PowerSwitch

Dear ladies and gentlemen,

I am very inexperienced when it comes to Internet forums, but I hope that I might take the opportunity to learn from so many of you intelligent, knowledgeable and friendly people.

I chose this forum because it looks like a perfect place to discuss topics that are now very close to my heart. It may be too late, at my age, to make any significant changes to make the world a better place, but I hope to help in any small way that I can.

This brings me on to the subject of my post. With the price of energy bills ever-increasing, my wife and I are now starting to look at different ways to reduce our costs, as well as our carbon footprint, so that we may enjoy what is left of our retirement, and I do very much like the idea of solar energy. However, we have a few concerns, which I hope that you may be able to allay for us.

Firstly, with the sun blocked, here in the South West, by thick cloud for most of the year, will it be difficult for the solar cells to 'absorb' (if that is the right word) enough energy to power a four-bedroom home?

Secondly, to make this a worthwhile venture, enabling us to generate all of our own electricity, would we need to have the entire roof covered with panels, or just the odd panel here and there?

Finally, are there different 'grades' of solar panels? My wife and I would like to buy the best that we can afford, but we would like to know if there are 'good' panels and 'not so good' panels? Essentially, we are looking to buy the best quality at the lowest price.

I very much appreciate any help that you might be able to give, and I look forward to hopefully engaging in healthy discussions with you all in the future.

Kind Regards,

Sebastian Walker

Hello and welcome Sebastian. Can't help you much with your queries but there are others here who certainly can and I am sure will be along shortly.

Welcome, Sebastian.

You do not give much detail of your house and its heating system so we can only give general advise. Can you tell us what insulation you have now and the fuel used for heating? You will save most money by reducing your consumption first and then by spending on draught proofing and insulation second. "Eco Bling" in the form of hot water and electric solar panels, although looking nice, comes a distinct third.

A pleasure to meet you, eatyourveg and kenneal.

Thank you for your advice. We have cavity wall insulation and we use natural gas for our heating.

In order to get the most out of solar power, would we be better off investing in some kind of electrical heating source, so that all of our energy needs were met by electricity, rather than fossil fuel?

Kind Regards,

Sebastian Walker

So you have a relatively modern house with cavity wall insulation and gas heating.

1. Insulate insulate insulate.

Assuming the cavity insulation hasn't settled, nothing to do with the walls.
Check your roof insulation. If it is less than 10 inches deep, top it up. Then top it up anyway. Very cheap to buy. Make sure you leave enough airflow round the roof edges.
Check the whole house for drafts. Doors, windows, vents. Check your ground floor - is it concrete or raised flloorboards? My be worthwhile sealing the cracks in the floorboards.

If you don't have double glazing, or if it is over 20 years old, think about getting it replaced. If you have the budget get tripple glazing, else make sure it is the heat retaining glass that is available.

2. Reduce your consumption of electricity/gas
If you're boiler is more than 10 years old, consider replacing it with a condensing boiler. How is your water heated? If gas or electric immersion tank, then you can install a combined solar /gas heating system. If you have a combi boiler, options are more limited.

How is your heating controlled? Fit thermostatically controlled radiators and a separate timer control for house and water heating. Decide how cool you can cope with, and only heat the house to that temperature in the rooms you use regularly. Keep internal doors closed.

Replace incandescent or halogen lights with CFLs or LEDs.
Buy one of those plug in electric consumption metres, and measure how much each of your appliances uses. Old fridges/freeezers/ hi-fis or TVs etc. can be really inefficient. Unplug what you don't use often, and prioritise the real guzzlers for upgrade.


3. Not blown your budget yet?

Providing you have a pitched roof somewhere between SE and SW not overshadowed by trees or other buildings, then consider solar hot water.

4. Hate the kids and want to spend their inheritance?

Spend every last penny on Solar PV with battery backup and grid isolation for when the power goes down. Failing that, small scale PV still gets an excellent feed in tariff , so if you can afford the outlay and have the roofspace, you may end up receiving money from the electricity companies instead. If budget is tight, you can rent your roofspace to a company who install their panels on your roof, and you get a cut of the profits.

That's enough to start with...

You can make an approximately 80% saving on your energy bills by increasing your loft insulation to 450mm thickness of fibre, adding external insulation to your cavity walls, draught proofing the whole house, insulating the floors, if that is possible then adding solar hot water, some PV and a wood burning stove. Change all your light bulbs to CFL, or better still LED. The major savings come from the insulation, though.

