Retired, renovating cottage

[Delicatedave]

If I'm not supposed to be here delete me, I'm fine with that, people have been doing it all my life :-)

Background: Sort of forced retirement though giving up working for idiots and then struggling to get my own businesses off the ground, then 5 years cancer which I got the all clear from in Sept.

Work Experience: Billiard table renovation & manufacture, French Polishing & furniture renovation, Computer Internet architect, Internet social media expert, Internet business website developer, Football memorabilia dealer.

As you can see, I'm not afraid to to "have a go at most thing" but I do tend to push the boundaries of what is normal & what can and can't be done. My new home is a semi-detached cottage in the country. Used to be one house but the owner split up and sold off what I think is the best part as it's got the land :-) My aim isto fix the place up in the next 12 months or so in a way that gives us the lowest outgoing forward. For that reason I'm looking at air source, ground source with battery storage & solar but ruled most of it out for the reason that it won't be economical as the is just the two of us. It's currently on Eco 7 electric but the is only now one Storage heater, and yes it's cold all the time :-)

I got here looking for info on 12v lighting, bit dismayed that so many people were dismissing using 12v for the whole house but then I think that whole conversation was based on conversion of 240v into 12v. My aim is to use solar panels & wind to charge batteries. Yes, I know I won't save much but it's also a project. I'll also be doing a lot of gardening, growing veg so I aim to come up with some water collection ideas.

[Tennentslager]

Welcome @Delicatedave no reason why anyone would delete you...? you haven’t done anything wrong yet?

[nod]

Welcome 

 

Multi- tasker 

You should fit in on here perfectly 

[ToughButterCup]

Welcome

Lots of quiet fireside reading for you on BH - should last you through the rest of the winter. All the topics you mention have been raised here - often.

[Ferdinand]

>Delete

 

Hmmm. Friend of cybermen.

 

Welcome. Pushing the boundaries is good, as long as it is in a good direction :-).

 

At this stage my brief comments would be:

 

1 - Fabric first. Fix the structure before you add the ASHP and gubbins. My experience says you should be looking to reduce bills by 50-70% on a reno. Part of that will come from playing the supplier market.

2 - Most of the stuff is pretty much standard practice as has been done for decades. Grand complications not required. Pay equal attention to ventilation as well as insulation.

3 - Thinking time even more first - the most cost effective way to fix a mistake is in your head before you have made it :-). 

4 - Remember this when doing your ASHP, and check precise terms. I think this  is still the case.

 

Best of luck.

Ferdinand

Edited February 8, 2020 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

The main issue with using 12 V for lighting used to be, and perhaps still is to some extent, the power loss caused by the voltage drop in cabling.  To some extent this has been alleviated a bit by the lower current demand from LED lighting, but if you want a reasonable amount of light the current at 12 V can still be pretty high.  For example, I've used quite a lot of 12 V LED strip lighting, some of it powered by solar and battery systems.  To get a reasonable light level I found that I needed to use 5630 LED strip that uses around 12W/m.  The ~2m length above our front door draws about 2 A, and although bright enough, it's not massively bright (a fair bit of light in this photo is coming from the 10 W LED floodlight behind the car):

 

 

In this case the cable run is very short, you can just make out the battery box and solar panel to the left of the strip light, so voltage drop wasn't a problem.  However, when you have a fair area to light up, it's easy to get to the point where heavy cables need to be used to minimise the voltage drop and associated power loss.  I originally use this same LED strip in my garage, as four 5m lengths, but ran into problems as each strip was drawing about 5 A at 12 V, so 20 A in total,  and the losses in the wiring were starting to get a bit high.  I ended up switching to tubular mains LED lights, just to get around the problems caused by this.

 

Increasing the battery voltage to match the voltage of standard solar panels helps a bit, and is probably a sensible compromise.  Standard solar panels have an maximum power voltage of around 30  V, so with a suitable MPPT and charge controller can charge a 24 V battery system OK.  Using 24 V rather than 12 V halves the current and reduces the power loss in the wiring to one quarter of that from a 12 V system for a given power, so makes a significant improvement.  It's also usually fairly easy to find bargains for this size of panel, as they are the ones used on practically all domestic scale PV systems.

[Delicatedave]

22 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

>Delete

 

Hmmm. Friend of cybermen.

