DamonHD

I ran across this today, but maybe I'm missing something: Ecodan R744 QUHZ-W40VA Monobloc Air Source Heat Pump https://les.mitsubishielectric.co.uk/products/heating/domestic/outdoor/ecodan-quhz-monobloc-air-source-heat-pump Rgds Damon

I was in the one of the towers there for a short while in 1997, possibly one being pointed at! (Asia Pacifc Tower?) The really sick-making thing was the chaps walking straight out on the shiny steel spikes (HSBC building) without even a safety harness I think. Rgds Damon

That's not quite how that bit of the database works! We separately have deeemed score / lifetime saving computations happening for ECO3... Rgds Damon

No CU or equivalent is likely to be able to fix a brown-out or a horribly messed-up waveform, and both can damage equipment as thoroughly as a 'surge' (depending on your definitions). Rgds Damon

It seems sensible to switch off and/or unplug when you *know* there's going to be a disruption, since things are going to at the very least be messy on the way off and on, especially if everything that has pent up demand (eg fridges) tries to ramp up as the first sniff of power appears. (Good, modern gadgets in some cases delay drawing significant power until the suppy seems stable, but lots won't.) Rgds Damon

No UFH, just rads, here in rainy Kingston (London), and I don't expect to put the heating on for another month. Though we have a glitch with one of our MHRV fans which may bring that forward. Room temps ~18C-20C, but auto-setback in vacant rooms by several degrees c/o <<my pet product*>> Rgds Damon *Good news on that front: the product that shall not be named went in the SAP database 30th Sep! B^>

Two near identical houses walking distance from here, have had identical ASHPs put in. One had the external unit mounted directly on the exterior wall. The other insisted on it being some way down the garden. Latter house gets about half the CoP of the former... Rgds Damon

We had no trouble getting a replacement washing machine within a few working days from starting, though in the end the one we got was close enough rather than the top choice because of what was in stock with our preferred vendor. I expect that looming Brexit logistics may be messing with warehouse space etc already, and indeed I hope our wobbling dishwasher doesn't conk out until well past 1st Jan so that some supply chain kinks have been sorted out. I am still tempted to buy early to avoid that risk... Rgds Damon

Are you trying to clean the machine or have it condemed? Rgds Damon

It also isn't the tariffs (alone) that kill you unless the vast majority of your economy is (often low-value) physical goods, which the UK's isn't. Rgds Damon

It should be a relatively cheap (and non-fake) offset to get as far towards zero or negative at home on energy as you can. You can always add storage later, but for now the GB grid doesn't have enough solar, so you're fully green without IMHO. Rgds Damon

My builders didn't like Fermacell much, espacially in combination with my favourite aerogel: http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-Spacetherm-aerogel-thermal-insulation.html#Spacetherm-F Rgds Damon

A plain current clamp meter whoever fancy and expensive (a) cannot tell the direction of flow and (b) compensate for voltage changes and (c) entirely compensate for non-resistive loads. A deliberate side-effect of my Enphase AC Battery install is pretty good metering that deals with all of that. Not in perfect agreement with supply meters for example, but close. http://www.earth.org.uk/Enphase-AC-Battery-REVIEW.html Rgds Damon

Yes, agreed. (Or if we have patchy sunshine so I want to be more confident that I can get more of the load covered by our PV.) Rgds Damon

FWIW on mine the 30m quick wash uses almost exactly the same energy as the ECO wash (which is an hour of wash and rinse, then two hours slowly drying!) at 0.8kWh: http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-Zanussi-ZDS2010-freestanding-slimline-dishwasher-REVIEW.html#performance Other washes use double that energy. Damon PS. I do run the rinse to keep food from sticking and things from getting smelly while waiting for the machine to fill up. That uses tiny amounts of energy, maybe 1/20th that of a wash, but it does use 5l of water.

With the kids at home on lockdown we went up from about 5kWh/d to about 6kWh/d. When the younger one was back 2d/w consumption dropped back a bit. In our case it was TV/XBox plus some extra gas for baking (~1kWh/d)... The baking fad has faded a bit too. Rgds Damon

Mainly making sure that things are really off when we are not using them (eg the microwave, which otherwise used 5W for the clock we never set, over time possibly more than the energy we used cooking in it). And very carefully checking the specs for replacement appliances as we bought them. The range of consumptions for devices doing nominally the same thing is remarkable, and shops have been poor about pointing out anything other than the shiny shiny. Trip up on that and you are wasting energy for the device's entire life. That one smart plug for the the TV, DVD, Xbox makes a difference I think, which would otherwise push up our overnight use by ~50%. I also cut down power for my servers sufficiently (from ~640W to ~2W) that the whole lot runs off-grid on a separate system. The first bit (replacing a rack of servers with a Raspberry Pi) is the important part. The off-grid system is more-or-less showing off having done that. Nothing very clever. Rgds Damon

@Christine Walker If you only heat/boil what you need for your cup of coffee that takes about 30Wh, or about 30 of those to hit 1kWh. (Note that from an environmental point of view, if you put milk in your coffee that swamps all the other carbon usage.) Just to annoy you all, our gross electricity use (which includes cooking, but not heating or hot water, and pretends that we have no PV) was 1992kWh last year. http://www.earth.org.uk/saving-electricity-2019.html Our overnight load is basically just the fridge/freezer so averaging ~40W. We have the TV and DVD and cable box off overnight (unless specifically recording anything) because even all in standby it uses the equivalent of the boiled water for half a cup of coffee every hour. (We did also buy a reasonable sized LED TV and I checked the power consumption of everything that we considered before buying - I reckon that we saved 50% of lifetime energy use.) The cable box is perfectly happy to be completely turned off overnight as long as we put it in standby first. If we didn't, we'd be creeping up to another pointless half a-fridge-fridge freeze of power overnight and whenever no one is watching. http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-LIME-energy-saving-plug-REVIEW.html Cutting back on the 'vampire' loads can make a big difference. None of the manufacturers care about burdening you with an extra cost for the lifetime of their gadget, but you should! Rgds Damon

Everything. http://www.earth.org.uk/Enphase-AC-Battery-REVIEW.html#Review Rgds Damon

I am in a house which though as old as me happens to be almost the exact mean new-build size in the UK I think, 76m^2, and I think it is a good efficient size for me and the other 3 members of my family. I do NOT think that we should be building bigger. For a constant number of people and reasonable insulation and ventilation, energy use and carbon emissions and other resource use will go up with with house size for no inherent benefit, from tiny house though my size house, upwards. Rgds Damon

1.2kWh of my AC-coupled battery storage cost close to £3k including all work, for which I'd expect to get 7kWh of Sunamp heat storage. Rgds Damon

Can't speak for SAP. Both mine are Vent-Axia, one in the bathroom (HR25 with humdistat) and Lo-Carbon Tempra in kitchen: http://www.earth.org.uk/MHRV-Vent-Axia-Lo-Carbon-Tempra-P-REVIEW.html It's quite common I think to put them in the wetter/smellier rooms. Rgds Damon

Single-room MHRV such as I have in two rooms? Rgds Damon

Having insulated my house reasonably well with aerogel, I think that instantaneous space heat demand is no more than about 3kW under normal circs. So I could replace the combi for the rad circuit with a Willis heater, thus the question in another thread. By the time you look at the gas standing charge, capex for new emitters of any sort, grid declining intensity, etc, and the fact that this house will probably be pulled down in five years, 'instant' heating beats storage from a money ("total cost of ownership") and carbon pov, I suspect. Rgds Damon

Thanks, I'll look into those! Damon