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0:05 AM, 4th August 2023, About 10 months ago 27
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We’ve all been hearing about the government’s green plan for the private rented sector. But are the plans actually as ‘green’ as they make out to be?
The government believe heat pumps could be the answer to help tackle the energy-efficiency problem in PRS homes.
This Property118 investigation looks at all the details to do with heat pumps and finds out whether they are as energy efficient as they claim to be.
There are different kinds of heat pumps but most use the same basic principle of heat transfer. Rather than burning fuel to create heat, the pump moves heat from one place to another.
During winter, the heat pump will absorb heat from the outside and release it inside. In the summer the pump does the opposite by moving heat from the air inside to outside.
While this sounds all good in principle there’s a lot more than meets the eye.
Installing a heat pump isn’t cheap. An air source heat pump can cost between £7,000 and £15,000 to buy and install.
Ground source heat pumps can cost between £15,000 and £35,000. The government launched a boiler upgrade scheme last year offering a £5,000 incentive to install a heat pump.
It’s worth remembering that the grant only covers the cost of the pump and not the installation.
According to a programme by the BBC, the government initially planned to issue 30,000 grants annually in England and Wales but only managed 12,000 in its first year.
When asked about the high costs of heat pumps in the programme, the Minister for Energy Security Graham Stuart said: “The price of heat pumps is coming down and we think that heat pumps with a rebalanced pricing system across the energy sector will become more and more competitive going forward.”
However, the government completely missed their target to install 600,000 pumps a year in 2022 with only 43,000 installed.
The BBC says at current rates of installation, it will take more than 400 years before every British home has a heat pump.
Even if some people can afford to pay, there is another barrier to hitting the government’s heat pump targets. The UK only has 4,000 trained heat-pump installers – it is estimated we will need 33,000 by 2028.
Rodney Townson from landlord association iHowz, says that the organisation have never shared the government’s ambition for heat pumps as a solution for lower carbon heating in the PRS.
“Tenants want safe homes which are affordable to heat and do not want technical heating solutions which can end up costing significantly more than existing gas central heating.
“In order for heat pumps to deliver efficiency of up to 300% they require a well-insulated property which is likely to require some form of mechanical ventilation with heat recovery to ensure sufficient air flow.”
Heat pumps are not suitable for many older properties without huge insulation upgrades, eg external cladding.
Though the plans have not yet become law, ministers have previously proposed that by April 2025, newly rented properties in England and Wales will need to meet a minimum EPC standard of C – tougher than the current E standard.
The regulation is also slated to apply to existing tenancies from 2028.
Having a heat pump installed on the property doesn’t automatically guarantee an EPC C rating.
Heat pumps use more electricity compared to natural gas and the way EPC’s are designed at the moment they take into account grading based on bills rather than carbon output.
However, a consultation on new EPC and minimum energy efficiency standards (MEES) requirements ended two years ago.
The government has given no response to it, leading to widespread uncertainty in the PRS about what is expected from landlords. Mr Townson has been writing to ministers since 2021 urging them to publish the new EPC and MEES requirements for the PRS.
He said: “As the UK transitions to a lower carbon emission approach to heating homes landlords need more support from the government.
“Landlords and other homeowners require greater clarity on what the new EPC/MEES standards will require, which is supported by a long-term scheme with adequate resources – installers, materials, funding and assessors.”
Landlords up and down the country are already struggling with rising costs and many are spending thousands of pounds upgrading their properties due to the government’s green energy push.
Mick Roberts, a landlord from Nottingham, previously told Property118: “Many landlords have spent thousands of pounds upgrading homes and we don’t even know what’s what yet due to the uncertainty around the new EPC targets.”
He said a lot of properties may need £30,000 spending on them just to get to band C.
“I’ve got to start telling tenants soon, ‘You can’t live here past 2028, the government say you can’t if the property is not a C, and your rent doesn’t pay for a C’.”
Tom Spurrier, of the UK Green Building Council, told the Telegraph: “We have currently got a metric that incentivises gas because it is cheaper.
“If you install a heat pump, which is powered by electricity, your EPC rating may fall.”
Scottish Green Minister Patrick Harvie revealed plans for homes to receive a lower environmental rating if gas boilers provide the heating.
Landlords and homeowners in Scotland will need to meet an EPC rating of C or above from 2025 – with the rules preventing the sale of some properties that have boilers.
Lord Willie Haughey, a businessman who owns a heat pump supplier company, said heat pumps may not be the answer due to Scotland’s harsh climate.
He told the Telegraph: “The truth of the matter is that heat pumps don’t work as efficiently in Scotland as they do in other countries.”
Lord Haughey also warns that heat pumps are noisy and will only heat water to 54C (129.2F) – that’s lower than the 60C recommended by the Health and Safety Executive to kill the legionella bacteria.
Could these plans be coming to England anytime soon and will landlords be expected to install heat pumps instead?
The government previously stated that it aims to ban the installation of all new gas boilers in England by 2035 in rented and owner-occupied properties.
