marshian

I’m not sure on the crop yield - As a rule rabbit food goes on Mrs Alien’s plate and rarely mine

Mrs Alien used the wrong water tank on her lettuces - it had the washing machine "wash" water in it...................... Apparently soaking the leaves in a weak citric acid solution gets rid of the taste of persil (I'm not so sure.............)

"Smart" water meter - gives me hourly total usage so not difficult to pin down a very accurate usage for anything at all - just make sure what ever you want to measure is done in the hour and try not to use other things during that hour note down the activity and the hour when it happened and a day later you can see exactly what the water usage is You can fit an aerator or flow restrictor above the shower head and reduce the water consumption without really impacting the feel of the shower We have large (ish) rainfall style shower heads so normally rubbish with a gravity feed hence booster pump on H & C supply but they are still less than 8 l/min - guessing cos never actually measured that.......

Most of a normal summer we don’t run out of water for the garden (plants, fruit trees and veg patch) with 1100 litres of rainwater storage This summer has been very dry so washing machine water, washing up water and bath water harvesting has been in full swing washing machine each cycle is 6 litres from the wash cycle and 24 litres from the rinse cycles (wash water for shrubs and rinse water for veg) - we do 5 wash loads a week so a reasonable qty. washing up water goes on the cherry tree and surrounding shrubs Mrs BC likes a bath once a week and thats normally 80 litres and that gets mixed with Wash cycle water. showers are normally 30 litres each so 120 litres a day max - I’ve never bothered to try and harvest that water we aren’t harvesting as such just minimising mains water usage on the garden which normally is none I think I’ll add a mini (500 litre IBC) as that could go behind the shed and act as a buffer for dry periods

I have a thermostatic mixer shower running on hot and cold gravity feed (boosted by a pump) It's plumbed the wrong way round "Hot goes to cold" and "cold goes to hot" the result is to get a cooler shower you turn the temp knob clockwise and to get a hotter shower anti-clockwise - I will one day re-plumb it but meantime it's just me and Mrs Alien that use it and we rarely adjust the temp anyway - it works fine (It annoys me that I got it wrong a lot mind)

It may well do that - it may also decrease the pump speed if the gate valve is fully open It's why a little experimentation is useful Last year our average summer daily HW needs required 1 x 4.5 kWh per day - we didn't run out of HW between reheats every 24 hrs This year is 1 x 3.25 kWh per day - we don't run out of HW this year either Parameters I've adjusted are pump speed, gate valve restriction and HW tankstat temp setpoint I need a better hobby

I think it's a bit more nuanced and people give advice based on their own set up (I'm just as guilty of that which is why I try to ref my current set up when responding) If we look at the process and what we are trying to do when batch heating water there is some sound reasons for controlling flow rate via a gate valve and or pump speed Slower the pump speed the gate needs to be more open - speed the pump up and you'll need to close the gate valve more We want the HW supplied by the boiler to spend as long as possible in contact with the cooler water in the tank to allow as much heat transfer as possible We want the water to flow in at the top of the coil and out at the bottom so at every point in the coil the HW from the boiler is able to transfer heat because the water outside the coil and in the tank is cooler as you go down the tank Pump speed can have an effect - if you have a boiler that doesn't control the speed of the pump then you need to establish the lowest pump speed possible to maximise the time in the coil However - there is absolutely no point screwing the flow down to a point where the flow rate in the circuit is insufficient for the boiler resulting in repeated short cycling as this a massive waste of gas. So the target is to heat the water in the tank in preferably one burn so initial start up losses are minimised.

PS mine is now set up on X plan (DHWP) so can’t do both at sane time but the gate valve still is in use just slowing the flow down to keep the boiler from throwing full power at the re-heat (viessman 16kW boiler with 4kW min output - vented 115 litre HW tank with stupid 0.3 m coil - although I have new unvented 180 litre tank to fit with 2.7m2 coil that will initially be set up as vented)

it would probably be worth a little experiment to optimise the gate valve setting ready for winter mine is set to 1 3/4 turns out from fully closed in all year round. Easy to find the optimum - fire up on HW only let the boiler stabilise at target flow temp then slowly shut the gate valve 1/8 of a turn at a time until the boiler trips out due to temp rising above set point (too little flow) back out again 1/4 turn and thats your setting for summer and winter (open enough for HW heating in summer to keep boiler happy and closed enough that in winter when running both CH and HW together for a period of tome that the route thro the coil isn’t stealing all the flow and starving the CH circuit

I thought S Plan was either HW or CH but I guess it can be configured to do both CH and HW at same time in which case yes running both together over a longer period would work (I used to have Y plan set up and did similar but I did have a gate valve on the HW coil return to stop the HW tank stealing all the flow

Your 30 yr old HW water tank will have a very small coil (0.3 m) designed for a non condensing boiler set up running much higher flow temps. Your Boiler has a min output of 7 kWh - it can't go below that so instead if the Tank stat is still calling for heat the hysterisis of the boiler means it will have to see a temperature lower than the set point in order to fire again and with little of no heat transfer that could take some time. Half way thro the HW heating cycle (when the boiler is coasting after a burn) run a hot tap for 5 mins - this should introduce enough cold water into the tank to drop the return temp and the boiler should fire again much sooner - this will tell you that the coil in the tank is way too small for the boiler min KW If you want a quick fix turn the flow temp up to max for HW and cut the time down - do the water heating in one burn and rely on the tankstat to say satisfied to end the HW reheat cycle PS if you are running low flow temps to improve efficiency you really are wasting your time - You aren't going to get much condensing efficiency doing HW recharge with a tiny coil in a 30 year old tank anyway so you might as well hit it hard and just get it done

Sorry but that's the wrong order Try to remove the immersion heater with the tank still full first (Obviously don't remove it but crack off the joint) then once it's cracked you can drain down knowing that the immersion has been loosened If you try to remove an immersion heater that's been in a copper tank for a while with the tank drained down - you will need a new tank anyway as the soft copper will ruck up around the immersion boss and then fracture

Any brand recommendations that are current - some of the 50 for £20 Amazon ones have shocking reviews and there is a proliferation of brands on Amazon - probably all made in same place but to different stds

That is a lovely tip and one I would never have thought of - Thanks for sharing New Kitchen being delivered in Oct so very useful and timely

I'm so disappointed he didn't buy one of these for each room I loved the advertised claims, then the test and finally the deconstruction of the unit The old adage is "if it looks too good to be true then it probably is" has never been more apt