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The financial crisis - a period of economic readjustment ?


steve b

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I've asked A&M about this and after consideration got the ok ... the main rider is to try to avoid a political slanging match, not the easiest thing as it's all connected somewhere .

For example, any thoughts on the best sort of roof insulation to use these days?

I'm on mains gas CH but considering taking it out in favour of a multi fuel (wood or coal ) Aga type cooker with back boiler . More work to run but I do have plenty of wood- ooer:ph34r: and a nice used multi fuel range cooker with back boiler dry stored at the moment.

   Interested in comments from anyone that has made this change recently - last few years about pro's and con's 

Another thing on my list is what's the experience of smart meters ? Do they save you money in reality ?   

Plenty more I could add but I'm interested in the collective thoughts and ideas of this forum 

Have at it ........

Steve 

 

 

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I'm in the wood game - so I have wood all the time - ooer.  My CH is oil (now theres a lottery) as mains gas is never going to be round this way. I use and open fire to heat the house and the oil to provide a back up. The kids wear jersey's inside in the winter. The problem with wood and coal is that it's a target for the yoghurt knitting green folk. It releases carbon (officially far more than Snagger when he's working), although in reality it's nowhere near. 

I'm seriously following a large number of folk around here and getting an LPG conversion on the boiler. 

SMART Meters , now that would be interesting to hear about

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Had a smart meter in my old house for electric only as we were on bulk LPG. All it does is show you how much you are using at a given point in time and a total amount used per day

 

You then need to utilise that information yourself to see what you could turn off standby/try different things to see how you can get that daily usage down

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Smart meter I had just showed the useage and cost you were racking up day by day - useful until I changed energy companies then the cost bit didn't work properly.

I did some sums on how best to keep my costs down this winter, the result is I'm in Portugal heading south to Africa, when the UK gets warm again I'll turn round and come back 😄  

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19 minutes ago, L19MUD said:

Had a smart meter in my old house for electric only as we were on bulk LPG. All it does is show you how much you are using at a given point in time and a total amount used per day

You then need to utilise that information yourself to see what you could turn off standby/try different things to see how you can get that daily usage down

Have had smart meters in two houses now. Mildly interesting when we first got one, seeing the usage shoot up when you boiled the kettle. Then realised that none of our usage that made a noticeable difference was really discretionary (okay, we could only drink water - but we weren't really wasting significant amounts). And that's with me working from home.

Chucked it in a drawer and never looked at it again.

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I was under the impression that smart meters allowed suppliers to hike unit cost up in peak use times and possibly reduce unit price during low use. A bit like economy 7 but with multiple high and low charge periods during a 24 hr cycle . 

Maybe that is still to come ? 

I'm well aware of unit use for any given item - it's not complex maths after all. 

Steve

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1 hour ago, steve b said:

the main rider is to try to avoid a political slanging match

Are you aware this is the internet? :lol:

I've been curious about solar for a long time but the claims have always been ahead of the reality and the cost/savings just never added up... but talking to a colleague they're having solar plus a fairly large battery installed for (seemingly) reasonable money so I'm interested to see how that pans out for them, being able to have a battery means not having to do the dance of timing when you run appliances / heat things up.

My mum's had solar for ages, never really clear if it's saved her as much as it cost and only recently did I have to point out that she was still using the gas boiler to heat water when she could be flicking the immersion on for an hour or two during the daytime for nothing :rolleyes: also suspect she's not on a great tariff so anything she doesn't burn herself won't be earning her anything back.

Smart meters only tell you what you're using - you have to actually look at it and change what you do in order to save any money. It's just as easy to look at the wattages of things in your house and decide if you use them too much or not. People worry about charging phones or leaving lights on when those things are orders of magnitude less power than boiling a kettle or heating a room. General rule is anything that heats stuff up is lots of kilowatts, everything else is hardly worth worrying about.

I did see the other day someone measured the power use of a few bits round their home and (IIRC) the Sky TV box used an inordinate amount of power even when turned off - not as much as a heater, but multiplied out by 24x7x365 it was a big chunk of change.

