SteamyTea

They are lying (expletive deleted). The insisted that I had a smart meter fitted as the signal was about to be turned off a year ago. I am now having all sorts of 'billing' problems with EDF. Got to the stage that they are refusing to contact me now as they say the 'complaint is resolved', but they are still posting me bills every few days. One was for one days usage (£1.49). I am going to put another complaint in today, 3rd this week, not as I have anything else to do.

Welcome Get reading @Pocster's topic about doing nothing.

One of the problems is that car usage is a very individual thing. Most days I drive between 30 and 50 miles, so the car is stationary for 22 hours or so. But take yesterday, I drove 660 miles, so the car was stationary for about 11 hours. Today I may drive 30 miles or so, maybe 60. Ideally I need two very different cars. A small 'city' type car and a larger 'cruiser' (I know very well that I could drive 660 miles in a small car, but some comfort is needed, I used to do the journey in an original Suzuki Swift and a Corsa Automatic, but I am 20 years older now). In some ways what is needed in Urban and semi rural areas is car hire businesses that follow a similar business model that these electric bike high businesses have. The bikes are left in certain places around the town (Harbour Car Park in PZ, top of hill in Mousehole), you register and then just take a bike. At least with a car share scheme you would not get complete (expletive deleted) ignoring all the rules of the road like the you do with the bikes/scooters, but that is another issue. The main thing that people want from a car is instant accesses and ability to do the journey they want, when they want. This is why we own our own cars, the problem is that it is now getting expensive to do so (though still cheaper than 40 years ago). So while V2G seems like a great idea in principle, I don't see it as an effective solution to grid storage, a quick look at the electrical grid usage patterns will show that higher demand times coincide with 'rush hours'. From an energy saving point of view, it is silly to add in and extra 100 kg of battery storage to a vehicle to either supply the grid or be used for that extra long journey. Swapping vehicles is the better method, though fraught with problems (I lost my driving glasses in my own car, and would hate to leave my fags behind for someone else to enjoy). I like to keep things simple, if you need home electrical storage, install just that, if you want an EV as a low mileage run about, buy one, if you need a car that is capable of driving 800 miles in a day, buy one that can do that. Let the energy companies and the DNOs worry about fitting storage, it is a better usage of 'investors' cash than hoping that independent drivers are willing to share their expensive resources. The government could also put a price cap on independent EV charging, some are expecting 85p/kWh, which after charging and delivery looses is £1/kWh, which makes driving a diesel car cheaper, more flexible, and easier. It does make me wonder if we will get people that think their EVs will run better on different suppliers electricity, it still makes me smile when people will only fill up their cars at a Shell or BP garage, but never a Tesco (which is actually an ESSO managed business). I notice that when I open my fuel filler flap there is a note that says 'Ford recommends BP fuel'. I have not seen a BP garage where I live for years, I am sure there is one. Just had a quick look. I have a new term now, 'The BP Line', it is between Wadebridge and St. Awful.

Because deluded people voted to be better off, not worse off. Not going to work out that way. The controls are down to the manufacturer's interpretation, not the secretive, bullying EU commission that has only one purpose, which is to put the British in their place.

Yes. It would have been worse if the battery had just 'worked' as the Apple Generation says. I am sure I can get my car to do 20 MPG if I want to, instead of 65 MPG.

How easy is that to do? How long does the paint last? That is an interesting point, I suppose you can claw a lot of it back via windows, doors and ceilings. The walls may only be 30% of the exposed structure.

I would think that it really needs to be done before the insulation and VLC is fitted. Making the inner surfaces does not help wind driven cold air by passing the insulation. Trouble it doing it that way, is that the trades come along and ruin it.

I have often wondered where the point is between losses though the structure and losses though the infiltration is. There is a minimum infiltration for humidity control, so that should be the point to aim for, though MVHR skews that somewhat.

Or make one, it has WiFi.

pH is an odd thing as it changes with temperature. Ideally you want the pH to be the same as what it is in contact with, raise the temperature and the pH lowers i.e. more H+ than OH-. It is also a base ten logarithmic scale, so a small change makes a big difference.

It is strange how we think of insulation as a diminishing return but do not use the same term for airtightness. What we really need to do is set maximum targets i.e. no part of walls, floor and roof insulated above a U-Value of 0.11 W.m-2.K-1 and a mean of 0.1 0.11 W.m-2.K-1 Set an ACH limit of 0.3. I thought it was a water based latex, bit like self levelling floor 'stuff'. But I also think that the word 'latex' is generic and the product may not contain any real latex i.e. natural rubber. A quick google and natural latex is produced in most flowering plants and is part of the defence mechanism. If made from poppies, then it is known as opium, so get the right type of sprayable latex, put Portishead or Jefferson Airplane on the turntable and enjoy the experience.

