It might /just/ be possible to make a cost effective solar assisted HW system if /all/ the following are true.
1) You need to replace the HW cylinder.
2) You have the time and skills necessary to make and install solar collectors.
3) You have the time and skills needed to make the control system.
4) You have access to the scrap raw materials needed to make system. e.g. discarded CH pump, discarded CH radiators.
What is clear is that at current prices there is no way that a system can be built using either manufactured parts or professional installation let alone both.
On Tue, 8 Jan 2008 19:22:59 +0000 (UTC) someone who may be Ed Sirett wrote this:-
If, for the sake of argument, one takes the claims of the antis of only a £40 saving in gas per year at face value, assume no fuel price increases and ignore the (low) electricity cost then a simplistic simple payback period calculation for the Navitron Budget Solar Kit
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is about 22 years (£800 plus £100 delivery, if one doesn't collect it).
Oh dear, there we go again with the propaganda. The only thing I'm anti is the dishonesty of the greenwashers.
A single solar panel collects about 1MWh of energy per year if ideally placed - that's real data collected for the DTI. The gas to produce a similar amount of energy cost somewhat less than £40 at current prices.
Why do you feel you can't take such an established fact at face value? Do you have more credible data?
I'm pulling the plug on any of our ambitions wrt solar/wind schemes.
Natural Philosopher et al, thanks for the financials - that is disappointing, not your replies that is - just the prospect that (at present) this technology does not pay for the consumer, and we haven't (at present!) got money for just showing off. BTW I read an article about 'solar paint' on a website. I was half suspecting a wind-up. Perhaps that's the sort of advance (if it's for real) that will one day make it pay.
John Rumm et al, I've seen those heat pump arrangements, in every example the garden they are deployed in looks sizeable - which ours is not (maybe 10m square) - so I'm doubtful it is going to work for us.
David Hansen / Huge et al, we are in the UK, we are in a modern house and it has all the quick-wins you mention (even the new three pronged light-bulb housings which are a real pain as hardly anyone sells the bulbs!).
We are atop a small hill and it can get quite windy, so I half suspected a small wind generator might be semi-viable (until reading Peter Parry's post! - thanks Peter). My only additional worry with this was if the thing goes a wrong, the prop spins off and hits somebody - it's quite a densely populated area where we live. BTW Ed / Peter I'm no DIY buff, I half zapped myself with some mains leads once and it put me off for good.
As fossil fuels depleat and the cost of energy increases, perhaps that is the time when these technologies will come into their own.
A heat pump can be quite a nice simple solution when the only easily installable alternative source of heat is electric only, and you also want air conditioning in the summer. For example, one unit to heat and cool a outbuilding without needing to plumb it into your domestic heating or gas supply.
Spend your money on thermal underwear and turn the stat down two degrees.
Its the most cost effective thing to do.
And I must be off to divorce my wife, having woken up with a splitting headache to once again find that she has opened the bedroom window and the hot air heaters are flapping full bore..
Cost benefit analysis shows its cheaper to be single ;-)
I suspect once there are enough nuclear power stations. it will be the 'modern' way to go..
Just think. No more condensing boilers, no more oil tanks, no more flues and fumes and flameouts, no bloody great lump of space taken up with a clanky 18th century device. No more CORGI. No more annual service..
Just a nice coil under the front or back yard. And an electric motor
In message , snipped-for-privacy@googlemail.com writes
Since your epiphany are you going to remove this from your www-site? "Wind generation is often described as being intermittent because of days when the wind doesn't blow. This suggests a supply that is on-off which is misleading. Whilst available wind varies, it rarely (if at all) goes completely to zero, nor to maximum output. It is also possible to 'fill in the gaps' by storing excess electricity generated when demand is low."
Hard to do when people still want mock-Georgian houses.
A nice glass fronted[1] house with a good thick slab of something heavy behind it, equipped with blinds and vents should be able to do both heating and cooling if used properly. And there may be the rub - some occupiers will hate it simply because they don't understand how to use it or have fuddled the design up by building cupboards over the vents.
However popular it is, the whiners will generally get the press and what could be a super design with real benefits in reducing energy costs will become unfashionable again (if it ever gets started) because of ignorance and the media's hunger for sensational stories.
I had friends in the 60s who had some old radiators in glass boxes on the roof of an extension. Their boiler wasn't on at all from late spring to early autumn, and the system cost very little to run - just the power for a small CH circulator run at its lowest setting, and even that was only on when there was sufficient available heat relative to the tank.
When I last drove by the house it was still there - I guess it's paid for itself in the intervening forty years even if they had to scrounge some more radiators to replace rusted units at some point.
I suspect the only way this will change is if house builders start equipping whole estates at the time of building. The extra cost then would be considerably less than retrofit systems, with the added advantage that several hundred houses with identical systems will mean the local plumbers have some chance to learn what's going on.
Luckily mine doesn't object to having the bedroom radiators off and the window open except on /very/ windy nights. She just has a thicker duvet than me.
Does everyone else have their heating off over night? I used to think this was fairly normal, but looking out over the rooftops on a not particularly cold night recently I noticed that many houses still had plumes from their chimneys. Now, if they were houses with grannies in, I could probably understand it, but several of them I know have families with a couple of fit adults and a few school age kids.
Ours goes off every night about an hour before we go to bed. Comes on half an hour before we get up, then off again once the edge has been taken off the cold and we are off to work a bit later.
Gas bills are OK, especially since the new condensing boiler, all the sludge cleared out, the pump-over finally fixed, and TRVs on some radiators.
We have to save there...electricity bill is still horrendous what with all the computers, some 24/7...!
Yes, but principally because of the noise from expanding pipes and rads wakes us up... Even if it was on the programmable stat would set quite low (15C in the living room say) for the night period.
As for people leaving the heating on, I think you are over estimating the abilty of many to understand how heating systems work.
Aye, I'm thinking of replacing the ones here with mini ATX based things. The 750VA UPS is normally running at a good 80% capacity for 18hrs/day. Call that 600W * 18 = 10.8 units FECK ME! Naw that can't be right, can it?
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