 

I'm also re-looking at DIYing a waste-oil burner for workshop heating, with the price of leccy and how sniffy the council tip is about disposing of oil now it would kill two birds with one stone. Not very eco in terms of what comes out of the chimbly but being able to pump a load of therms into the workshop for cheap on a winter's day for £0 is very attractive.

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3 minutes ago, steve b said:

I was under the impression that smart meters allowed suppliers to hike unit cost up in peak use times and possibly reduce unit price during low use. A bit like economy 7 but with multiple high and low charge periods during a 24 hr cycle . 

Maybe that is still to come ? 

I'm well aware of unit use for any given item - it's not complex maths after all. 

Steve

I guess they could do that, and as you say, probably on its way.

We have one, and it is supposed to be able to be read remotely, but that doesnt work. Will not save you any money of its own accord, but you can see your own consumption, and the rest is up to you.

We have a woodburner, and a small wood ! This however backs onto a much larger bit of woodland, so effectively all our fuel for it is free, apart from the work involved in collecting and cutting. SWMBO also cooks on it in the winter, and we heat water on it too, so TBH, for the time being, the cost of fuel does not affect us too much.

We have an oil boiler for central heating and hot water, but never use the heating, just the hot water heating in the summer when its too warn for the woodburner to be lit. I put 2000 litres in the tank in February 2019, and there is still more than half left.

Electric bill is getting worse though, as we have the electric cooker and kettle, plus the usual lights, TV etc.

Only got old fashioned four inches of loft insulation that the mice top up with leaves etc, but with the woodburner on, its too hot in winter.

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I'm putting a rayburn in currently. Will heat 12 rads. The thermal store we need will also have inputs for solar water heating, log burner back boiler and an oil boiler. It will also have an immersion but only to be used if we ever put in PV solar. 
 

I have a lot of wood too so want to make the most of it and harvest what I have sustainably as needed. Mostly dead wood currently. 
 

Also need to get my arse in gear and buy a few tons of anthracite before that gets banned completely. Three should do a couple of years. The rayburn will be fine on wood when we are about but will need anthracite over night. 

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3 hours ago, Nonimouse said:

I'm seriously following a large number of folk around here and getting an LPG conversion on the boiler. 

Looked into this a while back, there isn't the same energy density in LPG as oil, and it will end up costing you a lot more (i.e. you can't say gas per litre cost === oil per litre cost as heat output is wildly different).

Plus modern gas boilers are rubbish -average life of 5 years, my oil boiler is 30+ and still going strong.

Much as I hate the stench, it will be staying as long as it possibly can.

I recently properly insulated my extension (single story old washroom, coal house and outside lavvy) where my office is, it has made a MASSIVE difference to heating over last winter, and remained lovely and cool over the very hot days this summer -37 outside, 24 in. The biggest thing I think you can do is insulate, more than any messing around with heating systems which tend to cost 1000s to do anything.

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I’ve started thinking on this.

I’m along the lines of solar, with a battery, and moving to electric radiators, and electric immersion heater for the water.

The pay back period then is against my current electric and gas costs. 
 

The pay back calculations are very individual to any given household - and obviously I don’t know how long I’ve got left (to live!) …

But the idea of breaking dependence on both gas and electric - and having that in pace for when I retire is very attractive.

Even if they resolve this energy thing in the short term - it is a finite resource, and we are already seeing them move on to harder to get sources - and that will continue - more cost and energy to bring this stuff up from the ground and that will passed on to the end user. 
 

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I had solar on one of our previous houses. We had it on a deal where we didn't pay for them but didn't get paid for the excess either. Ours were not pointing an optimal direction.

Did they provide power that supplied us and saved us money, yes. 

Was there excess going back into the grid, yes but only on sunny days.

Were they worth it, yes but only because we didn't buy them.

On balance I would only have them again if they were pointing south, if they came with the house or we paid very little for them. 

