Green Homes Grant - Up to £5,000 in Government vouchers

reilly

reilly

reilly

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Hi All

I’m looking to take advantage of the newly available Government Grants, and get my hands on some of that filthy free tax payers money for once (don't worry like a lot of you I've contributed over the years :)). Aim is to reduce the cost of running the house while saving the environment!

Additional info can be found here for reference:
https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/utilities/green-homes-grant/
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/apply-for-the-green-homes-grant-scheme#available-measures

The grants unfortunately cannot be used to replace existing items, such as old double glazing (mine is over 15 years old and the rubber seals are perished so that will be on the list to replace). I do however have an old school floor standing gas boiler. which is also around 15 years old. This gas boiler provides heating and heats hot water stored in a hot water tank (not a combi boiler). Without the grant I would be looking at getting all of the central heating replaced (boiler, radiators etc).

House is 4 bed detacted and was built in the 70s. House was a recent purchase and is a doer uper, so not worried about floors or ceilings being removed for installation.

The following low carbon heating measures are covered by the voucher:
  • Air source heat pump
  • Ground source heat pump
  • Solar thermal (liquid filled flat plate or evacuated tube collector)
  • Biomass boiler
  • Hybrid heat pump

Question is, does anyone have any experience wth any of the above? If so can you advise on the pro's and con's along with your experiences (noise, cost, reliability etc)?

At the minute I'm leaning more towards Air Source, but have read some horror stories about failure rates on the exchangers and cost of running due to electricity consumption.

I've dismissed Biomass boilers (cba to manage wood pellets etc), and Ground source heat pump (small garden and expensive to install).

Advice and experiences welcome.
 
Checkout the threads on MSE, its basically a shambles, so few approved contractors, impossible to even get a quote. When you do, its double the usual cost.
 
I don't have great a knowledge of the Green Homes Grant, or the hoops you'd need to jump through to get it. However, £5k isn't enough for a lot of technologies you mention; it's around £10k for a decent air source heat pump and you'll need to put in underfloor heating for it. Ground source heat pump can be over £25k to install - if they have to drill down (instead of underground slinkys in your garden) expect a 100m bore hole at over £5k per hole and you may need more than one!

It's not all that bad, look in to the Domestic Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) where they repay the installation cost over 7 years. Apparently you can claim both the RHI and the Green Home Grant for a renewable heat installation. If you don't have the funds available for an installation you can source an "investor" who pays for it but under "Assignment of Rights" they get in return all your RHI payments (for example, say it costs £20k for a GSHP system, but you qualify for £28k over the seven years, the investor makes a nice return). There's a lot more to it and certainly worth reading about.

I'm hopefully going down the GSHP route next year.
 
reilly said:
At the minute I'm leaning more towards Air Source, but have read some horror stories about failure rates on the exchangers and cost of running due to electricity consumption.
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We recently had a quote for our house to have an airsource heat pump fitted.

Based on house size, age and epc, they reckoned we would need a 12KW pump that would cost approx £1424 a year for electricity. At the moment we pay less than that for oil, let alone adding on the cost of the installation of the unit in the first place.

They estimated the RHI return to be around £1491 so the RHI would theoretically cover the running cost of the unit but of course, not the installation costs.

They based their estimates of savings of £29000 over seven years on their belief that we pay £4124 for oil each year, over 4 times more than we actually pay.

It unfortunately makes no economic sense for us at the moment.
 
I think I suggested the OP make this thread, I have also been investigating it and have a quote which I will write up here this evening when I have more time.
 
Just had a look and filled in the forms

seemed floor , internal or external insulation was the best option for me lifespan was 36years and roi was 35years , yeah totally worth it!
 
gailjon said:
They based their estimates of savings of £29000 over seven years on their belief that we pay £4124 for oil each year, over 4 times more than we actually pay.

It unfortunately makes no economic sense for us at the moment.
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Does anyone pay close to this? even at its peak our worst oil bill for a year would have been around £900-1000, with costs so low currently we'll be under £400.
£4K would heat a flipping school!
 
