Heat pumps - ThisIsMoney

[jim.gm4dhj]

bring back the range

[Rod Speed]

The house block sizes aren't anything unusual.

In fact you do get something for nothing with a heat pump, you get far more heat into the house with a heat pump than using the electricity in a resistive heater.

[Max Demian]

Proper ranges, and wimmin to black-lead them. Not poncy Agas.

[Andrew]

Nothing like a cup of tea made from a kettle that had been simmering for an hour or two, boiling off all the oxygen

[Andrew]

The latest revision to the building regs requires that bit of the inner leaf of a cavity wall that is hidden above the soffit to be fully insulated with the insulation folding over the top of the wall plate that the trusses sit on.

Also, builders will be required to submit full photographic evidence that all insulation has been correctly fitted. About time.

[Andrew]

In Auckland, like Sydney, property prices have gone bonkers for 20 years. People rent because they cannot afford to buy.

I suspect the ratio of owner occupiers to renters is about the same as the UK.

[Jeff Layman]

That's my experience too. We were left about a quarter ton of Phurnacite (or something similar) when we moved in, and having found that wood can't last all night, tried it once. It was still glowing in the morning. Logs are available here for about £140 a m^3. It varies a little but it's cheaper for stored (non-kiln dried) wood. I can store it for years if necessary to dry it as much as possible. I'll wait until summer to buy some if I decide I need it.

We have a 20m ash tree at the far end of the garden, and ash dieback has been reported about 5 miles away, so there may be a future supply of good firewood. It's a lovely tree, but also a pain as it donates its hundreds of thousands of seeds to my flower beds every year!

[Andrew]

ROFL. Lots of land has been lost in Hemsby and also North of Liverpool.

I just did -

[The Natural Philosopher]

Those are not pacific islands dork Coastal erosion is not something intelligent people who are not bigots blame on climate change

Nothing to do with global warming or pacific islands. Straw man, You lose

[Fredxx]

I was sceptical about NP's suggestion and so looked it up. It seems there has been more land that has emerged or reclaimed than lost to any rising sea level and man made flooding.

Whether that continues to be the case is the real question.

I'm killfiled by NP, so if you don't want him to see my endorsement of his post, then no one reply! :-)

[Fredxx]

Yerr-but, if most of that generation has come from fossil the inverse COP from raw fuel to electricity just nullifies any gain. Plus so much more complex than simply burning fossil fuel for heating.

[Theo]

But most of the time the grid is not 100% fossil. So you reduce CO2 in that respect. Also that percentage is improving over time - ie your home CO2 emissions decline without having to do anything.

As frequently covered here, there is something of a correlation between high pressure systems (cold, clear, still) and freezing weather when the heatpump is consuming more for heating. But there are also a lot of days when it's windy and not-freezing-but-still-cold where you still need the heat, and there the CO2 can be very low (down to zero in Scotland). Also most people's hot water demand is the same, irrespective of the weather.

Theo

[Fredxx]

It's not that obvious, as a rule solar is pretty useless when you want heating. Winds are lowest in freezing condition though I don't know the stats.

If you look at the bigger picture it's not obvious. More could be done to allow everyone with solar to generate for the grid, rather than simply heating water where demand is less than that generated. It could be just a meter change!

Water heating is small compared to heating and is difficult to justify the outlay of heat pumps for just that.

[alan_m]

One close up of an installation looks just the same as another so they will just use some stock photos if they are doing something dodgy.

[alan_m]

Isn't some of the UK still rising as a result of all that ice during the ice age being removed.

[Theo]

Right now it's dark, cold and damp outside (3C here). National Grid ESO says it's 37% zero carbon nationally, which is pretty typical for the winter:

North Scotland 0 gCO2/kWh North East England 3 South Scotland 12 North West England 87 North Wales/Mersey 103 South East England 181 West Midlands 227 London 231 East England 244 Yorkshire 255 South England 317 South Wales 363 East Midlands 393

By comparison 100% CCGT emits about 360 gCO2/kWh.

So if you live in the north it's very low. If you live in the south it's still slightly better than gas. And on windy days the numbers get a lot lower. The national record is 39 gCO2/kWh.

It's significant over the course of the year. Yes, in winter my heatpump takes about 25kWh per day for heating when it's freezing, but on milder winter days it's only 5kWh and in other seasons it's often 0kWh per day. But it takes 2kWh to heat the water every day, so that's about 750kWh per year, which isn't nothing (the annual elec bill is about 5000 kWh per year, including heating, hot water, cooking, electronics, etc).

In the US you can get heatpumps integrated into hot water cylinders, which they typically install in the garage or other unheated space. It costs about $1000 more compared with an immersion-heated cylinder. You make it back over a few years:

THeo

[Tim Streater]

Ah, shades of the China Syndrome.

[Fredxx]

Yes, I believe one side is tilting up, the other down.

I also thought that some coastlines were moving out to sea through silt?

[Rod Speed]

That's obvious.

Bullshit.

More bullshit. Plenty spent more than just time sleeping in bedrooms.

Irrelevant to what others and the bedridden did.

That was after the victorian era.

[Rod Speed]

Works fine for me and I have two of different weights so there are

3 alternatives heat wise and an electric underblanket.