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Installing a Heat Pump
Everything is a bit manic right now...
We're installing a heat pump.
Our boiler was on its last legs, so it was either replace it with another boiler, thus locking us into using gas for another 15-20 years, or replacing it with something less dependent on fossil fuels. Hence the heat pump.
As our downstair carpets all needed replacing (the only one that don't have holes covered with duct tape is 39 years old and a major asthma trigger because of all the allergens trapped in its deep pile) we're going for a complete change of flooring as well and have the heat pump feed an underfloor heating system instead of radiators. (Upstairs will still be radiators)
We'd originally decided to go for an engineered wood floor, but vinyl tiles are half the price and conduct heat better.
The first stage of the process has been completed. The chimney in our lounge has been bricked up, the hearth removed and the wall plastered. We chose not to remove the chimney breast entirely, that would have cost a lot more. The lounge looks quite a bit larger just removing the fireplace.
My asthma is not very happy about all the extra dust in the air, but I'll survive. In the long run, this whole process will benefit the asthma.
Next week, two large items of furniture go to auction. Neither of them are terribly practical for what we need to store in them, and sentimental value is all very well, but you can't keep things forever. Several other inherited items are going as well. Space is finite and it will help cover the costs of new shelving for our board game collection.
At the end of next week, all the downstairs furniture moves upstairs.... Old carpet goes to the tip. I stay out of the way as the dust raised will be horrendous....
This will be a major undertaking, roping in other family members to help move everything. For a week or two, we'll be living in a rather compact space in one of the bedrooms as every single downstairs room will have the floor being removed/replaced.
Friday coming, the boiler and the downstairs radiators all get removed. (Can't remember when the upstairs radiators go - they have to be replaced by larger ones, as heat pumps deliver heat at a lower temperature they need a larger surface area on the radiators)
We survive for several days with a portable electric radiator and thank heaven we have a well insulated house...
Monday, the underfloor heating people start work, they and the heat pump people will be working around each other (they're liaising very well) for several days.
I've still got to finalise dates for the flooring and painting people. We've only just finalised the heating dates, but the flooring people are getting back to me today or tomorrow, and the painters have already said they're flexible.
A good chunk of the heat pump and underfloor system should be covered by the Government's Renewable Heat Incentive, though we're not yet sure how much. They pay you back over a five or six year period, which to my mind is very wrong, as only people able to pay upfront (which we can owing to a legacy) are able to take advantage of the scheme.
What we need are government schemes to insulate the homes of people on low incomes and to directly support environmentally friendly heating systems. Heating homes is a large part of the country's carbon footprint and one that has to be tackled as quickly as possible. Every replacement gas boiler is a problem for the future.
We're installing a heat pump.
Our boiler was on its last legs, so it was either replace it with another boiler, thus locking us into using gas for another 15-20 years, or replacing it with something less dependent on fossil fuels. Hence the heat pump.
As our downstair carpets all needed replacing (the only one that don't have holes covered with duct tape is 39 years old and a major asthma trigger because of all the allergens trapped in its deep pile) we're going for a complete change of flooring as well and have the heat pump feed an underfloor heating system instead of radiators. (Upstairs will still be radiators)
We'd originally decided to go for an engineered wood floor, but vinyl tiles are half the price and conduct heat better.
The first stage of the process has been completed. The chimney in our lounge has been bricked up, the hearth removed and the wall plastered. We chose not to remove the chimney breast entirely, that would have cost a lot more. The lounge looks quite a bit larger just removing the fireplace.
My asthma is not very happy about all the extra dust in the air, but I'll survive. In the long run, this whole process will benefit the asthma.
Next week, two large items of furniture go to auction. Neither of them are terribly practical for what we need to store in them, and sentimental value is all very well, but you can't keep things forever. Several other inherited items are going as well. Space is finite and it will help cover the costs of new shelving for our board game collection.
At the end of next week, all the downstairs furniture moves upstairs.... Old carpet goes to the tip. I stay out of the way as the dust raised will be horrendous....
This will be a major undertaking, roping in other family members to help move everything. For a week or two, we'll be living in a rather compact space in one of the bedrooms as every single downstairs room will have the floor being removed/replaced.
Friday coming, the boiler and the downstairs radiators all get removed. (Can't remember when the upstairs radiators go - they have to be replaced by larger ones, as heat pumps deliver heat at a lower temperature they need a larger surface area on the radiators)
We survive for several days with a portable electric radiator and thank heaven we have a well insulated house...
Monday, the underfloor heating people start work, they and the heat pump people will be working around each other (they're liaising very well) for several days.
I've still got to finalise dates for the flooring and painting people. We've only just finalised the heating dates, but the flooring people are getting back to me today or tomorrow, and the painters have already said they're flexible.
A good chunk of the heat pump and underfloor system should be covered by the Government's Renewable Heat Incentive, though we're not yet sure how much. They pay you back over a five or six year period, which to my mind is very wrong, as only people able to pay upfront (which we can owing to a legacy) are able to take advantage of the scheme.
What we need are government schemes to insulate the homes of people on low incomes and to directly support environmentally friendly heating systems. Heating homes is a large part of the country's carbon footprint and one that has to be tackled as quickly as possible. Every replacement gas boiler is a problem for the future.
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Somebody - Labour? - is talking about ensuring carbon-neutral housing in future, which sounds like it means no gas, and heat pumps, so good for you for getting in there now. We went for an electric hob in our new kitchen in the expectation that household gas would not be available for the life of the kitchen, but the boiler was practically new.
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I agree about you boiler. There is a big carbon cost to replacing a system, so I wouldn't do it while your boiler is in good condition.
What I would do is check how mych loft insulation you have. More or less than 25cm?
