Habeck claims anyone could quite easily use 10% less energy

[optimista 5,839]

Pros and cons to everything. Have underfloor... it dries the air terribly so you need humidifiers... my wooden furniture and beams cracked, even the soles of your feet suffer by March. And the day it stops working... will we have to rip up the floor tiles ?

 

In Basel they tried to tap geo thermal and started laying pipes... but stopped quickly due to a possible (or probable ? Difficult to prove but they erred on the side of caution) increase in local seismicity...

[keith2011 2,572]

1 hour ago, Gambatte said:

 

I could be wrong but I doubt there are buildings with underfloor and oil.

Underfloor is new, oil is old.

 

You obviously have never lived out in the country where there is no piped gas available and many buildings have underfloor heating powered by oil!

[Fietsrad 385]

Heat pumps and underfloor heating and air-conditioning have something in common, installing them costs a lot, uses a lot of material. And they can not easily be repaired without expensive expert help.

 

Simple physical insulation is the best thing, I think. Then you do not need to heat much.

[Gambatte 897]

1 hour ago, fraufruit said:

Energy was as cheap

Well, I expected this answer. But no, I think this is wrong, and 50yr ago we were actually spending more of our income in energy.

[Gambatte 897]

37 minutes ago, Fietsrad said:

Simple physical insulation is the best thing, I think. Then you do not need to heat much.

Still need heating.

[Gambatte 897]

Next question here, for which I've already been breaking my head for a while:

 

What makes Waermepumpe so super expensive, compared to gas boiler?

Not complaining. Rather curious.

I mean the overall purchase and installation cost.

Again: we built our house in 2019, installing the simplest WP (air-air, also the least efficient) had an Aufpreis of 30keur. And we had anyway underfloor heating, and labor from the very same Heizungsbauer. 

More labor maybe? Yeah, but 30keur buys zillions of hours of Handwerker.

More expensive hardware? Most WP are like 5-7keur (that's 3-4keur more than a new gas boiler), and many are much less than that.

[Eric7 538]

1 hour ago, keith2011 said:

 

You obviously have never lived out in the country where there is no piped gas available and many buildings have underfloor heating powered by oil!

Keith is right.
We have a relatively old oil system with underfloor heating from the same time the house was built (1995).
In fact most of the houses in our village have underfloor heating and most of them have oil heating.

[Gambatte 897]

I see.

There's so much I don't know.

[murphaph 9,642]

2 hours ago, Gambatte said:

Next question here, for which I've already been breaking my head for a while:

 

What makes Waermepumpe so super expensive, compared to gas boiler?

Not complaining. Rather curious.

I mean the overall purchase and installation cost.

Again: we built our house in 2019, installing the simplest WP (air-air, also the least efficient) had an Aufpreis of 30keur. And we had anyway underfloor heating, and labor from the very same Heizungsbauer. 

More labor maybe? Yeah, but 30keur buys zillions of hours of Handwerker.

More expensive hardware? Most WP are like 5-7keur (that's 3-4keur more than a new gas boiler), and many are much less than that.

That's a rip off Aufpreis. We had an Aufpreis of 10k over gas and even that was too much if you ask me. That was 2016. Heat pumps are no more difficult to install than a gas boiler and I believe the prices are a reflection of the niche nature and shortage of skilled installers. A heat pump cannot be installed by a gas installer without the guy learning how to do it. They are like air conditioners and there are very few of those in Germany. It will change in time as heat pumps become the default heat source. But for the next few years the relatively small number of guys installing these things will be able to name their price.

[Gambatte 897]

@murphaphthat is/was exactly my guess. We will see how the market evolves within few years... btw didn't the government already ban gas heating in new build from some time in the near future? 2030? Surely then all the gas installers will have to learn how to install WP and things will change...

 

[murphaph 9,642]

I hope so because our own heat pump won't last forever and will need replacement!

[jeba 4,345]

21 hours ago, wien4ever said:

 

Curious about underfloor heating - how many sqm and how much oil/gas/kwh do you use per year on heating?

My house in Germany, built 1997, 180 sqm, gas öowered underfloor beating, needed between 10000 and 15000 kWh/year. Here in Cyprus electric underfloor heating in combination with a PV-system is what I'll do.

[silty1 3,597]

Our apartment complex was built around 2000 and it's got good insulation.  We used to turn on the floor heating in the two bathrooms at the start of winter and just leave them on round the clock.

But as we learned from neighbours, that's a pretty expensive way to heat - and with our strict FUCK PUTIN energy program firmly in place, we're being really, really careful with how we heat, leaving the floor heating shut off completely and relying solely on the Heizkörper, which are never turned up that high.  We also turn them down to the snowflake setting before going to bed or leaving the house.     

