Heat in the home

[al_yrpal]

Perhaps Ecotricity have the answer? Simple as mowing the grass... Pilot plant in Reading near their wind turbine.

https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-news/2 ... ur-boilers

Get mowing....

Al

[cycle tramp]

Perhaps Ecotricity have the answer? Simple as mowing the grass... Pilot plant in Reading near their wind turbine.

https://www.ecotricity.co.uk/our-news/2 ... ur-boilers

Get mowing....

Al

Actually we could dump all our dog poo in there as well, and if we think about it even our own

[Mike Sales]

Of course, we had real winters in those days, and no double glazing.

Suppose we did, what with temperatures normally down to -25 and school not closed till it got to -30. Suppose we had double glazing, though only when when the winter windows were installed (Nb. Obviously you couldn't have summer windows fitted in winter, it'd be like not wearing your snow trousers, or touching metal outside )

At my school in '63 one was only allowed to wear long trousers after the second year (or unless one was a ridiculous height).
I used to wear my tracksuit bottoms over my shorts on the way to school, whipping them off on entering. They were baggy cotton, not today's svelte synthetics.

[Mick F]

Winter of 62/63 we had drifts of maybe 6ft along the lanes in West Lancashire Wigan area. One morning, opening the back door, the snow had driffed right up to the top ........... so we dug our way out.
The drifts didn't melt away until March.

Yes, we had the Christmas hols off, but the school never closed in term-time, all the teachers were there, and all of us children were there too.
Mum and Dad went to work, and the country never stopped.

Shorts and wellies. Took the wellies off in the classroom and then put on shoes.

[ossie]

Looking at the poll...ordinarily 18-19 C during the day (only because the better half is now working from home- or I'd have it off or 15c)

The evening temp in the lounge is 20.5...that is the magic temp for some reason, always has been. We have a gas fire so that temp rises on occasion but only when it gets very cold. The rest of the house is tapered down accordingly (apart from the bathroom).

[francovendee]

Winter of 62/63 we had drifts of maybe 6ft along the lanes in West Lancashire Wigan area. One morning, opening the back door, the snow had driffed right up to the top ........... so we dug our way out.
The drifts didn't melt away until March.

Yes, we had the Christmas hols off, but the school never closed in term-time, all the teachers were there, and all of us children were there too.
Mum and Dad went to work, and the country never stopped.

Shorts and wellies. Took the wellies off in the classroom and then put on shoes.

I was living in London at that time. I'd never seen snow like it and even after the snow stopped the snow lay thickly for weeks. The edges of the roads were piled high with cleared snow with gaps so you could cross. Being London, when the thaw came the streets were black and filthy.
I used to watch the Routemaster buses sliding to stop but life continued and people got to work.

[Mick F]

I used to watch the Routemaster buses sliding to stop but life continued and people got to work.

Yep.

I remember getting on the bus, and it slipping downhill as it pulled away.
So what?
Life went on regardless.

These days, if we had snow like that, the country and businesses would stop completely. The country would grind to a standstill.

[grufty]

I'd like to squeeze in a question about air source heat pumps if I may, in the hopes that there may be a thermodynamicist watching!
If we will all be heading for these heat pumps, what will the effect be on the local temperature in cities and large towns, particularly if they lie in a basin?
Will the local temperature drop so that the pumps will have to work harder?

[Jdsk]

I'd like to squeeze in a question about air source heat pumps if I may, in the hopes that there may be a thermodynamicist watching!
If we will all be heading for these heat pumps, what will the effect be on the local temperature in cities and large towns, particularly if they lie in a basin?
Will the local temperature drop so that the pumps will have to work harder?

If all of the heat used to heat the accommodation and all of the cooling of the source end up local then the net effect will be less local warming than was previously the case with combustion boilers.

With an air source some of the cooling will end up elsewhere, and that effect will be bigger the further from the centre.

It's an interesting question how much that will affect the local temperature. My guess is very little. And of course the migration will be slow.

