SteamyTea

I think this is half the battle. I knew I was out all day yesterday, so turned the storage heaters input down. Meant the house was about 17⁰C when I got in, but probably saved me 4 kWh. Just went to bed early.

merde

There is never that much left, unless it is a large one from Phelps.

Here is my two penneth. Charity begins at home.

I wonder what Marcel Duchamp would have to say. Probably some philosophical crap, in French.

Post up a screen dump and we can all have a look.

Why not A2AHP. Get some decent cooling then.

We got asked to manufacture a clear staircase for an architectural show. Pointed out that not many women would be happy to walk up it. Took the designer a few seconds to realise why. (expletive deleted)ing twats.

Why the terms Primary Energy and Delivered or Consumed Energy are often used. If emissions are being calculated, then Primary energy is usually used. At a household level, then Delivered Energy is usually used. though I think Passivhaus may use Primary Energy. I am surprised, but that may be for two reasons. They tended to be close to the consumer, so only very small transmission losses. Not so much the case now for larger PV and Wind farms. The other thing is that as the fuel source is renewable, efficiency becomes a physics question, not a practical one. Both Wind and silicon PV have about reached there practical efficiencies, though PV may get another few percent, but not really a material difference. People get excited about dual layer PV, but that, in a physical properties context, is really 2 modules, one on the other, and neither has the conversion factor of a single module (yet, may be surprised). If you look at PVGIS, they have whole system efficiency losses, default is 14%. I am not sure if that is based on the raw data i.e. a 1 kWp 20% efficiency loss system will deliver 0.8 kW during standard testing, at the wall socket, or it is from collected system data and averaged out.

I think an adhesive is probably easiest. You can get non expanding PU resins. But you may find that PVA works well. I once bonded some polystyrene to timber with a urea-formaldehyde adhesive (Cascamite), then tested it for strength. The insulation gave way first.

Padawan. The only way Dave will touch a phone made in the last 5 years is if he finds one.

I can probably get 4 short showers out of my 200lt cylinder that is at about 45⁰ C. The last one may be a bit tepid, but would be fine for getting the work fat off. I may try and experiment with timings on my DHW. Day just top heating, followed by day of just night heating. Not sure if it will make much difference as it is really about lowering losses, not using less water, at a colder temperature. But in the summer, when I hear just the top of the cylinder, I save about 1.5 kWh/day.

And during the other times of the year, charging storage heaters should pay dividends. If I had PV, I would let the DHW take priority. I am happy to let the house float around 19°C at the moment, which is 1°C lower than in the past. Curing the old leaky door where I work has helped a lot. Colder mean temperature, but more comfortable overall, and I use the fan heater less than I did. Not used it this year at all, but it has been mild. So I think that any kWh pumped into a storage heater, is a kWh not brought in. Can't comment on the complication of your system, I can't follow the sketch.

Interesting, I put my GPS logger on today, drove 600 miles, parked back in my drive and the altitude gap was 2' (600mm). But I think a simple water level is the easy way for house stuff. There was a 'thing' in Google Earth were you could run the cursor over an area and it would work out the heights to quite good accuracy. Can't for the life of me remember how to do it. May have been this: View Path's Elevation Profile https://support.google.com/earth/answer/148134?hl=en I am too tired to try it now. Actually, I tried it. Dead easy, but not sure how accurate it is.

If you have the space, then off grid, with the occasional running of a generator is getting close to being feasible. Still a lot of up front cost though, about what some people a nicer kitchen and bathrooms.

New York City had district heating, but I think it went out of fashion when they started using natural gas. Did we have someone called SarahSW (on the old site) who lived in a place with a shared heating system (wood pellets I think). Broke down and there were arguments about who would fix it. I wonder what happened to her, I think they abandoned there project as if it is the place I think it is, nothing happened for a couple of years, then there seemed to be a bit of activity, then nothing again.

So 52 kWh per night, or about 45 kWh for just heating. While that seems high to me, I am in the warmest place in the land during winter (yesterday I used 8 kWh, 3 of which were DHW and 1 for everything else), I don't think it is excessive, except your place is a bit on the cold side. Fixing drafts would help a lot with that.

Does it mention lowering atmospheric CO2 by 150+ppm.

I don't think so. Wind turbine blades are made from the same plastic as swimming pool slides. We could just pile them up as the degradation is fairly benign. There are also ways to recycle composite plastics, just not done that much as we don't have a huge market for it.

I think London 'imports' most of its energy, so probably takes the percentages from the surrounding areas. There is a bit of a problem with zoning the country and then proportioning pollutants to that area. A lot of Cornwall's energy comes from the gas plant in Plymouth, and some of the waste at the St. Awful EFW comes from Devon (they just won't stop sending there shit to us). It is a bit of a nonsense to try and proportion, exactly, who is generating what. May just as well do a Carbon Intensity by population density, then we can claim that all Rural people are wasteful. The main thing is to reduce the national levels. I am just about to drive to Aylesbury, so shall be passing though, Devon, Somerset, Avon, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, with a tank of diesel bought in Cornwall, that came from a fuel depot in Devon, from ship that has come from Rotterdam, with oil that was probably refined in India, from Alaskan or Middle Eastern, or may by even Venezuelan, crude. When I get back later today (hopefully), I will have to fill up again, in Cornwall. How do I proportion that environmental costs to that simple journey. You have about 6 hours to answer that.

I think there is some hydro on weirs in the Thames. There is one near Windsor Castle, but that isn't London.

Much of the cost is for future decommissions, which was never priced in with the earlier nuclear power stations. Back in the late 1980s and early 90s, we were the worlds largest manufacturer of wind turbines. That changed. We have also bought into an untested design from EDF, the EPR. Same design as Olkiluoto 3, which is still not producing, 17 years after construction started. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EPR_(nuclear_reactor)

50°C for UFH is very hot, too hot to walk on.

Over how many day? About right for two people, will go up a bit, maybe a kWh/day in the winter. As @ProDave says, our radio switches are on GMT, but the billing window does change sometimes, but your energy provider will let you know. They sometimes, for load balancing reasons, shift the time. Sometimes I have had power in the afternoons for half an hour or so. This is billed at the night rate.

That is public ignorance, not really anything to do with changing over from FF to RE. It is 3 times the price of RE alternatives though.