Category: Energy Saving

Is triple glazing worth the extra expense in the UK?

 

With the current focus on energy efficiency, and many homeowners replacing their old inefficient windows – Iis triple glazing worth the extra expense?

The PassivHaus Institute tested surface temperatures on various forms of glazing when the internal air temperature is designed to be at 21°C:

Next to a single-glazed window, the internal surface temperature is around 1°C.
Next to a double-glazed window (circa 2000), the temperature is around 11°C.
Next to a modern, energy-efficient double-glazed window, the surface temperature is 16°C.
Next to a triple-glazed window the temperature is 18°C.

So whilst triple glazed windows performed better than modern double glazing, it was a relatively small difference, and something worth considering when comparing quotations.

Read article in Homebuilding and Renovation “Does triple glazing make sense?

Conclusion It is certainly worth replacing single-glazed windows. Whether you want to go for double or triple glazing will really depend on how much you can afford and how well insulated the rest of the house is. There is little point in adding triple-glazing if there is a lot of heat loss from uninsulated solid brick walls.

In June 2014 the UK government launched the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund that includes a grant for replacing single glazed windows with double or triple-glazed windows and solid wall insulation. For more details about the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund click here

Also read the Centre for Sustainable Energy (CSE) leaflet on Energy efficient glazing

 

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New home-owners will get a 500 pound bonus for making energy efficiency improvements

New home-owners will now get a £500 bonus if they make energy efficiency improvements to their homes that they have bought them in the last 12 months. This is in addition to up to another £7100 that might be available to them under the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund that was launched by the UK government in early June 2014.

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Improvement measures include solid wall insulation for older houses, a new condensing gas boiler, cavity wall insulation and replacing single glazed windows with double or triple glazed windows. There is also a £100 cash-back towards the cost of a Green Deal Assessment and accompanying advice from a Green Deal Advisor – who will be able to recommend the most appropriate energy efficiency improvements in the form of a Green Deal Advice Report (GDAR)

GDHIF cores

12 improvement measures

For more details about the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund click here

The 80 percent Hub has a network of Green Deal Advisors who can carry out Green Deal Assessments and offer impartial and independent advice – but trying to tell you anything. Click here for more information or ring Peter Bates on 01353 667973.

 

 

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1000 pound grant for installing a new gas boiler

The UK government is now offering a £1000 grant to householders and private landlords who replace their old boiler with a flue gas heat recovery system. Under the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund that was launched early June 2014 this funding is available to all householders who have an old gas boiler.

one type of flue gas heat recovery system that can be added to a boiler or integrated within a boiler casing

What is a flue gas heat recovery system?

A flue gas heat recovery system can make boilers more efficient by capturing and re-using heat energy that would otherwise have escaped out of your flue or chimney. It can be added to a boiler system or comes combined with the boiler. These systems, sometimes referred to as ‘passive flue gas heat recovery systems’, tend to cost around £600, but you could save up to £100 on your fuel bills each year. That means it should pay for itself in about six years according to the Centre for Sustainable Energy. They have a leaflet with more information click here.

Green Deal Home Information Fund

The UK government has made up to £7600 available per household. A new condensing boiler and a flue gas heat recovery system are two of the twelve eligible measures under Core One where you can claim back up to £1000. You will need a Green Deal Assessment and can also claim an additional £100 towards the cost of the assessment.

For more details about the Green Deal Home Improvement Fund click here

The 80 percent Hub has a network of Green Deal Advisors who can carry out Green Deal Assessments. Click here for more information or ring Peter Bates on 01353 667973.

 

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Powering the nation – UK household electricity-using habits revealed

This in-depth UK Household Electricity Use Study aimed to cover the electricity usage of a representative sample of English owner-occupier homes. The report was jointly commissioned by Energy Saving Trust, the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC), and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). Its results are summarised in the report “Powering the Nation”, provide the richest insights ever produced in the UK into how people use the electrical products that power their lives.

The report uncovers a number of surprises, mostly unwelcome ones:

  • The power consumption of appliances on standby is much higher than we thought.
  • Single-person households – over 29 per cent of all UK households – use as much, and sometimes more, energy than typical families for cooking and laundry.
  • We really are a nation of television watchers – not almost five hours a day but an average of more than six hours a day, costing us an an extra £205 million a year across the UK.
  • We love to keep our clothes clean. We run, on average, 5.5 washes a week; and if we have a tumble dryer, 81 per cent of our washing is dried in it.
  • We spend more on keeping our crockery, glasses and cutlery clean than we do on our clothes. Anyone with a dishwasher uses on average nearly twice as much electricity for this as they do for their washing machine.

Powering the nation shows how much we need to do to reduce our energy use in the UK and work towards a low-carbon future. Not only do we need to use less power, we also need to use power differently and at different times, altering our behaviour to reduce the ‘peak load’ demands on the grid. This will become even more crucial in the next decade, when there’s more decentralised and renewable power in the electricity mix, and we need to power the next generation of electric vehicles.

More details

Download summary Report

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A Reality Check on Renewables in the UK David MacKay

This TEDx event video with David MacKay, chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change – presents the options and impact for renewable energy and energy efficiency in the UK. He tends to argue a mixed economy of measures are needed.

David MacKay is a professor of Natural Philosophy in the Physics department at the University of Cambridge and chief scientific adviser to the UK Department of Energy and Climate Change. He received a degree in Experimental and Theoretical Physics from Trinity College and a PhD. in Computation and Neural Systems as a Fulbright Scholar at Caltech. In 1992, MacKay was made the Royal Society Smithson Research Fellow at Darwin College at University of Cambridge and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in May 2009. He has also taught at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences in Cape Town. In 2003, his bookInformation Theory, Inference, and Learning Algorithms was published and, in 2008, he self-published Sustainable Energy — Without the Hot Air. Both books are fully available for free online.

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