 

Welcome. Pushing the boundaries is good, as long as it is in a good direction :-).

 

At this stage my brief comments would be:

 

1 - Fabric first. Fix the structure before you add the ASHP and gubbins. My experience says you should be looking to reduce bills by 50-70% on a reno. Part of that will come from playing the supplier market.

2 - Most of the stuff is pretty much standard practice as has been done for decades. Grand complications not required. Pay equal attention to ventilation as well as insulation.

3 - Thinking time even more first - the most cost effective way to fix a mistake is in your head before you have made it :-). 

4 - Remember this when doing your ASHP, and check precise terms. I think this  is still the case.

 

Best of luck.

Ferdinand

Yea as I said not doign heat source now.

We've been in about 3 months, I think we've started off in the right way but obvs not as quick as "she" would like ?

I got a good look around, cleared out the loft(s), stripped most of the walls and discovered some things - one was that the hall was really cold so I took the ceiling down and low and behold the water tank above it had had a slow leak for what must have been years. The was a massive black damp patch across the plaster board and some of the support timbers had rotten. No real problem because we had already booked to have the emersion heater taken out. Also discovered a oak beam which supports the ceiling in the bedroom when I knocked out a built in wordrobe. So now I either build another cupboard around it or have a pole stuck 3ft from the corner of the bedroom - might be had to hang a light on ?

Things start moving next week - Monday Tree feller arrives to cut down some overground tree - the couple who live here had this love of conifers, with two nicely place eitherside of the patio doors. Nice when they were 4ft, they are now 30ft plus. Day after that the builder comes to create a new front doorway to the kitchen extension. That frees up the old doorway & hall which will become a study thereby gaining a room ?

Soon I'll be able to put up the shed I bought and which is in the kitchen having been painted over the winter. Next on the list is repairing the roof then I can start thinking about installing solar panels. I say start, I've already got my hand dirty playing around with a 20w panel and the old battries from a stairlift which was in the property. That will power the shed, but that shed will mainly be storage, I plan to build a workshop for my long term projects.

Great to be here, I'll start a TOPIC thread when I have time.

[Ferdinand]

Does 12V lighting offer much benefit over the energy reduction of modern LEDs?

 

Suspect that it is a bit like trying to use solar for heating - in the seasons you need it there is 90% less energy from sunlight.

[Delicatedave]

16 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

The main issue with using 12 V for lighting used to be, and perhaps still is to some extent, the power loss caused by the voltage drop in cabling.  To some extent this has been alleviated a bit by the lower current demand from LED lighting, but if you want a reasonable amount of light the current at 12 V can still be pretty high.  For example, I've used quite a lot of 12 V LED strip lighting, some of it powered by solar and battery systems.  To get a reasonable light level I found that I needed to use 5630 LED strip that uses around 12W/m.  The ~2m length above our front door draws about 2 A, and although bright enough, it's not massively bright (a fair bit of light in this photo is coming from the 10 W LED floodlight behind the car):

 

 

In this case the cable run is very short, you can just make out the battery box and solar panel to the left of the strip light, so voltage drop wasn't a problem.  However, when you have a fair area to light up, it's easy to get to the point where heavy cables need to be used to minimise the voltage drop and associated power loss.  I originally use this same LED strip in my garage, as four 5m lengths, but ran into problems as each strip was drawing about 5 A at 12 V, so 20 A in total,  and the losses in the wiring were starting to get a bit high.  I ended up switching to tubular mains LED lights, just to get around the problems caused by this.

 

Increasing the battery voltage to match the voltage of standard solar panels helps a bit, and is probably a sensible compromise.  Standard solar panels have an maximum power voltage of around 30  V, so with a suitable MPPT and charge controller can charge a 24 V battery system OK.  Using 24 V rather than 12 V halves the current and reduces the power loss in the wiring to one quarter of that from a 12 V system for a given power, so makes a significant improvement.  It's also usually fairly easy to find bargains for this size of panel, as they are the ones used on practically all domestic scale PV systems.

At the moment I'm thinking of either one big solar array on the roof - it gets sun all day. Or section off the house and use a panel each section but I've not looked into wind yet and even a large storage system like Tesla is not out the question - I as like ? Early days yet as I need to understand this more. Also need to find a way to heat both space & water unless I use electric from the grid. At the moment I'm looking a supplementing, ie warming the water before it gets to the washing machine & using fans to take warm air from the top of a room and push it places like the hall & bathroom. I think I can do all that with low voltage systems.

