The vast majority of older houses in the UK have poor energy efficiency (we have a scale going from A to G in the UK)
I have been looking to buy a larger family home around the Surrey/Kent area and its pretty much always the same story.
Couple in their 60s or 70s who wants to sell and downsize, have put money into extending the house, making it look pretty from the outside, but have done next to nothing on energy efficiency.
So you are looking at people trying to sell their 4/5bdr detached homes for Ā£1m to Ā£2m who have abysmal energy efficiency ratings (Grade E/F/G usually) and they wonder why they are not selling.
Nobody in their 30s or 40s is going to buy a house that will need Ā£100k+ in renovations just to improve energy efficiency to get it to about a C rating (not great but acceptable) unless you price that house competitively.
People get far too attached to their homes when they try to sell, and think that people will ignore the cost of heating (energy costs are very high in the UK) when they look to buy.
This is incredibly unrealistic in the UK and I blame Estate Agents for this (as they get a % of the sale price) So instead of cutting the price, they keep the charade going for years and years.
It sounds like the power ratings there are having a similar effect to whatās happening in Australia. It seems like a relatively low effort method for governments to incentivize home owners to make their properties energy efficient and in the process reduce carbon emissions
Iāve been chatting this morning with a friend of mine in Norwich whoās family put some solar panels on their small terrace(?) house. Sounds like adding the panels took their monthly gas and electric bill from Ā£280 to Ā£100. Seems like quite the savings.
ETA: knowing the price difference for utilities in an efficient house vs. an inefficient one, Iām guessing the cost savings on an efficient one could cover a significant price difference in terms of a mortgage payment.
Isnt the end result that the sales price 100k less and the new owner pays 500 extra a month in utilities? Energy efficiency is never a very high ROI project to take on when you are thinking about selling. Only time its really viable is incrementally to a project you are already going to take on.
Whenever I look at a house I estimate the running costs:
Mortgage (Ā£1m is about Ā£5.5k/month now)
Council Tax (Ā£500/month)
Energy (Ā£700/month)
These are always the big 3 in the UK.
So the running costs (based on energy only) for a detached home (4/5bdr) can run you about 13% of your mortgage payments.
That is simply too high and is being driven primarily by extremely poor energy efficiency. Why?
Older owners donāt believe in heat pumps (they have a boiler)
Older owners didnāt upgrade the windows (they are single-glazed or worse)
No cavity insulation (this one I can sort of understand as its very expensive)
All of these things get you the āF" or āGā energy rating.
Basically, you are dealing with people who think that if its cold in the house you should just put on an extra jumper.
For the older folks who do not think like that, and have actually done the work (to improve the energy efficiency of their home) on their house, the bidding wars for their homes can get quite spirited (and they then go outside of my price range).
If a house is Ā£1.2m, and the energy efficiency is F or G, I would expect a Ā£200k discount for it to be viable long-term (and at that price it would sell).
Wow, what is the cost per kWh there? We have a 4BR with something like 2,700 sq ft (250 sq m) above grade and weāve never spent $700 even during a hot Kansas summer. And our house isnāt old by European standards but itās 100+ years old, not exactly LEED certified.
We have a time of use plan, the peak price is $0.28 per kWh but on average we pay about $0.17.
If you can cut that bill 500 a month from 700 to 200, thatās 6k a year. It would take 33 years to make up a 200k discount. That seems a bit unrealistic.
Crazy energy costs though. Also considering the climate in the UK is not that extreme.
Iāve heard mini-split heat pump systems cost about a third as much as baseboard heaters cost. Based on my experience with older homes, Iām guessing massive gains are possible if you can just get better insulation in place. It seems like the heat disappears almost as fast as you generate it in drafty old places.
Seems like it ultimately comes down to how much of the energy is lost between the conversion of the energy to heat and the transfer of that heat to the living area. I am surprised baseboard heaters are that inefficient unless there is just a lot of heat loss if they are flowing through exterior walls to get to the living areas. Iād think they would be pretty bad for distributing the heat evenly though.
I have almost no experience with them so I am sure iām missing something.
Meanwhile, in Connecticut, effective Thursday the standard residential rate is US$0.29/kWh, although slightly lower rates are available if one locked in a better supply rate with an alternate supplier prior to December.
In Ottawa, we have a 3 tier pricing scheme, but the weighted average for the last couple of months has been around C$0.12-C$0.14 (U$0.08-U$0.10; Ā£0.06-Ā£0.07)
Heat pumps are more efficient because they (mostly) concentrate heat from outside sources and transport it rather than straight out producing it. They can have a multiplier of 2x to maybe up to 4x of heat output compared to what is produced by the same amount of electricity used by electric resistance heating. So the trade off is fuel cost savings vs higher upfront costs (device and installation). Places with high electricity costs obviously have a shorter breakeven period.
That makes sense, although I think the part that I struggle with is the cost of AC in the summer to maintain a 20F differential with outside air is a lot more than the cost of heating my home to a 40-50F differential. Maybe I am vastly underestimating the fight I have against summer solar output @1000W per m^2 on my dark shingles in all of this.
