Doe's anyone know what percentage of the old housing stock still has open fires as main room heaters ?
With all the talk of zero carbon new homes, I think its about time we tackled the massive, existing, wasteful dwellings, starting with the most wasteful. A retro fit stove may not be the final answer, but it would be a simple, quick step in the right direction. We have a lot of fifty's council houses in this area and most have open fires with highly inefficient back boilers. The council is spending thousands, fitting cavity wall and roof insulation when all the heats going up the chimney. I don't consider central heating as essential, if the main room has a reasonable heat source and the house is well insulated. In fact having to get of your butt to light it or stoke it should be seen as a positive step toward fuel reduction.

Hi,
Heard on the radio that the councils had spent a small fortune installing cental heating for those in desperate need of it, great, but now they have got it, folk can't afford the fuel so it stays off. So their lighting the old fire again, in increasing numbers.

Tom,

I couldn't agree more. We are currently undertaking an extensive refurb of a small bungalow part of the the brief is to reduce reduce reliance on fossil fuels (for all the normal reasons), we've set a target of financial payback within five years for the system as whole. The allowance is in the region of 4% of the property value for plumbing/heating, lighting and appliances, about £12K, of this about 50% or £6K is in above a standard developers spec. With solar and wood pellet DHW and heating should reduce from about £1200 per year to £300, lighting reduced by about 80%, etc. CO2 emmisions down around 75%.

The problems, way more difficult than just picking up a copy the building regs, have really been in sourcing and specifying suitable products, then calculating efficiencies for various options along with ROI, for which this forum has been invaluable, far more so than anything the Government or the various QUANGO's.

If the Government really wanted to do something they would make it easy, really easy, for your average builder/developer/self-builder to source, choose, and specify appropriate solutions, surely £1m spent developing easy to use high quality software and distributing it free would be money well spent?