SteamyTea

Yep, it is the final opening that ruins it all.

@PeterW I think you need to explain what some of the terms actually men i.e. low and high grade heat (crap terms), dynamic and static pressure. Also what can be expected and useful, rather than ideal. (something for that basic plumbing blog)

A bit of early morning lateral thinking. How about a 1Wire light sensor with a very small LED as the light source. This can be powered from the same source as the 1Wire. Actually, thinking about it a bit more, just the cheapest 1Wire DS18B20 and a contact switch. Then sense when they DS18B20 is connected or not. You can collect the temperature data when it is connected to i.e. when window is closed.

You can talk to them directly, but a quick look at their website this morning and I see a lot of words saying you may, can, might save some energy. It is just a water cylinder after all, my water cylinder 'stratifies', just like everyone else's.

Roof integrated PV can work out cheaper than tiling, and it reduces the thermal energy by up to 20%. A mate of mine did a report about 15 years ago about carbon sequestration schemes though forestation. Found out that many were double counting i.e. the reforestation was going to happen anyway, so no net gain, and a few were just scams. The best way to reforest is to let nature do it i.e. just put a area aside and the trees will appear. Now that the UK has left the CAP, only time will tell if all the new environmental schemes will actually happen (pulse fishing has been banned already, but this may lead to over fishing). I am always dubious about the tonnes CO2 stored by trees, one has to be careful as there are different methods of measurement used around the world. How everyone decided trees will save the planet – and why they won’t Everyone seems to agree trees are a major solution to climate change, but there is a danger that mass reforestation could see us to continue pumping carbon into the atmosphere EARTH 26 February 2020 By Adam Vaughan De Agostini editorial/Getty Images TREE planting doesn’t usually feature in US presidents’ speeches, UK general election battles or the business pitches of oil companies. Yet in the past year, pledges to embark on reforestation efforts have become a popular way to show you are committed to fighting climate change. There are several initiatives to plant or protect a trillion trees, to add to the 3 trillion we have today. So how did we get here, with humble tree planting taking centre stage among the tools to stave off extreme warming? Can we really plant the numbers needed to lock up enough carbon to make a difference? Perhaps most importantly, is all this talk of trees just a big distraction? “Fossil fuel industries can say they are harnessing nature to address their emissions” “Suddenly, this last year there’s been an explosion of interest,” says Fred Stolle at Global Forest Watch, a US initiative from the University of Maryland and other groups. Rising public concerns seem to be making governments and corporations realise they need to do more on climate action, or at least be seen to do more. “I think there’s massive concern about climate change now and people genuinely want to do something about it. I think they are reaching for what are easy solutions,” says Joanna House, a lead author of a UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report on land use published last year. Planting trees is popular, usually uncontroversial and brings benefits beyond storing carbon, from our mental well-being to habitats for wildlife. “People love trees,” says House. The spotlight on tree planting may have its roots in the 2015 Paris agreement, in which governments committed to try to hold global temperature rises to 1.5°C, rather than the 2°C many had expected. This led to a 2018 IPCC report, which made it clear that to hit 1.5°C, global greenhouse gas emissions need to fall to net zero by 2050. There was much debate about “negative emissions” technology, such as machines to capture carbon dioxide from the air. But with these in their infancy, the focus fell on trees as the only proven option. “I think a lot of the talk around the new ambition for 1.5°C was one of the biggest driving forces for putting negative emissions – and particularly nature-based negative emissions – on the stage,” says Stephanie Roe at the University of Virginia. But tree mania accelerated last year, when Tom Crowther at ETH Zurich in Switzerland and his colleagues published a paper that said Earth has room for nearly a billion hectares of extra trees, which could lock up several years’ worth of humanity’s carbon emissions. The research has been criticised as an overestimate, but was influential and made global headlines. “I think that played a key role in re-legitimising reforestation,” says Mark Hirons at the University of Oxford. A few months later, political parties campaigning in the run up to the UK general election competed on who promised to plant the most trees. Last month marked peak tree planting fever, when the World Economic Forum launched 1t.org, a plan to plant a trillion trees (other plans launched three years ago). Even US president Donald Trump, who has withdrawn the US from the Paris agreement, backed the initiative. Douglas Gimesy/Getty Images But even if we start planting vast areas tomorrow, can trees store enough carbon to buy us time to act on climate change? The Crowther paper said 0.9 billion hectares could lock up 205 gigatonnes of CO2. Including land-use change, such as forests being cleared for farming, humanity’s annual emissions are about 41 gigatonnes. But House says many researchers were shocked by the paper. “It’s quite harmful because it makes it seem