Did you see the report that boilers sales are to stop 2025

[ivan]

Bear in mind current generation is only just able to cope with bad weather demand.
A quick trawl of google returns will give you the annual sales in billions of litres of fossil fuel from garage pumps. Similarly you can find the energy content, of which about 35% is used to make the vehicle travel along. That has to be replaced by an equivalent amount of electricity, allowing for about 80% recovery from the battery and 95% efficiencey of the electric motor. It equates to the output of around 6 very large nuclear installations. A modern design (not producing bomb material) leaves about a car sized lump of nasties for long term storage. At present we are not capable of building one such in 20 years.
Can you imagine the noise from the huge fans in air heat pumps - small estate houses will not have large emough gardens for ground extraction...
Long term the only answer to this, and our heating requirements, would seem to be hydrogen - fuel cells for cars, tanks quick to refill, and combustion for heating. Again, long term, something for the current fuel rich countries to change over to, having unlimited sunshine, to photocell seawater to oxygen and hydrogen.
Maybe by then we'll have perfected fusion and energy will be unlimited etc. etc . as they said about nuclear in the 1950's.

 

[sirocosm]

The containment was the reactor casing just like most reactors, and works fine until breached at which point you are in trouble. At chernobyl due to a chain of events they got thermal runaway and the cooling water boiled, the 1000 tonne reactor cover just lifted, then an explosion and the core was exposed and burning sending radioactive material into the atmosphere.

There was no containment building as would be installed on any western-built reactor.

 

[Spectric]

If the reactor in any plant gets into thermal runaway then whatever is protecting it from the weather will not contain the blast or the radiation, that is why it is essential to maintain full control of the reactor and not enter the non operational zone.

 

[D_W]

Thats a start but I would also want a full face mask with the correct canisters so I could evacuate safely and not get dosed up in the evac.

I'm about 15 miles downwind. It would take exceptional odds for the fallout to go up and then come down right on me. iosat gets us time to go the opposite direction of the wind without the kids getting a thyroid dose. There'd be worse stuff in a real disaster (cesium, etc?) but I wouldn't be thinking about sticking around and riding it out.

 

[Rorschach]

Bear in mind current generation is only just able to cope with bad weather demand.
A quick trawl of google returns will give you the annual sales in billions of litres of fossil fuel from garage pumps. Similarly you can find the energy content, of which about 35% is used to make the vehicle travel along. That has to be replaced by an equivalent amount of electricity, allowing for about 80% recovery from the battery and 95% efficiencey of the electric motor. It equates to the output of around 6 very large nuclear installations. A modern design (not producing bomb material) leaves about a car sized lump of nasties for long term storage. At present we are not capable of building one such in 20 years.
Can you imagine the noise from the huge fans in air heat pumps - small estate houses will not have large emough gardens for ground extraction...
Long term the only answer to this, and our heating requirements, would seem to be hydrogen - fuel cells for cars, tanks quick to refill, and combustion for heating. Again, long term, something for the current fuel rich countries to change over to, having unlimited sunshine, to photocell seawater to oxygen and hydrogen.
Maybe by then we'll have perfected fusion and energy will be unlimited etc. etc . as they said about nuclear in the 1950's.

SIL lives on a new build estate, all houses use air source heat pumps. No complaints about noise.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

She is a publicist and campaigner FOR the scientific consensus, he is not and he thinks he knows better than the experts

She is a publicist and campaigner FOR the scientific consensus her parents, advisors etc. believe. Ftfy.

You did say consensus not facts, though, I'll give you that. it was scientific consensus a few decades ago that we'd be living in an ice age by now.

 

[D_W]

SIL lives on a new build estate, all houses use air source heat pumps. No complaints about noise.

They're not noisy like they used to be. I think most are scroll type instead of (not certain, but FIL's Geo pump makes less noise than my gas furnace fan does). Scroll type may be why they have a normal expected service life now, too.

 

[Jacob]

"Consensus" is agreement about the interpretation of the facts

... it was scientific consensus a few decades ago that we'd be living in an ice age by now.

No it was not.
It was a speculative theory, amongst many. And also in fact was the great white hope - that natural forces would reverse the heating of the atmosphere. by increase albedo as snow surfaces spread from the poles and increase reflection of sunlight and heat.
The fear now is that what will halt climate change will be the changes which stop us increasing our carbon footprint whether we want to or not, if we don't do it fast enough ourselves.

 

[ivan]

Well that's good news.
Bloke who bought my parents house recently got a grant for an air source pump which was fitted in a brick lean to. Fan must be about 900mm dia. Can hear it indoors, next door. I can hear the fan of my neighbours CH boiler in my bedroom. Fortunately he does not run it at night.
Heat pump heat is pretty low grade, so the air source pump and thus fan runs more or less continously (I am told by installers). We are all electric with storage radiators in all rooms (on 220V 3 phase) which is passably similar in cost to liquid gas (no mains gas here). After talking to installers re cost benefit / noise (esp. now no grant) ground source looked possible but expensive, so we decided to stick with off peak for a new extension.
Retired, we may well do more continental motor homing in future winters...

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My electrician told me he's installing more and more Economy 7 (many areas around here haven't mains gas.)

Ironically (unless it's been changed) it doesn't work with Smart Meters. I would have thought one of the main objectives of smart metering would be ultimately to introduce variable charging.

 

[Spectric]

Ironically (unless it's been changed) it doesn't work with Smart Meters. I would have thought one of the main objectives of smart metering would be ultimately to introduce variable charging.

