gascar

Thanks Steamy & Peter - I thought this thread might be productive having read (most of) it! Time will tell if the prices really do crash now.

Sorry to go off-topic, but can anyone point me to a decent article on ASHPs such as might be useful to ordinary drafty houses with solid walls? If I need 10kW with -5°C outside. Cop is what, 1.3? I think they'd be enormous and use more electrc power than is available. ?

It needs a mini zeolite recycler. You dry the stuff out with the low grade heat, then "Zorb" the zeolite by wetting it, and it gets very hot. Not heard of a small one yet, have only seen a setup for eg small blocks of flats. Neat idea though! It has one lot of zeolite drying while another is getting hot.

I've speed-read about half the A level E-S textbook. I found it pretty interesting. The school I'm in seems to have a dearth of awareness of back-of-envelope maths. Very simplistic optimists! "It'll be fine we'll all have electric cars" Ok, now look at the 'lectric needed to charge them. In winter we'll need one, or two if we do it inefficiently, Nuclear Power Stations on top of what we have now. We'll not be using gas in houses either, so add another NPS to supply us all 10kW or so all night to keep the houses warm and heat water. Then dig all the streets up because we don't have the electrical distribition. SO one of the teachers says (yes, one of the teachers) "But we can put solar panels on the roofs of the cars". Oh dear. E-S A level - one of the female teachers (biology) said there wouldn't be much interest because it's maths and they're girls. You wouldn't make it up, you'd be arrested for being non-PC. Bring back Domestic Science I say - Electricity, Gas, Water, Building materials..... how to change a friggin tap washer....

Hello good people In my dotage (63) I find myself volunteer teaching in a catholic girls school. Blimey - WHAT??!! Anything with maths in it. DT, electronics, astronomy, phys chem biol. Next year I'll be dibbling into Environmental Science A level. Kids (and teachers) ask me stuff. Materials engineering then computing grad, career in various industries, C.Eng, got made redundant when companies closed, wound up repairing gas boilers (nobody makes you redundant if you do that), then to teaching/assessing Corgi/GSR gas operatives, and doing electrical qualifications. So I'll be answering a bit but mostly asking, about Alternative Energies especially for homes, practicalities of insulation, and all that. As far as I can tell from here, there's no way we're going to be able to achieve what Govt has announced. Keeps me off the streets.