like trees can do more than they can,” she says. Several experts took to scientific journals to explain why they felt it exaggerated the amount of usable land and how much carbon could be stored. In response, Crowther says a lot of the criticism is well-founded, but it is important to get a global perspective on what it is possible, in order to set meaningful restoration targets. Based on Roe’s review of the literature, reforestation has the potential to lock up between 1 and 10 gigatonnes of CO2 a year. “In terms of what is feasible, we came to 3 to 4 gigatonnes [a year],” she says. More research is under way on calculating the carbon storage potential of tree planting. In the meantime, it seems large enough to be attracting big business. Last year, Shell announced that it would spend $300 million over three years on reforestation projects to generate carbon credits for itself and others. On Crowther’s analysis, Duncan van Bergen at Shell says: “Even those people who have challenged it, have not challenged the fact that it is really, really big. It’s on the margins between really big and huge.” He says the numbers presented “resonated” with Shell’s own researchers. Such interest in reforestation from oil companies has set alarm bells ringing in some quarters. “Fossil-fuel industries can say they’re harnessing nature to address their emissions, which is dubious I think, in terms of the scientific case for this significantly having an impact on climate change,” says Hirons. There is a risk that we plant trillions of trees without firms and countries also deeply cutting their emissions. Shell says that isn’t the case. “We are definitely not doing this instead of other tough things and changes we need to make. This very much comes on top,” says van Bergen. Even if mass reforestation happens in parallel with decarbonisation of economies, Stolle warns that trees must be planted at the right place and time. As well as picking suitable species for the climate and the soil where they are planted, it will be crucial to plant trees that help rather than hinder biodiversity. Biodiversity warning Take the UK, where the government’s climate advisers have called for a tripling of tree planting to hit carbon goals. Jane Memmott at the British Ecological Society says there are huge differences in biodiversity levels between trees you might pick for the UK. “Something like oak and birch is fantastic – there are literally hundreds of species associated with them, whereas something like sycamore has pretty much a single aphid on it,” she says. Then there are the people who live in and around the places where reforestation might take place, often in developing countries. Restored forests won’t thrive or remain intact long enough to lock up CO2 for centuries if local people aren’t invested in them, says Stolle. “In developing countries, people very much understand the value of trees,” he says, but only when they play a role in deciding when and where they are planted. Hirons fears that the urgency of tackling climate change could see the wishes of local communities being ignored. “I think there’s a massive risk of social harm being caused by widespread reforestation. There is an idea that there is lots of underused land, which is a myth.” While there are international guidelines on how best to do reforestation, set by the Society for Ecological Restoration, there is no requirement to follow them. Lastly, if the CO2 locked away is to be counted properly, we will need to monitor reforestation for a long time. That is surprisingly tricky. Deforestation is easy to spot – satellites show areas turning from green to brown. But they find it hard to detect new trees, which for the first few years will be tiny saplings hard to discern from space. Higher resolution images may help. Perhaps the biggest thing missing from today’s focus on reforestation is the great number of trees being lost to deforestation, which is getting worse. The world lost forests the size of the UK every year between 2014 and 2018. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest has spiralled to the highest level in a decade. Recent bushfires in Australia burned 64,000 square kilometres in Victoria and New South Wales, most of it forests. “It’s an eternal debate,” says Stolle. “Is [reforestation] a distraction because we really need to stop deforestation? On the other hand, if you look at the IPCC, we need those negative emissions. We can’t wait until we’ve done one before we do the other.” Revenge of the tree-hugger Trees have long been at the heart of environmental issues. Three centuries ago, in a bid to stop local trees being cleared, villagers in India put themselves in front of loggers’ axes, with some literally hugging the trees. Several were brutally killed, says Alice Bell at UK climate charity Possible, who is writing a book on the history of climate change. The actual term “tree-hugger” wasn’t coined until the 1960s, though, she says, and became pejorative in the 1970s. Bell says the “save the trees” movements of the 1990s and 2000s weren’t dissimilar to today’s debate. “It was about climate change but without mentioning it. Now it’s climate first,” she says.

2020's last laugh 2021. This morning, my bath tap stopped working on the cold side. Took me an hour to sort it though, so not all bad.

You can get single room MVHR units, they may be easier to install, may even be able to use some of the existing ducts with a bit of alternative thinking. https://www.bpcventilation.com/vent-axia-tempra-p

What is the size, and type of the current boiler? You may get away with the current 100mm diameter pipe, just got to see what the flow speeds and volumes work out at. 15m3 what?

