Heat in the home

[Paulatic]

Years ago, living in one of the coldest parts of England in a very beautiful but very cold house heated by logs alone, I improved the efficiency of the single, small stove by at least half with almost no financial outlay using simple skills every able-bodied person has.

Wouldn’t you like to share this?

I did, five or six posts upthread! Here it is again,

I once improved the efficiency of a woodstove by an estimated 50% by surrounding it with a couple of hundred bricks and firebricks, with ten layers of aluminium foil lining the space where it sat in the chimney and a computer fan blowing through the bricks

Sorry I’d missed that scanning through posts to catch up.
Having read it I’d argue you’ve not increased efficiency but had adapted it to meet your needs. Creating a heat store and assisting convection. It must have taken a long time to heat up from cold.
My reason to have a steel wood burner is, after lighting, the room is cosy within 20 minutes.
Heat pumps are cheap until the government gets hold of them and their schemes then the double glazing salesmen jump in. I put my ASHP in 12 years ago. It’s paid for itself because I put it in on the cheap only needing a refrigeration engineer to install. I’ve serviced it myself since installation there is nothing to them.

[pwa]

There is an extra "efficiency" saving to be had from wood burning stoves that few people consider. Drying clothes without using a tumble dryer. Tumble dryers are a big user of electric, and we have never had one. In summer we use an outdoor rotary line, and in winter we put washing on airers near (but not too near) the wood burner at bedtime, to do the drying overnight as the embers die down. It works a treat. No peeling wallpaper from having damp washing on radiators, and no electric used by a tumble dryer.

[pwa]

I can see the time coming, one way and another, when civil obedience and the rule of law will be incomptaible with the need to deal with climate changes. And furthermore, I think it looks like that time has already started.

The most direct action any of us can take is to reduce our own carbon footprint. When we've done that, we can move on to trying to get other people to do the same. Most of us have something we don't want to give up or change. I know what yours is I also know what mine is And I'm not going to raise either here because I want to make a general point about us already having something under our direct control, something that we can work on now.

[mjr]

I can see the time coming, one way and another, when civil obedience and the rule of law will be incomptaible with the need to deal with climate changes. And furthermore, I think it looks like that time has already started.

The most direct action any of us can take is to reduce our own carbon footprint. When we've done that, we can move on to trying to get other people to do the same. Most of us have something we don't want to give up or change. I know what yours is I also know what mine is And I'm not going to raise either here because I want to make a general point about us already having something under our direct control, something that we can work on now.

Isn't that falling into the personal responsibility trap and failing to call for reforms and systemic change? https://clear.ucdavis.edu/blog/big-oil- ... ocus-yours

[simonineaston]

The most direct action any of us can take is to reduce our own carbon footprint.

That's a very polite response! And one I recognise myself... I've just spent ages getting some internet devices to upload my 'leccy use so I can review my consumption over time and very illuminating (npi) it has been. The two spikes are breakfast & mugs of tea!

screenshot of energyhive 'dashboard'

I'd suggest the assumption that direct action is limited to thumbing the thermostat is incorrect. We're ignoring the simple fact that here on our mainland - or near it, at least - people are undertaking a very different level of direct action on a daily basis, to attempt to enter the country, at great personal risk; others glue themselves to our roads, again at personal risk, to protest against the government's apparent indifference to the dangers of climate change and in response to these protests, citizens with different views, have been witnessed threatening to deal with the protestors in what I would characterise as aggressive and potentially dangerous ways.
The stresses that have prompted these protests are all set to increase, alongside actions from the gov. that look as if, at least from one pov, they are rewarding the controllers of energy provision, for inaction, maintaining the staus quo and accrueing record levels of profit - hardly a recipe for public contentment.
And there is no evidence at all that things are going to improve... quite the reverse.

[Biospace]

Sorry I’d missed that scanning through posts to catch up.
Having read it I’d argue you’ve not increased efficiency but had adapted it to meet your needs. Creating a heat store and assisting convection. It must have taken a long time to heat up from cold.
My reason to have a steel wood burner is, after lighting, the room is cosy within 20 minutes.
Heat pumps are cheap until the government gets hold of them and their schemes then the double glazing salesmen jump in. I put my ASHP in 12 years ago. It’s paid for itself because I put it in on the cheap only needing a refrigeration engineer to install. I’ve serviced it myself since installation there is nothing to them.

Too right about government grants bumping the costs up, I watched this happen with the RHI. These clumsy schemes need serious re-thinking - there has to be a better way of stimulating uptake of something new.

I take your point about the use of the word 'efficiency', the stove itself wasn't burning wood more efficiently but better use of the heat it produced was being made, so something was more efficient. When we were about to move, I temporarily replaced the 4.5kW stove with an 8kW one I'd bought for the next house and run at its best (without the surrounding bricks or aluminium foil layers) over a week, it heated the house only marginally better, while consuming a good bit more fuel. Mornings were a lot cooler, temperatures fluctuated more.

