SteamyTea

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.

What would be the losses if the insulation was increased to 120mm?

Yep, it relies on people thinking that low temperature automatically means low energy. I was recently talking to someone about an UFH system that was being fitted to a new house. I asked how much insulation was being fitted under it, the reply was "80mm, it's the building regs standard".

For a laugh, I made a curved beam for one of my Simple Sunday Experiment. Then bust it.

This goes back a few years to when I suggested that we find a half decent CAD program. LibreCAD is free, and portable still.

One of my sister's many husbands, was the deputy head at a school in Berkhamstead. I lived just down the road at Abbots Langley for a while.

He is back on the radio, with Pippa Haywood as his latest. There is Cock Shooters Wood, I kid you not, it is close to Chequers, you could stay there.

I suspect that you can get away without a buffer tank if the heat pump is a little undersized. There may well bit a bit of a hit on the CoP though as the internal heater may kick in more often and the risk of frosting. I am starting to think that the frosting risk may be overstated a bit, but not seen any data to confirm it. Are you going for a CO2 heat pump, the old refrigerants are being phased out fairly soon I think. CO2 HPs can also run up to a higher temp, that may mean you do need a buffer.

My understanding, from having to read a book about structures, and why they don't fall down, is that the mortar is to stop lateral movement and to seal the gaps. Gravity keeps the blocks in place. Having said that, as it is a garage, a car will hit the wall sometime. So maybe some mechanical fixing would help. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Structures-Things-Dont-Fall-Down/dp/0306812835

Hello and welcome. Rather than get hung up on materials and techniques at this stage, spend a week or two reading up about basic building physics. This may sound daunting, but it isn't really. The main things you need to know are how different materials perform both mechanically and thermally, as you basically want to make an airtight box that won't let any heat in or out. The second thing is concerning your 'eco' bit. The word eco is rather a catchall for whatever people want it to mean. This gives marketing people a lot of leeway to sell whatever they like. A bit of timber cladding on a thermally leaky house is not eco. Also don't get hung up on all the possibilities of what could be done, work within your budget. Having said this, if the orientation is good, fit PV as it can be cheaper than a tiled roof.

I think that is barmy too. I blame the marketing people and their desperate desire to get market share. I have also heard that the charging stations are not that reliable, though that may just be the press playing on peoples fears.