It’s all about a load of hot air …

Now some two months into my new life living on the south coast of England, I have been learning much – in my terminally technologically illiterate way – about the practicalities of living upon semi-agricultural land.

One of first stages in our project is going to be the transformation of our cottage, which we intending – once all the preparatory design work has been done, the necessarily planning applications submitted and hopefully approved – into a bigger and more spacious, sounder, more sophisticated, version.

This plan has necessarily involved research over several months into all aspects of house-building, including the latest developments in dwelling insulation, ecologically-sound, future-proof – and hopefully cheapest possible – methods of providing secure utility services such as water, heating, electricity and gas.

During this research phrase we have received comments and advice from professionals in the building trades and also from friends, neighbours and others who have already “been there”.

A builder friend of Her Indoors recently waxed lyrical to us about “ground heat” technologies, whereby you drill a hole down a fairly long way into the ground and thence are able to benefit from the free warm-to-hot air thereby released and captured to be fed into your home.

It’s expensive to install, inevitably, but once it’s in place, you gain access to very cheap heating up to say a temperature of about 18 degrees centigrade.

During the summer months that might be all you’d ever need but, when it gets to winter-time, it’s possible that you might need to employ an additional source of heating in order to get the temperature up to say 21 degrees or beyond.

On a separate occasion, at a party in the Midlands, I happened to fall into conversation with an old university friend of my daughter’s who impressed me with his tale of the joys and benefits of “air heat pump” technology that – after a fair bit of research – he had recently installed at his home at considerable expense.

As I understand it, with an “air heat pump” you just fix the necessary “box of tricks” to the side of your home, press the “start” button and away you go – the pump somehow works its magic and, by grabbing and then converting cold air into hot by some magic or another, it then begins pumping heat into your home through your existing central heating system.

The point made to me was that – yes, (again) an “air heat pump” system is relatively expensive to install but – once it is in – the benefits are many.

Not only do your heating bills go down considerably, but (because of Government policy designed to encourage the technology) you can also apply to get on a Government subsidy scheme offering £400 per quarter which – depending upon your exact circumstances – could mean that, instead of paying for your heating at all, in fact the Government could end up using taxpayers’ money to pay it for you!

As it happens, we’ve just postponed beginning our serious work on the upgrading of our cottage until the New Year – we’ve decided to get the festive season out of the way before we start.

When we do turn our attention to the task, however, one of the first items on the agenda will be how we are going to heat our place.

Should this be via gas, oil, electricity – or, alternatively, perhaps, either of the new “ground heat” or “air heat pump” technologies?

Then this morning, when I awoke and came to my computer with a large mug of expresso coffee, I was both interested and concerned in equal measure this morning to spot this piece by Ross Clark on the website of the – DAILY MAIL

Hey ho ..

(“Make mine a mulled wine please, waiter!”) …