I would fit them if building a house from scratch or seriously rebuilding one.

Mike

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We are looking at solar and a battery. If you want to use excess to heat water there are gizmos that power your immersion heater when you have excess power, IE when it senses you are powering the grid.  

Re insulation, a few years back we redid our roof. You are supposed if you do to insulate to a U value of 1.8, but are excused that if you are only doing up to half the roof. Of course most people ignore that and just replace the whole roof as it was. However I found a roof felt that  gives really good insulation from Web Dynamics, together with 60mm Kingspan between the rafters. The new tiles were raised slightly to allow air between tiles and felt, so we used flatter tiles. Result! U value of 1.8 (already 100mm fibreglass Inthe loft) and the roof is now 'warm' rather than 'cold'. That has also made it more comfortable in summer. Our gas usage went from 2746 cu.m in 2013-14 to 1850 2021-22. So there may be differences in temp in those years, but you could feel the difference. The loft is warm and dry too, in summer only slightly warmer than upstairs, whereas it used to be like an oven. That is something that can be done quite quickly and easily without lots of internal disturbance.

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Biggest difference I found was having a proper thermostate, and a HIVE programmable one that that, different temps during the day, different programmes per day (rather than just weekdays and weekends), paid for itself twice over the first winter.

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As others have said a smart meter only tells you what you are using and if working correctly how much that is cost you, its then up to you to change things to actually save money, most of the changes are pretty obvious turn lights off, turn heating down etc even without the meter. It can be useful to show just how much somethings use though, I found out the fluorescent tubes in my workshop used more power than the lathe, each time one failed I replaced it with an LED light (they were also cheaper which made it more obvious a thing to do) and power usage dropped.

People get hung up on oil being a finite resource and its cost of production, its not quite that simple, like any resource as it gets more limited the price goes up, as demand goes up the prices goes up, when demand drops price drops (during covid for a while it was actually negative). It won't suddenly run out but it will progressively get more expensive which will make other sources of power more viable. To get more complicated there is no one cost of production, each well has a cost per barrel associated with it, due to flow rate, contaminates, quality and percentage of water being produced with the oil, etc. If price goes down they shut the more expensive ones off so overall price of production drops, if the price goes up it becomes economic to reopen these wells and bring on new fields with higher operating costs so apparent overall cost of production goes up but they are still making a profit. New technology is also making reserves that were unviable possible all the time which is why quoted world reserves are variable and frankly not a number worth a dogs leavings since there are so many variables it's pretty much a guess. We are drilling wells now that would have been impossible even 10 years ago, 20,000ft long with strong turns around other wells and ending horizontal with a placement accurate to less than 10ft is pretty common place now, I completed one last month.

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13 hours ago, Bowie69 said:

The biggest thing I think you can do is insulate, more than any messing around with heating systems which tend to cost 1000s to do anything.

This is the truth - the less heat escapes the less heating you need. Look at the Scandi homes where it is properly freezing & dark for half the year, and the newer "passive" house designs that need almost no heating.

I snagged some lovely insulated ceiling panels when I built the garage and those make a huge difference, I can run a small electric heater to knock the edge off on a cold day and it makes it pretty bearable. Unfortunately single-skinned brickwork leaks heat and I can't do much about that.

Likewise the inventing shed we lined with polystyrene panels a friend was getting rid of and the strip lights alone can keep it warm enough a lot of the time.

Unfortunately once you've insulated your loft and a few other easy wins it starts to get expensive/structural - we've got cavity walls with a load of manky old rockwool in, but changing or upgrading that would be £££.

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Our house was built in 1996 to the, then current, rather rubbish insulation standards.

We have since doubled the amount of insulation in the loft and that has made an appreciable difference. Three years ago we put solar panels on the house, once I established the payback period on the tariff at the time was less than the guarantee on the invertor, (the panels do not point optimally to the sun, so were picked for their off axis performance). Now, the more the cost of electricity rises the shorter the payback period!

