Weird Flex of having a Fireplace

Heat pumps are grand on A rated airtight houses. However a significant are not build to that standard. I suspect you have solar panels as well which is the correct thing to do as well.

Mine is a 1991 build house but insulated to a much higher standard but not to modern standards. It was not build to be airtight at the time and 30 years later( like many houses build now in 30 years time) the windows and doors seals have deteriorated. And my houses is insulated to a much higher standard than houses back then.

I have 100mm of blown rockwool in cavities. Drylined with an 25mm insulated slab board. 150mm of insulation in the attics. Under the floor is 50mm pink insulation boards. The heating system is an oil Stanley Range and a stove with a back boiler.

Just as an aside anyone with an open fire with the cost of fuel is making a serious error. Small room heater stoves are quite cheap and reduce the fuel need to heat a room by 50%+, give out more heat and when it goes out the draughts issue is virtually non existence.

We intend to change the oil range next year and are considering a wood pellet boiler stove, the technology has much improved and is more defendable than 10+ years ago. We intend to upgrade the insulationand change the doors. However whether the budget will stretch to changing all the glazing is a question we will look at. Chanhing the glazing to be made really worth while would require doing airtightness around all windows and doors as well.

Upgrading from oil to woodpellet will cost 5K+. Replacing front and back doors 6k+. Airtightness around them 500-1k. Repainting afterwards 2k+( extremely large hall). Insulation upgrade which entails going from 150mm to at least 250 mm 1ki sh doing it ourselves.

Like any couple we have budget constraints. It might sound good to put in a heat pump, however installing a heat recovery system is financially viable as we live in a dormer and it would require significant structural work. We have other prioritiesas well the orginal kitchen is still in the house and need to be replaced and the utility also needs a revamp at the same time.

At present heating the house a 170ish sqM house take about 1K litres of kerosene and mainly wood that we can source ourselves. The wood is mainly windfall trees or timber from hedgerow management so it's carbon neutral. Woodpellet heating systems are as carbon neutral as using electricity evennif it was all wind and solar which is never going to happen.

The reality is for those of us with older houses upgrading to heat pumps is not feasible and after significant expense it can lead to serious electricity bills unless you carry out significant insulation airtightness and glazing upgrades. However even with that you are faced with replacing radiators with electirheaters( underfloor heating is not financially viable) to end up with higher heating costs than previously.

We were without electricity from Friday morning to this morning. Luckily I got a generator 3KW set up on Saturday which ran the fridge and freezer, a TV and it would boil the kettle. The oil range actually went faulty ( control unit fault it was 34 years old but the uneven voltage from.the generator may not have helped it). The stove and back boiler kept the upstairs rooms and the sitting room comfortable, we got a gas heater for the kitchen/ dining room.

On gas heater if you are buying one. Get one of the Manhattan type as opposed to the older Superser type as in the link

https://shop-ni.calorgas.ie/calor-gas-3-4kw-manhattan-portable-gas-heater.html

However people with modern airtight houses should careful using gas heater as Oxygen depletion could be an issue in the case of an electricity being out. You will have no air exchange with the heat recovery system not working. Make sure to have a carbon monoxide alarm in the room

A heat pump derives 3/4 of the energy used in it's output from the outside air. 1/4 of the output comes from the grid.

Of that 1/4, almost 40% comes from renewables. So running a heat pump in Ireland uses just 15% fossil fuel for its output.

Actually that's exactly what happens. Once a generator is connected to the grid it is completely commingled with everyone else on the grid. Accounting tricks do not change that.

Data centres don't go offline when the wind isn't blowing.