Mussels wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:21 pm
I've been looking at solar setups again, it seems it's now a fairly simple DIY setup (with battery) if you don't want to earn any money trading extra electrons back to the grid. I suspect money earned from feed in won't make it worth paying labour to have someone else screw it up
I live in a bungalow with a shallow roof and mostly work from home so this will get some serious thought after I've done the kitchen and bathroom.
I keep thinking about that, for simple things like charging stuff in the day.
But then I realise that in the day I don't need to charge much!! LOL
And, my apartment faces NE - gets some decent sun in the morning, but not the rest of the day. And worse, I have no balcony, so I would have to find a little panel that I could hand in the window
Not gonna work till I move to a place with a south facing balcony
Life is for living. Buy the shoes. Eat the cake. Ride the bikes. Just, ride the bikes!!
Mussels wrote: ↑Sun Dec 04, 2022 8:31 pm
In other news my low temp radiators are working well. It's starting to struggle a bit but instead of turning it up I'm trying to find out what else I can change. Yesterday someone had left the bathroom window open and today I noticed the loft hatch is cold and one radiator is blocked, tomorrow the hatch will get insulated and I'll try to flush the blocked radiator.
It's also good my family is realising they need to conserve heat, leaving a door open for ten minutes means it will take an hour to heat up again. They think the new boiler is low powered, I haven't told them I turned it down.
Interesting, but short, article in the Guardian about boiler efficiency. In a nutshell, most boilers installed are oversized and are run at too high flow temperatures.
As an aside, I've been running a couple of CO2 meters again since the heating came on. If all draughts/ventilation are eliminated the impact on air quality is startling. Using a gas hob also cranks it up so I make an effort to get more air into the kitchen when cooking and keep the interior door shut. Also leaving bedroom windows on the night latch, as a minimum at night.
Actually had the 1500ppm alarm going off in the main room one evening.
Really like the idea of (designed in) heat exchangers and air management in new builds. Combined with decent insulation and triple glazing it would be
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
Count Steer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:45 am
Really like the idea of (designed in) heat exchangers and air management in new builds. Combined with decent insulation and triple glazing it would be
Should be a planning requirement IMO - I dunno, maybe it already is! Solar power/heating should also be a requirement. Building things in from scratch is way easier than adding 'em later after all.
On the boiler temp thing, anecdotally like, I noticed the other day that my next door neighbours boiler exhaust was 'steaming' loads and mine wasn't. The steam is of course condensed water vapour in the cold morning air, which shouldn't be in the boiler exhaust really - the point of the condensing boiling is that it's already all condensed out before it leaves the chimney, the energy contained in the hot water vapour is recovered.
Now that i've started seeing that on these cold mornings it's amazing how many houses are billowing out clouds of steam. Proves lots of boilers are badly set up I suppose.
Count Steer wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:45 am
Really like the idea of (designed in) heat exchangers and air management in new builds. Combined with decent insulation and triple glazing it would be
Should be a planning requirement IMO - I dunno, maybe it already is! Solar power/heating should also be a requirement. Building things in from scratch is way easier than adding 'em later after all.
I took a stroll along the old local railway line on Monday. It passes behind several new developments of quite expensive* houses. Rather than every one having solar panels, there was nary a one. It was almost like the covenants said 'thou shalt not fit unsightly devices to thy roofs'. I thought that they had to fit a minimum - as per Docca's house.
* to buy. They didn't look expensive to build.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
tricol wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 9:12 am
We're finding our new build house isn't keep the heat in as much as our 'old' new build, although I think it is down to the size of the house.
Also, we're getting a lot of condensation on the inside of these new double glazed windows. I'm guessing that means a bad install?
If the condensation is between the panes the windows are
If it's on the inside ie in the room, as Dazzle says, high humidity and lack of ventilation.
Something like the Curconsa 3-in-1 CO2 meter (Amazon) will show you temp, humidity and CO2. There are cheaper ones that will log data too but I'm quite impressed with the quality of this one.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
I get loads of condensation on the outside of my windows. I was worried at first, then I realised it means they're working - the outside is cold, which is what you want. Means the heat isn't escaping and heating up the outer layer.
Thanks both. I have a small monitor in my office, currently 61% humidity and 17deg C. We're being a bit tight with the heating if I'm honest, for obvious reasons.
Thing to be aware of is humidity is only half the story - 61% at 17°C is less water than 61% at 20°C.
We've settled on about 18.5°C as a comfortable temp now. 16-17°C feels cold and is actually also quite dry even at 60% RH (the 'R' is important here!) just a couple of degrees warmer makes a massive difference IMO.
tricol wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 9:30 am
Thanks both. I have a small monitor in my office, currently 61% humidity and 17deg C. We're being a bit tight with the heating if I'm honest, for obvious reasons.
61% is at the top end of the ideal range.
I've taken to trying to refresh the internal air overnight or when we're out ie when the heating is off put more windows on the night latch. With Hive I can put the heating on for 10 mins before getting home, then close some of them.
