SteamyTea

Done a quick 'first draught' of different materials (got to look up more material properties). But if my house was made of brick, it would have had a mean response time of 35 hours over the 11°C mean temperature differences that I have good data for. 35 hours is greater than one day, so not much use. If it was just OSB the mean response time would be 3.8 hours over the same mean 11°C, so a bit more useful. Just got to find some more material data until I can find something that would give 12 hours, which would be best on average, but as this time of year the days are long, gentle overall warming would happen. I shall see if I can get some more data. But as an aside, I have been pretty happy with the temperature inside my house the last 4 weeks or so.

Or grow cacti. I may have a go at modelling a wall that is being hit by the sun, just to see how much energy it can absorb and loose. I ma have enough data from the last month to do that.

Ship some over, make them work 12 hour days, deduct board and lodging from their net wages and keep hold of their passports. Apparantly there is trouble getting pickers down here this year, serves the gang masters right for treating the workers like slaves.

No ta.

All of them, including roofers, which is a worry. I would go out taking pictures of builders, but that would be just strange.

I have. Be an interesting correlation.

That much, I wish

My ex girlfriend got a local builder in because 'he was the expert on Cornish Units'. He also owned a pub. Says it all. Purely out of scientific interest, are fat builders better or worse than thinner ones? Now Poldark. Some of the film crew sometimes come in for supper when they are filming locally, not that I would recognise the Aidan Turner. I never recognised Ray Davies of the Kinks and he used to come in quite often.

Just heat capacity would do. If you have a look at this page you can see the thermal properties of materials. Some may surprise you. http://www.kayelaby.npl.co.uk/general_physics/#2_3

All 'Thermal Mass' is, is the product of insulation and specific heat capacity of a material. There is a lot of misunderstanding about how it can make a building thermally stable. Nearly all the examples come from 10° South of the UK with much sunnier climates and much higher temperatures, especially in summer. When I was studying the affect of solar radiation on mass (granite in fact), there was no real gain to be had with typical UK insolation levels. Our old mate Ed Davies did some work on it and concluded that a sheet of 9mm plasterboard could absorb and release energy just as well as 4 inches of brick. Don't fall into the trap that adding mass is all you need to do to store or stabilise thermal energy. If you want to slow down the rate of change of the losses though a wall, look at cellulose insulation. It has good insulation properties, good specific heat capacity and very good sound absorbing characteristics.

What happened to just using light to transmit data around the house. Seem to remember you could get LED bulbs that also sent the signal. Then you just have an IR device where you want to get the signal.

What, with naked men on the bog. That is your local called 'The Cottager' Bit of timeshifting here to avoid trouble Looks like you will be using The Glory Hole now

I don't care as long as they have good tits.

I have what is considered an offensive joke that I heard on Woman's Hour last year. Sometimes I am tempted to post it up

I was told that if you have one, or are one, you can use it. So I am OK. (now how long will this stay up)

What are you trying to achieve and why do you think that adding mass will help? You could try a simple experiment by getting some water butts/containers and filling them up. Water is about the best energy storage medium you can get. You would need to monitor the temperature before and after the experiment just so you are not kidding yourself that it has worked.

The building trade does not seem to be very professional. If it was regulated like banking, insurance or government procurement it would be so much better. Maybe that is where they come from.

Because the government of the time was ill advised. No it isn't, but if the country is going to get serious about air pollution, then that is the first to go, followed by heavy fuel oils, lighter fuel oils, spirit fuels and then gasses. There has to be a pragmatic approach to all this and using energy delivered per primary energy unit is a pretty good way to go about it. Timber burning in a domestic stove is one of the worse for a number of reasons. There are much better uses for saw dust, making sheet material is best. You are trying to defend the indefensible here, it is a bit like vandalism, it is never alright to cause a tiny bit of wilful damage just because other are doing more, is it.

Is there a figure for PM10 and PM2.5's per kWh energy delivered? That is quite worrying, I have some waste timber that is covered in lead paint, shall I bring it over for you to burn? It is the easy, cheap and best solution to this problem. Get this weeks New Scientist to read more in the Analysis section. @PeterW shows your assertion of 0.1% to be the bollocks I knew it was. We are heading that way and it will happen. The UK now does not burn much coal for electricity production. It is a start. I really wish people would start to accept that wood burning is unnecessary and unacceptable these days.

Is there one that is available, or is it a jumble of parts. I don't think it is like buying a computer, speakers, mouse printer, monitor. I once saw two qualified electricians test the short circuit voltage of a 3.5 kWp system on a very sunny April day. They did this by putting a short circuit loop in after the DC isolator. When I say I saw it, what I meant was I smelt it. Dopey pillocks. They never had a chance to measure the voltage.

https://playground.arduino.cc/Main/MQGasSensors But you could just do it on noise. Or sense the 'strength of grip' on the staining bars.

It is not the same problem; the grid was set up for centralised and coordinated generation. But it may be an interesting way of getting your line upgraded. My biggest load is my kettle, and that is only on for a few seconds. Pre FiTs and the ridiculous 41p/kWh + 5p/kWh deemed export rates, people with PV wanted 'net metering', then it was about 10p/kWh which is close to what we get now. The MCS scheme was not just about payment rates. It was also meant to protect householders from dodgy traders and unsafe installations. May not have worked in all cases, but generally most people are satisfied with their installations. Remember that switching DC is a lot harder than switching AC, and there may be some other safety implications to take into account. You are not dealing with an ELV. https://electrical.theiet.org/media/1425/low-and-extra-low-voltage-direct-current-power-distribution-in-buildings.pdf

Most kettles are about 2.8 kW, so a fair size generator. If you want a good one, go Honda. They can be linked together (I think Yamaha have a similar model). Otherwise go cheap and get a lower powered kettle. Camping stoves are pretty good and cheap.

I had a girlfriend that would thumb the blade around so that she could line it up, while her finger was still on the switch. Scared me shitless. I used to turn it off at the wall if I was nearby.

My view is that everything built should be included except fittings i.e. kitchen, bathroom, internal doors. Or to look at it the other way, not the ground the house sits on, but all the professional fees, licence fees, unexpected works, utilities. Basically the only things that are not in the calculation are the things that can vary wildly in price for the same utility value. So basically cost it out on what you want except the vanity items.