As promised here's my experience with the scheme so far with my property:

My property is a fairly modern 4 bed detached built in the early 00's. It has all the usual things you would expect of a property of this age, cavity wall insulation, insulated slab, cheap and nasty double glazing which the builders put in and I have increased the roof insulation to >300mm. It's got gas central heating which is currently provided by a Range Powermax 155X which is a bit of an 'odd' system, its a all in one unit, it's a 100L water thermal store which is heated by an integrated gas boiler. It came with the house and they don't make systems like that anymore due to various design issues, so what ever replaces it will be fairly expensive as I'll be effectively starting from scratch.

When putting all of that into the advice service it recommends we get install new heating controls with an estimated saving of £30-£95 at a cost of £400 and an air source heat pump system at a cost of £8,500 with a saving of "-" per year. £5,000 off a new heat pump system costing £8,500 sounds like a bargain, especially has you can get some money from the renewable heat incentive too. The heating system in the house, while works, is coming to the end of its useful life and will need to be replaced in the next few years, so replacing it now wouldn't be pre-mature.

There was only three companies within about 30 miles of me which were accredited for the scheme, luckily I got in early and had one of them come out and quote for the work. For an air source heat pump they need to undertake a heat loss calculation on your property which basically involves measuring up all of the windows, doors and external walls and based on the construction and how much insulation you have they can estimate how much heat the property loses. The calculation for my property meant we need a 6KW heat pump, 200l cylinder, associated sundries and all the paperwork needed for the RHI at a cost of £9400 in VAT @ 5%. I haven't had any other quotes so I don't know if that is high or not but it was in the ball park if what I was expecting.

That isn't quite everything though, going into this I knew that heat pumps run at a much lower temperature than a regular heating system so our radiators may not be big enough. Turns out only one or two were of sufficient size and to have them all swapped. The issue is that in some rooms the radiators are already type 22 so that means either surface mounted pipe extensions (deal breaker for Mrs Sk8) or making a mess of the walls to move pipes. I was quoted nearly £3k inc VAT which isn't too crazy when its broken down per rad, and it included new TRV's as the old ones are pretty poor condition. If the whole system is coming apart it makes sense to swap them, I also don't think they'll get a type 22 mounted where there is an existing type 11 as the pipes will not come far enough away from the wall so they'll all be coming off anyway.

So the total install cost would be £12,400 before incentives.

Incentives are where it gets interesting, for this install the green homes grant would pay £5000, taking the install cost down to £7,400. You can also get the renewable heat incentive which is meant to cover 80% of the estimated running costs for 7 years, I had an EPC done recently so I have a rough idea that the incentive will be approximately £1000/year for 7 years. Great right that would pay for the rest of the system? Nope, you can't double dip on the incentives. If you get a green homes grant, that amount is taken of any renewable heat incentive making it about £2k over 7 years.

The quote I had also came with an energy performance calculation for the heat pump, the numbers in it were a general estimate but you can get back to the assumption that the heat pump will achieve a 3.6 coefficient of performance across a year. When I applied that to my actual gas usage (in KW) and my actual energy prices the running costs came out around 10% more expensive to run than my current near two decade old boiler after factoring in the gas standing charge which I would no longer need to pay. In this estimate I also didn't make any deductions for the fact we currently have a has hob, so in reality the gas would have worked out even cheaper.

My neighbour also had the same heating system as me swapped last year for a system boiler and high-flow cylinder and it cost £4.5k to install.

The TLDR is that to retrofit a heat pump into fairly modern property with gas central heating and needs no insulation upgrades costs significantly more to retrofit than a gas boiler replacement and costs more to run after the incentives. It's more cash out up front and more cash out every month. For an older property which isn't as well insulated this would be much worse.

For me the scheme isn't worth it for getting a heat pump. Even if all of the remedial work to the radiators didn't need to be done I would have to really think about it. I don't think there would be any savings over the total life of the system, the cheaper install and running costs of a gas system will claw back the advantage the incentives give and is likely to work out cheaper overall. The servicing is more expensive and the cost to replace it at the end of its life is significantly more. Any issues that arise which are out of warranty are going to cost significantly more to rectify which is a big risk.

I also don't see gas prices rising disproportionately to electric prices over the next decade given how closely linked they are with all our gas fired power stations and how many houses there are on gas.
 
