SteamyTea
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Posts
23866 -
Joined
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Days Won
200
Everything posted by SteamyTea
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If you accidentally build your garage too small
SteamyTea replied to AliG's topic in Garages & Workshops
This serious, and possibly life threatening, wound was caused by technology. I dropped my phone behind the seat in the car, as I put my hand in to retrieve it, I caught the seat rail (thank goodness it was not electric) and maimed myself. This is a life changing injury, it has taught me to stop being a clumsy oaf (again).
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I don't think that it is really possible to affect the local humidity as an ASHP draws in too much mass of air. Sticking one in the sun should help though as even at quite modest levels of direct sunlight will soon warm it up. Just think how easy washing steams on a cold day when the sun hits it. It may be useful, but would need experiments to find out, to blow air though the unit with the HP part turned off. If the HP part was stopped before freezing starts (should be easy to establish) then just pass ambient temperature air though, any condensation should evaporate, or get dislodged, fairly quickly.
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@JSHarrisHow hard would it be to reprogram the unit to modulate the heat pump down a bit when it predicts the risk of frosting? Then it is just a matter of creating an algorithm (rather than a curve) that can control that for near enough all temperatures. Or it could just turn the heat pump off and let ambient temperature defrost naturally, may need a larger buffer tank though. Where @joe90 is not too bad for temperature and RH, so may not hit the frosting condition as often as you do.
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Working out ASHP min COP to beat lpg
SteamyTea replied to johny_99's topic in Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP)
The CH1 bottom floor temperatures seem to swing quite a bit. Can you plot floor temp against external temp to see the correlation better. -
What goes on in the shed, stays in the shed!
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That is an interesting problem @joe90 It is easy enough to make a sensor that can check temperature and RH, from that it is a simple calculation to work out the dewpoint temperature. Once that it known, and a few performance parameters of you ASHP installation, it is then just a matter of turning down the wick on the ASHP. I am not sure how easy that is to do, but probably not hard. I think @JSHarris ASHP has sensors already built in that can be used for this. SO other ASHPs probably have the same thing as it is pretty crucial to their performance (they need to know they are frosted up).
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Hopefully you can open this and it makes sense. You will need to change the .txt extension to .dxf (can we change it to allow some CAD formats to be uploaded please). Basically a 8m by 4m two storey box. A little wider and I could turn the stairs around though 90° and stop the living room being a corridor. SteamyTea HouseDFX.txt
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How have I managed to miss Node Red, seems my idea of making a fairly simple controller has already been done. Good, I hate all that poxy coding.
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I come from a disgustingly long lived family too Takes that long to do just a bathroom, ask OnOff
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Working out ASHP min COP to beat lpg
SteamyTea replied to johny_99's topic in Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP)
Rather than pay out for a new boiler/ASHP, have a look at reducing your heating load first. Ideally you should be doing this anyway. So look at adding extra loft insulation and fixing any air leaks around windows and doors. I spend less than £200 on a few very basic improvements and have, over the years, reduced my annual usage from just under 12 MWh to just under 4 MWh. -
Why not just sell up and rent?
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Do they charge fees for this fantastic service? As they say in 'All The Presidents Men'. "follow the money"
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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.
