SteamyTea

And walls can make usable space, oddly.

Maybe a plate heat exchanger. But why bother. Wood burning is tedious and dirty.

Others are madder. https://simple.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Marshall

You got a bit of land, how about doing an experiment with 3 holes. One bucket of poo without and aeration, one with and one that switches every 4 months. I would do it but my neighbours might get upset.

I don't know a great deal about bio-chemistry, or even organic chemistry (I know (expletive deleted) all about chemistry really, but good at research). What would happen if an air blower was put into a traditional septic tank? Would the bacteria change to the ones that like oxygen (aerobic) and if the blower was switched off, who it revert to anaerobic digestion?

I know it is only just February. https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/09735768

First things first. How much DHW do you need? If you are unsure measure it with a jug and a thermometer. You can get DHW cylinders with built in heat pumps, you can also get ventilation units with A2WHPs built in. But first you need to work out your water demand.

Is that last picture your bank manager 'the loan arranger'.

All the people I sacked for being useless either came from Klargester, or ended up there. Aylesbury's finest.

Isn't power BTU/hour. Conversion factor 1 BTU = 0.29 W

That is a difficult one to answer without knowing what your space heating loads are and your domestic hot water usage is going to be. It is not unusual for the heat source to be sized for DHW rather than space heating. This is more true for combi boilers.

There was a report a few years back about the parasitic loads of some USB sockets. I would think they come under the EU standby power directive now, which is ~1W I think. I just buy mobile devices that have very low power consumption.

Can we try and stick to convention for the units. kWh for energy kW for power e for electrical t for thermal When discussing heat pumps, we really should use the kelvin [K] temperature scale. This becomes important if you have to multiply or divide, it gets rid of that messy problem when expressing efficiency as a percentage.

I think they are about 60% efficient. A gas turbine, like any turbine, is governed by Betz's Limit. That is a mathematical proof that you need a certain amount of mass flow after the turbine to allow movement. It is also the reason that turbines get more efficient the larger they get, and the more blades they have, the less efficient they become. 3 blades is a good compromise, but not ideal. Time for the song I think.

Well in the classical physical world. From this week's comic. Physics Extremely cold atoms can selectively defy entropy When their quantum properties are precisely controlled, some ultracold atoms can resist the laws of physics that suggest everything tends towards disorder A magnetic and optical trap used to cool atoms to close to absolute zero The laws of physics assert that an organised system will grow increasingly disordered over time until it dissolves into featureless mush – but a new experiment shows that some extremely cold atoms could avoid such entropy. Quantum weirdness isn’t weird – if we accept objects don’t exist Any system beginning with low disorder, or low entropy, is bound to eventually become more of a mess. Picture flowers arranged in a bouquet: their entropy will gradually keep increasing until the brightly-coloured bundle breaks down into brown dust. For more than a century, physicists believed the process behind this, called thermalisation, was unavoidable. In the 1950s, however, it became clear that quantum effects can cause exceptions. Luheng Zhao at Duke University in North Carolina and his colleagues discovered that such exceptions could be selectively created. In their experiment, some atoms thermalised, while others defied entropy and remained close to their original state. “This has been postulated and conjectured in the past, but never observed in an experiment,” he says. Zhao and his colleagues focused on atoms of the element rubidium, which they cooled to only 19 millionths of a degree kelvin above absolute zero by hitting them with lasers and electromagnetic fields. They used the same tools – lasers and electromagnetic fields – to arrange up to 19 such atoms into a chain. These atoms were also supersized in diameter, meaning their electrons orbited their nuclei at a large distance. As a result, the atoms were extremely sensitive to light – which could then easily be used to control them. Using laser light, the researchers could make the atoms interact with each other in a very specific way. Light also allowed the team to precisely set the atoms’ quantum properties, such as the energies of their electrons, at the beginning of the experiment. After establishing the initial conditions, the researchers gave the atoms time to naturally change states – an opportunity to thermalise – before measuring those quantum properties and determining the atoms’ eventual state. Strikingly, with the right combination of initial properties and interactions, some atoms in the chain resisted thermalisation. Instead of joining their neighbouring atoms in forming one state that would experience lots of entropy, they ended up with properties very similar to those they had at the start of the experiment. Ultracold indium atoms could make unexpected new types of matter Thomas Iadecola at Iowa State University says it is unusual for part of a system to somehow fail to reach the same high-entropy state as the rest of it. “Typically, whatever initial state you started in shouldn’t matter,” he says. Now that the researchers have demonstrated that this type of behaviour can be engineered and controlled, it may have practical applications. The ability to selectively avoid thermalisation could be useful in experiments where ultracold atoms are used for simulating materials or where changes in their quantum states are used to process information. Iadecola says that making sure some atoms always behave differently from their neighbours could be an extra control method in such experiments. One especially promising use could be enabling quantum computers built from ultracold atoms to catch and correct their own errors, says Zhao. In this case, the researchers would try to ensure that any malfunction stayed confined to only a few atoms instead of spreading through the whole computer. Journal reference: Physical Review X, press Related stories Physics Experiment with 37 dimensions shows how strange quantum physics can be Physics

Send them to me and I shall educate them. Thermal mass, really. Do these people never study physics.

