You say "I have pretty much all the insulation and double glazing possible."
This is hardly ever true in the current UK housing stock. What do you actually have?
The single most effective thing you can do to reduce heating bills is insulate, and make airtight, the building, usually externally. A building with 200-300mm insulation all round and good airtightness should have very low heating demands, which may even be most sensibly heated with electric and a small woodburner, which conveniently, you already have.
In many buildings it's actualy the airtightness that really needs work, more than just the insulation. Some more details on that would let us help you more accurately.
Re the ecocent idea, which Martin suggests is only any use in very well-insulated buildings, there is one fitted in a refurbished, with UFH, but not particularly well insulated (just cavity-wall) domestic house near Cambridge and the owner is very pleased with the results and has a lot of good stats on exactly how much energy it uses. Some details here:
http://cambridgecarbonfootprint.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/13-Case-Study1.pdfHe did later send me a much more detailed study, which I have somewhere. His work suggests that it is a viable retrofit option for 'normal houses'.
Sorry for the delay, metaphorical fires to fight...
When I said "I have pretty much all the insulation and double glazing possible" it was a sort of shorthand for "I live in a leaky old cottage, with pretty much all the insulation I can easily apply to some bits and relatively up to scratch to others". The bits that don't give me too much worry are those I renovated, fully lined with 50mm cellotex and pb to 13.5" brick walls, 25mm cellotex and pb over existing ceilings and a total of 150mm foam in 600mm of new concrete floors where there's underfloor heating.
The rest (again 13.5" brick, some with a form of dry lining not fully investigated) has groundfloor ceiling heights from 8 to 12 feet and correspondingly (this is very much a cottage) 1st floor ceiling heights from say 50% 'skeiling'/50% flat (and insulated with 8" of spaceblanket) to 100% skeiling where there is no insulation on the slopey bits. There is no heating up there, and as a consequence, if the picturesque door to the quirky winding elm staircase is left open in winter, an avalanche of cold air tumbles down into the room where the woodburner is. Everywhere has double glazing in purpose-made timber frames. All external doors get a winter blanket hung over them.
I know, I know, I
should must address the insulation upstairs, but take it from me it is a more complex job than can be easily described - to the point where Mrs Chas and I have reached an uneasy truce over it, and as there's no-one else to complain about 'above' we keep the door shut, have a good electric blanket and put up with it for the moment.
Hence my request for suggestions re the best sort of hardware to buy that might make the biggest differenc, though I do see that to a great extent a fully insulated, airtight sort of gaff probably could be treated differently to my leaky old one and that as a consequence advice is likely to be conditional.
I have come to the provisional conclusion that I should join the FIT crew and subsidise the whole electricity-mad (c£2k pa) with it while the going's good and attend to insulation (currently looking at that superfoil stuff) in the fullness of time. By all means point out the error of my ways, I'm almost infallible but not completely. And thanks for all discussion of my plight, I read it all with interest.
Chas
