SteamyTea

Was popular in the 1960s to do this in flats, was because energy was going to be too cheap to meter. The problem may be that an element will be running at a higher temperature than a liquid system, this may cause hot spots. Easier it heat a liquid first and then pump that around.

Where would you place it, can't cover the heat exchanger. Also it is cheaper to use stored water that has been heated at a CoP of say 2, rather than use an element that has a CoP of 1. Even if it does hurt to have your hard won hot water pumped around the heat exchanger.

You all know what I am going to say, so shall not bother. I have suggested to @PeterW that we have a basic plumbing explanation thread/blog.

At 4°C, water is at its most dense, but water can also exist, in gaseous form, well below 0°C. Ice is a pretty good insulator, at -5°C (we should really be using the kelvin scale), it has a conductivity value of 2.25 W.m-1.K-1. But more importantly, it reduces airflow. The problem is that one ice has formed, the energy to change state is very high, ~330 J.g-1. This means that it can take a long time to defrost if just relying on ambient temperature, and why it is often more economical to just pump some preheated water back though the external heat exchanger. This is because some of the ice will fall off, so does not need defrosting. One way, and something that @joe90 and myself have talked about in the past, is to stop, or reduce the power of the ASHP when the conditions are right for ice formation. But as he has, until this winter (the coldest January in a decade apparently), never noticed it frosting, the idea rather got forgotten. I still think there is some merit in the idea if you know that the temperature will go below freezing later and you can play catch up then.

It also allows elimination of where the water is coming from. If the external temperature and RH levels are high, then that may be where the condensation is coming from, but if they are low, it might mean that the condensation is coming from inside the house i.e. extension still 'drying out', leaking pipe, broken drain, inadequate bathroom/kitchen air extraction. Water can get in all sorts of places. Took me 4 years to find out why my window was leaking, it was a crack in the render several metres from the window. When you ventilate you do not have to have a window fully open, it is not all, or nothing. So you can ventilate without loosing all the heat. So you can heat your bedroom at night, and ventilate, without getting too hot. I often wonder why people close bedroom windows when they go to bed, then open them up in the morning. Ventilate when you are in the room, not after you leave. Stop the problem before it is a problem. Understanding the physics of condensation is not really difficult, but we have Psychrometric charts to help. And formula to establish at what temperature the water vapour turns to liquid, and how much water there will be. Without knowing where you are starting from, you cannot establish if the problem is external or internal. This is why measurements are important. Measuring does not, in itself, cure the problem, it just helps decision making. Refusing to take any measurements means you are just hoping to stumble on the reasons, and there are, when it comes to atmospheric science, an infinite number of permutations. Here is a Psychrometric chart, notice that the lines are not straight, so even a small change in temperature can cause problems.

Better off fitting then horizontally (but keep them clean) as they can take advantage of scattered light on a dull day. There is too much reliance on direct beam irradiation in my opinion.

All turbines have to be up high, that is where the wind is more consistent. That is why they are up high. I cannot see the advantage of fitting a PV module vertically against a wall, especially a south facing one. But you can see what will happen if you go to PVGIS and set the angles and see what comes out.

You are. Small winturbines are very inefficient, and ask yourself why most turbines are horizontal axis ones with blades, and very large The cheapest renewable energy is currently photovoltaic.

Baby steps are needed.

I believe you have a damp/condensation problem. What I do not understand, is your total reluctance to help yourself when help is offered. I bet there a a number of people on here that could turn up at your place and isolate the problems pretty quickly. But you would not allow that to happen. So ask yourself why you are posting up problems that you then do not want to investigate the cause of.

I have just changed my name to the Scanwegian sounding 'Yours'.

But you also poo pooed my request that you collect some data. You just seem to think that it can only be your climate, so impossible to change. You have the kits to collect data, it costs nothing, and may reveal that, even though, your internal temperatures are low, they are not low enough to cause a serious condensation issue. Which you suggest that you have another problem that needs hunting down. BUT YOU WILL JUST NOT DO IT

Are you sure it was this forum, rather than this one. https://www.psychforums.com/off-topic/ I wonder what they do to stop spam and ranting. Join up and let us all know, you could even put a link in. This is their 'venting' thread. https://www.psychforums.com/just-for-fun/topic98319.html Could be fun to join and ask a few questions.

Was that before they told you to sit on the bog, naked?

Change radio station quick.

Spend a few minutes with Google. No one has been talking about an unsupported panel with a vacuum in it. I shall just do a Jackie Weaver.

@scottishjohn I am not sure what you are on about, started off about making vacuum panels in space, then getting a PhD student to try it out on Earth. I pointed out that it has been done, and how it is done, and you seem to be getting defensive about something and going to about thermos flasks and proper vacuums.

That is why it is surrounded by an airtight membrane. I think if you look at most VIPs they are of this design. The ones in a Sunamp are.

My sister was a parish councillor once. They used to 'forget' to tell her than a meeting was happening. Odd that, as I never invited her to anything either.

Been done, how vacuum insulation panels are made. Basically a foaming resin, just that as it foams, there is no gas transfer into the void. Cheaper VIPs use an evacuated open cell foam, surrounded with an airtight membrane. These ones are rubbish.

If you analysis common building materials, you tend to find that the ones that can hold moisture/water tend to have the highest specific heat capacity. This is not surprising as hydrogen, the major constituent of water, has a SHC of 14304 J/(kg.K). What makes things muddled is that there is a unit clash between energy storage and conductivity. They are joules and watts respectively. Joules is just the stored energy, watts are how fast you can release that energy. The difficult bit is that a house has variable power inputs during the day, some are external, some are internal. And to make matters more complicated, some of the internal forces are caused by external forcing. Ideally, you want to reduce the conductivity of a components (why we have legislation that makes us do this, can be treated as a lower bound), but you do not want to store too much energy that overheating is a problem. And to make it even more complicated, as the temperature of the storage mass reached equilibrium with either the internal, or external (and sometimes these are equal) temperatures, no storage or transfer of energy is taking place. Now when you think about it, how often are the conditions right to store enough energy to last a few hours, when there is only a small change between internal and external temperatures (use the kelvin scale). If you really want to store energy for later use, you have to go to an active system i.e. pumped solar thermal to an insulated store, PV to a battery. By doing this, you can then release that stored energy at the correct rate (this is power, and measured in watts). Relying on the walls of a house to do that is only going to work in a very narrow band regardless of what they are made from. So after many years of looking at this, I think that good insulation levels have a greater impact that high mass, as they limit the variable inputs and outputs. Just don't ruin it by putting in windows and doors, live in a cold cave, or a thick polystyrene box, the effects will be the same.

Do you know the exterior wall area, the floor and roof area, windows and door areas, then we can make a stab at the heat loss. 55m2 is just slightly larger than my place and I wish I could add an 80m2 extension. Do you know what level of insulation you are going to get with the new B&B floor? This is important to know with UFH.

Also look at the BTES efficiency. Not any better than growing a tree.

It is interesting when you analysis the data on page 5 of the 2017 report. It would be great if you could just drill a hole, pop a pipe into it, put any excess solar energy into some hot water, pass through the pipes, wait till winter, then pump it out again.

Already spent that, on wine, women and amateur dramatics.