When I first moved here, I was burning though about 11 MWh.year-1 last 3 years has been around 3.192, 3.352 and 3.075, so fairly stable and no loss of comfort. A few years ago I added an extra 0.15m of mineral wool to the loft, but did not really see the advantage, though on the few snow days we have had, I notice that my roof is the last to loose it. I managed to pick up some Celotex and started to pull up the loft boarding, remove the insulation, fit a VCL, lay the Celotex and am now waiting for free time and enthusiasm to do the rest. Only done a couple of metres squared. I was up there for about 9 hours with a 2 kW fan heater on, made it a comfortable working temperature, but 60p.hour-1 which hurts me. I do have a hole in the roof felt (after neighbours had roof replaced) that needs repairing, but it means I have to shuffle a load of stuff about and wiggle my body into place to glue a repair patch in place, and to be honest, I want a dry day for that. Today is dry, as was yesterday, so I am going out. Here is a chart of what has happening And Jan 2024 (note scale changes)

Not sure. The reason I started monitoring my energy usage was to answer that question. That was nearly 16 years ago. Apart from finding a cheaper tariff, rather than a different ToU one, I could not make the numbers stack up. But until last year I was working evenings, and now I work days, that will have changed things a bit. I will always be heating water though, and that 30 quid saving is really just the space heating saving. At the end of next month, I will have more data and will be able to do some real modelling, 30 days data is not enough to base a decision on.

@marshian The last 3 years my usage has been very stable, and I thought I had just about done all the passive improvements I could (I have secondary glazed, on the double glazing, a couple more windows and am going to improve the loft insulation), so it is interesting to see how much just a different heating regime could change things. And it is better than I thought. I do have the advantage that the weather is very mild down here, and no one else in the house.

I have done an experiment this year, it involves not turning my storage heaters on. I now just use a fan heater when and where I need it. This is very easy for me as I live alone. The headline figures are below. Jan 2024, Mean Power 0.75 kW, Energy Usage 543 kWh, Max Power 8.9 kW, Mean Power >0 0.94 kW, Mean Internal Temp 21.3°C, Mean External Temp 4.5°C, ΔT 16.9K, Zero Power 32% Jan 2025, Mean Power 0.44 kW, Energy Usage 329 kWh, Max Power 4 kW, Mean Power >0 0.55 kW, Mean Internal Temp 17.4°C, Mean External Temp 4.8°C, ΔT 12.6K, Zero Power 43% So around 60% of the energy usage, but with a lower internal air temperature of 4K. This lower temperature is not a problem in reality as I am out at work a lot, and can just switch the fan heater on and the room is up to temperature in a few minutes. On a daily basis, in Jan 2024 I was using 17.5 kWh.day-1, Jan 2025, 10.6 kWh.day-1 (I was aiming for 10 kWh.day-1, so close). Now this will affect my costs as I am on E7 and EDF has not fully published all my data yet. But last year I paid £118.81 and this year (excluding yesterday), £87.34 (So 74% of the price this year). So even allowing for the higher day unit price, but still heating my water in the E7 window, I have saved 26% in cash terms. Now rates have changed in the last year. Jan 2024, Standing Charge 62.46p.day-1, Day Rate 36.72p.kWh-1, Night Rate 14.68p.kWh-1 Jan 2025, Standing Charge 71.22p.day-1, Day Rate 31.473p.kWh-1, Night Rate 12.574p.kWh-1 So 14% increase on Standing Charge, -14% Day Rate and -14% Night Rate. I will look at this again when I have all the numbers in and see what is really happening with the price changes (I can look at the weighted averages at the half hour). Still, I saved £31.47, or about a third of the price of the speeding ticket I am about to be issued with for doing a reckless 27 MPH.

President of the WI, they have more power than Trump and are more scary.

So would relaxing planning rules and allowing free movement of labour across the globe.

What I find interesting is the concrete mix. Something that is pumpable, slump resistant, fast curing and does not clog the machine is pretty clever chemistry.

No. A double entendre, and we all know you like a twos up the cat flap.

Welcome. Is it the look/style of oak beams you like, rather than the structural integrity? If it is just the looks, build in ICF, timber frame, even stuck build it, then make up some fake oak beams (oak veneer or box), then stick them in place. Remember that with ICF you are forking out a large amount of cash at the start of the build, and it is not unknown for ICF companies to go bust. Also, ICF is not Lego. It usually needs specialized input from real engineers.