SteamyTea

No, but it is an irrelevance really. Council tax should be based on living accommodation in my opinion. It is a complete nonsense that you can have two very similar properties, but in different areas of the same town, and they have different bandings.

Why is your ST system still not working?

My breakdown is: Council Tax £1210 Water and Sewage £600 (ish) Power £600 (ish) So that works out at £48.50/m2 @Ferdinand is £13.25/m2 Must be because I live in one of the poorest parts of Europe.

I am only saying what should have happened if you go down the MCS route, not what some feckless, lazy and often dishonest installer actually does.

Could be worth just making your own, cheaper. Then let us all know how much it smells.

An MCS installation involved more than just a sparky connecting up the inverter. There was the structural engineer sign off, the DNO paperwork, approved modules and rails. Not saying that it should not be possible to DIY an installation, but many people shouldn't.

Yes, grid power is really cheap, really. A generator is cheap, reliable and predictable. Against what the Green Party and Friends of the Earth think, being off grid is not cheap or easy. And that is before any environmental costs are taken into account.

If it is on its own circuit, which I think it should be, just flick them on and off at your consumer unit. Saves getting the step ladder out.

This may be coming to an end as we are not yet replacing our nuclear generation, nor adding enough wind to the grid. Couple that with the increase in EVs, which will predominately be charged at night, we will be burning more gas. Probably why my night rate is half the day rate, a few years back it was a third.

Battery storage is an interesting idea. While it is really way to expensive to go truly off grid, a small bit of storage, say 1 to 1.5 kWh, may be useful for time shifting. I use about 1 kWh/day, during the day (i.e. not night rate). That now costs 22p/kWh (before taxes). So say I use 400 kWh a year, that is £88/year, but it would cost half that to charge them. Not sure how much storage I could get for £50 a year, or £100 for that matter if I used PV to charge them. It should be possible to calculate the sweet spot, but I suspect that is sometime in the future.

Or meter rental for that matter. Water is very expensive in the SW. Actually sewage is. Look at reducing rainwater runoff, you get charged for this.

Have a look at our Ed's sums on this: https://edavies.me.uk/2012/11/pv-dhw/ The prices may need updating, but the physics is good. Insulation is an odd one down here, we have relatively stable temperatures. The one to look at is airtightness and heat recovery. Start designing it in from the start. One of the big issues is solar gain. When the sun does come out, even in winter, it can quite quickly warm a place up. That extra input is hard to hold onto as the wind soon takes the energy away again.

Can smell Devon from there. Do you have a definition of Eco, or sustainable, or low energy? (reply to old post) Same way that Swindon is South West, only 230 miles from me.

Quick look at the Sheffield University site for Heysham area it shows that 12:30 yesterday it was it was producing 0.207 MW per MW per MWp. Not to be sniffed at.

There is the small business VAT scheme, think it is 12% of turnover, though not exactly sure of the details.

Seems small now considering: https://www.lovemoney.com/news/4133/the-five-biggest-pension-scandals Odd how we don't complain when our properties go up 5 fold in a decades or 2, maybe that should be taxed and the money put in a pot to help out pensioners, or some other worthy cause. Yes, it still seems odd to me. I wonder how they are going to tax EVs. Possibly on ownership rather than usage.

I think Kensa made some systems for the RNLI, they would have been small. Also you don't have to lift water that high, though that does depend on where the system is in relation to the lake and the house. Generally the CoP of a water source system is much higher, 4 or 5, so that should negate losses.

Yes, but I am sure all this has been sorted out already. There are a few boats that have heat pumps fitted, they have the same problems. The marine industry may be the place to look.

Had the same when I was working for a PV company, which was really a double glazing company behind the scenes.

Why go to the bother of sinking pipes into the lake. Why not just pump water out of the lake and feed that into the heat pump via a heat exchanger. I think that is how it is meant to be done.

Generally, in science, it is always worth looking at the actual units rather than in percentage terms. To give you an example, dairy farming uses about 1 GWh of electrical energy a day, Sound a lot, but is about 3% of our mean energy usage. Well worth it for something to put in tea. That is about the same as electric cars currently use.

That is to be expected because it is a percentage of the whole. This is not really the way to look at it. Really should look at the kWh/year and what that is costing in terms of emissions and cash.

More concerning is what happens when you rub their legs together to start the camp fire.

Easily supplied with a £12 fan heater.

So worth it for an extra 40mm. Especially as builders can't work to that accuracy.