Did anyone see the BBC programme on heat pumps?

Many people would rather pay £5 or maybe £10 more per week in heating costs NOT to have one of these monstrosities in their back garden.

Heat pumps are a rip-off and a scandal. They would be unsuitable and uneconomical for many millions of UK properties. EPC minimum should be D and not C. Otherwise the UK and its citizens will be bankrupted by the zero carbon madness. While we will go down the tubes, the real carbon emissions culprit — China — will end up ruling the world.

We are way down the list for polluting!

The top 20 nations with the highest CO2 emissions are:
• China
• United States
• European Union
• India
• Russia
• Japan
• Germany
• South Korea
• Iran
• Saudi Arabia
• Canada
• Indonesia
• Mexico
• Brazil
• South Africa
• Turkey
• Australia
• United Kingdom
• Three way tie:
• Italy
• San Marino
• Vatican City

Like all government sound bite policies it hasn’t been thought through. We will not have enough electrickery to support the conversion from gas to electric heating for many years after the deadline set by government ministers who no doubt will get their 2 property’s heat pumps installed under their expenses claim

I did see a program last night about Hydrogen Gas Boilers.

They are Carbon free and could well be the future as the boiler is much like the current gas boiler size.
Cadent are saying that most of their Pipe network is suitable for Hydrogen Gas.

Also, of course, apparently heat pumps only heat the water to 54 degrees which is below the recommended 60 degrees declared by the Health and Safety Executive to prevent Legionnaires disease.

They are least efficient when needed the most in the winter, and consume vast amounts of electricity!

And of course the Grid cannot support all this electricity required.

Reply to the comment left by roger radford at 02/08/2023 – 10:01
Why should property owners be expected to pay to meet zero carbon targets when the government is intending to ‘max out’ UK fossil fuel reserves?

The BBC’s Justin Rowlat is an eco-zealot, and I knew it would be a rah! rah! programme for heat pumps.

The bungalow owners said their investment was an £18k leap of faith, despite all the evidence pointing to their poor efficiency. Oh, to have that sort of spare cash for a bit of a punt!

Hydrogen [and Nuclear] must be the way forward, but there was plenty of opposition to the hydrogen pilot from Whitby residents.

We need to see it working at scale, but the excuse given was we can’t force people to accept such infrastructural changes. Well, tell that to those whose lives have been wrecked by the Heathrow runway and HS2 fiascos, where they were forced to accept.

Meanwhile, and it wasn’t mentioned too loudly, we are paying subsidies and supply rates to renewables suppliers, even though the Grid can’t cope with the supply and the wind farms sit idle much of the time.

This is a scandal, but all politicians are aligned in their apparent stupidity.

I quite like the idea of a heat pump – so long as it’s combined with solar, battery storage and a gas boiler to top up the temperature from 53 to 63. Otoh a simple combi boiler is simple with little to go wrong and if hydrogen becomes available there’ll be simple hydrogen combis to slot in.

A heat pump alone is not enough.

Has anyone tried using low cost diesel hot air blowers?
Some great videos on the costs of using these on YouTube.
OK, they’re not environmentally great like heat pumps, but they’re very efficient as far as I can see and they’ll get hard pressed consumers through next winter which is as far as many are looking.

It’s safest to mount these externally as they need an external exhaust. But they can be sited indoors if professionally installed.
8 kW heat for pennies per hour using ducted hot air.
Webasco are a well known brand, but the Chinese variant are dirt cheap, like £100.
Not for everybody, but worth looking at.