The government here have only just started offering it within the last year or so, and most people don't qualify - you have to be on a low income (less than £15,000 a year total household income) in receipt of certain benefits, have a boiler that is already broken, the boiler must be older than a certain age and of an inefficient model, and you must either have a child, be a pensioner. If I earned just a few more pence an hour I wouldn't be able to have got it.
I grateful they are running this scheme though, as I remember growing up in a house with just a couple of open fires, which we couldn't afford coal for most of the time, so we go and get what bits of wood we could and burn that.
The main reason they, the government, are doing running this scheme it is to meet climate emissions targets set the EU. I think's also a way they can use some of the budget they have to been seen to be using for the environment to try and boost the economy at the same time. They are trying to get lots of people to sign up for solar panels too for the same reason. A lot of companies are cashing in on it, you basically let them put the panels on your roof for 25 years, you get lower energy bills and everything that you don't use gets fed back into the grid.
That's a lot of restrictions. It would be really bad if your boiler broke in the middle of a really bad cold spell :( A lot of suburban/city homes here don't have fireplaces so if your heating system goes, you're completely screwed. During the Hurricane here, when the power was out for days it meant a lot of people also didn't have heat. They were warning people about hypothermia and frostbite.
If it broke and you were able to use the scheme you could ask your gas supplier to repair it, but it could be a few hundred pounds for a repair, and there would still be a call out fee even if it turned out they couldn't fix it. A new boiler if you were buying it outright would be about £2500 or you could get one of the gas supplier to install a new one on one of their scheme, but you end up paying about £25 a month for 15 years if you did, which isn't good as it's doubtful the boiler would last that long without packing up. Really unless you qualify for the scheme or you've not got a good income your choice are pretty much limited to being in debt or being cold.
I don't have a fireplace in my house as it's a new build, only eight and half years old, but the weather is actually unseasonably warm at the moment, it got up to 19C (66f or so) this afternoon and the weather is supposed to continue like this for at least a week.
Handily the person coming out to assess the old boiler who wasn't supposed to arrive until the 15th of October has just phone me to say had a cancellation and now he'd coming to look at it on Monday afternoon, so six days rather than three weeks time, so very pleased with that. Still don't know when the new boiler will arrive, but having assessed sooner, surely gives a chance of getting the new one before it gets too much later in the year.
I grateful they are running this scheme though, as I remember growing up in a house with just a couple of open fires, which we couldn't afford coal for most of the time, so we go and get what bits of wood we could and burn that.
The main reason they, the government, are doing running this scheme it is to meet climate emissions targets set the EU. I think's also a way they can use some of the budget they have to been seen to be using for the environment to try and boost the economy at the same time. They are trying to get lots of people to sign up for solar panels too for the same reason. A lot of companies are cashing in on it, you basically let them put the panels on your roof for 25 years, you get lower energy bills and everything that you don't use gets fed back into the grid.
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Hope your home warms up soon!!
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Really unless you qualify for the scheme or you've not got a good income your choice are pretty much limited to being in debt or being cold.
I don't have a fireplace in my house as it's a new build, only eight and half years old, but the weather is actually unseasonably warm at the moment, it got up to 19C (66f or so) this afternoon and the weather is supposed to continue like this for at least a week.
Handily the person coming out to assess the old boiler who wasn't supposed to arrive until the 15th of October has just phone me to say had a cancellation and now he'd coming to look at it on Monday afternoon, so six days rather than three weeks time, so very pleased with that. Still don't know when the new boiler will arrive, but having assessed sooner, surely gives a chance of getting the new one before it gets too much later in the year.
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