Jonathan wrote:

The figures in the graphic are in cloud cuckoo land.
£761 to lag the tank? £755 for loft insulation?? £2,240 for

It says on the graphic "hot water cylinder and pipework cover" - if this
involves lagging all the pipes in the house then the cost seems a little
low, when you consider all the making good that would be required after.

thermostatic radiator valves? At £9 per valve that's a pretty big
house!. All of the costs are between 5-20x exaggerated over real world

Close to £40 per valve with fitting I would have thought. So those alone
could easily be £500. Add a couple of hundred for converting to a fully
pumped operation and adding decent room and tank stats etc. So an OTT
assessment certainly - but could be as little as 2x - 3x

What struck me in particular was this paragraph:

"But the study from the Royal Institute of Chartered Surveyors shows
that some of the measures, such as solar panels to heat water, would
cost £5,000 to install but reduce average bills by only £24 a year and
would take about 208 years to pay back."

Could be right for some users. Much depends on if you have a usable roof
slope etc. Even if is saves you £100/year that would still be a 50 year
payback.

This is one of those things that can make much more sense if you can DIY
it as it brings the capital costs way down.

I work very hard to market ethically, using the "safest low figures"
as provided by the Energy Saving Trust and guidelines from the Solar
Trade Association

Somehow I doubt jo public with have any more trust in those
organisations particularly anyway.

The very, very minimum saving on an appropriate solar thermal
installation is £75 per annum per panel, in the real world it's many
times more. I'm sure even the most sceptical person in this group can
see all of the figures are utter nonsense. But what to do about an
ignorant public?

Nonsense like this ruins years of hard work rebuilding the reputation
of an industry which has already had hard times due to mis-selling.

I doubt it makes that much difference really. You don't buy solar water
heating on a whim, it is something that you are going to have to analyse
carefully first. So your customers are going to come from the "detail
people" who are prepared to do the analysis. Just on personality types
alone that will limit you to about 20% of the populous in the first place.


--
Cheers,

John.

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