Crofter

PassivHaus is all about energy/m², rather than total energy. Which I think is wrong and drives up house sizes. We don't measure cars in mpg per ton of vehicle. Also, it's very difficult to meet PH standard in a small build because the volume: surface area ratio favours larger buildings. Another thing counting against a PH Shepherd's Hut is the exposed floor. You've got a very large surface area and a small volume inside it. I came up against all of this on my own build, which is a 5*10m house on legs.

Ok a genuine charger is only £8 at ITS, no need to risk a fake one!

6Ah fake battery, one of the better known ones but the name escapes me just now. I always struggled a bit to press the clips on the sides hard enough when attaching it to the charger or a tool. One day I was putting it in the charger and pressed really firmly on the side clips. There was a loud 'click' like something breaking. A few moments later smoke started pouring out of the battery. I whipped it back out of the charger but it carried on smoking. I could see that the smoke was coming from behind one of the clips, and when I gave it a poke the plastic clip fell away, followed by a stainless steel spring. The smoking stopped, so I let the battery cool down so that I could take a closer look. It turned out that the steel spring was only isolated from the ends of the cells by a thin (1-2mm) layer of foam. I had pressed hard enough that the metal had cut through the foam and created a dead short. To my mind that's a blatant design defect. If I'd walked away and left it on the charger, it could have been very bad. I only buy genuine batteries now.

So giving this a bit more thought, I reckon I need: - a light/compact drill driver - an impact driver - a recip saw - a medium sized battery I'm very tempted to get a knock off charger to save some money. Do the genuine batteries have some sort of protection built in that would prevent damage from a faulty charger? I already own a genuine charger which is located elsewhere, so I just need a fake one to get me through a couple of jobs. Likewise with batteries, no point getting one I can't take with me on the plane, so 3Ah will probably do. I don't like fake batteries though, I had a right fright with a Ryobi pattern one a few years ago.

I'm already locked in to the Makita system, although I do have a corded SDS cheap thing as well for those odd occasions when I need it. I agree on the different sized batteries- sometimes you just want a little 1Ah for tiny little jobs where you want to keep the tool as light as possible, e.g. working overhead. And other times you want a 6Ah for the grinder. Horses for courses!

Thanks I think my original ones may have been from FFX, it rings a bell.

My Makita collection started with a brushless LXT drill+driver pair about twelve years ago. They were absolutely brilliant and I built an entire house with them and much more besides. Sadly the impact driver vanished one day (still a mystery). And now the drill is getting very wobbly, and is located a few thousand miles away from where I need it. So I'm going to treat myself to a new pair. I don't need hammer action. I can't remember the exact model numbers of what I've got but I know they were both brushless and 18v LXT. I'll need a set with a charger as the original one is still with the drill, and I'll need a battery. It might make sense to put this together from separate items. Any tips on where to start looking?

@Gus Potter none of what you have written explains how the UK can become self sufficient in oil and gas, which is the point of this thread.

Why do you think this is a given? It's easily established that rooftop PV can have a payback time of 5yrs or less, and a lifespan of 25yrs or more. These systems are being bought by private individuals out of their own pocket in order to enjoy lower bills. Nobody would be doing this if it didn't make economic sense. I don't understand why switching to systems that produce essentially free energy, after installation costs are paid off, is a bad thing. And yes it's going to be necessary to run gas power stations to fill the gaps, but is there something fundamentally different about the cost of burning gas intermittently vs burning it as the primary means of generating electricity?

I'd presume that in 50yrs time our oil and gas would be worth more than it is now. Nice little nest egg to be sitting on whilst everybody else burns their reserves.

My air to air system doesn't look like that. There's a normal outdoor unit like any other ASHP. Then under the floor there's the indoor unit, completely out of sight. Insulated 200mm ducts go from this too each room (smaller rooms split down to 150mm). The warm air comes out of wall grilles. One in the kitchen plinth, the others are just above skirting level. Each grille has adjustable vanes and a damper to restrict the flow. I've throttled down the kitchen one a little but otherwise haven't touched these. The house is 93m², the ASHP is 10kw, which I thought might be slightly oversized but it's what the installer suggested. In use, we tend to set it to anywhere between 18-20⁰C. The thermostat is in the hallway in the middle of the house. You can close doors on individual rooms if you want them hotter. So usually we leave bedroom doors open and that keeps those rooms comfortably cool, while closing the living room door lets the temperature go up to a degree or two more in the. We could adjust the dampers to achieve the same thing but opening and closing doors is easier! We do light the woodburner in the evenings so when I say we're spending £1-£2 a day, it's not quite the whole story. I reckon we maybe save £1 a day lighting the stove. Which does make me question the wisdom of spending so much time and effort chopping logs 😂 Edit to add: total installed cost was about £4200 including every little jubilee clip and clamp. Most of that was the supply and fit of the indoor and outdoor units. I ran all the ducting myself. A simple but time consuming job that the installer wasn't interested in taking on himself. I likely saved a lot of money by doing that myself. And just to reiterate, zero grant funding towards any of this.

What's wrong with your house? I've been pretty amazed by my heat pump. House is a very badly insulated 1970s bungalow, on an exposed hillside in the north of Scotland. It used to have storage heaters that were costing hundreds a month to run. I installed an air to air system and now I rarely spend more than £2 a day. Average daily usage this winter has been around 4-6kwh. It cost £4k to install so the payback times is likely to be easily under 5yrs, for a system that is better to live with in every conceivable way. Next step will be to spend about £600 installing PV and a diverter, and that should slash my DHW costs over the summer. I'm estimating a payback time of 2-3yrs on that.

So why isn't the industry making this case? The figures were seen in this thread area from the industry, and are likely on the optimistic side.

I'll bow to your superior knowledge on this, I was just going from what I could find as a lay person when googling the question. Numbers vary a bit but I'm getting estimates from 450-670m barrels between Rosebank and Cambo. So that's less than a decade at the consumption figure you've given above.

Analysis without numbers is merely opinion. The West of Shetland oil and gas won't keep the lights on for very long. Less than a decade if we extract everything. And some of this is likely to be uneconomic due to conditions.