Smart meters, like smart phones are not really that smart, an awful lot of hype around smart meters and the story I like is that they will save you energy and so reduce your bills, how do they do that? The only way to save is to use less, so unless you want to sit in the dark and turn off a lot of electrical appliances then you won't save a penny but the supplier will because he can automatically read the meter and reduce his cost which they will not pass any back onto you.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I reported that advert to the ASA. They came back that they had had so many complaints they would not reply individually. I notice now the ads say iirc user input required.

 

[D_W]

Smart meters, like smart phones are not really that smart, an awful lot of hype around smart meters and the story I like is that they will save you energy and so reduce your bills, how do they do that? The only way to save is to use less, so unless you want to sit in the dark and turn off a lot of electrical appliances then you won't save a penny but the supplier will because he can automatically read the meter and reduce his cost which they will not pass any back onto you.

They're "convenience" meters, but their real purpose is just to collect data and sell it. I'm sure there are groups of people who are oblivious and who would leave their thermostat set identically (high energy use) all the time, but when I saw a potential schedule for a smart meter (this is sans spouse now), it was less conservative than what I would do at the time (which is not to turn the heat up in the morning, and not to turn it up while at work, and only turn it up when arriving home (not before so that home was "comfortable" then). Same with my parents, who allow half of their house's heat to turn *off* in the winter while the other half (where there is more plumbing) drops down drastically. The half that turns off is the half they're in (the upper floor).

The only selling point I could possibly think of would be turning your heat back up on the ay home from a trip, etc.

My household thermostat is still 100% analog and we flip it on the way to bed and on the way out in the morning.

 

[Artiglio]

Well that's good news.
Bloke who bought my parents house recently got a grant for an air source pump which was fitted in a brick lean to. Fan must be about 900mm dia. Can hear it indoors, next door. I can hear the fan of my neighbours CH boiler in my bedroom. Fortunately he does not run it at night.
Heat pump heat is pretty low grade, so the air source pump and thus fan runs more or less continously (I am told by installers). We are all electric with storage radiators in all rooms (on 220V 3 phase) which is passably similar in cost to liquid gas (no mains gas here). After talking to installers re cost benefit / noise (esp. now no grant) ground source looked possible but expensive, so we decided to stick with off peak for a new extension.
Retired, we may well do more continental motor homing in future winters...

Just as the requirements for energy conservation have changed over the years so have the regs in respect of acoustic insulation and the passage of sound ( my first house , 1900 two up two down) the neighbour had a rotary dial phone on the party wall, you could clearly hear when they were dialling).
More recently i was given a” rough quote“ for a 20kw borehole ground sourced heat pump and was told not to expect much change from 50k. Plus i’d need 3 phase power to run it another 12k to bring it in plus the trebled standing charge. As the building has gas it was an easy choice as to what to do.

 

[D_W]

I'm guessing 20kw is with preheater coil? Otherwise, that's something like 300k+ btu continuous heat and cool.

150k btu-ish system installed here (heat and cool, with probably three vertical boreholes is about $20k in prior construction if nothing funny - as in, if gas or propane heat and A/C already installed).

 

[timk5163]

My electrician told me he's installing more and more Economy 7 (many areas around here haven't mains gas.)

Ironically (unless it's been changed) it doesn't work with Smart Meters. I would have thought one of the main objectives of smart metering would be ultimately to introduce variable charging.

Yes, things have changed: see Octopus Energy's "AgileOctopus" tariff that changes rates every 30 minutes to follow the wholesale prices. They can sometimes pay you to use excess energy (EV charging, etc.)

 

[Trainee neophyte]

I don't have a boiler, so ignored this thread until Saturday - it's taken me until now to get up to date!

I'm not going anywhere near the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Emergency debate, as that is a proselytising relegion, not science.

Regarding ground heat, as I understand it the heat actually comes from inside the earth, not from the sun. A trivial point, but the ground radiates heat from the mantle into space - your heat pump is just borrowing some of that heat - moving it a few metres is another way of looking at it.

What hasn't been looked at is how much oil we have left - oodles of it, obviously, but all of it expensive to extract. The energy required to extract it has a bearing on our economic wellbeing, and currently we average I believe 15 barrels of oil produced for every barrel consumed producing it. This sounds like a healthy margin, but it is right on the cusp of being enough to allow growth of the worldwide economy. It is only going to get worse from here, as old, cheap wells come to the end of their life, affecting the balance.

With our insane money system that requires infinite growth to continue, things are looking shaky. The coronavirus hiatus means lots of oil wells were mothballed, and it is not possible to just switch them back on as the demand rises, so we may have both high oil prices and shortages by the end of the year. An oil price over $70 per barrel = world recession, so this could be fun.

If you are of a pessimistic frame of mind then you may want to take control of your energy supply sooner rather than later. Insulation to reduce energy consumption and power from wood, methane, solar, wind as a last resort. Small hydro is fabulous if you are lucky enough to own a stream. Most of that presupposes you don't live in a city. Fuel shortages means everything shortages. Fingers crossed everything will be fine, and it is all just hype and fear to push the oil price up and make some people rich(er).

 

[Jacob]

....

I'm not going anywhere near the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Emergency debate, as that is a proselytising relegion, not science.

No it's the science.
The religion is in the naive faith that it's all nonsense and everything will be alright somehow, god willing, or that it's a cunning plot to make more money.
Or both, as in your last paragraph

Fingers crossed everything will be fine, and it is all just hype and fear to push the oil price up and make some people rich(er).

 

[Rorschach]

No it's the science.
The religion is in the naive faith that it's all nonsense and everything will be alright somehow, god willing, or that it's a cunning plot to make more money.
Or both, as in your last paragraph

Ahh "The Science" my favourite phrase of the last 12 months, totally meaningless of course.

 

[Trainee neophyte]

No it's the science.

No, it's The Guardian. As I said, not going there.