SteamyTea

Try this heat loss calculator. It is somewhere in the thread. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/439-fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator/

Not going to be cheaper to run than alternatives. UK energy crisis sparks rush for firewood despite air pollution fears People are buying up firewood and installing wood-burning stoves to heat their homes to reduce the impact of the hike in UK energy prices ENVIRONMENT 2 September 2022 By Adam Vaughan Many people in the UK are turning to wood fires for heating to avoid high bills for gas and electricity Tim Gainey/Alamy UK wood suppliers have reported an unprecedented surge in demand for logs, briquettes and other biomass products as households rush to minimise the impact of energy bills rising 80 per cent next month. However, experts cautioned that a resurgence in burning wood in stoves, fires and boilers at home could exacerbate air pollution and damage people’s health. “What we’re seeing is an absolute panic buy, like a covid emptying of the shelves of loo roll and pasta,” says Marc Odin at MJO Forestry, which supplies wood to 15 retailers in the south-east of England. The hidden science of weather and climate change Simon Clark at New Scientist Live this October In a normal August, he delivers some 55 cubic metres of wood; last month, he delivered about 250 cubic metres. “It is all about the gas price,” he says, referring to Ofgem, the energy regulator for England, Scotland and Wales, last week confirming that the price cap will see a unit of gas rise from 7p to 15p from October. More than four-fifths of the UK’s homes are heated by gas, while about a tenth also burn wood fuel. This coming winter, fires and stoves that burn wood look likely to be used much more heavily than in recent years as people try to minimise the use of central heating. “It’s just absolutely unprecedented,” says Rowland Parke at the Wood Fuel Co-operative in Dumfries, UK. He says the group sold as much wood in June and August as it would usually during three months in autumn and winter. Some of the 2000 customers that the co-op serves in the local area have told his team that they are going to turn down the gas and electric and burn as much wood as they can. Bruce Allen, chief executive of HETAS and Woodsure, groups that certify stove installations and quality wood, says “members are also seeing a higher demand for wood fuel with customers stocking up on wood earlier and taking bigger loads to avoid using their central heating as much”. People also seem to be installing more wood-burning appliances than usual at this time of year, says Allen. Visits to the HETAS website were up 60 per cent in August. Read more: Farmers in England will bury burnt wood in fields to capture CO2 Allen says it is important that people buy wood with a moisture content of less than 20 per cent, which minimises particulate pollution. “If we are going to see an increase in wood burning as an alternative, then we want to ensure that it’s being done in the most environmentally responsible way to safeguard the air we all breathe,” he says. Mark Lebus at the UK Pellet Council, which is a trade body, says: “We are seeing considerable uptick in new wood burning stoves and small domestic biomass boilers as the price of wood pellets remains very competitive with gas, oil and especially electricity.” Other companies supplying biomass for homes report a dramatic bump in custom. “Demand for firewood is huge with customers wanting to have an alternative heating source and fuel paid for ahead of winter,” says one industry figure, who didn’t want to be named. A spokesperson for Big K, which supplies supermarkets including Ocado, says the company is seeing “earlier than normal trends”, in particular for bulk wood sold in big bags. “We are aware of smaller processors facing a significant uplift in demand compared to the last few years,” they add. Janis Reinsons at Lekto Woodfuels in the UK, which sources wood from Latvia, says the company “has been experiencing historically high demand this summer”. The firm sold more wood fuel in August than its usual peak month of December. Reinsons says he is aware of competitors routinely running out stock. “It is impossible to tell whether or not the wood fuel industry will be able to satisfy the demand for wood fuels during the peak heating season,” he says. Odin says that two of the biggest retailers he supplies expect to run out of wood by December, if the current high demand continues. Read more: Health impacts of wood burning cost EU and UK €13 billion a year Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the main reason for rising gas prices, also seems to be shifting the provenance of wood burned in UK homes. Parke says one major German supplier has hiked prices of beech exports to preserve the fuel for domestic use. Wood fuel imports from Russia and Belarus to the UK have also been halted since the war began, says Mark Sommerfeld at the Wood Heat Association, another trade body. The UK government last month also proposed suspending rules on the quality of wood pellets due to disrupted supplies since the invasion. Growth in the number of wood-burning stoves in recent years has seen a 35 per cent increase in air pollution particles less than 2.5 micrometres in diameter, known as PM2.5, from domestic wood burning between 2010 and 2020. That has led to calls for a ban on sales of stoves in some quarters. Yet today’s high gas prices look set to boost wood burning, and air pollution in the process. Gary Fuller at Imperial College London says: “It is important that vulnerable people are helped to keep warm this winter, but extra wood burning is not the answer. It will worsen the existing air pollution problems in our cities, towns and even across the countryside in the UK and Europe.” He says people also need to think about where wood is sourced from, because felling more trees will see woodlands release more carbon and could harm wildlife habitats.

Cold showers, will do you good. That, and some bromine in your tea.

What I did during my Master's. I did not understand why we had to "rewrite, using your own words" in English O Level until then.

Welcome. As retaining walls also have foundations, are there transferable methods that can be used for houses, preferably ones that don't use tonnes of poured concrete. Many years ago I used to make moulds to put fancy finishes in retaining walls.

Don't you just series conn CT up enough batteries to get into the required voltage range?