Comments made by Michael Gove on Times Radio last week signal the government may be backtracking on the proposal.
He said: “There are proposals to decarbonise our existing housing stock, which I think are the right direction to go.
“But the costs which some of those changes may impose on homeowners and landlords, I think that at this point in time, we do need to be careful about”.
Compared to installing a heat pump an installation of a fossil fuel boiler tends to cost around £2,500. Another issue is that heat pumps don’t work well in poorly insulated homes.
Homes need to be well insulated for heat pumps to be effective because the devices work at lower temperatures and so will struggle to get the house warm and keep it to temperature.
Mr Townson says that the government has not done enough on insulating Britain’s homes.
“Last winter the government spent almost £4bn a month to subsidise energy bills, yet no significant new funding has been made available to accelerate the insulation of Britain’s homes over the summer months.
“Clearly, the PM and the chancellor have forgotten George Osborne’s prompt to fix properties while the sun is shining.”
Mr Townson says the other problem is that the PRS is made up of older housing stock and many HMOs or leasehold flats have planning restrictions which make it impossible for heat pumps to be fitted.
“Many rental properties are HMOs or leasehold flats. There may be planning or lease restrictions which prevent or add additional administrative and direct costs, which prevent or make it unaffordable to fit heat pumps for these properties.
“The PRS has a high proportion of older housing stock, hence landlords’ concerns at the lack of any government announcement on the new EPC standards, beyond Mr Gove’s recent indication that it has been kicked into the long grass and will not be addressed this side of a general election.”
He says that councils need to relax planning restrictions along with fees for any insulation measures. It’s no wonder that landlords and homeowners are looking for cheaper options rather than installing a heat pump.
Mr Townson says that insulation is the most sensible solution.
“The best and most sensible solution to energy saving in the housing sector is Fabric First, which is draft proofing and insulation.
“This is a sensible solution as it reduces the need for energy to heat (and cool) homes and the solutions are independent of the specific energy source (mains electricity / solar / hydrogen).
It remains to be seen whether the government will backtrack on its green energy push for the PRS.
We all want our homes to be as energy-efficient as possible but with the costs involved, heat pumps might not be the answer to the solution.
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AnthonyJames
23:21 PM, 4th August 2023, About 10 months ago
I've had a heat assessor visit my 1907 detached 150m2 house today. External wall insulation cost will be ballpark £30K especially if I make any attempt to use brick slips etc to evoke the original very attractive look of the house, rather than destroy its appearance with boring white render.
Replacement windows need doing as I have 20 year old Pvc and timber bays with infill panels and narrow air gaps. That's another £20K.
Internal wall insulation needed as well to connect to the loft insulation and avoid cold bridging, as the EWI can't reach the roof plate as sloping ceilings in bedrooms. That and draught-proofing and ground floor insulation under suspended timber is another £8-10K.
So that's Fabric First completed, with AHSP, solar panels and battery to follow.
No, impossible, it's completely unaffordable as a rental business. I will redevelop the site and sell.
ECO4 funding if I were unemployed and on Universal Credit? Apparently I'd be offered £4K at most. What a joke!
John Grefe
12:41 PM, 5th August 2023, About 10 months ago
reply yo Mick Roberts & Beaver. I assume that it's allowed to name companies? My house is solid brick which hasn't altered. Better Planet, Potters Bar EN6 4NQ Tel;0101662408 http://www.betterplanet.co.uk. Family run business, I deal with Stephanie Larsson but other team members are available. Good luck, I am pleased maybe to encourage you? John
Fergus Dodd
13:29 PM, 5th August 2023, About 10 months ago
Has anyone heard of this company https://polarnightenergy.fi/
It seems too good to be true, however, if it is feasible, it could make all domestic heating systems obsolete.
Ade T
13:44 PM, 5th August 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by matchmade at 04/08/2023 - 23:21
And even if you did that work today "matchmade" in a bid to get to the EPC rating of C today, which would be admirable and you would certainly achieve at least a "C" with that lot of work with the current EPC system..........
Tomorrow (next month/next year) when the NEW EPC algorithm is brought out, nobody knows what your EPC rating will be, in spite of spending all that money.
Therein lies the problem because the transition from "COST" based EPC to "CARBON" based EPC will have a monstrous effect on current EPC values.
Until the NEW EPC methodology is known you are simply gambling with your hard earned money that any improvements you make today (in the hunt for the EPC rating of "C" or better) will be recognised by the NEW EPC system when its finally brought out.
Even the energy companies that are promoting ASHP admit they are more expensive to run than Gas Central Heating (GCH). If the NEW (to be revealed) EPC system favours ASHP and wallops you if you have GCH then tenants had better get used to much bigger electric bills. LL would be forced to remove GCH, and install very expensive ASHP's, resulting in more expensive fuel bills for tenants; particularly those living in the north of England and Scotland where ASHP are far less efficient, because its like a fridge outside even in summer. This is looking like another mis-selling scandal to me.
