SteamyTea
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Posts
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Everything posted by SteamyTea
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I find things inside the house generally not a problem (I am small, fit, lithe and agile). But stuff outside is a real pain. Painting or maintenance mainly. So think about putting up scaffolding and ladders, how do you work over a porch. Shame that fixing points can't be built in, that a cantilevered work platform can be fixed to, is not standard. And never fit anything that is not a standard size. My bath is a bit smaller than most, and now it is going to cost a lot to change it.
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Shall see what I can knock up later.
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Just going to say welcome. And as an engineer, a house is a piece of cake, they don't have to land at 180MPH, at night, in the wet, with a cross wind...
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Budget wired network
SteamyTea replied to Tennentslager's topic in Networks, AV, Security & Automation
Why not go for WiFi, gives you good flexibility and commercial kit is pretty robust. Easy to take with you and reuse somewhere else if the office gets closed down. to A lot of it also depends on the hardware setup. If you are going for up to 10 desktop PCs, that is a lot of heat being generated, and a lot of noise. Why not laptops with better monitors, keyboards and mice. Or, and I am not sure of the proper term, but thin clients or dumb terminals. Everything seems to be going via the cloud these days. -
What, a plan of my house?
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Interesting. My house is 3.5m wide inside, that 'narrow' house in the drawing is 2.9 m wider. Not what I would call a narrow site.
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Temporary park home accommodation and council tax
SteamyTea replied to joe90's topic in Party Wall & Property Legal Issues
Joe I am sure you mentioned having a holiday there 10 years ago, why you asked to use it again as it was so nice. -
This is really down to the price of energy in my opinion. The easy thing to work out is the capital cost of different systems, and the relative complexity of them. If you want the whole house heated, then yes, a 'single' system is probably the best. But, if you live a 'disjointed' life, i.e. different people living to different timetables, then a more controllable zoned system may be better. Also, as you have probably found out, there is a big difference when the sun comes out, if only briefly. That happens a lot where you are (usually, this last summer was very odd).
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Yes, it will, as it is a small problem. But take another scenario, say a refurbishment to a lower standard, and with the original boiler, then it is a totally different kettle of fish. Or using E7 and regular storage heaters, which are still one of the cheapest overall methods of installing and running a heating system. Variable time of day (TOD) energy pricing may make this a more important issue in the future.
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Starting to seem to me that heating control is more about prediction that the actual switching on and off. There are two statistical methods used to predict weather, both based on observation. Frequentist: This relies purely on the distribution of past events. The output is a probability rather than binary. Baysian: This is still based of past events, but allows a known event to be discarded. The output eventually becomes binary, which is useful. I am not sure how reliable getting a local weather feed from the WWW will be. It is rather at the whim of the weather station owner and the feed could be pulled at any time.
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Help me identify this, please
SteamyTea replied to ToughButterCup's topic in Bathrooms, Ensuites & Wetrooms
Ever industry has its own 'language'. There is a theory that it is to keep people out and promotes protectionism. Having just been away for a month, I noticed that 'the locals' spoke in statements, one sentence, one meaning, only. This stifled debate and was quite tiring to listen to. And they had no idea about irony and general humour. -
The problem with solar gain is that it is very location dependant. On my cheap 'weather station', basically a clock, a thermometer and a pressure gauge, it is amazingly accurate in predicting sunny days. The only outside measurement it can make is air pressure. I wish I know how it worked as these things are sold world wide. It may be possible to point one of those IR thermometers up into the sky. The colder it is, the clearer it is. The most reliable indicator that I know of is wind direction. Not 100%, but pretty good in the UK.
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So if it was as simple as just plugging in a 'thermostat' or two then that would suit most people. The logging can go in in the background without them knowing. I was more thinking of a very simple device, basically a temp sensor and a knob to set the temp, the clever bit would be behind the scene in the 'box of tricks' Not really any different to what most people are used to.
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After a slight hijack on another thread, I thought it best to start one a bit more dedicated to heating control systems. Some of us like playing with wires and stuff, other are happy to buy in a system. This may be a good place to combine the pooled knowledge, and pinch a few ideas. If I get time today (decorating bathroom) I shall try and post up some thermodynamic theory. But no promise on that.
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I am going to start a new topic on heating control as a few of us are practical and like the subject (and got a box full of RPis and components). https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/4142-heating-control-systems/
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I suppose it is, with a bit of automatic curve matching (which is not hard, though the coding my be tricky).
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Rather than worry about the hysteresis (a word I still not spell or pronounce), could a thermostat be set to a temperature and then use a timer to delay the on/off period. So say it takes 20 minutes for the room to cool by 0.5°C, onces the set point is set, there is no way the heat source can add to it for at least 20 minutes (times and temperatures may vary). This would stop short cycling. A similar idea could be used on the heating cycle but would need two set points, the upper and lower. Once the lower set point is reach, the heating system stops. That is really just a smarter hysteresis idea, but with some lock outs. I would think that it was a pretty simple thing to DIY.
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Sounds like the cylinder is loosing a fair bit of heat, how much insulation does it have?
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I might be miles off here, but can't you get some GRP made up (or do it yourself, Faye is a clever girl), easy enough to get the sizes you need with the right (simple) tooling.
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So I am just playing about with some local weather data and at noon today, I could have got, with a south facing 1 m2 window, 177W with double glazing and 188W with triple. At 15:00 I would have got -1.8 W with double and 12.5 W with triple. At 9:00 it would have been 5.8W or 22.4W At best, with the solar power at 368W, I would have got either 298W or 309W, for 5 minutes or so. Go for the triple.
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I worked the U-Value out as normal, so W.m-2.K-1 . m2 . (T1 - T0) For the radiation I multiplied the G-Value by the area, product of the cosine of the azimuth and Altitude angles and the solar power. Something like (excel is a bit different as it uses radians): G-Value (decimal fraction) . T-Value (decimal fraction) . Window Area (m2) . Cos(azimuth angle) . Cos(altitude angle) . Solar Power (W.m-2). Then took the Thermal losses away from the solar gain. Try it, but change the extension from txt to xlsx. I may have made an error. Just don't input anything in the last 3 cells, they are the answers (B14, B15 B16) Solar Gain Calculator1.txt
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Just though, I have a pair of Dunlop, steel toed, trainer style shoes from that cheap 'sports' shop. The one that treats all customers like shop lifters. They grip reasonably well on a wet floor at work and only cost about 22 quid. Think it is these and they have gone up: https://www.jjbsports.com/dunlop-safety-iowa-mens-safety-shoes-181001?colcode=18100103
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I just did a quick and dirty spreadsheet. For a solar input of 100 W.m-2, a solar azimuth of 45°, an altitude of 20°, with a temperature difference of 15°C. Using a U-Value of 0.5 and a G-Value of 0.5, I make it 62.7 W.m-2 (1m2 window). That is the basic triple glazing from the chart above. An old light bulb would give you that I think. When I change it to a U-Vale of 2.7 and a G-Vale of 0.78, I get 34.9 W.m-2. That is a basic double glaze from the chart above. (always a chance that my spreadsheet is wrong)
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Do the sums for different radiative forcings i.e. 50, 100, 150, 200, 250 W.m-2.K-1 Then decide of you can actually shift that energy to the rest of the house. You may find that you can suck more energy out between the roof tiles and a small gap under them. One of the misunderstanding is that when stuff is heating up, that is all it is doing. It isn't, it is also loosing energy at the same time and at a faster rate the relatively hotter it gets. Just today, in my comic, there was this question answered.
