Remote Living > Heating
Optimising domestic space-heating retrofits from nat gas to heat pump
mab:
I would be very interested in your findings - except I'm having an ASHP installed right now and 8 years is a bit long a time for me to wait to optimise it. ;D
I'm building a house which is not to passivhaus standard but does exceed current UK build requirements for insulation and (i hope) air permeability. I've laid underfloor heating pipes with the ASHP in mind, but due to the fact that i have to use a registered installer (to claim the £5000 grant), i am dependent on the installers and manufacturers knowing what they are doing.
So far I'm not convinced that either of them do. :-\
But I'm doing my own research, and i suspect that once it's commissioned I'll be getting my own spanners out and making improvements - i just have to wait for the warranty period to elapse.
I recently did some fault diagnosis on a 13yrs old GSHP in the local village hall (17th century i think, solid stone walls, but new underfloor heating and floor insulation - 13yrs ago). The heating works well despite it being poorly insulated by todays standards, and the old heat pump that is on or off (as opposed to modern variable speed inverter driven compressors). So I'm expecting your eventual findings to be positive.
I think anout 2/3rds of houses in Norway use heatpumps ( not sure what proportion are air source though), where temps regularly are down to -20°c in winter i believe, and as you say, in absolute terms that's not that cold, and it's the temperature range of the refrigerant that is the limiting factor.
Good luck with your PHD :)
DamonHD:
Hey thanks!
I promise that my intention is to publish anything useful ASAP as I stumble across it. There's ~29M UK households behind you in the queue to upgrade to heat-pumps and I'd rather that as many as possible are done as well as possible. B^>
Rgds
Damon
DamonHD:
My first 'paper' (it's not going anywhere formal) is done...
https://www.earth.org.uk/UK-homes-needing-retrofit.html
TL;DR: ~20M UK homes already built and currently using nat-gas hydronic heating will still be with us in 2050 and almost all will need to be upgraded to heat pumps... Luckily my simple calcs line up with those of the grown-ups the UK government appointed to give climate advice (the CCC)!
Rgds
Damon
SparWeb:
If the study considers up to 25 million dwellings, of which 1/2 million are "technically unfeasible", then the problem with those exceptions is only the political side of their existence. The climate effect of doing the majority of the dwellings but not addressing them is missing 2 % of your target. Not technically enough to matter. It's the existence of exceptions that will matter most. The same might be said of the 2M "conservation" buildings but what I'm missing is what those really are. If they aren't really dwellings but actually commercial/tourist/mixed use buildings then that's a whole different matter. The consideration of dwellings only covers half of the uses that buildings get put to in the world. If your county of Kingston is also considering retrofits to commercial buildings, they may find ways to deal with their "technically unfeasibles" there.
If a government-funded conversion program is too generous, then even the "technically unfeasible" building owners will subscribe, draining the fund on hard-to-fix buildings. If the program is onerous to subscribe and comply to, then the exemptions granted to the "technically unfeasible" buildings will seed resentment among those who are forced to comply. You can't win. All you can do is seek the point of minimum pain.
Let's hope your work will help that point to be found.
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