Nick Thomas

> Immediately following their appointment, the joint administrators sold the business and assets of the company to two parties, as part of an interconnected transaction: Does sound like a stitch-up.

They're offering one as a spot prize in today's saving session - "or £4000 cash", which might be a hint as to the price they want them to go for. I very vaguely recall them saying they were going to use CO2 as the refrigerant but can't remember where from.

We're not super-rural here but we've already had at least six power cuts this year. None of them long, but it's not exactly inspiring confidence. Fortunately, I already have the battery and EPS-touting inverter; just need to add some wiring to make it useful throughout the house.

Heh. I'm currently reading about earthship-style "earth tubes" that apparently provide passive hx ventilation in cold climates A battery + MVHR is probably more pragmatic

Just as an aside, it's weird to call them passive houses when they require active ventilation. I'm sure it's not a novel observation.

Eden project are at ~5km, bless 'em: https://www.edengeothermal.com/the-project/drilling-and-operations/ That's "proper geothermal" though, a ground-source heat pump can do alright with a ~50-200M vertical well, depending on where you are and whether you go open or closed loop. https://www.bgs.ac.uk/geology-projects/geothermal-energy/ has a brief overview of different technologies and a couple of shiny maps.

This (kind of - no idea of brand) stuff worked fine when we took down and rebuilt a concrete block wall, leaving the windows in place: https://www.proguardproducts.co.uk/proguard-window-protection-film-blue.html . Dunno how it compares to spray-on.

Welp, the quarry never got back to me, so I've ordered the three bulk bags of slate and a geotextile membrane big enough to do two layers without any seams. Hopefully the front garden will be sorted Wednesday.

Everything is political, and different classes have different class interests, so it's not too surprising that this happens. Not exactly a new phenomenon.

The SEG rates are definitely taking the mickey, but 15p/kWh from octopus is ~50% of the retail price just now, which is in the general range of reasonable. I've started thinking of the grid as a low-efficiency battery as a result. Might look a bit different from April, I guess.

The grauniad must be watching this thread TBH. Today's contribution: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/09/arsenic-london-air-burning-waste-wood

That aged well https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/feb/08/wood-burners-in-effect-banned-new-refurbished-homes-london Not seeing the primary source offhand, anyone got a link?

Oh, it comes to earth alright. Pruned an apple tree this winter and burned the (still green) wood that was too girthy for the composting bin in the chiminea. Ridiculous amounts of smoke, but of course, garden fires aren't controlled like wood stoves are. The house up in Shetland has a wood-burning stove that I'm giving serious thought to removing. Hard to say at this point whether it'd increase or decrease the sale price to do so.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2022-11/FINAL Installer guidance V2_0.pdf 5.20 tells us that quotes should be for: > the total quote amount, including any VAT, before the grant is deducted The installers I talked to all did that, and also used the before-grant amount throughout the sales process. Didn't have any try to pull a fast one.

The way it works behind the scenes is that a "voucher" is generated prior to the install, and redeemed once the install is completed - as long as it's completed to standard. The voucher has a limited valiidity period and must be redeemed within that. https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/sites/default/files/2022-11/FINAL Installer guidance V2_0.pdf has the full deets - section 5 for vouchers. Self-builds don't need to submit an EPC, per figure 3. Companies vary on whether they want the full amount upfront or not, and it seems to vary based on circumstances with a single company as well. At one, I was asked to pay upfront and get the 5K back as a refund; a friend who got a quote from the same company was assured he'd only pay the net amount. The main difference between the two was that I was paying outright and he was looking at their finance. Definitely cheaper to buy and fit one yourself, but the degree of rip-off varies considerably among MCS installers. I had quotes (before taking BUS into account) ranging from 12K to 21K (including full install, new UVC, and replacing 4? radiators), bless 'em. Permitted development requires MCS install, but I suppose that's not really an issue if you're self-building.

4:30-6 tomorrow any good for you? I tend to be running down the battery from any stored solar at these kinds of times, which surely impacts the baseline. Still reasonably healthy though.

I had a free-standing one - a bit smaller - many years ago. Absolutely rubbish, very little heat, almost invisible flames ^^. https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0667/5357/files/modernblaze.com-How_to_Install_a_Recessed_Ethanol_Fireplace_1.pdf?15911223302447120822 (different product, same idea) suggests cement board or something else fireproof. I'd suggest you'd get better results from one of those fake-flame fan heaters, though.