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Destination said:
Does anyone pay close to this? even at its peak our worst oil bill for a year would have been around £900-1000, with costs so low currently we'll be under £400.
£4K would heat a flipping school!
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Yeah - with the prices at the moment I think we use about £600-700 a year and that includes 2 showers running off it. That is a reasonable size 5 bedroom house with several people living in it.
 
On top of the above I think there are some real issues with the scheme. The online advice tool is far too simplistic, doesn't ask enough questions or give detailed enough advice. There also aren't enough accredited installers for any element.

The incentives to install insulation are good if people take them up and should be the number 1 priority and is really a key enabler of any green technology that could be deployed. Personally I'd scrap the rest of the scheme and just concentrate the whole lot on insulating old houses. That said they need to be really careful that they are installed correctly. Insulating old houses without addressing ventilation can cause huge damp issues which are then difficult to rectify. This needs to be made clear.

When applying the incentive to solar thermal its a reasonable incentive but a complete missed opportunity. If a property is suitable for solar thermal it would also likely be suitable for solar PV which would be far more beneficial to the property, the home owner, and has wider benefits as its far more flexible. Any excess energy not being used by the house can just be dumped into a thermal store saving on gas. The savings for a solar thermal system would be far lower than a solar PV system.

As noted above applying it to any of the heating systems eligible just don't seem financially viable unless the property was already set up for it (in which case would already have one) or has a very expensive source of fuel.
 
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Mysterae_ said:
Cheers @b0rn2sk8 , that was a good read.
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No problem, at the end of the day, I'm all for going 'green' but it needs to be financially viable and this scheme doesn't make that so, it just lowers the upfront cost.

I should add that the sales person I spoke to was very good, certainly knew their stuff and there was zero sales patter or pressure selling nonsense.
 
Yea had a couple of inquiries about this at work (window and glass industry) no benefit for us so not worth it, have enough work as it is. Its just another stupid scheme by government to spend our money.
 
Johno please? said:
Yea had a couple of inquiries about this at work (window and glass industry) no benefit for us so not worth it, have enough work as it is. Its just another stupid scheme by government to spend our money.
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I have friends in the bike shop business, the service scheme they avoided at all costs. Do you think there might be a direct correlation between this green scheme and poor contractors? I was looking at cavity wall insulation, though haven't looked at viability or eligibility yet. (waiting on a purchass still). But feeling very sceptical.
 
Unfortunately this is why the planet is already doomed. People will only go green when it's financial viable (cheaper) to do so. That's the primary reason to go green.

Helping the planet to be able to sustain mankind is not enough of an excuse. Giving our children a decent standard of living is not enough of an excuse. Money is king.

The government shouldn't be needing to incentivise people.

We live in a fairly modern house (build in 2008), and are using the original gas boiler. I've already been looking into solar panels, heat pumps, powervault 3.

I'm happy if it costs a little more to be honest.
 
TheOracle said:
I'm happy if it costs a little more to be honest.
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It doesn't cost a little more though, as already said in this thread it costs way more.

And to suggest that the majority of people are not changing purely because they can't be bothered to look after their children's future is crass.

The majority of people who don't upgrade is because they can't afford to. Why do you think that the YouTube videos of Tesla power wall fittings, solar panels and the such are generally in the homes of the well off or retired?

Money has to factor into the equation because people need to be able to afford to change to green energy solutions.
 
gailjon said:
It doesn't cost a little more though, as already said in this thread it costs way more.

And to suggest that the majority of people are not changing purely because they can't be bothered to look after their children's future is crass.

The majority of people who don't upgrade is because they can't afford to. Why do you think that the YouTube videos of Tesla power wall fittings, solar panels and the such are generally in the homes of the well off or retired?

Money has to factor into the equation because people need to be able to afford to change to green energy solutions.
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People would rather spend £1k on a boiler and an extra £9k on a car, kitchen, holiday though

It's not as black or white as either of us may have suggested though, I'll accept that
 
As above its not just a little, the install costs are double and it’s more expensive to run. That’s before having to retrofit all your rads for larger ones, it’s a huge amount of work. It’s not like the EV argument where the upfront is more but the TCO is less due to the fuel costing less than 1/4 as much.

Money is better spent stopping heat from escaping in the first place IMO and then I’d add if your property is suitable.
 
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