The stove sat in a stone chimney which was built partially outside of the property's walls, on cold days or nights after the stove had been running for four hours or more, you could warm your hands on the warm, exterior stones at the chimney base.

I had expected that a couple of hundred bricks would somehow sap a lot of heat for the first hour or two of running but if there was a slight difference, it wasn't felt. Spaced a little away from the stove so air was warmed and convected into the room as soon as the steel heated, the bricks soaked up radiation previously sent into the massive stones of the chimney and through the register plate. Several sheets of aluminium foil were sandwiched between the bricks and the exterior wall to reduce radiation losses of the bricks to the chimney.

The chimney stones would take many hours to warm then would lose a lot to the outside, whereas after 90 minutes the bricks were radiating and convecting a lot of extra heat, temperatures were much more stable as the stove cycled and on icy mornings the sitting room was typically 13-16C rather than 8-11C. Heat otherwise lost was being captured and released to the room more steadily than the rapidly heating (and cooling) stove, significantly adding to the overall output while the stove was running and gently warming the room for many hours after the last embers had died.

[pwa]

I can see the time coming, one way and another, when civil obedience and the rule of law will be incomptaible with the need to deal with climate changes. And furthermore, I think it looks like that time has already started.

The most direct action any of us can take is to reduce our own carbon footprint. When we've done that, we can move on to trying to get other people to do the same. Most of us have something we don't want to give up or change. I know what yours is I also know what mine is And I'm not going to raise either here because I want to make a general point about us already having something under our direct control, something that we can work on now.

Isn't that falling into the personal responsibility trap and failing to call for reforms and systemic change? https://clear.ucdavis.edu/blog/big-oil- ... ocus-yours

I can see that there is a need for a government co-ordinated approach, and campaigning for that makes sense. But isn't the first step, for each of us, to look at what makes up our own carbon footprint and deal with each aspect of it? Transport, domestic energy use, the energy used to make and transport the things we buy, and where our dosh is invested..... We are the consumers in a market economy, after all.

[simonineaston]

With all due respect to those thinking ahead and taking the time and effort to modify their personal, domestic behaviour, you are completely wasting your time. What matters is what we all do, in the sense of a single unit ie as a species. And the bad news is that the vast majority of individual governments, of the countries making up that Whole - and no matter what they say and what they promise - are still in thrall to the colossal behemoth that is the fossil fuel industry and are still committed to large scale production of carbon emssions for the fore-seeable.
And since the most serious and experienced scientists are now saying that we're in the Last Chance Saloon and that what we do in the next 5 years will affect our future over the next millenium, I can safely say that it's Good Night Everybody...
What a shame.

[Biospace]

With all due respect to those thinking ahead and taking the time and effort to modify their personal, domestic behaviour, you are completely wasting your time. What matters is what we all do, in the sense of a single unit ie as a species. And the bad news is that the vast majority of individual governments, of the countries making up that Whole - and no matter what they say and what they promise - are still in thrall to the colossal behemoth that is the fossil fuel industry and are still committed to large scale production of carbon emssions for the fore-seeable.
And since the most serious and experienced scientists are now saying that we're in the Last Chance Saloon and that what we do in the next 5 years will affect our future over the next millenium, I can safely say that it's Good Night Everybody...
What a shame.

Is this suggesting that until the USA and China start using RE as 70-80% (or whatever you reckon will save the planet) of their total consumption, there's little point in tiny nations like our own doing anything?

Because if so, I disagree. The power of the influential individual, whether individual person or individual nation, is immense.

LIfe is clearly going to become interesting, no matter how large or small the efforts to mitigate the effects on our planet's climate, because we've spread microplastics and other pollution so far and wide the effects will be with us for hundreds of generations. And there are several tens of thousands of years to carefully mind the nuclear waste.

[Pebble]

We have been making an effort to use less, this is our cumlitive KWH use (gas +electric) since last week in may, compared to previous years. (that yellow line was the very hard winter of 2010) this year is the heavy red line and so far least used at this stage.

[simonineaston]

I do like a graph - 'specially tuppence coloured! Takes my mind off worse things

[pwa]

We have been making an effort to use less, this is our cumlitive KWH use (gas +electric) since last week in may, compared to previous years. (that yellow line was the very hard winter of 2010) this year is the heavy red line and so far least used at this stage.

But the weather has been very mild so far. Our heating is technically "0n" all the time, but controlled by the thermostat. It hasn't kicked in since last spring. Our house is currently at about 20c without using the heating. So for the moment our gas use is just as it is through the summer.

Even so, you do look to have been making an effort.

[Pebble]

Here it is run from begining October , this year (Red) is not as good as 2017. But we have made some significant changes and I think I can do better in the months to come.
The dif from our best to worst years is only about 17%, which is not massive.

[mjr]

But the weather has been very mild so far.

O how easy life is in the mild mild west! We've already had first frost in the fen depths and a couple of mornings of cold fog.

[Biospace]

This is the time of year when passive solar heating starts to work really well, if there are sunny or partially sunny days. Some go as far as the 'Trombe wall', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_s ... lar_system