SteamyTea

That has generally been the minimum in most countries that protect the term 'Engineer'. My Father was an electrical engineer, he was (expletive deleted)ing useless at anything mechanical. I studied Automotive Engineering, which is really just Mechanical Engineering with a bit more thermodynamics and examples from the automotive arena, rather than a foundry or a plastics factory. Oddly though, I learnt more chemistry doing my second degree in renewable energy than I learnt previously. I think I got lucky with who was lecturing us though.

Not read all the recent replies, but the members who have replied give sound advice (usually). You could look into fitting an Air to Air Heat Pump (A2AHP). That was it will be cheaper to heat the place, then ventilate the bollocks out the place, with or without heating recovery. There are a number of different A2AHPs. Some are cheap, others are expensive, and some are fitted inside only with a couple of holes drilled through the walls. Quite a few people on here have fitted them, and one member has one fitted in his static caravan. The VLC, (vapour control layer) in the UK climate is fitted on the inside, which is why ventilation becomes important. It is there to protect the building, not the occupants (they should know about ventilation, but many don't, living in an airtight house takes a bit of getting used to). ST also means solar thermal, a technology that is not used much now as PV (photovoltaic) is cheaper and generally more useful. I am sure with a bit more detail about your mother's home, we can, collectively, get it warmer, dryer, and cheaper to run. All without putting the dog in an outside kennel, where it should be.

Just protect the term 'Engineer'. A degree in Engineering Commissioning/Process Control would be useful. The Thermodynamics is really easy, only a few, very simple and intuitive rules to follow. 4 only really.

I am pretty sure I said you need to write a book about all this. Is that woman drunk? Looks like the lush I saw staggering down Market Jew Street last Sunday evening.

That should be standard for all heating systems as it is to do with the building, not the thermal source. Easy enough to do your own as a double check. Did they recommend an alternative, and what about your DHW needs?

@Green Power From your blog "You may be told by a professional installer that your house isn’t suitable for a heat pump." How true, had an electrical technician tell me that a heat pump would not work in my house as I have wooden windows. Obviously a man that fell asleep during the classes about conductivity and resistance. Probably why we was swapping meters and not wiring houses.

Bit in the Guardian about how the UK could produce more RE electricity with only a small impact on land area. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/apr/09/england-could-produce-13-times-more-renewable-energy-using-less-than-3-of-land-analysis What is so annoying is that I was at Exeter University a decade and a half ago and we had already worked this out. Did I hear on the radio that we have broken monthly temperature records for the last ten month? Now I know some of that is because we are in an El Nino period and next year we will probably not break so many records, but if you every talk to someone what is complaining about the rain, ask what they are doing about it.

Many years ago I stumbled upon Barnsdale Gardens, it is where Geoff Hamilton had his TV studio set for Gardener's World. What amazed me was how small each set was, and how different they where. Should be possible to combine a few. Well worth a visit if you want to go Rutland way. Failing that, get a book for inspiration.

I have seen primary reasons somewhere, so you may need to hunt around a bit. Some of that can be attributed to lower smoking rates and fire resistant furniture (was in the 1980's that the legislation came in, so most of that furniture is now discarded).

Well worth a listen to this old broadcast. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b007ycdl

Probably worth looking here.

Except when it is hotter and higher humidity.

Can you install 'emergency' lighting. Say a 3W bulb somewhere suitable and a small changeover switch.

What temperature does your mother keep her place at? The relationship between temperature, humidity and mould growth is not linear. Adding external insulation will help in using less energy to keep the temperature higher than the outside air temperature, but in itself, does not change the amount of water vapour in the internal air. To change that you need to ventilate. You can get single room mechanical ventilation and heat recovery units (dMVHR) and it may be worth fitting one of these before you try anything else. While you think there may not be any water leaks, you may need to investigate this more i.e. waste water pipes, clothes drying, ground height.

The water treatment is probably most of that.

Isn't it abut time that we all started routing out 'stuff' though the TOR network? I am amazed at how reliable my TOR server is, it just keeps going and cost me a tenner. I have got OnionFruit on my Windows PC, that seem to work well. Posting this through it.

"Our assessment of the quality of new evidence is biased by our previous beliefs." Dr Ben Goldacre, Bad Science, 2008. (His mother, Noosha Fox, is interesting as well)

Then let if overheat. Back in '86, I did some composite plastic samples for material testing. One of those samples was purposely made incorrectly (way to much hardener). Popped them on the testing machines (tensile, compression, bending and vibration) and watched them explode. The one that was purposely wrong failed very early, except for the hardness testing, it was way harder than the others, which accounts for the spectacular failure of the other tests. (I did my apprenticeship in a company that made testing machines)

SMA make good inverters, but when we had problems with them, it was always a case that the inverter had to be shipped back to Germany. That was over a decade ago and the UK was a small market for them, so things may have changed.

How well does it pick up bodies that are greased up and bound?

There are lots of material properties to take into account. Concrete buildings never used to be much good in an earthquake, they are now though. Main thing was, if I have my arithmetic right, is that concrete is not as bad as a lot of people think. It has one big advantage over timber in that it can be cast into complicated shapes with very little waste.

Is it. At around £100/m3 delivered it must been one of the cheapest materials there is. You can buy standing timber, with the bark, at around £55/m3. Once planed to size and stacked in Travis Perkins, it becomes about £2300/m3. I am adding to this, as I am a bit bored this morning. The embodied energy in concrete is around 2500 MJ/m3 (700 kWh), timber is 5100 MJ/m3 (1420 kWh), the embodied carbon is 360 kg/m3 and timber is 280 kg/m3. Food for thought that is. https://theconstructor.org/sustainability/embodied-energy-building-materials/567108/

Depends, the posters used to be good.

How much is caused by all the electric motors, and brakes, on the trains? Also, if the average OAT goes up, the thermal losses will go down. That should be easy enough to check. One of the few towns that is a similar latitude as London. But. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/okotoks-drake-landing-solar-energy-repairs-future-1.7148389

Thermal Inertia or Thermal Diffusivity if you please.