No Gas boilers in New homes after 2025

Navvie

An EPC certificate is only as good as the person who carries out the inspection.

I live on an estate where all the houses are of a 'wimpey no-fines' construction (solid concrete walls) yet many of the houses that have had an EPC done (like mine) state there is a cavity wall and it's filled with insulation.

Pacifico

So a return to storage heaters which I hoped to have seen the back of in the 1970's..

But wait - how is electricity produced...  

springtide

It will be interesting to see how this works out in practice. I guess the key is this is for new homes.

My house is maybe 5 years old and I don’t think Nest has reported me using more than 20 hours of heating per month since living here.

This thread seems to imply solar might be able to meet a decent chunk of the power most homes need:
What are YOUR solar PV's generating TODAY?

I guess we need someone to invent something like solar roof tiles so that these are integrated with new homes rather than retrofitting existing solutions.

ashenfie

In Sweden at the beginning of the 1980s numerous low-energy houses had already been built for research and demonstration projects.

This standard was so successful there that in overfulfilment of the construction standard, mainly low-energy houses were being built even up to the mid-80s. With the “Nybyggnadsregler” in 1991 the low-energy standard became compulsory.

In principal a zero energy house has no primary heading system and on the basis of calculations most of the time it needs no extra heading. On very cold days you use an auxiliary maybe electric heater. Works perfectly if you keep the doors and windows shut. So additionally you need heat exchangers to keep the air quality high, else it's stuffy.

So yes it can be done. BUT it's expensive and this country we build the cheapest MDF houses with brick surround. This is total incompatible with what is required and so a major culture change would be required.

It would change the build cost from around 110,000 for two beds to around 220,000 on top of land etc.

Pacifico

Coming soon - maybe..

Tesla Solar Roof: Elon Musk Reveals New Time Frame for Ramp-Up | Inverse

spinaltap

Solar tiles/slates have been available from several companies for at least the past 10 years. Unfortunately, they’re not as efficient as integrated/in-roof solar panels.

Yesterday, I visited the Elmsbrook Eco village in Bicester, Oxfordshire. Choose 2, 3 or 4 bedroom houses - either outright, shared ownership, or as affordable rents - which come with 12 x integrated solar PV panels, triple glazing, air recovery, water-waste recycling, and centrally shared combined heat and power plant.

Elmsbrook new homes development - Bicester, Oxfordshire | FABRICA

Crafty

So how does it work when that central system has problems and needs to be repaired ?

It was always said that the extra cost of triple glazing didn't warrant the gain over double glazing, has the cost dropped compared to double glazing or is this a "money no object" type thing ?

DOBLY

^ Modern triple glazing can outperform double glazing by a huge margin, but needs to be the high-end stuff, not the mass market watered down version that gets put in many developer new-builds.
It only really makes sense in very well built houses that are approaching passivhaus standard:
The building must not leak more air than 0.6 times the house volume per hour (n50 ≤ 0.6 / hour) at 50 Pa (0.0073 psi) as tested by a blower door, or alternatively when looked at the surface area of the enclosure, the leakage rate must be less than 0.05 cubic feet per minute.for unobstructed south-facing triple-glazed windows, the heat gains from the sun are, on average, greater than the heat losses, even in mid-winter.

spinaltap

The dedicated on-site CHP is provided and maintained by SSE. Elmsbrook residents pay a monthly service charge of <£37 for its upkeep.

Crafty

So £37 a month   a charge for energy used ? or £37 flat ?