lovingly fitted into all the nooks and crannies but I'm sure the assessor didn't check that).

I don't deny we need to do something but but this just seems certain to result in badly executed measures with an ineffective method of measuring the outcome.

 

[steveb]

my favoured approach is tax energy. First x units per household or person are free (calculate this figure as 75% of average usage), then any subsequent units at 3x the previous price.

Then you obviously have the ratchet in future where 75% becomes 70 becomes 65 etc..

 

[plasticpigeon]

Ha Neo Marxists. I've only ever heard Jordan Peterson use that expression and I don't think much of him really.

 

[88v8]

my favoured approach is tax energy. First x units per household or person are free (calculate this figure as 75% of average usage), then any subsequent units at 3x the previous price.

This makes far more sense than the current tariffs where average unit cost falls as one uses more.
Energy should be taxed like income, the tax rate rising as usage increases.
Much too sensible.

And of course it would scupper electric cars. Hooray.

Ivor

 

[Me!]

And of course it would scupper electric cars.

Not if the allowance was done as Joules or Kilowatts or BTU's (as this is a period forum) per person across all forms of energy, be that electricity, or petrol, or coal or aviation fuel etc.
If a person flying for a weekend shopping trip to New York meant they then had to cycle to work one day a week rather than drive because they had run out of allowance, ... it might make them think twice about it.
And it would mean that if I choose to sit in my period property wearing a jumper in the winter rather than investing some of my personal energy allowance to manufacture and install double or triple glazing and more of my allowance to heat the house to the mid-20's centigrade, then I wouldn't be penalised for doing so.

 

[malcolm]

This thread made me giggle. Absolutely you are right - taxing energy is the only way to make energy use less popular. Making things expensive has proven success on other things they don't want you to do.

I've been insulating my house to death. I checked my spreadsheet and I have used £800/year heating gas each year with or without insulation. Insulation is fab - at the start I was freezing and now I'm toasty warm.

There is a huge caveat - we are all pretty well off on this forum but most other people have to survive on minimum wage living hand to mouth in rented accommodation they have no control over. Landlords don't mind heating bills as they aren't the ones paying. Landlords would be the ones paying for insulation.

 

[88v8]

Good point about landlords. That would include local Govt of course.

What's amazed me, this winter, is the effect of a couple of small changes, the first being lime.
Our sitting room is 2ft lower than the other rooms, and walking into it has always been like entering a fridge. It has a storage heater, in the evenings we had about 62F which is a bit chilly, we always lit the woodstove.

Last year I plastered the south wall in lime, over lime pointing, and at the same time we had the cement pointing removed from the other three walls.

Now, the clammy fridge feeling has gone. In the evening with the heater on a lower setting, it's about 65F which is quite comfy. So much so, that thus far this winter we've only lit the stove twice.

The other factor is that we have a dehumidifier in there full time, just running on auto. Slightly tempting to switch it off to ascertain what effect it's having, but not quite tempting enough.

Ivor

 

[steveb]

I read somewhere that dry walls are a significantly better insulator that wet walls. Presumably the lime would help with that, as would the dehumidifier.

Whether you need the dehumidifier if the walls have dried out, only experimentation would show.

 

[Greg.Hobson]

This thread made me giggle

. . . .

Landlords don't mind heating bills as they aren't the ones paying. Landlords would be the ones paying for insulation.

Hi all.

I'm a landlord - the worst kind as I rent by the room - but I include ALL household bills in the rent payment and yet my rents are still lower than the average for rented rooms. My tenants walk around in shorts all winter so the bills are a lot. We just make less profit, but enough for my wife to holiday abroad every year for the past 5+ years (I only go with her to other continents!). BTW, we are pensioners so our income is actually only around the average UK household income, we just don't have any mortgages.

To get back to the point of the thread, I agree with just about every point made so far but think over population is not really the size of problem others present (I admit to having 4 children) as I have seen first hand the potential still left on this planet of ours, based on both both human and natural resources. I do however believe in the taxing of high consumption, particularly as expressed (setting the base level such that 75% of people are unaffected) with a steeply increasing rate from the base level. I would include income in this ( and Inherited wealth but that's another topic . . .).

It being a period property forum, I suppose what I want to say is that I also agree that plans by any government to force a 1 size fits all is almost certain to create all sorts of unintended consequences and displays ignorance on the part of thse seeking to win our votes. hardly a winning strategy!

 

[malcolm]

I'm a landlord

I wasn't having a go at you especially. More making the point that the occupier doesn't always have much control over insulation levels in rented housing. I rented a lovely original arts and crafts farmhouse for a few years. It had no insulation at all (and to be fair would have been difficult to insulate without a new roof). The windows would often freeze on the inside during winter. Sadly it was demolished and replaced with an executive home after the minimum levels for rented home energy efficiency came in.

Before. For Ivor who can't see the image type in http://www.vord.net/about_me/farmhouse.jpg

After. The 17th century bricks from the early bit would have been handy for my chimney.

I reckon it's the rented that forces legislation encouraging the free insulation muppets rather than a more sensible tax on energy use which might allow you to do something more sensible.

Even then I had a huge argument with building regs recently. The topic was whether it was sensible to do stuff that would have 1000 years payback on energy saving. I doubt my house will be here in 1000 years time, and cost for things like builders mostly translates into their energy usage at the end of the day. Others have pointed out I could achieve the goal more cheaply with impermeable membranes but I would much rather be able to do my own thing.

 

[Flyfisher]

To get back to the point of the thread, I agree with just about every point made so far but think over population is not really the size of problem others present (I admit to having 4 children) as I have seen first hand the potential still left on this planet of ours, based on both both human and natural resources.

I've little doubt that our planet still has plenty of potential for further plundering of its natural resources but the question, for me, is what sort of planet do we wish to leave to future generations. The fact is that those natural resources are finite, which translates into a finite wealth to be shared amongst the global population, so the higher the population the poorer it must be - both in the tangible sense of shared wealth and the intangible sense of quality of life and the environment in which we all live. This, of course, glosses over such massive social issues as distribution of that wealth, but finite it remains.

Unfortunately, human history has no track record of appreciation or concern for such 'airy fairy' notions in the daily struggle for existence and individuals building the best possible lifestyle for themselves so I don't anticipate this changing any time soon, if ever. Indeed, I read in the news today that both main UK political parties are currently promising to out-spend each other to ensure the continued growth of our economy. Continuous growth in a world of finite resources - where exactly do they think that will end? Oh well, what can we expect when our system of government only operates on a 5-year election cycle? Until we have some form of global government - with teeth, unlike the largely ineffective United Nations - I can't see how we can effectively address global problems.

 

[steveb]

I wouldn't worry - I give it 100 years before normality is restored and the termites are back in charge of the planet.

Or crocodiles

 

[Flyfisher]

Yes, I have little concern for the well being of the planet as a whole. We know it has experienced climate extremes and huge extinction events in the past and yet here we are. Indeed, for all our anthropomorphic concern about our fellow creatures - especially the cute ones such as dolphins and elephants etc - it could be argued that species extinction is entirely natural and normal. I’ve read that more species have become extinct than are alive today, yet it doesn’t seem to have hindered the biodiversity we see today. So I’m not particularly concerned about ‘life on Earth’. I’d say it’s humanity that’s at risk, not the planet. Perhaps our ‘intelligence’ is not the long-term evolutionary advantage we think it is?

 

[plasticpigeon]

I'm not sure what point you are making here.