SteamyTea

Been checked out, I am safe to work with children and vulnerable adults. I do pretend that the courts have said that no ones children are allowed within 500 meters of me, but usually gets misunderstood. Then I get my lights punched out. I will probably stop posting when the new terms and conditions come out. Lined the cupboard walls with 100mm of PU sheet, then filled in the gaps around the around the cylinder with mineral wool. Leaving an airgap at the bottom for the cable (cause I am a good boy).

My rather cute, blonde, single female neighbour has asked me to fix this. Said it has stopped vibrating. She is picking it up later tonight. (She is really a redhead but has the decency to dye it blonde). This has gone so far off topic it is now silly

Not for me, what to see what fingering fish does to my skin

3 things here. A. Very small sample B. Treating normal allergies C. It is science, whether you believe it or not

But back to energy storage (almost) To store 24 kWh as gasoline would take about 2.5 lt.

I think he is quite the opposite, he did a good program about energy. Always hard to get a complete picture across on a short program. And he did bother to reply to me once, or twice. https://drivetribe.com/p/internal-combustion-its-all-a-bit-YZGOUlf-RnKJY2S4fdl0_w?iid=DUUZjFaPToGbFv4oPrbYPA worth pointing out that my first stint at university was studying Automotive Engineering

Pretty poor really. You could measure the thickness, find out the material and then work out the thermal losses. Before I secondary insulated my DHW cylinder, I was loosing more than I was using. Oh and don't believe the manufacturers claims, the testing regime is, to say the least, a bit odd.

"Batteries are rubbish". James May, Top Gear, 31 July 2011

I had to plug my car in today. The cold did my battery in. £14 quid for a charger and after a couple of extra cuppas, it was as good as new. Quite surprised that the battery is the original one, so 12 years old. Lead acids are great. Just going to wait till the summer to buy a new one. Today is probably not the cheapest day to get a new car battery.

Just for starters: http://www.afro.who.int/health-topics/air-pollution Statisticians are pretty good and finding out what is happening and can account for differences in populations, environments and incomes.

That is more cars than I have seen at the Land's End charging point.

Was tried in Corby. They used a lake to dump excess heat from the leisure centre. They forgot about evaporation losses.

It is set up for just that. No one is going to give power away. When we opened the tap on the Norway gas interconnect, we had negative gas prices. That never filtered though to the retail consumer. But at the moment we have higher than average import prices, and that is not filtering though yet. Though the exchange rate difference will this year.

Because they had never fitted one before. They are probably fitting heat pumps now.

Sizing is about knowing your heat loads and temperature ranges. Then the juggling starts which is based on the specific heat capacity of water which s 4.2 kJ.kg-1.K-1, which is 0.k00116667 kWh.kg-1..K-1. kg-1. To be on the safe side, and to save doing solution to partial differential equations (or partial solutions to differential equations as I prefer to call them) that take the form δT/δt(x, y, z) = 0, we usually just sum all the inputs and outputs and then add a bit for a laugh. So you have a store that can hold 450kg of water and it has an input temperature of 10°C and you could just get away with a 60 lt shower at 40°C. That is a gnats under 16 kWh. The shower only uses 2 kWh of that, so you are left with 14 kWh for space heating. But not quite as you have to take into account the minimum temperature required for your space heating needs. So say that is 35°C, you then have, in effect, 390 kg of water to play with, so that works out at only 2.3 kWh left over for space heating. (You can see why space and DHW should really be separate). So iterating again but with a TS temperature of 60°C 0.00116667 [ Wh.kg-1..K-1] . 450 [kg] . (60 - 10) [K] = 26 kWh Take away the 2 kWh for a shower, then you have 24 kWh for space heating. This does not take into account any provisions for thermal losses (pretty high on a TS at 60°C over a day) or extra inputs during the day. There is a lot of criticism about about system sizing, but it really is quite limited and is usually based on the worse case i.e. coldest weather, limited input time period, maximum hot water requirements. This accounts for what can seem like extremely large TSs put into places 5000lt is not unusual.

Yes, but it is not as simple as it seems. You also have to take into account incidental radiation angles, overall insolation levels and time of day.

Maybe when we actually got reliable power. I agree that subsidies have skewed the market, never been keen on them.

One of the problems with variable tariff is that the general public will not cope with it. They can barely cope with E7. I was chatting to someone that is involved on the periphery of the energy market and he was telling me that it will be all sorted hen we have meters that bill every 15 minutes. So 96 different price segments. Just not the way forward. The real problem is that electricity is pretty cheap and will probably get cheaper in real terms as time passes. There have been government surveys that show that the big energy companies do not make huge profits on retail energy trading, but that myth is still there. A kWh of electricity is about the same a kWh of gasoline even allowing for the vastly different tax regimes. The real problem is that we are attacking the problem from the wrong end. People with resistive heating (like me) should be considering heat pumps. Trouble is that the cost, and physical restrictions, of installing a heat pump are often prohibitive. Standard Tariffs are not so bad as they can give you payment flexibility. If you have ever had EDF try to take £2500 out of your account, then just under £2000 and then just under £1000 in 4 days because of a meter misreading, you will know what the bank charges are (about £90 at the time). I was a student at the time so only 'got paid' 3 times a year. I could change to the very cheapest deal on direct debit and save myself a 'whooping' £74/year. But one missed payment will screw that. I shall stick with paying every 3 months, which I can drag out to 4 months if needed, thanks. Because I am a relatively low user, sub 5MWh/year, I have never seen much point in changing.

Yes, but this can be used to increase the storage capacity of a cylinder by evening out the temperature to a higher level. This could be useful when taking advantage of renewable energy. Though as soon as you turn the pump off, statistics take over and the top of the cylinder will become warmer than the bottom.

What is this sunshine you talk off. Been down to 4°C here and overcast. But there is ice of the car this morning, must be the 3rd frost this winter.

I really must get my bottom E7 element changed fixed as I often pay full whack for my water heating at the moment. I agree. It is not as if you will be left without power, but just a pain to change supplier when it happens. If there is a 60% fair usage ratio, then it is not for me. When things are working normally my night usage is around 80%.

We have a thread on that too.

Down to the density differences as water is heated. Without teaching my Grandmother how to suck eggs, hotter water rises to the top of of tank and stays there until it is used or cools. Cooling is generally at the interface between the water and the cylinder. Insulating the cylinder reduces this cooling over time, so there is less downwards circulation down the sides of the cylinder. This is why I dislike the word 'stratification' and much prefer using the term 'temperature gradient'. Stratification implies that there are discrete and isolated layers of water stacked one on top of another and you can access each one individually. Some cylinder manufactures have placed mechanical restrictions i.e. plates and buckets, inside cylinders to contain the natural temperature induced turbulence. But I think that is more 'marketing' driven than engineering. It might be worth just reminding readers about the Laws of Thermodynamics. Not going to show Stephanie Flanders Dad and his mate this time.

I am still pondering this. If you don't mind the bathroom always hotter than the optimum for comfort and drying out, then yes, stick it in (or close to) the slab/floor/tiles/whatever and just set it to a high temperature. To a certain extent the extractor fan, with or without MVHR, will draw in cooler air. If this is not optimum, but it more likely to be too hot than cold, then probably not a problem, though not the most energy efficient method. The most energy efficient is to control the air temperature and that involves balancing the thermal inertia of the floor with the total mass of air that need heating, and the temperature of that air. Only local history will tell you the optimum setting to get that right.

Judging by the eyewater I have just done, none of these would have worked. Think I shall have to eat more fruit.