First things first. It is kWh, not kw, or KW, or Kw. Second point, raising the flow temperature should heat the house quicker, energy transfer is proportional to the surface area, shape and temperature differences. Thirdly, is your house really a PassivHaus, or built to a similar standard? How much insulation, and what type is under the floor? Fourth point, is your ASHP actually defrosting, or just stopping? This may because of short cycling because you are running it at a higher temperature. Fifth point, is the ASHP the right size? The efficiency drops as you reach its maximum power (power is kW, not kWh).

What @Iceverge says, sums it up nicely. Heat capacity is both mass, or volume, and the intrinsic properties of the material. It is not just the mass or volume.

Dead right. I cannot see any value in swapping my cheap kitchen counter top to an expensive granite one, but people still do. And I bet I can cook better than most of them.

My first thoughts were about the heating to. Have you does a thermal model of the place. This only needs to be a basic room by room model i.e. floor, ceiling, walls, windows/doors and temperature differences. Finding the air leaks is the challenge, as there may well be air movement though the insulation that is already in place, which negates much of the purpose of insulation. What some people call a plasterboard tent. MVHR, in itself, is not a heating system, it is just a better ventilation system. Your place is a little larger than mine, and any money spent improving heating and ventilation is realistically never recouped, So look at other benefits i.e. improved air quality, warmer building, less outside noise.

Yes, timber frame, with cellulose insulation. Not got the time at the moment to look at all the charts. Couple of thoughts, reducing East/West window area may reduce overheating. Reflective films will also help. Adding PV will also reduce overheating. The Exeter climate model does not take into account changes in cloud cover (as far as I know, it didn't when I was there), so not the ultimate guide. And, just a little bugbear with some of us, tell us the SI units for 'Thermal Mass', or use the proper term.

https://www.kingspan.com/gb/en-gb/products/insulation-boards/insulation-technical-hub/articles-and-advice/what-are-u-values-r-values-and-lambda-values Basically how it reduces the power to keep one side at a fixed temperature.

Or Thermal Time Constant (the time it takes to drop or rise 1°C). Or just do it properly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_effusivity And never, ever us the common term.

Go the stored DHW route, electric showers are pretty crap really. Even a 10 kW shower is not that powerful.

Welcome. Decide on the foundation system first, it is where it all starts. Then go the timber frame route, things are much better when they are build in a factory.

Does your defrost come on at set times, and run for a set time? Wondering if it is a preventative measure, rather than the weather. As you have a deep slab that the pipes are in, is it driving a lot water out of it i.e. is your house humid. Water takes over 4 times as much energy to heat up, and the the evaporation losses are added to that. To evaporate a kg of water takes 2450 kJ/kg.

@PhilRobinson Only reason I questioned it was that I thought the SA had small, 1 kW heating elements. No idea where where I picked than up from, so may well have been wrong, or maybe some old units do have small elements. The chart looks fine to read off.

This happened when we were out of the country (lived in France then), and I had a bit of an argument on our return with a shop keeper (Martin's Newsagents) that there were 240 old pennies in a pound, not 200. Thieving bastards.

So is the heater 3 kW? (reading from chart 17:02 - 16:20 = ~0.40[minutes] and 2 kWh)

My neighbour had new windows fitted so popped around to see what everything looked like and got hatting to the fitter. He claimed that if you made a house airtight then it would be stuffy. I said the MVHR deals with that. He did not have a clue what I was talking about. He kept claiming that you need some 'holes' to 'stop the place overheating'. Neighbour still gets leaks, but they are nothing to do with the windows.

Right, then it makes sense to get a diesel powered CHP. It tis really only an old car engine and a generator put together. The clever parts of a CHP is the autostarting and phase matching, current sensing autostart would be useful, but your batteries would cover a lot of that. Phase matching is not necessary as you are off grid.

You can, my Mother has one, trouble is, it cost about £1800. Turntables are not needed these days (well for about 30 years) as they can magically swirl the microwaves around now. My Panasonic NN-CD78KS has a limit to how close it can be boxed in (there also needs to be a ventilation gap for the hob), so I have left it free standing, not what I planned, and still may put it under the hob with a cooling fan (why I got a current sensing switch). I have though, moved the bin to under the hob, though I still, after 16 years, not get used it not being by the door, but my pirouettes are coming on nicely.

How come, are the trucks different sizes?