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Sometimes, though I doubt this counts. There are plenty of places that do things like this and have done for decades. See stories about them from time to time. Not necessarily in this country though. An installer wanting a simple life can think of a myriad of reasons not to do something I'm sure. Takes a client/specifier who wants an holistic approach and is will to push for it/pay a premium for it to get there. In a situation where there was scope to experiment with low risk/cost, maybe this farm example is a good one, you could do the following. Get a couple of scrapped but good car radiators. Connect them via pipe + circulating pump. Put one in front of the warm exhaust and the other in front of the cold intake and measure the energy of both systems. Assuming the exhaust is 20+C warmer than ambient expect that would lead to a decent efficiency gain. Likely cost of a couple of hundred quid and some time. If it works, wire the pump to only run when there is heat demand.

This seems like such an easy win, at least if the things are relatively close in the first place.

Could be an interesting project to use that. Though guess regulations make doing anything there quite difficult.

Agree with this. Jim mentioned his interest in 10gb ethernet and I took that as tech interested. That in itself will probably be ok with cat 6 in most cases but for the little uplift 6a buys you more room for suboptimal install/placement. There is already a 25GBase-T standard. Not very available yet but will be in the life of the building. 10 gigabit is already quite slow compared to modern storage* so if you do tech stuff in general or specifically do stuff related to video (wannabe youtuber, etc) then I can see you wanting to upgrade to 25g when it's available to consumers. *1GB/sec. SSDs can usually do 5GB/s now, latest Macbook they are claiming upto 14GB/s Cat 6 is fine for in a home for what is available now. But again, what you put in your walls you hope will last for decades so spending a little more now makes sense to me. TBC Cat7 is a complete waste of money and bigger number is not better here.

When this is only a bit more expensive than Cat6 and comes with LSZH and outdoor rating I'd go for this. It's about 15p per metre more than standard Cat6 (from the same shop).

£43 seems extremely cheap. Here's some options for comparison: https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/store/cat6a-network-cable/cat6a-cable-reel-box/ I'd recommend using Cat6a rather than Cat6. Difference won't matter in most cases but if you want to run 10g or HDBase-T (HDMI over ethernet) then it might make the difference on longer/noisier runs and the price isn't hugely different. I think cat6 will work fine for rs485 over the distances involved in a house.

Quick response heating was what I took as the brief. If you have a 20kw heatloss then keeping the whole place warm for long periods of time is going to burn thousands of euros a year no matter how you heat the place. If you are willing to spend that sort of money, better to spend some of it reducing the heat loss. With a property with 20kw heat loss your only real economical heat option is to heat the rooms you are in and not the rest. Not the most comfortable way to do it but plenty do. That needs fast response. Either high temp radiators or some form of air driven heating. I took this as a do minimum to the property so we can exist for 5 years, 10 pushing it. Saving money for the knockdown/rebuild. On an horizon over 5 years again IMO the balance lies in reducing the heat loss. 20kw really is an awful lot unless this place is a mansion and if it's not a mansion then there must be a number of quite quick/easy fixes to bring the loss down.

If the rest of the house is generally cold then a heatpump cylinder outputting cold air won't be a great help. Much better option if you have a well insulated house that has more issues with cooling than heating.

Heatpumps can meet any demand you choose as long as you buy big enough. https://www.aircondirect.co.uk/p/2059835/lg-dualcool-pro-a-12000-btu-smart-wall-mounted-split-air-conditioner-with-heat-pump Picked the above at random, it outputs >3.5KW much more than a fan heater while consuming >3x less for equivalent output. They have one double the size for less then double the price. Is this a really big property? Really leaky? What's the cause of such high heat loss? If it doesn't have loft insulation do that before anything else. AC is very quick and easy to install as long as you don't might the outdoor units spread about (or have planning issues related to that). Mutlisplit a bit more so but still quicker and less disruptive than redoing central heating (pipes tend to run externally) Never really investigated the cost of an oil system from scratch. I thought getting a tank installed generally involved planning amoung other things so assumed it's not a particularly cheap option. If it works out the cheapest option and the environmental cost is not a concern then go for it. AC heatpumps I would guess will be fairly competitive on price once you consider redoing all the plumbing, cost of new radiators, etc.

Thinking further and depending on their financial situation and attitude, if this does come in significantly cheaper than the other options (over 5+ years) then have the possibility of taking the difference and using that to build a ground mount solar array (assume farmhouse comes with some land). Position it such that it can stay after they build the new house. Summer generation will help offset some bills and it's a longer term investment that putting it directly into the property. Government support might also be available.