[Delicatedave]

8 minutes ago, Ferdinand said:

Does 12V lighting offer much benefit over the energy reduction of modern LEDs?

 

Suspect that it is a bit like trying to use solar for heating - in the seasons you need it there is 90% less energy from sunlight.

It's not all about cost reduction now, who knows what cost electric will be in 5 years. But I think with the help of some storage it's do-able even in the UK. I mean I have solar lights down my drive which come on at around 6pm and most night stay on bright enough till 10pm. So about a 12 hour charge has last 4-5 hours on those cheap buggers.

[SteamyTea]

Welcome

17 minutes ago, Delicatedave said:

low voltage systems

Not really about voltage. It is about power, the watts, and energy, the joule, also known as the watt-hour.

But it really comes down to how much you want to spend.

13 minutes ago, Delicatedave said:

who knows what cost electric will be in 5 years

Across the developed world this has been consistent at around the 5% of median household income, for decades.

This is mainly to do with government interventions. 

[Jeremy Harris]

24 minutes ago, Delicatedave said:

At the moment I'm thinking of either one big solar array on the roof - it gets sun all day. Or section off the house and use a panel each section but I've not looked into wind yet and even a large storage system like Tesla is not out the question - I as like ? Early days yet as I need to understand this more. Also need to find a way to heat both space & water unless I use electric from the grid. At the moment I'm looking a supplementing, ie warming the water before it gets to the washing machine & using fans to take warm air from the top of a room and push it places like the hall & bathroom. I think I can do all that with low voltage systems.

 

 

It's really hard to do high power stuff, like warming water and space heating, at 12 V.  Might be an idea to take a look at the Navitron forum ( https://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/ ), as there are a few there who are totally off grid, plus some who are partially off grid, and have a fair bit of experience of using low voltage DC.  I'm pretty sure that most end up running systems at around 48 V, really to overcome the problems caused by cable power loss as much as anything else, but they may still be good source of expertise on low voltage stuff. 

[DamonHD]

FWIW I run some low-power stuff such as my server (and occasionally my laptop and a small amount of lighting) from a 12V off-grid system with ~500Wp of panels scattered round the front and back of the house at low level.  It has some storage, nominally ~2kWh though ageing and in need of replacement.

 

I also have a fairly big (>5kWp) grid-tied solar array and now a smallish AC-coupled battery.  All heavy lifting including basically anything to do with heat is done from this part.

 

Rgds

 

Damon

[SteamyTea]

15 minutes ago, Jeremy Harris said:

I'm pretty sure that most end up running systems at around 48 V, really to overcome the problems caused by cable power loss as much as anything else

There is a reason that low voltage^[1] PV modules are more expensive and not as efficient as standard ones.

 

^[1]Not really low voltage as anything under 1000V is low voltage, Extra Low Voltage is really the right term as that is below 50V.

[SteamyTea]

3 minutes ago, DamonHD said:

FWIW I run some low-power stuff

Have you ever compared the total efficiencies between the two systems?

[Delicatedave]

16 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Welcome

Not really about voltage. It is about power, the watts, and energy, the joule, also known as the watt-hour.

But it really comes down to how much you want to spend.

Across the developed world this has been consistent at around the 5% of median household income, for decades.

This is mainly to do with government interventions. 

Your point about 5% is subjective and I won't base my calculations on those thanks. If you take the UK as an example, it really depends on effort & luck with switching & the way you understand and use the energy. I'll give you 2 small examples of what I mean - Having just moved into this home my first action was to switch electric providers, the difference between the one I was with and the one I am is more than 30%. Secondly the people who lived here before us didn't know how electric storage heaters work, they even had wooden covers over them so they couldn't change the setting. How they were set loaded up maximum heat and let out maximum. The result being the had the equivalent of 12 electric ovens on full for 6 hours and the heat from that was eing sent into the rooms from about 8pm at night till exhausted, all though the night. Result being their electric bill was well over £2k a year, the home was still cold. My bill will be already half that and I aim to get it become £500. So you see no one will see only 5% unless they actively keep on top of it.