I am a fan of fan heaters, they can heat a room up very quickly, but I do dislike the noise they make. Any convection heater lets the hot air rise to ceiling level, then as it cools, starts to heat the room. Having a stone place will not help any, the mean air temperature inside the house will be set by the wall temperature to a certain extent. Stone conducts heat quickly. It is why we insulate houses. I am currently sitting in my kitchen (3:30 AM with an OAT of 8°C) which is at 20°C and I turned the storage heater off 2 days ago, my house is lightweight timber construction, but well insulated. If there are any damp problems, or the place has high humidity, it may be worth using a dehumidifier, they dry the air, recovering some of the latent heat and add heat to the tune of their power draw i.e. 1 kW. Storage heaters are a good option if you can get on a time of use tariff, but they are just convection heater. They supply heat exactly the same as any other heater, the term 'background' heat is a bit of a nonsense term for 'too small'. It would be better to say that if they are undersized you will need supplementary heaters, if they are over sized you will need to turn them down. They can often be picked up for nothing though, and with some digital timers that switch them on and off to coincide with the cheap period, no rewiring would be needed (except maybe change an outlet to a double pole switch, you can't run a large one from a 13A plug and socket). If you really are going to put in UFH in the future, remember that you do need a lot of insulation under it, ideally 200mm+. You don't want to he heating the ground up, unless you really want to believe that, like thick stone walls, it stores energy for a later date. Identify and fix any obvious air leaks and put in lots of loft insulation of you can. Running costs are easy to work out. Price of energy [£/kWH] x sum of power [kW] x sum of runtimes [h] My energy prices are currently £0.3672/kWh during the day and £0.1468/kWh during the night. The last two week I have used 21 kWh during the day, 130 kWh during the cheaper night period. So 14% is day rate and 86% is night rate, makes the mean rate £0.24/kWh including VAT and meter rental (£0.6246/day). If you can get a fixed tariff below that, then no need to change supply. That included hot water at night, what is your Mother doing for hot water? Hot water is the greatest part of my annual bill because it is needed every day, and I use way too much.

As it is a current clamp and your heap pump is an induction load, it will not be that accurate.

I will probably be going up during the week, depends if my 'missing' chef comes back.

That just looked like a lagged cold water tank, AKA F&E. A simple test, but not always 100% accurate, is that if you can put your thumb over the tap/shower pipe outlet, and stop the flow, the water is gravity fed. If you can't, it is mains pressure. Obviously if it is pumped and the pump is running, it will squirt everywhere.

What day? I intend to visit my Mother during the week, the extra 100 miles to get to Kent does not seem to be much more on my journey.

It is a bit more than just the size of molecules. The 'weave' of the material will reduce the speed of the air because it has to take a longer path. So say the material is 0.1mm thick, but the weave means the shortest path is actually 1mm, for any given pressure, the time taken will be ten times greater. From that you would think that a water molecule with a slight + charge, rather than a nitrogen (charge 3-) or oxygen (charge 2-) molecule there would be no difference, but by choosing a membrane material with the right charge properties, water molecules can be attracted and made to stick in place, then normal evaporation can take place.

Do you mean a pumped shower, rather than using electricity to heat the cold mains water? A combi boiler usually directly heats the cold incoming mains water, which then comes out the tap, a system boiler usually heats a cylinder. (a combi can be set up to heat a cylinder, but that is a special case)

I seem to remember this topic has been discussed before, and what you describe is the gist of it.

Does your heat pump use that heater to defrost? The energy could just have been blown out the unit.

Seem a good place at start from. I generally find that if the mean outside air temperature (OAT) is above 9°C for 3 days, I don't need any heating. This does not work in December and January though as there is so little solar input (both in intensity and duration) that even my heavy breathing does little to warm the place up (even today, valentine's day). Generally if my house is unoccupied and unheated it will always be 3 or 4°C above OAT in the winter.

Thermal engineering of a house is pretty basic. Stop warm air leaving, stop cold air getting in. All that means is the outside of the house has to stop air movement, not the inside as that can allow the insulation to be cold. Don't let anything that conducts heat better than the insulation go from inside to outside i.e. beams and joists. Control the internal humidity, this is usually done mechanically l.e. a fan and ducts. Any humidity that does manage to get past the vapour control layers (basically a sheet of polystyrene in the inside walls) must be allowed to migrate to the outside. This is why walls are constructed so that the more vapour tight layers are inside, and the more vapour open layers are outside. Vapour movement and air movement are not the same thing. Sealing around window and door frames is a matter of taping either side ideally. Window and door frames are also thermal bridges, i.e. they conduct heat better than the walks, which is a bad thing. The better the frame U-Value the better, but be conscious that large windows have poor thermal performance anyway, so the frame may only be a small part of the overall heat loss. You can swap around U-Values i.e. thicker insulation on a north and east facing wall, these are climatically colder in the UK, and still get a well performing house. Your most likely to have overheating problems than under heating problems these days, even sticking to minimum building regulations. Do so thermal modelling i.e. solar angles, intensity at different times of the day and year. This only needs to be basic, split the day up into 18 hours, 9 either dude if noon, split the year up unto 26 weeks, then go to PVGIS and download the TMA hourly data for your location.

Could be that PVC pipes are inherently smoother, including the joints. My first house had a glazed downpipe, had been repaired with some concrete mix. The Richards often got stuck halfway down. The next house and all but one since had PVC, no problems, except the old one in Weymouth.

Have you seen Mr. HD's beard, she will put up with a lot. (when I visited the IWI was being done and there was a baby somewhere, heard it, never saw it)

You're lucky to have a wife that is happy to shop at Poundland.