Keeping the internal kitchen door shut when cooking should help keep the moisture level down in the rest of the house.
Running the main heating to keep a lowish background heat and using 'point' heating ie a fan blower where you need it is an option as it pushes the air around more than static radiators do with convection.
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
Humidity seems to be a common problem in the UK and all this advice to seal up drafts doesn't help, I've gone through my options:
Trickle vents, this seems like a backwards step so I'm not doing it.
PIV (Air blown into a room from the loft), it will blow cold in winter and hot in summer so I don't like this either.
MHRV (more complex system that takes humid air from bathroom & kitchen and uses the heat to warm fresh air that it pumps into living areas). I like this idea but it relies on good internal air flow which means gaps round doors which then means more noise transmission between rooms. I still like it as I can fit cooling coils to reduce humidity in the summer, just need to sort out the room venting issues. It seems it can keep heat in but not heat out, I need to find out why before committing.
PEV (permanently on extractor fan), it's a bit wasteful as it just blows warm air out of the house. I fitted one in the bathroom to keep a negative pressure and stop humid air drifting back into the house. It doesn't chuck out as much air as I expected and the humidity detector works well, I like this as a simple and relatively cheap fix.
Dehumidifier - I've bought a new one which isn't cheap to run but my humidity was upwards of 80% most of the time and mould keeps creeping in. Hopefully it is a temporary option.
I swapped out the kitchen wall extractor for an extracting cooker hood, that made a fair difference as it doesn't need to extract as much air to remove cooking steam.
For radiator temps I've turned the heat up to 50 degrees, 45 would probably work fine if my radiators were more modern and less blocked.
When the boiler was fitted my plumber asked if I wanted 15WK or 25KW, the old boiler was 11 and the shower was 8 so I opted for 15. Plenty powerful enough for a 3-bed bungalow except I ran into the problem the article mentions of combi boilers taking a long time before hot water comes through, it feels wasteful to run the tap for a minute waiting for hot water, but the article makes me feel better about it.
We've got 5 of those PEVs in our house, I do have a little concern over my expensive warm air being sucked out but they do seem to keep the house free of any condensation.
More on my off grid lifestyle, today I've installed a propane water heater. No choice really. I was able to use the electric heater on Wednesday last week and it's been cloudy ever since. My in-house expert was getting pissed off with cold showers so the gas heater and a bunch of fittings was purchased. Hot shower tonight and I can't wait.
The cloud cover has been exceptional and there's no cloud free days forecast for the foreseeable future. People that have been off grid here for years are getting pissed off. I'm losing around 10% a day on the solar batteries, even the expert is concerned. I've borrowed a generator, I'll buy the necessary electrical fittings tomorrow so that I can plug it in. It'll run though the inverter and charge the batteries. I'll only need it for a couple of hours maybe two days a week but it'll take some of the worry away. If it works I'll buy my own and convert it propane.
Mussels wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 10:25 amthe article mentions of combi boilers taking a long time before hot water comes through, it feels wasteful to run the tap for a minute waiting for hot water, but the article makes me feel better about it.
It would be the same if you had a tank full of hot water - it could never be near every tap. At least with a combi you don't pay to heat water that doesn't get used.
I've trained - almost successfully - Filly to only use the hot taps on occasions when hot water is actually needed.
Plus, I've turned down the actual hot water temperature. No Legionnaires issues as there's no standing water.
When we replaced our 20 y.o. gas boiler a couple of years ago, the installer suggested buying a combi boiler even though we have a DHW cylinder and intended to retain it. His suggestion was to run the combi circuit solely for the kitchen tap, which is less than a metre's pipe run away from the boiler, so virtually instantaneous hot water. The bathroom would continue to be supplied from the cylinder, which is housed in a cupboard just off the bathroom.
So we now have hot water at all taps that is delivered with virtually no delay. It does help that boiler and cylinder placement was pretty much ideal, but shows what can be achieved with a bit of thought.
mangocrazy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:47 pm
When we replaced our 20 y.o. gas boiler a couple of years ago, the installer suggested buying a combi boiler even though we have a DHW cylinder and intended to retain it. His suggestion was to run the combi circuit solely for the kitchen tap, which is less than a metre's pipe run away from the boiler, so virtually instantaneous hot water. The bathroom would continue to be supplied from the cylinder, which is housed in a cupboard just off the bathroom.
So we now have hot water at all taps that is delivered with virtually no delay. It does help that boiler and cylinder placement was pretty much ideal, but shows what can be achieved with a bit of thought.
Just for clarity...what is heating the DHW cylinder?
Doubt is not a pleasant condition.
But certainty is an absurd one.
Voltaire
mangocrazy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 06, 2022 8:56 pm
The 'system' side of the combi boiler. There is a diverter valve adjcaent to the DHW cylinder that switches betweenCH and DHW as programmed.
So how does that work in practice - does it mean that the boiler constantly (within any timer limits) maintain a tank full of hot water?