[SteamyTea]

1 minute ago, Delicatedave said:

So you see no one will see only 5% unless they actively keep on top of it.

My point was in response to where electrical energy prices are heading, not individual usage.

15 years ago, when oil prices shot up, people where talking about $250/barrel being the new normal, but they are still at the long term average of ~$50/barrel.

I have a similar sized place to you, and it comes in at about £600 a year with meter rental and VAT.

I have (for my own reasons) not bothered to change supplier, though I do keep an eye on prices.

[Jeremy Harris]

 

Changing electricity supplier is getting to be a bit of a minefield now, especially with some of the more complex ToU tariffs.  I keep a spreadsheet of our usage profile and the latest tariffs from suppliers in this area, and in the last six months or so it's becoming clear that the usual price comparison sites are struggling to give accurate recommendations for some tariffs. 

 

Our house is all-electric (electric heating, cooling, hot water and charging my car), and we're paying about £48/month for electricity, so a bit under £600/year.  We get back about £1,000 a year for the electricity we generate, though, in FiT and export payments, so we have no real energy bill to pay.  I accept that the FiT payment we get is a bit of a fiddle, as it was an incentive to get us to fit the solar panels we have built in to our roof, but nevertheless it was on offer and I wasn't going to turn it down.

 

The 25 solar panels (6.25 kWp)  provide roughly 60% of our annual hot water, with the rest coming from using off-peak Economy 7 electricity overnight.    We find that the electricity generation from the more or less South facing solar panel array drops off a cliff in October and then picks up again about March, so we have four or five months with very little solar power.  The data from PVGIS ( https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html ) is pretty accurate, and matches our pattern of generation fairly well:

 

 

 

[Delicatedave]

3 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

My point was in response to where electrical energy prices are heading, not individual usage.

15 years ago, when oil prices shot up, people where talking about $250/barrel being the new normal, but they are still at the long term average of ~$50/barrel.

I have a similar sized place to you, and it comes in at about £600 a year with meter rental and VAT.

I have (for my own reasons) not bothered to change supplier, though I do keep an eye on prices.

Well yes I'm not really disagreeing, as for the oil price franking and LGP gas have had a impression on that market.

The energy market is corrupt and I'm happy to take advantage in the knowladge that while I do so I'm still paying more than I should ?
But my aim now is to reduce my dependence on these companies. At the moment I have a bit of cash but income is going to be a problem going forward. So I either save and get a few more years from my savings or invest in systems that cut my yearly costs. Holding on to money is not that exciting at the moment with the interest offered.

 

[Onoff]

Welcome. Great attitude to have a go at everything.

 

It's about the journey not the destination! Keeps the old grey matter ticking.

 

[Delicatedave]

2 hours ago, Jeremy Harris said:

 

Changing electricity supplier is getting to be a bit of a minefield now, especially with some of the more complex ToU tariffs.  I keep a spreadsheet of our usage profile and the latest tariffs from suppliers in this area, and in the last six months or so it's becoming clear that the usual price comparison sites are struggling to give accurate recommendations for some tariffs. 

 

 

 

 

 

Yes it is a minefield, I've found keeping an eye for a new company is beneficial as I think what happens is they invest as little as possible in their staff so can give a cheap price. But as they gain customers the rules say they have to employ more staff and that's where they get in trouble. On the other side the big companies understand the market better and they'll push their prices up to get rid of of customers so they don't have to employ more staff.

Your information is most welcome Jeremy thanks.

[Delicatedave]

1 minute ago, Onoff said:

Welcome. Great attitude to have a go at everything.

 

It's about the journey not the destination! Keeps the old grey matter ticking.

 

I really didn't set out to do that ? After giving up my first job because I wasn't valued I setup as self-employed. Few years at that I went to uni at the age of 40. They discovered I was dyslexic and I discovered I could consume technical knowledge like most people consume cake. Got my 2nd job and then was overlooked again for promotion again - even-though I was tasked with setting up that new department the promise of me managing it wasn't kept! and although they managed to keep me there for 2 more years by giving me money, in the end it was either me leave or me end up with a mental health problem. Since then I've done what I enjoy only. I'm now ready at 60 for something new.

[DamonHD]

6 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

Have you ever compared the total efficiencies between the two systems?

No: I don't think that I have any meaningful way to do that...

 

Rgds

 

Damon