Yeah, I could've exported today, but didn't bother. Gridwatch didn't register any kind of coal spike, so mission accomplished I suppose.

Apparently there'll be another session tomorrow, Monday 23rd, 5-6pm, but octopus haven't told me about it by email yet. I could still opt in via the control panel though. > Earn 2700 OctoPoints - worth £3.37 - for every unit of power you cut down That's gone up. They've been a lot less frequent than I imagined, so as a percentage of total energy costs it's a drop in the ocean... but a significant saving on the days they *do* happen. > So far you've earned 11400 OctoPoints (or £14.25) over 5 Saving Sessions (Not including the last session, or the 12.5p/session bonus for maintaining a streak)

Huh, I was thinking about one of those for my own bathroom. > Cycle I: The polluted warm air is extracted from the room and while passing the ceramic energy regenerator, it transfers the heat and moisture to it. In 70 seconds, as the energy regenerator gets warmed, the ventilator automatically switches to the supply mode. > Cycle 2: The fresh, but cold outdoor air flows through the heat regenerator and absorbs the accumulated moisture and heat so that the supply air flow has the room temperature. In 70 seconds, when the energy regenerator gets cold, the ventilator switches to the air extract mode. The cycle starts from the beginning. The changeover between the supply and extract modes takes place each 70 seconds Suddenly reads like a bad idea 😅

They left the controller fixed to the UVC in the airing cupboard, so it thought it was always 30°C indoors. Made a difference to the weather compensation! I moved it so it's on the upstairs landing now, and I guess it's fine, but it's not what I had in mind, which is https://github.com/aerona-chofu-ashp/modbus . Possible, but a bit too skunkworks for me - i'd rather Grant/Chofu sold a little dongle that I could talk to rather than having to fiddle, and some heat pump manufacturers do.

Just following this up - I got a quote off them today. They do the grinding and install the pipes quite happily, but you have to get someone else to pour a 3-10mm screed on top for most finished flooring types, and of course, that has to dry before the UFH can be used. To avoid that: > NB: Tiles, Natural Stone and bonded wooden floors can be applied directly on top of the JK® system without any levelling or smoothing compounds. A suitable flexible, UFH suitable, adhesive need to be used in all cases. but I was never going to do any of those. Pricing detail: So nearly £80/sqm (inc VAT) for everything except the covering screed and a bit of electrical work. Grinding the grooves in a sand/cement base is ~£33/sqm (+VAT) at my scale; doing it in concrete or tile adds ~£12.50/sqm to that. The kitchen is (badly) tiled so the idea that they could put the grooves straight into what's there, rather than me having to take it all up, is attractive. All in, probably too much for me, and more disruptive than I was hoping ^^ - but maybe useful information for someone else. I was wondering how difficult it would be to DIY with a wall (floor!) chaser; suspect the answer is "too difficult".

I have one of these, the aerona3 6kW using R32. Installed by a not-so-competent installer, emitters are radiators and there's a buffer tank. They offered to turn weather compensation off but I politely declined that ^^. Not sure what to tell you, it does the thing and isn't overly expensive to run. I'd prefer something with easy modbus integration for local control, but it's not a huge quibble.

Hah, yes, I forgot 9-9:30am, the heat pump was running on full for the whole time. Was still worth turning it off for the second half, though. even if it saves 1kWh relative to the baseline that pays for the heating we used overnight 🤷‍♂️.

You can charge from AC with your existing 3600ACS inverter, but making it happen in sync with the output from your microinverters would be challenging. Not impossible, but... awkward, for sure. What's best for any given installer may or may not be best for you and your situation. If you've got someone who only does microinverter installs, they're probably not going to give you an honest assessment of whether you'd benefit from them or not. Someone who is happy to design+fit either depending on site conditions is more likely to arrive at the optimal setup. The 3600 Hybrid has DC inputs for two strings, so one option is to put the "awkward" panels (assuming there's enough of them and they're fairly similar in awkwardness) on string A and all the good panels on string B. Or you can just not use the awkward spaces and, as @Dillsue suggests, have the west face as string A and the south face as string B.