We have looked at a battery, but that does not seem to be viable as we don't export much surplus electricity, although that has been distorted from working from home for much of the last two years. Using off peak electricity to charge the battery would be a way of saving overall costs, but you need more complex control gear. We will have another look next year, as battery prices fall and useful lives increase.

We got a quote for a heat pump, but that was outrageous and the second supplier we asked, (who did the original solar panels), said not now, wait for the boiler to break/cylinder to fail, as the cost to change is out of line of any cost savings to be made. 

In an ideal world, we would like to get to Passive Haus energy standards, but that would really need a south facing new build and a lottery win!

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I looked into the idea of building an earth ship (passive House). Ignoring the horrific cost of land and the fact you would have a hard time convincing the planning office. You can't actually build one to meet the current building regulations. I believe there are two that have been built in the UK and neither can be lived in because they don't meet the regulations. It's frustrating that even when you want to do more for the environment etc you either can't due to regulations or you simply can't afford to. 

We are planning to do an extension next year and I would love to add rain water harvesting for toilets and washing machine but I doubt I'll be allowed or can afford to do it.

Mike

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We put grey water harvesting in when we built our extension. It's only for flushing the toilet and watering the garden, but it was very simple to do.  The thermal efficiency of our extension is really good. I asked the architect for an additional 100mm for wall insulation and a hipped ceiling. There is a large void underneath as the house sits on a slope, so I requested timber joists, not block and beam. The joists are 12", netted and filled between with insulation. I've allowed extra joists in one area for a log burner, but as yet it simply doesn't need one. One radiator does the all 68m2 and the kitchen and utility.

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1 hour ago, jeremy996 said:

We got a quote for a heat pump, but that was outrageous and the second supplier we asked, (who did the original solar panels), said not now, wait for the boiler to break/cylinder to fail, as the cost to change is out of line of any cost savings to be made. 

Can I ask how outrageous, as I believe a ground source heat pump is the only viable solution to all this. But any local specialist that can do it is so busy they don't even answer a phone or email.

(Please PM me if you don't want to share).

Daan

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And one problem with heat pumps is they have a coefficient of performance of about 3 max ( they may claim more but thermodynamics being what it is...) So if you currently have a 24kW boiler, you'd need around 8kW electricity input to run the heat pump to get the same out. If you use it say to supplement other heating it may be a better proposition, as heat pumps like to warm large volumes of air slightly as opposed to heating small volumes of water massively. It looks like water really needs to be heated by solar, either directly or electrically to get hot enough to avoid bugs living in it. 

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On 9/8/2022 at 10:38 PM, Bowie69 said:

 The biggest thing I think you can do is insulate, more than any messing around with heating systems which tend to cost 1000s to do anything.

Quite.  That has been stated many times by most energy companies, boiler manufacturers, heat pump manufacturers, solar system providers, architects, economists and even (perhaps with less credibility) the government.  However you obtain the energy, the less energy you need, the less it’ll cost you.

 

The problem with fitting heat pumps into old properties is that they don’t produce the high water temperatures that boilers crank out, so need much larger radiators or, better still, underfloor heating.  That makes the overall installation very expensive.  Air source heat pumps have around 3:1 energy ratios for typical current pumps, while ground source run at about 5:1.  Ground source are considerably dearer, but will create greater savings in the long run.  But you also need to consider that air source become very inefficient below close to freezing and will occasionally have to run in reverse, taking house warmth to heat the heat exchangers to melt of ice.  They can also be very noisy, while hound systems don’t suffer those issues.

There are a lot of useful videos on YouTube about both types and their foibles.

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Also, air source  may be 3:1 , but rapidly drops when cooler outside to 2:1.

Spoke and mirrors around the whole thing.

ASHP , as stated, requires your central heating running at a much lower temperature, which means you end up running them all the time to get a base level heat in the house.

Whereas my heating runs at 85C, can heat the living area up in 30 mins quite happily, and then start cycling as and when needed.

Which is better? Running all the time, or just when needed.....

Answers on a postcard... 

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