SteamyTea

We get tomorrow's delivery prices every evening, and adjust our prices on a daily basis. Really horrible explaining to regular customers that what they paid last week is not the same as this week. Our cooking oil has gone through the roof, proteins more than doubled now, energy more than doubled (no price cap on commercial energy). Judging by the number of restaurants that have burnt out in St. Ives in the last 12 months, I suspect insurance will double. And the council have decided to charge for parking. Now £8 for a cheese sandwich where I worked last summer. 2 of our products are no longer available as well.

4.2 [kJ.kg-1.K-1] x 1000 [kg] x 1 [K] = 4,200 kJ = 1.167 kWh Now in winter, you may need to run your heating system at a higher flow temperature, say 45 °C and let the store drop no lower than 38 °C. So 7 K to play with. 7 [K] x 1.167 [kWh] = 8.169 kWh. To put that into perspective, my old storage heater, which takes a 3 kW load for up to 7 hours, can store 21 kWh. It is 1 m by 0.25 m by 0.8 m and weighs about 200 kg. OK, it only has a CoP of 1, but only cost a few hundred quid. Easy to wire into a simple control system to take excess PV. And it cannot leak. What kind of CoP does this 13 kW ASHP offer and what kWs does it deliver at 0° OAT?

It is kWh (energy) not kW (power). We really should deal in joules when we talk about energy. Gets rid of all the confusion. If you divide the kWh/day number by 24 (hours), you get the power in kW. If you multiple the kWh number by 3.6, you get the MJ number.

Half of what? Your space heating demand should have been dropping from mid thermal winter. Really worth getting a data logger that does internal, external and electrical usage.

That is a really good point. Can that be easily automated, so say between fixed times, all valves are open except DHW), or something appropriate.

It really comes down to how your house performs for each incremental degree of heating. One thing you do know about it your hot water, that you need every day, and probably about the same amount. Assuming you have the heating off at the moment, know is a good time to monitor that energy usage. You then have your ASHPs base load. Knowing that, you can play around with different times and tariffs. It is worth accepting that there may be times when it works out more expensive to run an ASHP at high loads i.e. when OAT are low. If you can identify those times, compare the running costs to turning down your flow temperature and plugging a fan heater in. It is all a numbers game. A fun one. And remember that mean temperatures can be plotted at a percentage of time they happen. Here is the Central England ones boing back to 1772

Pay everything with a credit card. I think businesses are going pop all over the place.

I can, but I went to Public School.

What's that then? Put everything on a timer. Midnight to 7AM. They will learn to live with it, 7,000,000 people have.

Titanium Dioxide usually.

Shane, you could have gone for a roof integrated system and saved on tiling.

The assessor can do it on the way home from his mistress.

When you started your refurbishment, did you ever think a small draft would worry you after all the trials and tribulations you have been though. Soon you will see the funny side of it all. We have!

Isn't that what CAN bus does. Send out a signal that power is available, then devices take and use it, if they need it.

Yes, or No, not sure.

Still trying to work out what is going on.

I bet you never, ever, thought you would be typing that sort of reply 2 years ago. Building physics soon takes over your whole life.

Better off doing it a few hours after sunset, then surface wall heating from solar gain is not distorting the readings.

Wish I could ask him. But if it is based on his spreadsheet, then it is only looking at the fraction of total house losses, regardless of the energy source. It also only uses mean values and not weighted values. So probably badly skewed, not sure in which direction though. May have to make up a model sometime and see what comes out. I have an unused paving slab somewhere that can mimic a slab.

Mine is, 2/3rd up the wall.

Don't you just end up with a glaze of wee wee on the floor. Actually, similar colour to my bathroom.

Here is a better use for wood. EXPLORE OUR COURSES Menu Waste wood chemically recycled to produce material stronger than steel A treatment process can turn old pieces of wood into a new super-strong material called "healed wood" TECHNOLOGY 19 May 2022 By Alex Wilkins Wood for recycling Wood for recycling can now be turned into a substance stronger than steel urose/Getty Images A material made from recycled wood is five times stronger than natural wood and can be made from any timber by-product, including shavings and sawdust. Wood is a hugely versatile material, but millions of tonnes go into landfill each year. To build a truly circular economy, wood will need to be re-used on a grander scale. Orlando Rojas at the University of British Columbia, Canada, and his colleagues have invented a process that dissolves lignin, a glue-like component inside plant cell walls, and exposes cellulose nanofibrils, which are tiny fibres also found in the plant cell wall. The method involves a solvent called dimethylacetamide, used in the presence of lithium chloride. When two pieces of wood treated in this way are brought together, the nanofibrils bind to create what the researchers call a “healed” piece of wood. Although this no longer looks like natural wood, it has better mechanical properties. Tests show it is more resistant to breaking than stainless steel or titanium alloys. ADVERTISING “We get a mechanical strength that supersedes the strength of the original material,” says Rojas. “It works because we use the inherent properties of cellulose, which is a material that binds together very strongly by something called hydrogen bonding.” Read more: Wood can easily be turned transparent to make energy-saving windows Not only can wood treated this way be re-used to create new objects, but the treatment process can be performed repeatedly on the same pieces of wood to extend their working lifetimes. “This is a really elegant way to heal wood, using a common cellulose solvent, recovering and enhancing the mechanical properties of nature’s wonder material,” says Steve Eichhorn at the University of Bristol, UK. “The approach is evidently scalable and therein lies the challenge to take this technology to the next level.” Rojas and his team didn’t examine how much their method would cost if scaled up to an industrial level, but all of the techniques used are well-established. “The processes that we use here are very typical in wood processing,” says Rojas. “So scalability is not an issue.” Journal reference: Nature Sustainability, DOI: 10.1038/s41893-022-00887-8

My Mother seems to be replacing hers all on her own. Walking like she used to, still a bit of aphasia, but can get a witty retort out pretty quick. And she remembered that she owed me £480 quid to get the shower fixed 2 weeks after the event. Nowt wrong with old ladies, though not sure I want to grease myself up in my shreddies and dance for them, that is more @pocster's fantasy.

Never read it, but I am sure it is good. I have some old Level 3 TEC books, and the Penguin Dictionary of Building Terms. Builders like all other professions, take well understood words and phrases, then give them a completely new meaning, often almost the opposite of the true dictionary meaning. Don't get bogged down in technology. The 'science' f building is very basic. Gravity holds it in place, wind tried to blow it over, thermal energy leaks out. Plumbers and electricians drill holes. windows don't turn up on time. Plasterers get the painters to clean up after them.

Welcome. Take this dreaming time and turn it into learning time. I cannot comment much on planning and layout design, but getting a grounding in relevant mathematics and physics (GCSE level is fine) is well worth it.