It's clearly a great idea reducing the carbon footprint of a property, but if the weight of that legislation and huge cost hits the LL then the LL will sell.
If the consequence of the NEW (currently unknown) EPC algorithm is that the tenant lives in a lower carbon house, but that house cost twice as much to heat than the GCH house then that's not going to help the low income tenant at all.
If the government want to force LL into this then they will need to provide financial support to LL otherwise even more LL will sell up. If the Govt want to protect tenants from increased electric bills as a result of removing gas CH then the Govt will also need to financially support the tenants fuel bills.
At the moment we LL's are being asked to carry out expensive "improvements" to our properties as early as 2025 when nobody has a scooby doo what the resulting EPC value will be under a new EPC, carbon based regime.
This fiasco needs sorting out fast. When industry experts are saying ASHP are NOT cost effective for vast swathes of the UK then the policy makers MUST listen.
Don't tell us in 10 years time Mr Gove that the further decimation of the PRS was an "unintended consequence" of trying to be carbon free with "compulsory" introduction of ASHP's (to meet NEW EPC legal requirements). Its so obvious what the consequence will be that even my goldfish can see the problem.
Beaver
17:49 PM, 5th August 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Peter Sproston at 04/08/2023 - 12:54
And do you know how long the boreholes are supposed to last? I've seen something online that says they online last 15 years.
Beaver
17:51 PM, 5th August 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by John Grefe at 05/08/2023 - 12:41
So you have no cavity walls but have solid walls. How did you insulate them?
stephen Bailey
20:30 PM, 5th August 2023, About 10 months ago
What happened to evacuated solar collectors. Low cost to install, only electricity needed is a circulation pump. This can heat enough water for washing etc. Larger quantities of evacuated solar collectors can produce enough hot water to heat your house. You have to deal with the excess heat in the summer though.
In the next few years we will have Perovskite Photovoltaic panels. These will cost significantly less than current silicone PV panels and be more efficient. Heating a large water tank from electricity produced by the PV panels and circulating this water around the central heating system is simple using the existing central heating system. If more electricity is needed it can be taken from the grid which hopefully will be green. Hydrogen is a great idea but may be restricted to commercial applications due to some current safety issues. If every house was well insulated, had PV perovskite panels and evacuated collectors we could stop needing hydrocarbons to heat our houses.
Heat pumps and the cost of running them is total nonsense. From a cost perspective a new Gas boiler costs £2,000 to install, a system using heat pumps would cost £10,000 - £15,000 in an average house. There is no cost saving using heat pumps, with a COP of 3 if you are lucky in the UK and electricity costing over 3 x as much as a Kw of gas there is not any cost saving using heat pumps.
Peter Sproston
9:42 AM, 6th August 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 05/08/2023 - 17:49
I am unsure what there is to limit the life of the borehole unless problems with unusual ground conditions which should have been known when originally drilled?
The hole is unlined and a 2 core heavy PVC pipe dropped down for the flow and return. The slurry produced from the drilling was largely returned to fill up the holes.
There is a welded PVC elbow at the top which diverts the pipe toward a manifold chamber.
We were told that the boreholes should well outlast the heat pump and unless the pipe breaks down somehow or the top elbow fails there is really nothing to go wrong.
Where the ground differs from ours considerably some drilling companies use different slurries to surround the pipe to ensure adequate heat transfer, I believe.
Being electro-mechanical the heat pump will clearly have maintenance issues longer term and ultimately replacement too at some point, although I believe they are pretty hardy pieces of plant.
Adrian Ellis
10:35 AM, 6th August 2023, About 10 months ago
Heat pumps have limitations and are not the silver bullet everyone who has no technical knowledge about them presumed.
There are 3 types, 1). Air source, 2). Ground source, 3). Running water source.
1). Air source effeciency is dictated by tempariture difference, therefore smaller difference (winter) less effective, just when you need it to work!
2). Ground source effeciency drops pro rata as the ground chills and can freeze into a block of ice, so again useless fur coat no knickers.
3). Water source, a constant flowing stream /river that doesn't freeze solid provides the best heat exchange environment. Water is substantially more conductive for heat exchange than air or ice. The temperature difference remains more stable and larger volumes of heat are able to be extracted more efficiently.
As is plain to see, the majority of properties in the UK will not have access to a flowing stream/river so are left with option 1 or 2.
Neither are effective or efficient but they will generate profit for the companies producing them and the installers fitting them.
The politicians as usual have not got the faintest clue about anything other than self promotion on current political agendas.
Before you invest huge sums in a heat pump see if the companies will guarantee output or your money back, somehow I doubt it.
I hope this information is useful to all, for the doubters I am a fully qualified refrigeration Engineer and I have nothing to gain giving you false information.
Mick Roberts
17:47 PM, 6th August 2023, About 10 months ago
Reply to the comment left by John Grefe at 05/08/2023 - 12:41
Thanks yes,
The companies I deal with just set up to take the grant money & we can never trust them that the end result will be warmer house, lower bills, & actually work.