To clarify, install AC/multisplit in the main rooms. Use electric radiators/fan heaters in smaller or occasionally used rooms. Likely get this installed cheaper than the alternatives unless you can get a grant for wet heatpump setup. Scrap exisiting CH plumbing. DHW just use direct tank with immersion, or as they have 3 phase, maybe 3 phase high power electric boiler/shower (less standing losses but if using time of use billing maybe higher bills).

Such a high heatloss because it's a leaky place? Left field option, air to air heatpumps (ie AC). Not intending to warm the structure but the air? May be the cheapest option considering no gas, cost of oil, etc.

The ships are really expensive, but cram a lot into a small space and all the manufacturing is done in cheaper places like Korea or China in well tuned production lines. If we want to build the same on land, we have to buy almost all the same equipment plus deal with planning, environmental objections, explosion risk/safety and generally high cost/low availabilty of suitably skilled people. For LNG carriers at least there is a multi year construction backlog so nothing really relevant to current crisis.

Also, if that is a gas boiler, the boiler may be designed to have a gas tight seal around cable entries, which is likely not in place as is.

Yes, in fact I thought that was somewhat part of the existing strategy (why some of the existing storage was shut down). Though LNG carriers are a lot more expensive (10x to 30x) plus there is boil off.

If we get most of our supplies from Canada, wonder what the economics would be of keeping a floating reserve. Save building space on land and double handling. Just buy/pay for extra bulk carriers and keep a number in a queue to build a buffer. Possibly could slow the transit down too to save fuel to lower the overall cost. (I assume current ops are optimized for cost, so balance of fuel use and time underway). Especially as a short term measure while renewables build might make some sense.

thousand Will be interesting exactly what was in there but expect it to be a lot. Those disposable vapes are such a travesty and if they sold disposables I'd bet they sold rechargable ones too along with spare 18650s. Wouldn't be shocked if the basement/back room was full to the gills of batteries/battery containing supplies. Plus they are the high energy, very flammable LiPo. Not LifePo4

This surprises me, at least on a masonry build with a decent cavity. I can imagine localised damage that needs work but totaling the house?

Talking a 90 day reserve. Drax currently burns it but not sure what else. Assume we would be wanting a reserve that could be burned for 90 days with Drax flat out and likely some other plants also. Agree.

I think when we shut down our coal plants a significant proportion of the coal they were burning was imported. Not sure this would add up to much, and if you are paying to have electricity generation as part of the incinerator plant then you are generating energy during normal operation. Edit to add: and non-incinerator plants don't have the filtering to clean up the emissions from waste. Best backup we have available to us easily is to reopen gas storage facilities. We could have 80-90 days storage of gas available if we wanted to at reasonable cost. We aren't far off from not needing fossil fuels during the summer months. Lot further to go during the winter months. But still as we deploy more renewables the amount of time that the same amount of gas storage buys increases. None of this helps with short term spikes caused by the current crisis. But at least it is happening as we are coming into spring where our need for gas/heating oil is limited. Edit to add: if you want non-gas, burnable storage, maybe store a stockpile of wood/biomass. You'd have to store it in a way that won't rot down over time (woodchips not a great way to do that) but seems quite doable.

This is the huge saving vs Gus' estimates. DIY bearing replacement rather than replacing either the whole unit (which seems excessive but might happen if parts unavailable) or replacing the whole fan using a professional likely adds up to a saving of £500+ each time. Important that you choose an MHVR with a fan whose bearings can be replaced. From reading hear some fan units are very difficult to service like this forcing a whole fan unit replacement.

If the price is good compared to others then maybe worth buying on the basis that you might want to be replacing the polycarb at a later date. I'd guess the polycarb will last a while then all go at a similar time. Glass would get broken one at a time over a period of time requiring occasional replacement. Either way you are replacing bits.

Completely anecdotal but I've seen more reports of fires from loose connections on 48V wiring to batteries than I have of LifePo4 batteries burning.

Though why bother? I doubt the system is using much energy with it's current behaviour so overriding it isn't just one more complexity that can cause problems.

The big risk was they'd run out of defence missiles rather than the attack ones. They have virtually unlimited supplies of JDAMs, much less long range weapons but they don't really need them now they have destroyed everything Iran has to shoot at their planes.