 

Going to be interesting comparing this year's consumption numbers and heating bill with years past.

 

One thing we routinely have to do is completely air out the place (Stoßluften) in the morning, and dry off any condensation build-up on the windows.  Below -6 it starts to puddle a bit on the floor, it gets so bad, but the airing out helps a lot.  

 

Has anyone installed /have already in place those digital thermostats?  Are they accurate and reliable?

[keith2011 2,572]

2 hours ago, silty1 said:

Has anyone installed /have already in place those digital thermostats?  Are they accurate and reliable?

I used them for several years a while back (can't use them where I now live) I thought they were great, reliable and programmable so you can individually set the heating for each room when and how much you want. Only negative is you need to replace the batteries from time to time.

[Gambatte 897]

12 hours ago, jeba said:

between 10000 and 15000 kWh/year

 

Why such a very huge spread?

BTW, for a 1997 180qm house 10000 kWh/yr seems very little. Our house is 2019 117qm and consumes for heating ca 9600 kWh/yr gas.

[Krieg 14,924]

16 minutes ago, Gambatte said:

 

Why such a very huge spread?

BTW, for a 1997 180qm house 10000 kWh/yr seems very little. Our house is 2019 117qm and consumes for heating ca 9600 kWh/yr gas.

 

He does not live in Germany, whatever jeba says is irrelevant to us.

[Gambatte 897]

Alles klar.

[Fietsrad 385]

4 hours ago, silty1 said:

Our apartment complex was built around 2000 and it's got good insulation.  We used to turn on the floor heating in the two bathrooms at the start of winter and just leave them on round the clock.

But as we learned from neighbours, that's a pretty expensive way to heat - and with our strict FUCK PUTIN energy program firmly in place, we're being really, really careful with how we heat, leaving the floor heating shut off completely and relying solely on the Heizkörper, which are never turned up that high.  We also turn them down to the snowflake setting before going to bed or leaving the house.     

 

Going to be interesting comparing this year's consumption numbers and heating bill with years past.

 

One thing we routinely have to do is completely air out the place (Stoßluften) in the morning, and dry off any condensation build-up on the windows.  Below -6 it starts to puddle a bit on the floor, it gets so bad, but the airing out helps a lot.  

 

Has anyone installed /have already in place those digital thermostats?  Are they accurate and reliable?

One wonders whether your home is overinsulated. There might be moisture gathering in other places too, could have unpleasant consequences.

[snowingagain 5,189]

In the interests of saving gas, has anyone cooked a Christmas pudding in a microwave?   As alternative to 6 hours of steaming?

[toBnruG 1,152]

4 hours ago, silty1 said:

Has anyone installed /have already in place those digital thermostats?  Are they accurate and reliable?

I installed a digital / programmable wall thermostat in every room this Autumn to prepare for an energy saving Winter. We have underfloor heating throughout our apartment.

They run off the AC mains supply of our existing heating system and so they do not require batteries (they just include some capacitor or other to provide power during outages so that the clock doesn't get reset every time the power goes out for a few seconds). Can't yet speak to reliability but they should be extremely reliable since the electronics inside is very basic.

They can be calibrated up and down by 5°C. I bought 7 units and wired them all up in one location on day one to calibrate the temperatures... out of the box they varied by as much as 2°C from one unit to another, therefore I would not suggest installing in multiple rooms without calibration. If you set your living room to 21°C and your hallway to 20°C, but they are un-calibrated with 2°C error, then you might just end up with your hallway constantly heating your entire house and the living room always feeling cold! This problem exists with any thermostat though. I assume the cheap analogue ones have must more error since they rely on the temperature dependent tensile strength of metal strips, which is highly prone to manufacturing variations.

 

I read a lot about there being no point in trying to regulate different temperatures through the day with under-floor heating. I can safely say that, in my house at least, this is complete bull.

Every room of our house is on a weekly temperature profile. All rooms are set unrealistically low at night (good insulation means no room can drop to 16°C), and the ones which should be warm in the morning I configure to the target temperature starting about 1 - 1.5 hours before the temperature is desired. I find that some rooms will lose between 2 - 2.5°C overnight, so having the floors starting to warm up 1 hour before we wake up is absolutely ideal.

If my wife or I are traveling to the office then I switch off the thermostat of that room the night before. The home office tends to be 2 - 3°C colder on days when it's not used. Anybody claiming that this takes the same energy as just heating at all hours at a constant temperature has no knowledge of physics / energy transfer.

 

With our heating it takes around 30 minutes to feel a noticeable difference after turning it on, and around an hour to get the entire room heated by 2°C. If you factor this in to the heating schedule then digital thermostats can be great and I definitely recommend them.