the daydream fund challenge thread

rhiwfield

Choille, Underfloor heating, house designed with mega insulation and solar gain, its the big advantage of newbuild over retrofit, though micro-hydro sounds wonderful! FWIW I think that going down the oil route now is very risky unless you've got sunk investment.

Re jumpers and curtains, I'm wearing gilet and fleece atm and we're proud of our curtains with DW's added home-sewn thermal lining (about 110 metres of it :eek: ) held tight at base against walls with cup hooks and wilko curtain rods. Its like triple glazing and makes a huge difference to heat loss.

Lotus-Eater, couldnt take temps of 15C atm with DW still mostly sedentary, 20C-21C is what the thermometer shows in the lounge, though most of the house is about 17C and last winter's workday temp was much lower with her out at work and me in thermals! Last winter we used about 1500 litres of oil, the cut down to a mix of insulation, better boiler and woodburner. Hope we dont use much more this year. Otherwise, tend to agree with your line of reasoning, but will wait to see RHI in detail. I'm very wary of the air to water HP CH atm, I dont think the technology is currently good enough or reliable enough. Bit like the current position on electric cars. So I'm in waiting mode as well unless circumstances change.

Davesnave, I'm sure that when you get around to it, it will all be fully planned and effective. Now £30k would give some serious electric generation, 6,000-7,000 kWh a year at least. Are you considering ASHP/GSHP if you're going down that route?

lostinrates

rhiwfield wrote: »

With several of you building new or proposing to renovate your properties I'd be interested to hear your future space heating plans, as I've been thinking about what to do with ours for quite a while now. When oil went briefly to $140 and heating oil was in the high 70s per litre, our consumption was then a staggering 4000 litres pa . Our CH system is part microbore, we've concrete floors and 13 standard rads. No mains gas nearby, terrain wrong for a biomass boiler or GSHP, what to do, short of move house?

Well, oil plunged in price, but we put in a new very reliable boiler 85% efficient and embarked on a mad insulation and draughtproofing drive, and put in a woodburner. Glad we did as we just about ran out of oil in the big freeze last winter as oil lorries couldnt make it to us for weeks. So thats where we are today, but what now? The log burner gives security in case of leccy or oil failure and we wouldnt be without it. But with oil we're reliant on a fossil fuel thats likely to become scarcer and pricier and is not good for the environment.

ATM I'm looking at four options:
1) part conversion of oil boiler to run kerosene/biofuel mix. Might be worth doing if backed by RHI and would give estimated 30% drop in CO2 emissions. It would also be the cheapest capital option and avoid scrapping new boiler and tank early in their life and wasting the embedded CO2. Still leaves us dependent on oil and possible taking up land which could be used for food production.
2) air to water heat pump to tie in to existing CH system. Easily the most expensive option, also more likely to fail and need for high water temps would reduce efficiency
3) one or more air to air split HPs to supplement oil system which is kept in reserve, not likely to benefit under RHI but probably the most efficient way of using heat pumps.
4) Do nowt

I believe that we'll know detail about the renewable heat incentive next month (?) but what are you doing and what are your reasons?

Like Choille I want underfloor heating. Radiators are a waste of wall space where books could be and are !!!!!!s to clean. I waste a lot of time trying to get dustbunnies and dander out from rads. How e do that I don't know. Our architect (I feel so sanky having an architect) is here the week after next, I'll ask him to think on it and tell you what he says.

ATM we have the wood burner in the cruddy chimney and three closed in fireplaces. I like real fire..but recognise there are too many people to ecologically all use real fire in whatever form. The wood burner we hope to put into what will be the dining room and tentatively we'd like to reopen the two fires in the two sitting rooms, and have (OMG this sounds ridiculous now I'm tying it) another in the kitchen (where I expect we'll mainly live) and in the extension. The thing with the fireplaces though are those draghty chimneys....not sure, also how far gone the existing chimneys are! One is an inglenook, not sure about the sealed one behind it. Fireplaces in such quantity would be full time work for me alone, and not green or practical, but are great for full house weekends, high days and holidays. I hope we'll have lots of them!

ATM we also have oil rads. They will go. I've heard different over ground and air source pumps. I dunno. We have ground space for those sort of pipes, and roof space for something from the sun...I just don't know and get ''lost in rates'' of return and value. We'll take professional advice but I'll like to be producing power and being as self sufficient as possible.

We like it cool in the house, but if we do B and Bs when the building work is finished I dare say we'll have to jack heating up for guest bedrooms and a reception room.

We've already had a morning when the condensation has iced over in side the house.

alfie_1

just a quick note re poppy seeds.... there are SO MANY in the bag you can afford to spread them everywhere generously.so if all dont grow you have plenty that will. i put them out in february [they like to be cold before they are warm to germinate]. i get a good show that summer. i get them coming up in corners i didnt put them now [birds/wind transporting seeds from the pods?]
i also spread any seeds that i aquire into my pocket wherever i see them when im out and just throw them around and wait to see what comes up where, which is usually a surprise as id forgotten them !!

