SteamyTea

You could test the idea with a fan heater. Just point it at the MVHR extract in the room and see what happens. I think the main problem is that MVHR is not designed to cope with the higher temperature differences and the greater airflow that a vented tumble dryer produces.

Not for much longer maybe http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37701427

About what I currently pay on Day Rate and E7

And here is some of the history: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horsepower

Interesting report, there seems to be no mention of the silicon finish. Or, again, am I missing something.

Slightly off topic, but as this is a free thinking subject, I am going to ask the question. If the silicon top coat moisture impermeable and the lime/Pavatex isn't, where does the moisture from higher internal humidity go. I may have missed something in the wall build up.

I like the idea and have often wondered why we don't use steel more than we do (along with GRP). A big advantage is that you know, right from the start, the quality of the material. You can't say that about timber. Condensation is juts a matter of calculation really. Thermal bridging is design. Both are probably easily overcome. I did my apprenticeship in toolmaking and smirk to myself when people talk of 'building tolerances'. British Steel knocked these up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BISF_house

Power or energy density?

Looks so good I am surprised that no one had thought of doing it before

Or highlight just the text you want to quote and click on "Quote this"

Yes, so maybe education is the real answer (not what we call education at the moment). Where I lived at the time of the Community Charge, I saw a huge reduction when the tax came in. Nearly everyone benefited. It was a well run council (Aylesbury). Where there seemed to be problems was areas of high population density and high unemployment, coupled with a lower than average age. So large towns and cities became worse off. Then there was also the removal of the 'shire counties' subsidies central government (or in other words, the local taxes where going to go up anyway). The really odd thing about basing local taxation on property wealth is that wealthy people use local services less than poorer people (based in household income). If any group should be protesting, it should be the wealthy.

Too true.

One of the things I find hard to fathom is why councils should be involved in social reform. It is not really their 'job' to make the country a more equitable place (or not), that is for governments to do. The council is there to provide local services in the most cost effective manner.

I seem to remember that it is only after June something or other, that the money we earn starts to become ours, so we pay a total of about half our wages in taxes of all sorts. I did work out a few years back that if all the UKs taxes where put onto income, then the tax rate would be 65%ish. Not too bad really when you consider that everything else would be totally tax free.

The VAT issue is a bit of a red herring in my opinion. What is important is the total size of the investment pot. It is that which will influence the number of places built, it don't matter if VAT is set at 0, 5, 10 or even 20%. The free market is quite adept at reducing costs to meet the amount of money people want to spend. I bet most people on here who have built a house have had to make major savings somewhere. Add all those individual savings together and I am sure that the VAT issue would be negated. The caveat is that people should not be unrealistic in their initial costings.

I think that the problems with the housing market are not as simple as most people (who write about it) think. There are often reports like this that think one simple fix will sort everything out. But the main things is the geo-demographic distribution of the nation. This is why we have empty and derelict properties, as well as overcrowding. As for council taxes, just reintroduce the poll tax. If you are an adult that lives in an area, you contribute for the local services, simple. If you don't like the price of those services, then vote the council off, or move. Basing it on income or wealth is a difficult thing to do, too difficult in reality.

4 things really, the lower storage temperature (50°C rather than 65°C+), limiting the time that it recharges on E7 to a couple of hours before the period ends (mine is strange as it comes on for an hour, off for an hour, then on for 6 hours, then off again at 7AM), using the water as soon as it is hot, rather than wait till it has cooled a bit, so morning bathing for me, and finally, loads of extra insulation. This was the hard bit, but I basically lined the airing cupboard with 100 mm of Celotex, including the door. Then filled in the corners between the cylinder and the boards with Rockwool. No a pretty job, and I was unable to insulate below the cylinder, and there is still a gap at the back where it is hard up against the wall, and where the cable goes to the immersion heater. It would be easy to design right on a new build, harder as a retro fit. This is one advantage of the Sunamp, it is smaller and already well insulated, so replacing an existing cylinder becomes an easier job.

