DamonHD

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

Our triple glazing ( http://www.earth.org.uk/triple-glazing-3G.html ) is a bit darker than double, but I don't think for us that it's a major issue. The make up of the triple glazed units is as follows: External pane of 4mm Clear Float/12mm Argon gas-filled cavity/4mm Planitherm Total+ Clear Toughened Safety Glass/12mm Argon gas-filled cavity/4mm Planitherm Total+ clear inner pane. Rgds Damon

Hi, Have any of you played with lamps such as: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Hama-00176548-4-5-GU10-LED-Multi-White/dp/B07FR9YBZQ/ that I could control from my off-grid Raspberry Pi vi my network/WiFi (or even the RPi’s own WiFi or Bluetooth at a pinch) without an expensive hub or complicated protocol? (In case it helps, I *do* have a recent SmartThings hub sitting unused at the moment.) My aim is to provide a ‘mood’ lamp driven by how much power we are pulling from the grid, that gets more fierce as demand gets higher especially at peak time, but that is only on when that lighting circuit is on. I'd like to try one first, and if it works probably add a second one... Note that I already have grid import/export and grid intensity available in real-time (ish) on my Raspberry Pi... Being relatively efficient (60lm+ per W, and no huge background draw) would also be good! Rgds Damon

Various of you are saying that the inverter size matters rather than panels, but I don't believe that was the case at least when I did mine. The DNO/G83 and MCS cert seemed to be all about the nominal panel capacity IIRC. Now in my case, because I was an early bird, and I think also because my array is split east-west and simply cannot all run at 100% all the time, the DNO let me put up ~5.2kWp on ~4.5kWp of inverters on my single-phase connection. Rgds Damon

Another very basic question or two since no one has recoiled in horror so far! 1) "External immersion heaters are designed to directly heat domestic hot water (DHW) in a vented system." My rad circuit is not vented so far as I understand it, but there is an expension vessel there and an emergency pressure relief value, so I am assuming that this would be OK. But please say if not. 2) "Because the Willis Immersion is such a rapid water heater, it is not recommended for use in hard water areas." Hardness is not going to be an issue as new mains water is not getting in as a source of calcium except for top-ups. But are there other corrosion or similar issues that I should think about? Rgds Damon

Background/vampire continuous load of 250W would be high IMHO. Get that down to more like 40W to cover your fridge/freezer and save > £200/y straight off! Rgds Damon

Interesting! But when we want space heat we just don't have any PV to divert! This is going to be almost entirely sucking in grid electricity. (I *will* divert any excess PV to DHW, but given mid-winter total generation is ~1.5kWh/d of which only a tiny amount is exported anyway given an a/c coupled battery...) Rgds Damon

Completely annoying that I've not been able to progress this, but it occurs to me that I might double down and be able for little extra money and effort to divert some space heat demand to electricity when intensity is low: http://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-solar-DHW-for-16WW-UniQ-and-PV-diversion.html#returnWillis Tell me why this won't work, or isn't a good idea (other than exergy)? Rgds Damon

Still using a lot of AVR (328P) and RPi (2/3/4) over this way. I'm not sure that I'd consider RS485 'old'; it continues to do a particular job, reliably. I'm hoping to buy a new piece of kit post-lockdown with an RS485 interface, for example. Rgds Damon