SteamyTea

Could you not have had the turbine (I assume it was small) dedicated to just heating water, then no need to control much at all, just maximum temperature.

Pretty good really. Makes me wonder why we don't fit a glass panel over 'daylight' walls and pump the thermal energy around the house. A posh trombe wall, but not using the wall as storage so much.

So a system boiler. These are usually, but not exclusively, set up to heat either the water, or the building. It then gets complicated as there are a number of different 'plans' to divert the boiler water. S Plan, Y Plan, W Plan, Plan B (though I think that involves morning regret and pipes that change rigidity) You may have to do a drawing.

Soap, wears the soap, it does don't it.

Combi gas boilers are sized for DHW delivery. System boilers are designed for mean and maximum heat load. What sort is your boiler? Or at least how is it plumbed up? There are others on here that know a lot more about boilers and pipes.

Just had a quick skim read, but this thought struck me. As batteries do not charge in a linear fashion (the closer to 100‰ SoC the longer it takes) would it be better to charge to say 85‰ and accept that a larger storage system would be needed? May also get more years life out of a system.

Is it to do with inverter minimum loading? Seen it quoted at 200W, this would run my lighting load 50 times over. In fact, I would be hard pushed to get a 200W load most of the time.

When I look at my 'windrose' that groups house, OAT and solar by wind direction, it is only OAT that makes a noticeable difference. Probably down to only having 40 m2 of wall/window area. Half of that will be shielded as it is, at best, facing the opposite direction to the weather. For a place your size, where it is, and the temperature you keep it at, it is quite an achievement to use so little energy. I assume you have a heat pump. My problem is even at 14p/hour at worse, for everything, I cannot justify financially a HP. Though I might get one as an experiment. I suspect getting some PV, 2 to 2.4 kWp would be the best route as I can get 5p/kWh SEG. Even allowing for a MCS payment, probably works out the better option.

How large is your place, mine is a small ~50m2, terrace. And in one of the warmest places in the UK winter. It almost got down to -2.5°C once. Here is this winters OAT temperature profile. 1/1//23 to 1/4/23. I think I wasted energy by unnecessary heating, 15% of the time.

My mate up there, who is from NI, so knows about miserable weather, says that he appreciates it when the sun reached it peak altitude, around 15° isn't it. This sunroom, how many days does it heat up. That is quite a serious question, as well as being flippant.

Both heaters seem to have used about 15 kWh/day. This is pretty consistent as they are old (1987) storage heaters. The larger one (4 element, 3 kW) seems to have used 10 kWh/day and the smaller one, which is half the size, 5 kWh/day. The remaining, or current, usage of 5 kWh/day is for DHW and all the other house loads i.e. fridge, cooker/oven, washing machine. Last summer/autumn I did two improvements, fixed the leaky back door and added secondary glazing to my window. The secondary glazing, which greatly educed noise (I already had double glazing) also seems (need to analysis temp differences more) when I need to turn on/off the heating by at least a °C. In the past I would turn thee heating on once the previous weeks OAT was 10°C, now it seems to be around 9°C. I also have a warmer house by around a °C. I also have hardly used my portable fan heater, which was usually my 'gauge' for when to turn the storage heaters on. If I was using it for 2 or 3 hours a day, then was the time to swap over (that is down to price difference as I have E7). Probably used it in total this winter for 5 hours. That is mainly down to not having a cold draught on my feet from the leaky back door (that was, in the end, a simple fix and took 10 minutes to put right, but 18 years pontificating about it).

I think I am still quids in, but we should not be in for another major rise in energy prices. Seems our capitalist economic system, in conjunction with government guidance, and most importantly, people cutting usage, has worked. The mild winter may have helped a bit, but not as much as people think as we have crap heating systems in the UK. South West Water, the most expensive water supplier in the country, and possibly the world, offered us all £30 off our bill if we cut back on usage. 5 lt/day was the target. I got the £30, so the target was hot, but no idea by how much. Some of that will have coincided with reduced energy usage. So in this instance, a financial incentive worked, though I am not sure how full our reservoirs are.

Your in Glasgow!

That emoji looks like someone bending over, with a cold upper buttock. I am often told this is a family friendly website.

Well yesterday was the first full day I had my heating off. Over the last two week I had turned off the main storage heater, now the little one is off as well. So gone from around 20 kWh/day, including DHW and everything else, to 10 kWh/day and now down to round 5 kWh/day. House was a bit cooler than I like, and has been, since I turned off the larger heater, gone from around 20°C down to 19°C. This morning it was at 17°C (5AM), but now almost 19°C, so not so bad. The price difference has gone from 14p/hour for all heaters on, to 10p/hour with just the small heater on, and now will be around half that. I can live with 14p/hour to run a house, but half that is even better.

I know what you mean, and you are right. I think that it is a myth that ordinary Portland cement render is waterproof, airtight and has no breathability, compared to lime. But I cannot find decent numbers to back it up. I suspect that what happens in a major refurbishment of an old building is that many of the real reasons for damp are cured in the process i.e. gutters fixed, holes filled, roof repaired, soil build up removed from walls, heating and ventilation/humidity levels improved etc. And why specify sheep wool insulation, that is bonkers financially, thermally and environmentally. I did a calculation somewhere on here that if we took all the flock from sheep, we could insulate about 1200 houses a year, but at a huge environmental cost. Stick in full fill mineral wool, even if it is not fully filling the cavity. It has anti-wicking properties.

https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/eiq-12wminv/electriq-eiq12wminv-wall-split-air-conditioner

Phil Spector created the wall of sound, look what happened to him. There is a bit here about how we hear. https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct4y3s

It is possible, but will probably hasten the end of the boiler. Never good to keep stopping and starting mechanical pumps and fan. Sounds like your boiler is oversized for your heat load, fitting a buffer/volumizer may reduce the problem.

Should be called Search and Destroy.

Not really. There are SI base units, kg, m, s and a few others. From those, you can make recognised units like newtons, joules and watts And from those, with a bit of mixing up, you get recognised units like kWh, So kg.m2.s-2 = J kg.m2.s-2 / s = kg.m2.s-3 = W kg.m2.s-3.3600 s = 3600 kg.m2.s-2 = kWh as there is 3600 seconds in an hour. In an ideal world, we would use joules for energy and watts for power, but somewhere along the line, someone thought it was a good idea to use the kWh. That in itself is not too bad. But, then it gets corrupted into nonsense units like Killa wots per our, which does not even make sense in English, let alone phyisics. Try the historical records on Weatherunderground. You can usually find a weather station within a mile. Some are better than others i.e. solar meter.

I assume there are 3 pillars, and two separate 'triangles'. Apart from calling the power, energy, it seems about right. Actually it seems very good. Amazing how the losses soon add up the isn't it. Still 300W is not dreadful, a small fan heater on 20 minutes every hour.

@JamesPa Useful list, thanks.

Go skip diving. Or try B&Q. https://www.diy.com/search?sort=product.price&term=Kitchen+sink

I thought my graveled (20mm granite) rear was a bit light at first. I soon got used to it, and it has darkened over the years.