Mortgage Rate Rises

Ali195 said:
Don't worry, once the mortgage is paid off you just have sort out retrofitting the house for modern times, and other things, such as

Switching from system to combi boiler
Solar panels
Electric car
Upgrade house electrics for car, charge point
Better housing insulation all around

And once you're just about done...
Total refit of heating system for air or ground source heat pump, along with trimmings to make workable.

Oh boy, what a joy it's going to be. Ticked off the first, £4k (there abouts) for switch to combi. Leaking, knackered 1970's porch replacing almost £8k come Oct, next year solar panels, what's that £12-18k..

I have no idea how people are going to afford all this on top of sky high mortgages for aging properties like mine (mid 70's).
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Combi isn't an upgrade over a system boiler..it's just a different kind of boiler. It's actually a worse choice if you have solar.
 
TNA said:
Good luck with that. Depending on severity that won't be easy. You fix it, few years later it comes back. Luckily my house doesn't have it.
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Its all about fixing the cause of it. Where not just simply putting some dpc and calling it a day!

Where building French drains and drip beed around the house and taking off parts of the render at the bottom.

I'll post pics on my renmovating thread and ping you
 
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Classic Blue Theme said:
Combi isn't an upgrade over a system boiler..it's just a different kind of boiler. It's actually a worse choice if you have solar.
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To be fair our old boiler was some ancient Glow-worm model from the 90's, plumber said it was already an old one when he was in college, he looked like early 40's.

Why is it an issue for solar, heating water using it? Just assumed I'd be using it for electricity to be honest.
 
Classic Blue Theme said:
Combi isn't an upgrade over a system boiler..it's just a different kind of boiler. It's actually a worse choice if you have solar.
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Combi is considered an upgrade from a green perspective because you're only ever heating the water you need not a tank full that you might not. Yes they're pretty efficient heat loss wise but they still do loose heat.
 
Combis suck. They will save you a small amount on your heating.
In winter my now old megaflow loses max 1.5kwh, and probably less.
But that heat is in the house, and we still have a functioning air cupboard!

In July I dumped just under 100kwh into my water from excess solar. Many days I had zero gas usage.

I would never go back to combi after having a full pressure hot water system.

Storing elec generation into water is one of the best stores we can use.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Combis suck. They will save you a small amount on your heating.
In winter my now old megaflow loses max 1.5kwh, and probably less.
But that heat is in the house, and we still have a functioning air cupboard!

In July I dumped just under 100kwh into my water from excess solar. Many days I had zero gas usage.

I would never go back to combi after having a full pressure hot water system.

Storing elec generation into water is one of the best stores we can use.
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Combis suck for you! Not for everyone.
They save me a huge amount. When some days we use 0 gas.

Anyway back to mortgages this month onwards I'm putting an extra £400 into the mortgage which is nearly a 100% overpayment. It should take the sting off a little cone remortgage time.
 
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I mean combis suck in real world usage, they do minimise bills.
I would take quality of life water usage over a few kwh of energy loss. Again energy loss thats into the house anyway.

But they are just so poor in performance compared to a system boiler, unless as often happens now people massively over spec them to get a decent flow rate to cover real world usage.
Then what happens? Efficiency drops since most of the time it doesn't need the peak capacity the installer over speced for.

Compared to a vented I would take a combi. Most peoples experience of lowered bills is vs an old vented crappy system.
Latest thing I have seen is people putting a small rad in the airing cupboard to get the benefit of that back.
 
Solar panels are on the extreme end of what people need to do. Sit down and do the maths you will see there’s some good pay off periods with sorting out things like insulation and boilers etc.
 
danlightbulb said:
a lot of houses don't really have room for an airing cupboard. Often in the bathroom making it even smaller and so removing it can add a lot of usable space.
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Well a lot of houses did have them and people ripped them out.
Some newer houses I agree they do build without.

I wonder how water heating is going to work in this scenario for people in the future.
Its going to end up not being gas eventually. I am not convinced its going to be hydrogen.
So we are led back to elec.

One of the techs that looks good is hot sand, charged when grid is cheap, that then passes water through this to heat it.
The sand can also be heated by solar when thats available.
Problem is this again needs somewhere to go. Its probably half the size of a typical tank.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
Well a lot of houses did have them and people ripped them out.
Some newer houses I agree they do build without.

I wonder how water heating is going to work in this scenario for people in the future.
Its going to end up not being gas eventually. I am not convinced its going to be hydrogen.
So we are led back to elec.

One of the techs that looks good is hot sand, charged when grid is cheap, that then passes water through this to heat it.
The sand can also be heated by solar when thats available.
Problem is this again needs somewhere to go. Its probably half the size of a typical tank.
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We will see a move back to tanks, we already are to a certain extent with the popularity of pressurised hot water systems growing rapidly partly driven by people looking to solar.
 
a1ex2001 said:
We will see a move back to tanks, we already are to a certain extent with the popularity of pressurised hot water systems growing rapidly partly driven by people looking to solar.
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Yes exactly.
The hot sand box might work for people who never had a tank. But they will need to find somewhere for it still.
 
Richie said:
It is and I'll do my bit in going green via things like recycling and keeping other waste to a minimum but I am not going to bankrupt myself to go even greener.
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It should not be the case but that's how the government etc have designed it...

They won't give us affordable standard solar panels on every property in the UK because it doesn't suit the energy companies pockets
 
robj20 said:
Combi is considered an upgrade from a green perspective because you're only ever heating the water you need not a tank full that you might not. Yes they're pretty efficient heat loss wise but they still do loose heat.
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I disagree. They also have poor flow. From a green point of view they are distinctly worse as you can't exploit solar or cheap night rate electricity. Some combis now have a mini tank in them to try and deliver a similar benefit. Tanks can also be placed strategically to avoid running the tap so much.
 
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danlightbulb said:
a lot of houses don't really have room for an airing cupboard. Often in the bathroom making it even smaller and so removing it can add a lot of usable space.
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You don't need an airing cupboard. Mines in the attic. You can even get horizontal ones now.
 
Mercenary Keyboard Warrior said:
I mean combis suck in real world usage, they do minimise bills.
I would take quality of life water usage over a few kwh of energy loss. Again energy loss thats into the house anyway.

But they are just so poor in performance compared to a system boiler, unless as often happens now people massively over spec them to get a decent flow rate to cover real world usage.
Then what happens? Efficiency drops since most of the time it doesn't need the peak capacity the installer over speced for.

Compared to a vented I would take a combi. Most peoples experience of lowered bills is vs an old vented crappy system.
Latest thing I have seen is people putting a small rad in the airing cupboard to get the benefit of that back.
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Again loss into YOUR house. My boiler is in the garage/utility room.
I agree there are certain efficiency losses with central heating using a combi, mines not too bad only the absolute coldest days does it max out it's modulation.
But a system boiler/setup is a lot more costly I doubt I'd make the money back there.

Personally I think rather than just guess that everyone's demands are the same it's best to fit the system that suites the household. Not just one system or another "sucks".
 
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