Hi, hoping people out there will be able to give me feedback on the following situation either through professional expertise or experience of using a heat pump.
Apologies in advance for the long post but I wanted to ensure I got the details across.
I had a technical assessment carried out on my small 3 bed semi and not surprisingly the BER was E1 despite having had the attic insulated to 200mm under flooring and 400mm elsewhere. The house if freezing within 30 minutes of switching off gas in winter. I was told that I can get to A2 if I do external insulation, new windows and doors to bring the Heat Loss Indicator to 1.9, and then junk the heating system in favour of a heat pump (air to water) with new radiators and zone controls. Cost of this (including grants) will come to approx 33/35K - I don't have a final estimate for windows/doors element so need to finalise that part to be more certain of final price.
From what I can tell, if I leave out the heat pump and just do windows/doors/external insulation then the cost will be about 26/27k and I will only get a grant for the external insulation. Existing plumbing is a one pipe system so I will probably have to look at changing that to a 2 pipe system either way in order to add zones for upstairs and downstairs and to allow individual rads to be turned off in the future to be more cost efficient.
Given how cold the house is at present, and that I will have to invest money on updating the plumbing, and that I will get windows / doors grant by going one stop shop that I won't get otherwise, and that ultimately the difference is at most 9k, I am thinking it might be best to go for the heat pump and not throw good money into fixing a gas heating system that will eventually have to be replaced in the longer run? I think I will achieve B2 rating if I fix the existing system, add external wrap and upgrade windows/doors. I'm in my fifties and so realise it probably won't pay for itself but then again it would be nice not to have to live in a cold house as you get older. I won't have a big pension so definitely can't afford to renovate then. However, I am very concerned by suggestions that the cost of running a heat pump is very expensive and I certainly won't have any spare money after the cost of taking out a loan to do all this on top of an ever increasing mortgage. Any advice/ feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
Apologies in advance for the long post but I wanted to ensure I got the details across.
I had a technical assessment carried out on my small 3 bed semi and not surprisingly the BER was E1 despite having had the attic insulated to 200mm under flooring and 400mm elsewhere. The house if freezing within 30 minutes of switching off gas in winter. I was told that I can get to A2 if I do external insulation, new windows and doors to bring the Heat Loss Indicator to 1.9, and then junk the heating system in favour of a heat pump (air to water) with new radiators and zone controls. Cost of this (including grants) will come to approx 33/35K - I don't have a final estimate for windows/doors element so need to finalise that part to be more certain of final price.
From what I can tell, if I leave out the heat pump and just do windows/doors/external insulation then the cost will be about 26/27k and I will only get a grant for the external insulation. Existing plumbing is a one pipe system so I will probably have to look at changing that to a 2 pipe system either way in order to add zones for upstairs and downstairs and to allow individual rads to be turned off in the future to be more cost efficient.
Given how cold the house is at present, and that I will have to invest money on updating the plumbing, and that I will get windows / doors grant by going one stop shop that I won't get otherwise, and that ultimately the difference is at most 9k, I am thinking it might be best to go for the heat pump and not throw good money into fixing a gas heating system that will eventually have to be replaced in the longer run? I think I will achieve B2 rating if I fix the existing system, add external wrap and upgrade windows/doors. I'm in my fifties and so realise it probably won't pay for itself but then again it would be nice not to have to live in a cold house as you get older. I won't have a big pension so definitely can't afford to renovate then. However, I am very concerned by suggestions that the cost of running a heat pump is very expensive and I certainly won't have any spare money after the cost of taking out a loan to do all this on top of an ever increasing mortgage. Any advice/ feedback would be greatly appreciated, thanks.
