37 comments on British MP interviews David Strahan, author "The Last Oil Shock"
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[Read it last month: good book go get it!]
Insanity: I live in a 120 flat apartment block in London and there is currently a study underway to replace the communal boiler with individual ones run on gas...
Thing is we could certainly put solar on the roof to supplement the coming high gas prices but as single units we are stuffed. Can you think of a more stupid thing to do -my point is that people are totally unaware of this issue -maybe 1 in 100.
If this goes ahead then "That's it I'm Outta there!"
Nick.
That's a really interesting decision making process. Many stakeholders and an incomplete situation awareness. What is the justification for the change? Is the existing (gas?) boiler at end of life? Is heat currently a public (within the building), non-rival good leading to inefficiencies? "Privatisation" is expected to lead to increased efficiency?
It might be worth designing a flyer detailing the situation with UK gas, our coming reliance on imports etc., questioning the wisdom of major gas investment.
With a large building like that a large common boiler sounds like a good idea - could it be replaced with a single combined heat and power boiler? With many users, load would be smoother than single residences.
Hi Chris -the decision to go from the water and space heating communal boiler to individual ones for water/heat is being driven mainly by the high price of replacing all the communal pipework from the boiler to the individual flats...
And I have already made a flyer! I'm serious about this -if they go ahead with this I will sell up as I don't see a future here. Of course I will try and get 120 new TOD readers first!
Nick.
It's not necessarily the case that individual units are less efficient:
- modern condensing combi boilers are 90% efficient in their conversion of gas to energy (+90-92%)
- because they are 'on demand' there is no large waste of hotwater tanks, heating water to basically let that heat go away, and the total system capacity can be lower (because it doesn't have to cope with 120 people drawing a bath at 9pm, which the other system will do, even if it never happens)
Also you don't lose heat pumping hot water through pipes through the whole building, that loses that energy.
I can also add that central building heat is *very* bad for encouraging cockroaches, who love to move along the warm pipes between flats. It's cold barriers between flats that prevent them doing that.