Jonathan

[[XAP]Bob]

Local heating will be reduced, the heat pulled from the air will be lost to the air anyway… (or will have been lost to the air, thus requiring reheating inside).
So we heat with ~20-25% as much as we used to.

[francovendee]

I was asking a friend how economical is her wood pellet stove and it seems they are very efficient.
It's a new installation in an old house and wasn't cheap, 9000€. She had this installed at the same time as a high tech VMC system was also installed.
I understand this ventilates the house and takes warmth from the exhaust air to warm the incoming fresh air.
It sounds good but if we get a power outage (fairly frequent in high winds) then she is left sitting in the cold.
I had a smug feeling when looking at our non electric wood burner warming the house.
In total she's spent nearly 20000€ on the combined systems.
That amount of money woud keep me in wood for more years than I have left.
I do question the 'green' credentials of a pelleted stove as there is energy used to manufacture the pellets.
I do like the idea of being able to control the stove with the phone. It'd be nice to have my wood burner light itself when we're on our way home.

[al_yrpal]

I used to have a hopper fed anthracite chippings stove, a bit of a pain really.
If you have access to free wood thats a huge bonus. I have asked Which to do some investigation on various types of fuel, wood, compressed wood logs, and various types of smokeless fuel. What is the most economical? Environmental aspects? We are new to our multifuel stove and burning all sorts I havent figured out whats what, its a laboratory task.
I have just blasted some of our courtyard. Its quite revealing to see the contrast between blasted areas and the rest stained by air pollution, some of it no doubt from our chimney....

Al

[yakdiver]

Still holding out, only 16c inside today

[Ben@Forest]

I was asking a friend how economical is her wood pellet stove and it seems they are very efficient.
It's a new installation in an old house and wasn't cheap, 9000€. She had this installed at the same time as a high tech VMC system was also installed.
I understand this ventilates the house and takes warmth from the exhaust air to warm the incoming fresh air.
It sounds good but if we get a power outage (fairly frequent in high winds) then she is left sitting in the cold.
I had a smug feeling when looking at our non electric wood burner warming the house.
In total she's spent nearly 20000€ on the combined systems.
That amount of money woud keep me in wood for more years than I have left.
I do question the 'green' credentials of a pelleted stove as there is energy used to manufacture the pellets.
I do like the idea of being able to control the stove with the phone. It'd be nice to have my wood burner light itself when we're on our way home.

Not long after moving into this house we had to replace the oil-burning boiler. We considered a wood pellet boiler but it would have been more expensive than a new oil boiler and required a tall stainless steel flue, which may not have worked properly because it would have been under the crown of a large beech tree (neighbour's and has a TPO). But even if none of those things had been an issue we still wouldn't have done it because a wood pellet boiler needed more room and we'd have lost the downstairs toilet. We had to replace that new, old boiler last year and when I mentioned wood pellet the first thing the (different) engineer muttered was - 'but the tree'. There's a bunch of reasons why retrofitting newer technologies are difficult.

But I don't really see that, if produced from sustainable wood, wood pellets don't have green credentials. The production of all fuels involves energy to process it - you even really have to factor in the huge amount of reinforced steel and concrete of the pads wind turbines sit on. And of course a lot of pellets are made from by-product; there's a huge amount of sawdust and shavings from the milling industry and it's not just wood. A few years ago I was talking to a biomass boiler manufacturer/installer which was making boilers for a coffee-producing company in South America, the pellets were to be pressed from the husks of coffee cherries.

[francovendee]

We have a wood pellet plant a few miles away.
It has huge piles of wood stored in the open. Some of the wood is large trunks but most is narrow branches.
We cycle past regularly and always comment about the large amount of smoke, or possibly steam, pouring out from a very tall chimney.
Energy to cut the trees, to process it into pellets , bag it (plastic) and distribute it. I compare this to wood bought from a local farmer. Energy to fell and log the tree and energy for the tractor to deliver it. I'd say our wood burner is far greener than a pellet stove.