Things can get very focused around here. You only need to mention anything related to certain pet subjects, such as table tennis, Olympus cameras or Jane Austen, and eyes will light up and brains will willingly engage you in heated conversation. I thought I was immune from this until someone gave me a mug that said ‘Warning! May start talking about the allotment.’ But if someone starts talking about Air source Heat Pumps, then I have to pitch in – any ‘heated’ conversation really at all.
I started my early life in an oil heated house and knew about the crisis in oil prices at a very early age. From my memory, my parents were relieved to sell the large, expensive to heat house to an employee of an oil company. We moved next to a house with a gas boiler and warm air heating – I hated it and Mum bought a humidifier to put next to the piano to compensate for the dry air.
I loved the Rayburn stove when I moved into a mobile home near Southampton – but the romanticism wore off coming back from working late to get the coal in and achieving an uncontrollable blaze at 2am after being absolutely freezing the rest of the evening.
Gas was relatively cheap, very controllable – but it was gas, a fossil fuel responsible for this warming climate and not what budding, would-be Green Party politicians wanted in their house. That, and the increasingly alarming research about the pollution gas causes in your home, from heating and cooking, probably contributing to my asthma problems.
So we were lured into an Air Source Heat Pump, paid for partly by a govenment grant. Would I do this again? Possibly. It became much more economical when I immersed myself in understanding the jargon – ‘co-efficient of production’ and ‘flow’ rates could trip off my tongue and I learnt how to program a not very intuitive app. When we brought the insulation in our 1780s house up to the highest standards that we could, then bills became much more affordable with our solar panels helping too, especially in the spring and autumn when the heat was still on and the sun was often shining. Surrounded by other houses as we were, I became paranoid when the fan developed a harmonic ring when the wind was in a certain direction (never when the engineers came) and I used to get so worried about upsetting the neighbours that it all rather put me off.
When I was youth worker at St John’s Church in The Walks, I dug out my previous experience of researching church heating systems when the gas heating was condemned and the church that was cold even in August (great advantage at that time of the year) was not the welcoming, warm atmosphere you want for a toddler group with young babies. It was then I learnt about ‘far infrared heating’ – heat the fabric of the building and the people much like the sun does – which is the latest technology and very efficient. But surely far out of our reach in a domestic setting?
Our new house had a very old suspicious looking gas cooker – I could find nothing on the internet about the make. When we tried to use it, it had knobs missing and several rings didn’t work. The gas fire was hideous and would need a thorough safety check. But the main heating is three storage heaters. I haven’t had those since a student in Aberdeen. They are great if you are happy being boiling at night then freezing if they run out of their heat by the evening – just what a post-menopausal woman does not need.
The gas was removed in, what felt like, an instant. Octopus disconnected it for free. Gas Wise came and disconnected the appliances for £89 and helped get them outside, and a scrap metal dealer took them away for free. So simple and no standing charge for the gas now (just before the govenment announced removing it for everyone!).
Aren’t Vinted and Ebay marvellous? Continuing my desire (and need) to update this house very economically, I was very surprised to find far-infrared panel heaters on both these platforms. We will cope that we have got different ones, needing several apps to control them and if they look a bit different? Well, no-one will ever see them at the same time!
We have now kitted the whole house out (though not all installed yet) for under £1000 and that includes an electric towel rail and one of the biggest gambles in my interior design experience – more of that later! We can install all of them ourselves once we have the storage heaters taken out and sockets put in their place. Rob has already installed a couple in the bedrooms. They will never need servicing and, when combined with the solar panels and battery we are looking to purchase, will be even cheaper to run than they are now.
Next time – am I really prepared to divulge my interior design gamble? One daughter thought it hideous but is coming round to the idea, if not the reality! Judge for yourselves as I will try to photograph it in the best light possible.
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