The GREEN DEAL thread

[RenewableCandy]

Is that 25 degC, and all day? Are you serious?? Or is that just going to be a "worst-case scenario" against which you are going to compare other settings?

[DominicJ]

It was the last thing I was planning on adjusting to be honest.
The water at 40* and the limited number of radiaters have a much bigger effect than the thermostat

[DominicJ]

Thermo down to 20 (living room was at 22 according to the snake.
We seem to be having some mild weather, so I'll keep an eye on usage over the christmas break.

[kenneal - lagger]

DECC has a blog on the Green Deal here and I have left the following comment. Pleas can others get on there and wake the buggers up to the extent of the work required.

Energy costs in the future are likely to rise continuously as China and India, a third of the world's population, continue their economic growth. The only circumstances in which fuel prices are likely to reduce is if there is a world recession, in which case no one in the UK will have the money to heat their houses anyway. On the basis of continually increasing fuel costs, the Golden Rule will be out of date for an individual property the moment the work is carried out. Properties will be inadequately insulated and will require repeat visits.

In view of the scale of the work required - an average of 624,000 houses per year for 40 years or, given a standard distribution curve, a peak of 2 to 3 million houses a year put against a maximum new build rate in recent years of 250,000 per year - we will be hard put do that amount of visits once only let alone multiple times. We need to do once only visits to any one house. In view of the scale of the work it needs to be done on a contract basis for a number of houses at a time in order to get economies of scale.

The work needs to be done to a set standard of insulation and that standard needs to be set by the Climate Change Act requirement for an 80% saving in fossil fuel use. All insulation work done now should be to a 2016 zero carbon Building Regs standard of insulation.

The Climate Change Act and the Kyoto Agreement requirements are based on an environmental necessity not on an economic aspiration. If the Green Deal is to be successful it must be based on the environmental requirements not economic aspirations.

Anyone who has designed the work required to achieve an 80% saving, and I am one, knows that there is one hell of a lot of detailed design required to achieve that saving. A couple or three contractors turning up at different times and doing their own little bit will result in a bodged job that will leak energy, waste resources, money and time and will never achieve the savings necessary. A good job needs to be designed, detailed and carried out as a single integrated contract.

Nowhere in any of the Green Deal literature have I seen anything about an overall design of the installation.

The Green Deal is a good idea which is let down by an ignorance of the extent of the work entailed.

The work should be properly designed by people with proven experience in the design of highly insulated structures.

The work should be carried out to a high technical standard not to an "economic" standard which will be out of date before the work is started.

The work should be carried out on a one hit per house basis preferably in a contract on a number of adjacent houses.

The job of the economist should be to devise a way to fund the necessary work to the necessary standard not to set the standard.

If the Bank of England can print hundreds of billions of pounds in an attempt to bale out banks, surely it can find a way to print a few tens of billions of pounds per year to fund a national insulation scheme which will flood through the economy and give it a temporary boost to keep the flagging monetary system going for a few more years.

[biffvernon]

A chicken comes home to roost:

In an increasingly rowdy atmosphere, Mr Barker was also challenged on why construction firms would choose to invest in the Green Deal given the slashing of the Feed-in-Tariff (FiT) for solar installations. One audience member told Mr Barker that confidence in government energy initiatives had been 'massively undermined' by the FiT saga.

from Builders Merchant News

(And why does he read Builders Merchant News? they asked)

[woodburner]

A typical Victorian middle class bed had about 8 layers of sheets, blankets and eiderdowns. Even in the 70s I was cold through most of the winter in our drafty, uninsulated Victorian semi. We had night storage radiators and one coal fire. There was a constant fear of burst pipes. It was just normal.

On very cold mornings I was allowed to dress in front of an electric bar radiant heater.

In the 70s??? We live in a Victorian semi now, with the original windows, one storage heater, one wood stove, one storage heat cooker, and a 75W towel rail. If it gets cold, just find more clothes. Simples

[woodburner]

Ken, I feel you may be banging your head against a brick wall. Any money available for the scheme will be spent, but much of the work will be done to a slap-dash standard by poorly paid and poorly motivated people who are in the job because they have been chucked off benefits. It will be another snouts-in-the-trough exercise.

[SleeperService]

Ken, I feel you may be banging your head against a brick wall. Any money available for the scheme will be spent, but much of the work will be done to a slap-dash standard by poorly paid and poorly motivated people who are in the job because they have been chucked off benefits. It will be another snouts-in-the-trough exercise.

+1 That Mark Group guy is still punching the air

[biffvernon]

Green deal getting into trouble?

Some will pocket the savings and do their bit for the environment. Others will "switch the dial round to 24 degrees and Hoover in their knickers," according to Greg Barker, the Tory climate change minister who is desperate to prove that the Green Deal programme will not mean higher bills, as some have warned, but will instead inspire a generation of eco-interior designers. In all, 15 million homes in Britain are not fully insulated and ministers expect the Green Deal to trigger £14bn-worth of private sector spending in the next decade.

Keen to prove there is more to having a low-energy house than lagging the loft, Mr Barker enthuses about LED mood lighting, which can change colour, create different moods and even switch off automatically when the last reveller has left the party. Ugly houses could also be reclad to stop heat escaping, while new doors and windows would improve the look of a property.

"There are a large number of people out there who just want to make their homes nicer," he said. "That goes to the heart of what Britain is about. It was that ethic that drove the privatisation of council housing in the 1980s and extended opportunity to millions of people under Margaret Thatcher." The Green Deal is "very much in that tradition" and will help people "improve their home and actually get a rung up the ladder".

http://www.independent.co.uk/environmen ... 17618.html

Call me old-fashioned but I'm not sure that government ministers should use phrases like 'Hoover in their knickers'.

[JohnB]

Call me old-fashioned but I'm not sure that government ministers should use phrases like 'Hoover in their knickers'.

It should be 'vacuum in their knickers', unless there's a scandal involving a domestic appliance manufacture about to be revealed .