Free electricity?

[Andy Burns]

The gas operator can apply for a warrant to enter the premises, by force if necessary.

[harry]

They need no warrants. When the gas/electricity is signed up for there is a right of entry clause. For emergencies and anything else that crops up. Has been for yonks.

[Simon Mason]

Great - I'd love to meet the boys at last.

[bert]

In article , Simon Mason writes

AIUI the free leccy was conditional on you having a smart meter so no need for you to submit bills. I suspect you are in for a ride awakening.

[bert]

In article , Simon Mason writes

Ah well if npower are involved anything can happen.

[Simon Mason]

I am toying with the idea of getting rid of my gas central heating, converting to 100% electric and so I will pay NO energy charges at all!

[Andrew]

are there any storage heaters that could store enough heat during the weekend to last the other five days ?.

[Andrew]

My neighbour had free electricity for 10 years at his MOT business because EDF failed to switch the account into his name.

When they tried to bill him for £6,000 of consumption he refused to pay because they had not sent him a bill, even though he knew they had made the original mistake.

EDF wrote the £6,000 off.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Yes. but not that are easy to make.

I estimated that a well insulated swimming pool full of boiling hot water under a house would be enough to heat it for many days.

If you do the sums, lets say you need 50W/sq meter to heat a house., (which is actually a LOT) and you have a meter depth of (insulated) hot water under it... so a cubic meter of water or a metric toinne...at say

80°C that you will allow to go down to say 50°C before its 'exhausted' in terms of heating...well that's 30x1000x1000x1000 calories or 30,000 kcalories

30,000 kilocalories is about 35 kwh Since we only need 50W, that is around 700 hours. Around about a *month* of heat.

To run a CH off that is easy. Just put the CH primary in a big coil in the heat bank and pump it round. Or even just have selective removal of bits of insulation to allow the heat to rise.

In practice the way you would make this is to cut a huge pit, line it with a lot of polystyrene, cast a base on it, then build up the foundation of the house as blockwork with polystyrene outside it and then backfill to keep the styrene in place. An insulated block and beam floor over the top completes the construction. You would need so make some of the construction more waterproof than is traditional of course.

It is an interesting fact that of all the ways to store energy, if all you want at the end of it is low garde heat, bloody great lumps of stone concrete or water are in fact cheap and effective.

What doesn't work is a few cinder blocks in a storage heater though.

The mass required has to be build into the house somehow. What you are really looking for is cheap well insulated mass. Water is perhaps the easiest, but concrete, stone or masonry would work too. But by volume they are not as good as water.

[harry]

No. There is no insulation that is good enough. Most of the heat would be lost.

[bert]

Are there any storage heaters that store enough heat to last the next day?