Posted by: @jeff

Be interesting to see what happens if the government go ahead as planned and replace the RHI in March next year with an upfront grant of up to  £4,000.

£11,132 vs £4,000 is quite a big difference.

I assume the current RHI is probably unaffordable for the government as the number of installations ramp up. 

What will probably happen is that installers and manufacturers will dramatically drop their prices to maintain business. It's common knowledge that all involved parties are making a lot of money because of the government funding. This may be reduced by as much as 50% which would bring equipment and labour costs more in line with the rest of Europe.

@editor that's probably right. I think the plumber spent 4 days on the job here with this and that. His cost was £1k a day, so him and his lacky were £500 a day, and I doubt he pays his skivvy that

Posted by: @batalto

@editor that's probably right. I think the plumber spent 4 days on the job here with this and that. His cost was £1k a day, so him and his lacky were £500 a day, and I doubt he pays his skivvy that

450 to 500 a day for a plumber? 

https://www.mybuilder.com/pricing-guides/hourly-rate-of-a-plumber

@jeff no way he pays his apprentice that. That's around £60 an hour. Maybe for odd jobs, but for a full-time job, £500 a day is expensive

Posted by: @batalto

@jeff no way he pays his apprentice that. That's around £60 an hour. Maybe for odd jobs, but for a full-time job, £500 a day is expensive

That's why i asked 😊

That sounds about what we paid for our installation - something like £4,500 for 3 days with a team of four guys. Crazy money. 

I saw an interesting conversation on Twitter this week where there was an installer saying how cheap an installation of some sort of basic PV set up for hot water was. The kit cost £1,200 and his installation fee was just £1,000 for a one day job and he was going on about what a great deal it was. Madness. 

I'm afraid it is what is called market forces, supply and demand. Everyone wants to be a manager these days and not get their hands dirty. Several years ago when I was working in India, the company to whom I was contracting were charging the client $1500 per day for my services. But of course I am worth it.

When you take into account all the additional costs of running a business, £50 per hour for a good quality, reputable plumber does not seem too excessive, even though plumbing is not such an onerous task.

I will have to remind my wife how much money I keep saving by carrying out all the plumbing and electrical work around the house.

I think costs will come down. A bit. Like they did when the solar PV grant was reduced. My view is you are paying for a skilled heating engineer to design a system for your house. For which there must be a cost. Plus materials and parts for the solution. And then to fit said system. 
So volume will drive down costs a bit, but until we get a lot of trained heating engineers (not plumbers - although a fine profession) then the costs won’t come down further. 

Solar PV makes an interesting case study due to what happened in January 2016. One of my cousins worked in the industry before the collapse.

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/solar-pv-cost-data

2015/16

Government figures on number of installations/cost per KW installed. 

April 5,241 2,025
May 5,775 1,981
June 9,928 1,920
July 5,575 1,940
August 5,923 1,863
September 10,757 1,806
October 8,007 1,780
November 12,454 1,684
December 16,528 1,676
January 10,102 1,587
February 2,347 1,820
March 2,485 1,911

This is based on official actual MCS numbers in the link. Am sure there will be individual people with different costs. 

The cost per kw was falling, installations per month were high. Of course some of the fall in costs nearer January may well have been due to the fact the RHI was closing as competition heated up. 

Once the FIT change took place installations collapsed, the competition collapsed and the number of installers collapsed and have never returned to the same level of installations. Costs rose. 

Costs per kw in the latest stats were 1,691 for March 2021 so have dropped again over the years. Hopefully we will see an increasing trend of installations in the years ahead. 

The mean cost 2020/2021 was 28% lower than 2013/2014.

There is nervousness about what will happen when the RHI goes for ASHPs next year. That seems to be backed up by people on this forum about whether they would install a ashp without the RHI. 

Of course things may be different this time round, ashp costs may fall, but i am not as confident at the moment about talk of 50% falls in costs unless i am missing something which won't be the first time. 

I managed to sneak in the FiT for my solar PV just before it ended and I've squeezed both the green homes grant and the RHI from the ASHP.

Overall both FiT and RHI I will be getting around £1400 a year for the next 7 years from the government, plus the £5k I had up front for the ASHP - not too shabby

At this exact moment I have an E0 low flow fault on my system. Essentially it refuses to run as it thinks the flow rate is too low for the pump... So no heating... Plumber is coming tomorrow, apparently there is a filter to clean out? Why I wasn't shown how to do this is beyond me. I'm sure I could have it out in 5 minutes and everything running again. Hot water is at least full, but wife and baby are not happy about a cold night. Typically it's quite chilly this evening as well. Hopefully the house holds the temperature this evening.

@batalto Turn all your TRV's or thermostats up to max, then switch it off and on again, and it will work.