Jeremy's situation was a bit unique. He had a combined cylinder with header tank, in a room on the unexpected warm side of the house (his plant room was off the East side bedroom, it also had the MVHR unit in it). And he was not living in the place at the time, so the cylinder was always hot. So yes, it was causing some additional heat into one room. In hindsight, which is a wonderful thing, he could have designed the system differently i.e. separate cylinder and F & E in a different place, or a pressurised system. All fitted into a dedicated, insulated enclosure. It was his investigations into this problem that showed where the errors lay with the standard test procedure for heat loss of cylinders i.e. a 'days' thermal losses are actually only over a few hours, not 24. The clever thing about the Sunamp is the insulation, but it still has a quoted loss of 0.6 kWh/day (not so different from my losses), the smaller overall size (for similar capacity) and the easy of installation. The price of a single unit is probably not so different to fitting a simple system. Getting two units in i.e. 10 kWh will cost more, but not double, but you will have double the thermal losses i.e. 1.2 kWh/day. But then you can run a shower or two without additional pumps and wiring. The main message, in my mind (which is a strange and convoluted place) is to thermally isolate any heat store from the rest of the house if you think it is going to cause a problem.

All I can really comment on is my own system. I have a 200lt cylinder that is heated on E7. My incoming mains temperature is between 4° and 23°C (spreadsheet needs updating), the mean temperature is 11°C, the cylinder is heated to 50°C. The standing losses are now below 1 kWh/day. I use about 120 lt of hot water a day, but it is at 38°C once in the bath. So that is somewhere around 4.5 kWh/day. This currently costs me 36p/day. Delivery is done though a cheap (£100) twin impeller pump and a very cheap non thermostatically controlled mixer tap (never had small kids in the house, but had a disabled lodger who coped with it fine). The shower delivers 11 lt/min and the bath gets 20 lt/min I really can't complain about the set up at all. In the past there where problems with high losses and a lodger that thought the time to get out the shower was when the water ran cold). Occasionally I have had 4 people in the house, so just up the storage temperature by 15°, which stores another 3.5 kWh. This has always given enough hot water. When I am feeling really tight (and environmentally guilty), I just take short showers (30 lt) and get my usage down to around a kWh/day, plus the 1 kWh/day losses. When the time comes to change the cylinder, and it will come as it is nearly 30 years old now (I live in a very soft water area), I will possibly go for a smaller cylinder and secondary insulate it even better. An instantaneous water heater would reduce the losses (but no gas so would have to be electric) as would a Sunamp (but not to zero). I have thought that an ASHP may reduce the outgoings, as a 6 kWp one could easily recharge a cylinder in 4 hours, but is not really financially worth it. I would be better off fitting a couple of kWp of PV.

PD It is a bit of both from my understanding. You can't have more than a 1% volt drop between the meter (PV) and the CU (but really the main meter, which s usually close). This is more the case for ground mounted systems, or you could get the scenario where the modules, inverter and generation meter are several hundred yards from the load. The generation meter would count every joule being generated, but there could be large losses on the way to the load. It is true that voltage between the systems has to be within limits as well for reliability and safety.

You have to remember that if you intend to claim FiTs (or something in the future), there is a 1% voltage drop allowance (not the usual 5%). This is on the AC (it is to stop the meter showing higher readings than is reaching the CU). As for DC or AC cabling, that all depends on which inverter(s) you go for. If you go for micro-inverters, then you need to think about AC cabling (4mm), if DC to one inverter (somewhere cold), then just conduit for the DC cabling from the roof. It is not unusual to route this outside the building. Shame that you have been refused PP for PV. You could have gone roof integrated , saved some money and made a better looking install.

Don't leave. I am interested in this as to a certain extend I agree that the recommended air changes are low. What do you think we should be aiming for?

A combination of nuclear, large and small scale hydro, solar, wind and tidal, plus some geothermal. Just needs to be deliverable at 3p/kWh (wholesale price). That is the real challenge. In last weeks comic there was a bit about reforming natural gas into hydrogen, but leaving carbon behind, rather than CO2. That looks a promising idea, but does rely on natural gas. So let us frack away, it is going to happen anyway (for those that don't know, my BSc is in Environmental Science, specifically renewables, but I am a pragmatic person).

Abundant, reliable, flexiable and very cheap, non polluting energy sources is one way.

@Ferdinand I read this a year ago when we last discussed this (can't remember if it was on eBuild or GBF). http://www.emptyhomes.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/Empty-homes-in-England.pdf Just knowing about housing though is only part of the story. It has to be related to the age distribution in an area. But with around 600,000 (200,000 long term), we can easily house 1.2 to 1.8 million people (2 or 3 people per house). I wish I had more time to look at it again as it is an interesting economic area that needs a lot of unpicking.