Have you considered A2AHPs for space heating. The layout of your house means you could get away with one in the living room, your kitchen is probably fine with nothing. Maybe another on in the loft but piped to each of the rooms upstairs. Or night storage heaters, though the CO2 penalty may be too high for your liking.

It is odd as I have heard on the radio (I don't have a TV) several times recently, that turning down the temperature at the boiler will save energy. Some people may be in for a shock, especially ones on quarterly billing, the period between October 1st and January 1st could be painful.

I know you did not write this, but there is someone who has mixed up temperature, power and energy. Here is a bit about higher and lower heating values. https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/fuels-higher-calorific-values-d_169.html Not a great difference for natural gas, 14.5 kWh/kg higher heating value and 13.1 kWh/kg lower heating value. Should be possible to measure the flu gas for the RH and temperature and then work backwards. What would be really posh is a feedback system that adjusts the return temperature to keep it all in the optimum place.

Do you mean 3.6 kWh over 24 hours, which is 150 W. Or a peak power of 3.6 kW, which may only last seconds. Or a mean of 3.6 kW for 24 hours, which would be 86.4 kWh.

Interesting that. May be one of thee best lessons they learn at university. Take control of your own actions and finances.

That does not make any sense, what was android thinking. Yes, I ran a new cold water pipe from the loft tank to the shower pump. Then the static pressures were the same. Worked well until a friend filled the bath to the brim and emptied the F&E. She may have been a pigmy, but was no need to make the bath into a swimming pool. Bloody Aussies, they have no idea about the environment.

My 1987 house wasn't. Had to run a need feed to the pumped shower unit when I fitted it. First time I have ever seen it plumbed in that way mind.

I would have thought so. Obviously if the ACH are 20, any heat recovery will not be noticeable. Aim to get it down to 1, then you will probably get 2.5. It is all in the detail, and then odd things that you cannot see. Make no assumptions and assume every nook, cranny and flat surface leaks.

Not really, it is just physics. MVHR gives you controlled ventilation, and to a certain extent, controls humidity, while also recovering energy. Mechanical ventilation does the same, but without the heat recovery. You can, if you want, just pump external air into the building and hope that there are enough, evenly spaced, leaks that the system works. I am currently improving my airtightness, in my already good house. For ventilation I will, for this winter, just open a window.

Achievable, but if that is easy is another matter. What you can do is play with the ACH figure and find out what sort of ventilation is worthwhile. Don't forget you can get single room heat recovery units.

Well I am already wondering if I should over report my usage. I wish they would just send a cheque, then I could book a holiday to somewhere hot and sunny. I am currently working on measures to reduce my usage, may have wasted 200 quid.

So we are keeping the £400 grant, spread over 6 months. Shall have to see how much extra I need to add to my readings to get all of that. 100 quid is gobbled up by meter rental, so that leaves 300 quid for usage. If my night rate is 22p/kWh, that is roughly 1,400 kWh over the 6 months (from October), about an extra 8 kWh/day. I am going to have a warm house, or a lot of credit.

A mate of mine makes those sorts of planters. No idea what he charges, can ask him. You got any dimensions? I usually knock things up from timber I have laying about. By the time an inch of timber has rotted through, it is time for a change anyway.

Don't tell them that hospital have them. I think it is about time that everyone realised that power is not delivered from just one source. All countries need a mix of sources, it is just the fraction of each that seems to be misunderstood. I can play with figures and create a number of different scenarios to achieve the same end i.e. adequate power 99.9% of the time. I could show prices and delivery based on historic data (it's all there for anyone to look at). I could even throw in environmental issues. But it will make not one jot of difference to most people as they take no interest in it, and even less willing to learn about it. The best thing would be to let the National Grid sort out the size and location of generation installations (they know how to manage what they have incredibly well), then invite tenders from the generation companies. So planning rules will have to be overturned, but it is about time individuals realised they don't, through a fluke of wealth and location, have the right to deny others what they can easily afford. To show, in an odd way how fickle people are, the tourist figures for August came out yesterday. Allowing for rounding, Cornwall had 1 million less visitor trips. So about 20% down. Cornwall has not changed, except we had very little rain this summer, prices have not changed much, no travel restrictions and the people down here still hate the Emmets. Where did they all go, abroad or stayed at home?

The recent details are here: https://electionresults.parliament.uk/election/2016-05-05/results/Location/County/Cornwall Seems the Tories and LDs where in lockstep until 2010, then the LDs lost support. I wonder what happened in 2010 to make the bigots down here change their minds. Must have been a local MP misbehaving, as we take no notice of what happens up country. The Tories are only where they are because the LDs and Labour lost support. Even the Greens and UKIP (what happened to them) had the same pattern of increase after 2010.

Have you thermally modelled your house? You can then change things and see what is important and what is not. I find it easier to set a total target energy use for a building, then see what needs to be changed to achieve it. Using a metric like kWh.m-2.y-1 is pretty pointless as it takes no account of the buildings form.

Yes, integral face of the external brickwork. There are also cavity closers for openings, they need to be fitted well.

We had a huge property price drop between 1989 and 1991, the same government still got elected in.

If cold outside air can blow around, or though, insulation. This is a particular problem with mineral wool insulation.