Posted by: @david999

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@jamespa yup but if a house burns down and takes out a family or a whole authority of heat pumps fail and a council have to pick up the bill who gets the blame. They just sit in the dock crying playing daft claiming nobody told them and really really sorry. But the planet is stuffed and no amount of heat pumps will make any difference, zero.  If we can’t start cooling down this planet soon, and we can’t. It’s game over, it’s a planet jim but not as we know it and there is no planet B.  2050 to net zero ha ha who are you kidding.  26 years!! In the past 5 years it’s gone downhill seriously and if the recent events were not El Niño generated as scientists hope we could be in a runaway climate. So don’t buy a big box of cornflakes. 

off my soap box now.  Probably up at 27 pages now 😬

I didn't defend the status quo, merely pointed out that the MCS stamp of approval is not worthless, its worth a lot to installers (particularly poor installers).

IMHO heat pumps do not need and shouldn't have a special 'consumer protection/regulation' regime.  Building regulations (which are enforced by independent organisations overseen by local government, or by local government itself) should regulate anything to do with their efficiency and safety that needs to be regulated.  Planning should regulate appearance and noise in relation to the effect on others.  Everything else falls into trading standards or consumer protection.  But we have fallen (or been lured) into the trap of treating them as something 'different' thus making it more difficult for established traders who live by their reputations to compete, and ushering in instead a load of special purpose grant harvesters who will disappear once the grants taper off, and who have the protection of a set of rigid rules and a closed shop.  Big mistake.

By all means provide government grants or other incentives, but don't invent complex and unnecessary mechanisms that distort competition and raise barriers to entry, without improving the product, in the very market you are trying to promote. 

As to the fate of the climate, its clear that we have long ago passed the point of being able to make a material effect without pain, and its equally clear that considerable long term pain is now baked in.  So we are faced with a choice of accepting considerable pain now to avoid even yet more pain later (which is the responsible approach), or continuing to prevaricate, obfuscate and greenwash which makes the future more or less intolerable in much of the world (in practice almost everywhere in the world, and for almost everyone except the super-rich, because of the inevitable knock-on political/social effects).  Sadly I tend to agree we are, totally selfishly and unconscionably, headed for the latter, but am not yet prepared to give up on the fight (for the avoidance of doubt Im not suggesting you are either!).

@jamespa I was agreeing with you and just reinforcing what you said in entirety😊

So fellas, on the screen in front of me I have 40+ documents which form the Planning Application for a new housing estate of an initial 124 dwellings, plus an option for further 176 and half-a-dozen commercial units.

There are nearby existing air-shafts for abandoned water-filled mine workings, which would be ideally-suited for ground-source heat pump collector-loops to supply all the social-housing...
but the geotechnical consultants recommend filling them in.

Instead, the energy consultants recommend individual ASHPs for each dwelling, which will create an interesting noise issue with a net housing density of 51/hectare.

The developer is bringing in mains gas, which doesn't convince me they either understand or favour heat-pump technology.
Perhaps they've already read the woes expressed by @david999 in this topic, and don't know how to find a decent installer!

Each house is to be provided with an EV Charge Point and internal space for a storage battery.
So presumably they don't yet know of the new PAS63100 'standard' and its fearsome arguments that batteries shouldn't be housed within a dwelling.

Add that lot together, and the developer is still undecided about whether they will need to pay for a new substation.
That's all the more odd because there are two 11kV overhead supplies already crossing the site!

Now, how long should I take to write a submission to the Local Planning Authority to explain what will and won't work?

Or do I just copy and paste some of the choice phrases written here today(!) and leave the councillors to try and enforce their adopted Policy of there being a Climate Change Emergency 😥 

Posted by: @transparent

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Now, how long should I take to write a submission to the Local Planning Authority to explain what will and won't work?

Honestly don't bother unless the local plan (or the neighbourhood plan) is super intelligent about climate change.

Planning decisions are, by law, made based on the local plan and 'other material considerations'.  Planning officers and councillors rarely have an engineering background so won't understand sophisticated arguments or decide that they are 'material'.  The local plan will require x houses or more and that will dominate.  Heat pumps are proposed so that covers the developer, but they will presumably give the purchasers the option (otherwise why install a gas supply).  Lost cause 

@jamespa a prominent scientist was interviewed by enthusiastic journalist regarding a recent Mars landing and prompted the scientist to elaborate on how long it might take to make Mars habitable.  He said we should forget about such fantasies and focus on saving our own planet. 

i really don’t think politicians go into that field to better the country. 

