Dodgy69 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 22, 2023 5:10 pm
My mate is going full electric...We can't make gas but we can make electricity, so he's replacing all his rads with infrared wall panel type rads. Apparently they heat objects and furnishings rather than space. With good insulation he reckons they work well.
Solar panels and a battery to get through the dark hours. Initial outlay about 12k, going by some sparky he's been talking to. Insulation in key, but it's definitely food for thought as gas is the winter killer on bills.
I live in Spain with year round sunshine. In the winter I switch over to bottled gas for hot water, I've just taken out the log burner and installed a pellet burner and I have two bottles had heater things. Gas bottles have the price pegged by the government, they're just over 15 euro at the moment.
Admittedly my daily charge window is only about four hours in mid winter, the sun goes round the mountain. Because of the height of the sun panels generally half what they do in winter. I can survive a few cloudy days with no problems. Your mate using only electric won't survive a cloudy morning without resorting to mains if he's trying to heat the house, water, cook etc.
Joking aside, be careful how far you take the "someone else's problem" viewpoint eh? 99% of your lifestyle, if you've vaguely western based, relies on someone else doing something for you
Mr. Dazzle wrote: ↑Sat Jul 22, 2023 8:08 pm
What's your pressure like and how much are turbines?
I assume that was meant for me?
Water pressure is a bit pants, it's drinking water but there's not enough pressure to pipe it directly to the house. It fills a 1000 litre tank in an old underground water deposit that would leak it all away if filled (hence the tank). There is an on demand pump which gives me 3 bar in the house.
There's zero chance of running a wind turbine. I'd never get the license required for it and my bit of the mountain is quite sheltered.
Cousin Jack wrote: ↑Sat Jul 22, 2023 7:09 pm
I did a quick and dirty calculation for our place a few days ago.
About 15 year payback for solar panels, about 30 years for an air source heat pump.
Might be a bit quicker now.
My gas boiler is about 10 years old, so is likely to peg out sooner or later.
I've considered installing an air source heat pump, but it would require more than removing the boiler involve installation of a huge tank (currently combi boiler). Unlikely to be an equivalent cost to a boiler replacement.
Dodgy69 wrote: ↑Sat Jul 22, 2023 5:10 pm
My mate is going full electric...We can't make gas but we can make electricity, so he's replacing all his rads with infrared wall panel type rads. Apparently they heat objects and furnishings rather than space. With good insulation he reckons they work well.
Solar panels and a battery to get through the dark hours. Initial outlay about 12k, going by some sparky he's been talking to. Insulation in key, but it's definitely food for thought as gas is the winter killer on bills.
In winter when the sun is weak and he needs more energy for heating where is the electricity going to come from?
It is probably possible in a purpose designed building but a big hurdle for me is ventilation, I think the numbers are always based on not having any.
In the energy efficient buildings I've worked on its more based on ventilation control rather than not having any.
Airtight (ish) building with a heat recovery unit to use outgoing warm air to heat incoming cold air.
To be fair these buildings have generally been designed to be efficient from the outset and arent leaky wind tunnels. Even ones designed to be good still need pretty much all the tradesmen onboard with sealing it up well (even the sparks and plumbers need to up their fucking game a lot cos theyre bad for cutting holes in the vapour control layers and not sealing em up) and usually its better to airtest before it's plasterboarded then on completion to check that the plumbers and sparks havent forgotten something then cut loads of holes in the joint to get cables or pipes through.
The trick seems to be get tradesmen who're interested in the result and keep hold of em cos they're few and far between.
What we've all decided to do is, all but one neighbour goes on a water meter, then we'll all share the one non metered outside tap and go fucking wild.