Go to http://www.superhomes.org.uk/get-inspir ... me-locator and look up Winchester, Piping Close (79% saving) and Lewes, Sheepfair (72% saving) in the Superhomes locator; both projects I designed. The Sheepfair house was more difficult to get airtight and to get a good insulation perimeter on as it is a chalet type house, hence the lower energy saving. I also had some input on the Brighton, Ditchling Rise house and Maria and I collaborated on the Lewes house.

Both clients were retired people spending their pension lump sums as they weren't getting much return from the bank. I'll leave you to work out what your return is on an 80% saving on your fuel bills. They also get much increased comfort and energy and comfort security, provided you have a store of logs. Both homes will stay comfortable even if the electricity goes off: an increasingly likely prospect in the near future.

I've got a similar project in for planning permission in Basingstoke at the moment and 9 houses to Passivhaus standards in Newbury about to go for planning. The Passivhaus standard houses should achieve about 90% savings on a current Building Regulations standard house. 8 of the 9 Newbury houses are on one site and will have Combined heat and power with a district heating system and, using biodiesel, will be zero carbon homes.

The secret is to insulate to the max first and then spend money on alternative energy supply.

I finished building this extension to a bungalow in 1983 having planned it in 1975. It went from 800 sq feet to 2300 sq feet on three floors and had a heat load of 6 kW which is better than the current building regs would achieve. If I was doing that project now it would have a heating requirement of 1 to 1.5 kW.

There has been no need to spend too much money on fuel bills for years but the British people are only just realising that comfort is achievable and affordable. The building industry has yet to catch up.

This photo was taken during the December of 1981 when we had a 7 day power cut. We were the only house in the lane which was comfortable as we had a woodburning stove as well as insulation to keep us warm. None of the other houses in the lane had any heating because their heating pumps wouldn't work without the electricity supply. The upstairs was warm because it had a very low heating requirement and the rads worked off a gravity feed from the wood burning cooker/boiler, as did the hot water.

Now where does the boundary between information and advertising fall, I wonder, and does it shift if you're a moderator . . .?

An Inspector Calls wrote:Now where does the boundary between information and advertising fall, I wonder, and does it shift if you're a moderator . . .?

I reckon that Ken was proving his credentials and showing he's actually done it, rather than just reading it on a web site.

An Inspector Calls wrote:Now where does the boundary between information and advertising fall, I wonder, and does it shift if you're a moderator . . .?

Kens home is a splendid example of what can be achieved useing a mixture of generally traditional building techniques with a bit of modern science and modern materials.

Not an advert at all IMHO.
Is he trying to sell one like it ?
Or promoting a particular suppliers products ?

It would seem not.

I regularly post links to suppliers and products that I can recomend, making it clear that I have no connection with the business in question.

Other established members are welcome to post links to recomended suppliers or products, provided that they either have no connection, or declare any connection.

Whilst newer members can also post links or recomendations, these are very carefully sructenised and often deleted.

If a new member says " where can I buy a cheap ipad", and then recomends somewhere, they are likely to be banned.
If an established member says " I recently purchased a stove from XYZ" and am pleased with it, that is different.

Kenneal and others on this site regularly offer free professional advice to those who ask, which is of great practical value. They do not do so out of a desire to line their pockets, but in a spirit of altruism, which it would be well, churlish to criticise.

A thank you goes out from me to all here who give out useful, solid, nuts and bolts information so freely and have done so for years.

Yes, I begin to see how this all works.

And technically, it just shows what you can achieve in heat loss reduction by fitting very few, small windows into a house. John Seymour was pushing that message in the 70s.

Yes, Inspector, that house was always good and bright inside, except at night with the lights out of course. It's about placement of the windows and the right decoration. We have always spent al lot of time outdoors so when we go inside it is nice to "be inside".

I think some architects are a bit frightened of the great outdoors but like to look at it. So they like to keep a layer of glass between themselves and the big wide world. Hence "glass boxes."

Yes, I forgot the solar energy sources inside the building

Thank you for your input, RalphW.

I have learnt an incredible amount already from all of you about how to make a home more energy efficient.

Kenneal, that extension was very tastefully done, retaining and, at the same time, creating plenty of character.

Regards,

Sebastian Walker