SteamyTea

I bought the cheapest one from ScrewFix, I am amazed how good it is. Similar to this one. https://www.screwfix.com/p/titan-ttb515stp-15mm-electric-nailer-stapler-240v/99925

I think there are still not any confirmed cases of legionairs disease, as opposed to the presences of the bacteria, caused by DHW systems. I may be wrong as it is a few years since a heated debate about this happened over at the other place. When I worked for the council, we had all the taps and tanks tested, part of the system got closed down and sterilised. Up until then, no one had reported any symptoms. After the system was isolated, a few people got ill and blamed it on the water. Go figure.

I have wanted something like that for decades. My cheap weather station is spookily accurate when it comes to predicting cloud cover. I wish I knew how it did it. I have looked for the algorithm online but had no luck finding it. I believe that you can get an API (whatever that is) for the MetOffice data. May have to look at that sometime. I was bloody cold this morning, but house was at normal temperatures. It has brightened up now, so feel a lot warmer.

My Aunt lies in Canada, 10° South of me, in Cornwall. So a lot more sun power as well as a lot more snow. We have palm trees down here, just like they do in the Isle of Skye. But they are not real palm trees, they are Cordylines. There is a Banana tree in Penlee Park, but never seen a banana on it. But back to ST, shame that there is not a simple, cheap drainback system anymore.

Have you factored in that DHW is pretty useless below 30°C and has an upper limit of 65°C (though that can go higher when grown ups are not looking).

Just been reading James May's ManLab book. There is a section about wiring a plug, as well as making a concrete kitchen top.

You may want to hold on a couple of weeks as I have been running one of my Silly Sunday Experiment (actually 50 weeks so far) about the thermal properties of different masses, but identical volumes. The data will show what is happening, not looking good for added mass. I also have some house data from a new build, hardly any difference between the heated and unheated sections even though they have very different masses.

What I did, but added about 150mm. Part of the reason I limited my E7 window to the last 3 hours of the period was because I use most of my DHW first thing in the morning. Since changing my cylinder a year ago, I have not got around to fitting any temperatures probes, should have done it at the time as I don't fancy the doing the job now. One thing I have thought of doing is to fit some probes to the header tank, then I can see how much the temperature varies up there. My summer DHW usage is significantly higher than my winter usage, so would be interesting to see if it actually costs more.

Just had a thought while enjoying a hot bath. Heat loss from an off the shelf cylinder can be quite high. I calculated that my losses where at least equivalent to my usage, and sometimes higher. To get around this I added extra insulation. This lowered the losses considerably, as did lowering the storage temperature. Worth considering the size of the cupboard that the cylinder is in, and how easy it would be to add extra insulation. Not to be outdone on the charts, here is May's mean energy usage by hour. I am usually up by 6AM, so water heating is between 1AM and then. I have limited the E7 window so that it now starts at 4AM.

Yes, I have seen what it has done to my best mate (though he asked me for 50 quid the other day, I refused, and not heard from him since). If we legalised drugs, I am sure we would see the same problems that alcohol causes. Legalisation does not mean safe. Most car incidents happen below the speed limit.

Ah, Matlab, I still feel the cold sweat of university. ST has a few maintenance issues that need to be considered, PV is, generally speaking, either working or not. Also it is much easier to route cables than pipes. You can use a heat pump to raise the temperature of your mains water a few degrees, then for the final push from say 40°C to 55°C use the immersion heater from the PV. As for the best way of doing this, it is difficult to decide. Two cylinders is probably the answer. A lower temp one feeding the higher temp one. As an example, I have a simple, vented, Economy 7 cylinder with a capacity of 200lt. I run it at 50°C. This is generally enough to for 2 showers and a bath per day. I can raise the temperature up to 65°C when I have people to stay. That gives me more capacity without having to turn the secondary 'top' element on. I had a lodger once that was under the assumption that the time to finish a shower was when the water ran cold, left me with a £2000 water bill. I trained her up to take much shorter showers. It worked, she could wash in 3 minutes in the end. Limit the flow of the showers to no more than 9lt/minute. Mine is 11lt/minute and very nice.

Really a case of making a simple model of the house in Excel and changing the numbers.

Legalise cocaine and tax it, should bring in a few quid and save prison costs.

Takes away the H&S issues too. Have they got all their toes and fingers?

https://www.bre.co.uk/filelibrary/SAP/2012/SAP-2012_9-92.pdf Only 234 pages

IoW is Up North to me as is Plymouth, Exeter and Bude.

IoW has an OCGT 140MW unit at Cowes, the Gateway to the World.

Some years ago I looked at the total tax take of the UK, then worked out the percentage we would have to pay if it was only on income tax. I think it worked out at around 65% on every single pound we earn. But goods would be cheaper and we would not have to pay any council tax, road tax, fuel duties etc... And companies would not be able to avoid corporation tax, as there would not be any.

I remember that Paul in Montreal (from the other place), did not go for a particular good U-Value when he did his refurbishment. He spend his time and money on air tightness. He got good saving on his running costs. I once started a spreadsheet that balanced the losses from air leaks so that they matched U-Value losses. I never got around to putting in cash values, might have to revisit it sometime.

I wish the only tax was on earnings from/in the UK. Then we would have a much simpler and clearer system. It would also get rid of a lot of opportunities to avoid paying. It seems odd to me that some people can claim benefits while working, or not working, while others cannot i.e. me. But it is OK, Boris is sorting it out for us, he want to reduce tax take for the rich again.

I feel the same. When he has been on Radio 4, he seems to be pushing an agenda of some sort, not really sure what though. I know it is the job of environmentalist, and I include myself in that group, to set a high bar, but it does piss me off when I talk to people in my profession that seem to be fixated on just one or two issues, especially when they think that it will solve all problems. The use of selective data seems to be worse in the environmental industry than in the medical industry. It is a shame as no matter how much I point out the misconceptions, it just does not sink in.

Welcome As far as renewables go, look at roof integrated PV and ASHPs. Make the big decisions first and the rest falls into place. Purely as an aside, I have no idea what water and sewage costs on the IoW, but if it is similar to Cornwall, you may want to look at a borehole and sewage plant. May work out cheaper after a few years. Avoid any type of combustion for energy generation, even though you have lots of wood.

I use E7 with an additional timer that limits the E7 window to the last 3 hours i.e. 4AM to 7AM. This helps limit standing losses during the night and gives me enough DHW for a day. I use about 3 kWh/day for DHW. So about 30 pence worth. My water and sewage costs me about 50p.

Better off taxing vehicles on mass rather than peak power, that is real the physics. This is going well off topics. Time to go out in the sun.

What are those problems, every day, the world gets a better place to live in. If we only focus on the big personal disasters, we miss the bigger picture. It is true that we can do things better, but we are slowly working our way towards them. Global infrastructure change does not happen overnight. All my life I have been told by the older generations that the country is going to the dogs. Where are all the dogs (or hand carts, rack and ruin, or other doom monger scenarios).