Posted by: @david999

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@jamespa a prominent scientist was interviewed by enthusiastic journalist regarding a recent Mars landing and prompted the scientist to elaborate on how long it might take to make Mars habitable.  He said we should forget about such fantasies and focus on saving our own planet. 

i really don’t think politicians go into that field to better the country. 

I worked in local government for 14 years and I am convinced that many politicians do go into it to better the country.  Unfortunately, to rise up, you need very different qualities, either instead or as well.  Some have both but perhaps not the majority.

@transparent don’t take too long writing the piece about the gshp since that absolutely excellent opportunity implies district heating and no private developers ever think that way. The law needs to be changed so that the energy consultants MUST consider district heating and local facilities, until then it won’t happen. But I bet a space for bike storage is allowed for but not the BEV cars?

The external battery point is essential and possibly a piece on put the PV panels on the south, not north side of the roof, (a local developer to my mum just built houses independent of the orientation so the PV faced north, not clever!).

What you didn’t mention is all houses being built air tight and not just the one that they have to test (100% testing would improve heat loss considerably).

Yes make the point about local substation otherwise the rest is just decoration.

Posted by: @judith

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that absolutely excellent opportunity implies district heating and no private developers ever think that way

For good reason I think.  District heating implies (yet another) private monopoly supplier of an essential service.  Personally I would run a mile from such a scheme, as it will inevitably get sold to someone whose only objective is to extract as much money from it whilst underinvesting in the infrastructure, eventually resulting in a large bill to fix it up on top of the high fees paid already for the service, the proceeds from which have flowed largely into the owners pockets.  Who would want that in their house (or for that matter country), if they could avoid it?

District heating is obviously sensible, but unless its state owned (which it wont be unless we get a very long run of more enlightened government) then it becomes yet another route to extract wealth from the poor to fund the (largely offshore) super rich.  We already have ample evidence to show that this is the case, no need to run the experiment again! (not that we needed to run the experiment in the first instance, it requires only a knowledge of human behaviours/motivations to work out what will happen).

Posted by: @judith

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the piece about the gshp since that absolutely excellent opportunity implies district heating and no private developers ever think that way.

The Social Housing partner within the scheme could insist on a GSHP network for their tenants once they know that it's a possibility. So it's worthwhile making this known during the period of public consultation.

@jamespa  there is a new style of district heating now possible.

Kensa Heat Pumps, Cornwall County Council and BEIS got together for a trial in Stithians called Heat The Streets.

They sunk a number of boreholes (no mines nearby) then interlinked them below road-level. Each house can optionally have a GSHP heat-exchanger unit which draws in from the linked boreholes, and delivers DHW and space-heating outputs. It costs around £25 flat-rate per month, plus whatever electricity the householder uses to run their heat-exchanger.

Installation costs would be less if there were existing shafts into underlying flooded mine-workings. Kensa themselves use that approach for their own manufacturing site.

@transparent the reply from my installer

Posted by: @transparent

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there is a new style of district heating now possible.

Kensa Heat Pumps, Cornwall County Council and BEIS got together for a trial in Stithians called Heat The Streets.

They sunk a number of boreholes (no mines nearby) then interlinked them below road-level. Each house can optionally have a GSHP heat-exchanger unit which draws in from the linked boreholes, and delivers DHW and space-heating outputs. It costs around £25 flat-rate per month, plus whatever electricity the householder uses to run their heat-exchanger.

Installation costs would be less if there were existing shafts into underlying flooded mine-workings. Kensa themselves use that approach for their own manufacturing site.

Interesting, but I remain uneasy that the private monopoly owner of the shared ground loops has you over a barrel.  £300 per year (essentially for access to the warm water) is quite a lot, and could easily be doubled, trebled or worse when an offshore private investor is sold the asset.  Maintenance may be 'minimal' but it will require maintenance and this, as we so painfully know from the experience of the water utilities, is an opportunity to charge the fees, pocket the money, but not actually make the investment.  Personally Im very hesitant about buying into such a scheme unless its UK state (or probably better still local authority) owned.  Humans are simply too greedy to resist the easy profits of a private monopoly.

@david999 - that reply from the installer needs @ant87 to comment rather than myself... which is why I've just tagged him here!

I'm not a heat pump expert (yet!).
I operate mainly in the fields of Smart Meters, Electricity generation & storage, Building Control regulations and national grid infrastructure.

It's the combination of our different skill sets which makes this forum so useful.