Rummer

lostinrates wrote: »

Like Choille I want underfloor heating. Radiators are a waste of wall space where books could be and are !!!!!!s to clean. I waste a lot of time trying to get dustbunnies and dander out from rads. How e do that I don't know. Our architect (I feel so sanky having an architect) is here the week after next, I'll ask him to think on it and tell you what he says.

I really like the idea of underfloor heating as we have concrete floors and I hate the space radiators take up too. I seem to remeber however being told they it was very expensive to both install and run, is that the case or have I picked things up wrongly?

lostinrates

Rummer wrote: »

I really like the idea of underfloor heating as we have concrete floors and I hate the space radiators take up too. I seem to remeber however being told they it was very expensive to both install and run, is that the case or have I picked things up wrongly?

TBH, I don't know. The expense, I kind of gulp, will be a fairly small percentage of what we have to do here, and as all the floors are coming up and the heating has to be changed it will never be cheaper to install than then for us. As for running, again not sure...IMO rads here are not efficient, they are under draughty windows and therefore heat is blocked out if heavy curtains are closed and also heat the front exterior wall more than internal walls (all our walls are solid and I know nowt about the theroy of retaining heat but it seems odd to me.) Thinking longer term for us, we keep heating low and plan to insulate incredibly well where we can.

RAS

rhiwfield wrote: »

Re jumpers and curtains, I'm wearing gilet and fleece atm and we're proud of our curtains with DW's added home-sewn thermal lining (about 110 metres of it :eek: ) held tight at base against walls with cup hooks and wilko curtain rods. Its like triple glazing and makes a huge difference to heat loss.

Thought this was interesting http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-11759023

RAS

choille wrote: »

Funny Simon Fairlie selling sythes - what a small world & even funnier the guy who lives nearish give me a one handed sythe - like a long handled sickle the other day. I'd never seen one before.

That's how I originally heard about him; apparently he got frustrated by how bad harvesting was at TB, discovered there were no good scythes sold in the UK so learned how to use Austrian ones and then people wanted one, so he started to import them.

I have wanted do one of the workshops to try them out but they are always at a time when I struggle to get away. Anyway, I discovered recently that one of our local groups has one and a friend uses it to cut their meadow. A neighbour knows how to maintain it (German) to my friends delight, so I hope to get my mitts on it this next summer so I can decide if i want one and what size to go for.

lostinrates

RAS wrote: »

Thought this was interesting http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-11759023

That's superb! And valuable if a green property tax is brought in, thank you!

where I have shutters I close them and as soon as I can get interlined curtains up I will...the rails here aren't up to it. Curtains over shutters might then might be compared to being triple glazed, haha council!

choille

Rummer - If you have an existing concrete floor you will have to be able to lose about 180mm - 100mm insulation & 80 screed, tiles whatever. Lot to lose out of a room height. So maybe you would need to rip the existing floor out & start again. You need as much insulation in the floor as possible. It's not a cheap option.

We'll lay ours ourselves & hopefully will be heated by combination of dual boiler - woodburner & turbine - we need lagoons for water storage & regulation - it all seems pretty far away and like a lot of things there will possibly be modifications along the way.

House OH designed in a very coastal, cold spot has air sourced heat pump - that does everything heat, hot water etc - with a wee wood burner in the lounge has been up for a year. V well insulated & loads of S facing windows - therefore loads of solar gain. It is pretty lovely & I wish it were mine. I will have a spear at the owners next time we see them & see how it's doing energy wise.

There will be no new houses built with oil heating in a few years.

If you put up a porch in the right spot against a house it will help heat the house.

alfie_1

lostinrates wrote: »

TBH, I don't know. The expense, I kind of gulp, will be a fairly small percentage of what we have to do here, and as all the floors are coming up and the heating has to be changed it will never be cheaper to install than then for us. As for running, again not sure...IMO rads here are not efficient, they are under draughty windows and therefore heat is blocked out if heavy curtains are closed and also heat the front exterior wall more than internal walls (all our walls are solid and I know nowt about the theroy of retaining heat but it seems odd to me.) Thinking longer term for us, we keep heating low and plan to insulate incredibly well where we can.

i can give 2 instances of people i know whove had underfloor heating put in... this is not necesarily gospel but...
1, friend had new kitchen fitted in old [300yrs] cottage, decide to underfloor heat. the "builder" put a resin on the floor, put the cables, put the tiles down RESULT....rubbish and unuseable [cant alter it as kitchen was then fitted.
2. friend had a raised floor put in her extension, there was a special wood? type panels put on low beams, then a special insulating material, then the cables , then the marble tiles..RESULT brilliant.
moral of the story....check your fitter is not a cowboy and ask an expert [not the person you are thinking of employing!] to relay the "order" of materials to make it work properly because once in ,very difficult to alter/fix....
friend no 1 has never been able to use his heating and had a long running battle to get compensated.
friend no.2 has lovely warm kitchen floor.
im not sure wether it works under wood floors the same, only known it under tiled floors. [and only certain tiles are recomended!]
so do be carefull if you are contemplating it!!
p.s. it is quite expensive to run too..