SteamyTea

The sensible thing to do is designated parking. When I lived in an old terraced street, neighbours used to complain about parking. The most vocal had 5 vehicles, 2 were vans. Houses were 4 metres wide.

I think it is a pretty good idea really. Not the kind of thing that would be taken up voluntarily. So like better insulation and condensing boilers, legislation is needed or it will not happen.

There is quite a difference this year from the long term averages.

What is to stop people connecting a secondary charging point that does not have the controls/spyware fitted? Something like this? https://www.amazon.co.uk/QUBEV-CHARGING-UNIT-TYPE-SOCKET/dp/B07WV579VB

Worth a listen https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w3ct3j7x

Isn't that what Heating Degree Days do? Allows you to compare on a common basis i.e. 12 or 15⁰C.

Contract for Difference is how it is done these days. Basically fixed price, fixed delivery, and heavy fines for non delivery. Offshore wind is now about £33/MWh. Third of the price of new nuclear. Cheaper tan gas generation, even before Putin's shenanigans. Been going a few years, since 2015 I think, but there are still legacy systems (think the old FiTs as a comparison). No government is going to allow a large percentage of the population to be disconnected because of domestic energy prices, they will want to keep it at about the historical norm of 5% of household income. Now I think household income is about £38,000, so about £2000 a year spent on energy. Probably not that far off that with these prices. You have to remember that the price was artificially driven down by a few (about 30) companies that had dreadful business plans. We are now paying the price, in part, for this. I think Bulb, just one supplier, is running up a few £bn in government debt, it could not even be given away. Octopus has recently taken over the customer list , but I suspect it will be a separate company as the deal is that, after a few year, if any money is made from Bulb customers, Octopus will give the treasury a few shillings. Some people greed, to save a few pence, has cost us all about £160 this year so far.

Shit, you have posted up my secret data source, that is available to everyone that has an opinion that needs challenging.

'Many' is not good enough. Really has to be all. I often think that technology is often self serving. Just because something can be done, it does not mean that it has to be done. Good engineering standards are all that is really needed, and those are based on basic physical properties. It is those basic properties that often get lost, and often misunderstood.

It is a risk benefit analysis really. Just the price of risk is often not high enough to discourage, and the benefit is usually overstated.

Was a general point about the energy market. Imagine trying to buy transport fuel by the 'enough to get me to London'.

Or just download the local authority energy data, local weather, and play. Friend of mine actually did this at university. Was a good correlation between age of buildings and energy usage. A very impressive step when building regs changed and cathode ray tube TVs went off the market.

Yes it is. But nothing to stop tested materials being fitted. Having been involved in a material failure that caused 2 deaths, I can tell you that it is a harrowing experience dealing with the Coroner, police, insurance companies, suppliers, customers and having to face the victims families. And it was an incident that happened before I joined the company, but as the senior member of staff, I took the abuse (one director left when the writ turned up, the other remaining one bankrupted the company not long after, but before the fine was paid). Do the right thing.

We have the smallest area housing in Europe. It is quite hard to disagregate the true numbers unless the experiment was set up with the express purpose of finding something out. I would like to play with their data and see what comes out. I did hear a good term about data collection yesterday. 'Like trying to count the number of vegans in a town but asking customers in the burger bar'

Yes, we used to buy timber to make the saunas like that, but at least it was in planks. Though thinking about it, it may have been the size of the woodpile before machining, then the lads chopped it up wrong and burnt the evidence. I think energy should be sold by the megajoule, no arguement about how much energy is in it then. Barmy that we buy it by the volume, mass, or archaic units, and even mixed units, that have their origins lost in history and folklore.

How would you feel if an unqualified tradesperson came and fitted an untested product into your home?

Our fault for bombing the shit out of it years ago. Heroes of Telemark

Yes, it is an odd way to buy energy, especially as part of that cube is air. So paying for water, North Sea gas is pretty dry once delivered. Why is wood wet.

Interesting the comments about the controllers. I seem to remember that with the Carrier units, a second controller, called Command Module (very space age, very American, in 1967) was needed to set the things up properly. I think @joe90 has one. What is probably needed is another communication standard to supersede all the others. I am not sure how many physical parameters an ASHP actually has that can be changed. Flow Temp Return Temp Flow Rate Flow Pressure Refrigerant Flow Temp Refrigerant Return Temp Refrigerant Pressure Compressor Speed Fan Speed External Loop Flow Rate External Loop Flow Temp External Loop Return Temp External Loop Pressure Room Temp Sensor External Temp Sensor Valve Position Sensors (2 to 5 maybe) Safety Cutouts (2 to 3) So that is about 20. Then the reliable software to run and report it all. Amazing it works at all.

I used W profile foam strip. Just remember an air test will almost certainly be sucking air out the house, so depending on how the hatch is fitted, you may have to fit a different sort.

What was your price per kg?

Good job we left the EU, we can claim that we are the best in our union now. Even Spain and Italy, countries that are still considered unfinished, are better than us.

How so. There is around 4.5 kWh/kg in timber with 20% moisture content. 20 kg x 4.5 kWh = 90 kWh £26 / 90 kWh = 0.288 £/kWh Gasification will not recover all the available energy, or it would be magic.

How cheap is that timber? Quick look on eBay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/394232733783 Work out at about 29p/kWh before it is put into an inefficient combustion chamber.

Well except for all the other times it has been higher. https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-chart While direct, universal, support will vanish, probably in April 2023, the Treasury can do a lot to the retail price. Reducing the environmental taxes is on area, they could shift these to gas, oil, coal, biomass. I think the real problem is that we have got very used to low taxation on domestic fuel, this has kept the price low, and discouraged most investment in energy saving. This has to change. It should be up to home owners to sort themselves out, not constant hand outs from the tax payer. That just adds another layer of bureaucratic 'waste' into the mix. While we will always here the horror stories of children living in damp houses and old people dying under blankets, they are the non typical stories. We don't hear about the millions of families that have decided to not renew the car this year, or take a cheaper holiday, or just buy less 'stuff'. That would be boring, and just highlight normal life, and where is the fun in that. You could always buy a couple of those diesel/kerosene hot air blowers as a temporary measure. Should be easy to get 10 kW of air heating into a building for less than £300.