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Our boiler keeps needing fettling, but it is still well within its lifespan, so we will fettle while it lasts and decide later.
H
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I agree you should keep you boiler while it is working reasonably well, there is a carbon cost for any new installation.
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This installation (on brackets) is reasonably typical; the other way is to put it on a small concrete pad. The white ducting at the top right of the frame conceals the pipework and cabling.
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The temperature difference is amazing. I've never had to use the 2nd quilt on the bed since then. The house used to get down to 7 degrees C in winter, before the insulation. Since then the lowest ever is 12C, but mostly it hovers about 16.5 C without the heating on - even when there is snow and ice outside.
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It's not terribly cold outside today, but even so...
No heating at all, as the boiler has been removed and the new system won't be fully in until late next week, but I'm not cold. I haven't even turned on the emergency electric radiator.
We desperately need more of these free insulation schemes.
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After three decades; presumed lost, a small group of fanged deer have been discovered in Viet-Nam.
Found on Jorja Fox's page (CSI) via Marg Helgenberger who tweetd about getting arrested at a protest for the first time at aged 61.
Puts me to shame.
kerk
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It has to be either fossil fuels like coal, or biogas.
Biogas can be made from stuff like manure and crop residues - also specially grown crops. That is great when it's using waste material, but not when the crops are specially grown.
Using farm waste to make biogas reduces the methane emissions, so you do particularly well there.
A farm can produce a lot of it's own energy from an anerobic digester. And the residue left afterwards makes good fertiliser.
Europe produces a fair bit of biogas, but much of it is used directly for electricity generation.
When you start growing crops specifically for biofuels, the math changes and becomes very bad indeed. Using the same land for solar power is massively more effective. The difference can be a factor of several hundred. (The only people rooting for biofuel crops are American farmers who want the subsidies and airlines who are desperate to have any kind of fuel that sounds even remotely environmentally friendly)
I don't think we could produce enough biogas from waste to power all the existing home heating systems, though CHP (combined heat and power) systems will work well for houses that are build together and share a system.
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I believe the same thing goes for municipal waste dumps, which also have a methane problem. (Apparently our local landfill site now pipes its outgassing directly into an on-site electricity generating plant!)
When you start growing crops specifically for biofuels, the math changes and becomes very bad indeed. Using the same land for solar power is massively more effective.
Yes; it's like the difference between feeding your pigs on household waste and growing grain specifically to feed them with...
(Though I'm not sure that using cropland for solar power is itself a good move; I've seen sheep grazing under solar panels, presumably with the double bonus of saving mowing around the base, but I imagine growing food crops is another matter.)
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There's trade offs in all directions between power generation, crops/livestock and planting trees.
One of the reasons why we all need to eat less meat and use as little power as possible.
We have to have more trees to soak up as much carbon as possible. Low grade farmland is the best bet. Land used for sheep grazing (which is usually heavily subsidised) would be much better used for woodland regeneration. Espacially as sheep fart methane...
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Like other vegetation, trees only 'fix' carbon dioxide during their lifetimes and release it on death (otherwise the atmosphere would become depleted and the cycle wouldn't be sustainable); what we really need if we want to deplete the atmophere again is more coal or proto-coal formation (bigger peat bogs? ;-) to put the excess carbon dioxide back where it came from.
Of course where I assume it originally came from was tropical swamps in the Carboniferous era, but we're not likely to get many of those round here.
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Grass uses CO2 to grow, but grass that isn't cropped short will develop deeper roots (especially if the ground isn't compacted by having too many animals grazing it). Those deeper roots store a lot of CO2 underground. (There's been some interesting studies on American rangelands which have been badly degraded by overgrazing. Adding compost and having lighter grazing can greatly increase carbon sequestration in the soil)
People tend to forget that soil is an important carbon store. This is massively so in the case of bogs, where, if they are properly looked after and neither burned nor drained, spahagnum moss piles up year on year and can hold more carbon than a forest. But you already know about bogs :)
Ruminants fart methane which is a more potent greenhouse gas than CO2, so the sheep eat a CO2 supply and turn it into something worse.
I can see why rabbit control would help. Rabbits aren't native and badly over-graze the Australian vegtatation. See http://innohurryatall.blogspot.com/2013/10/the-rabbit-proof-fence.html for a photo of both sides of a rabbit proof fence.
The results are manifold:
1. Less carbon is locked up in grass and other vegetation
2. Soil is blown away when the vegetation is destroyed, leading to a loss of soil carbon.
3. The rabbits fart methane.
4. There's probably a minor rain effect as well. If they hinder forest regeneration, then rainfall will be lost too. Trees increase rainfall.
The carbon that trees store during their life should not be underestimated. They can store a lot of carbon.
Currently, the ONLY practical method we have of removing carbon is to grow trees. (Carbon capture and storage is a way of reducing emissions, not getting CO2 out of the atmosphere). There are a few wild schemes out there, but none that are likely to work on a large scale or do so without creating a whole host of potential new problems.
The UK used to be almost entirely woodland. The Lake District and the Pennines were once covered in trees. We forget how much has been felled - the demands of everything from ship building, charcoal burning for glass making, pit props for mines, trench supports in WW1.
There is a movement that says we should change to timber frame houses. It picks up on your point about old trees dying and rotting. If we turn mature trees into structures that will preserve the timber, then we can keep growing more trees and lock up more carbon.
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Another irony, of course, is that some species that are considered endangered in England are actually common in mainland Europe; they are simply at the extreme edge of their range here and thus very vulnerable to small changes in their environment.)
The pictures of European woodland in David Attenborough's programme this week reminded me of my mother's disappointment in the Schwarzwald when she went there as a girl -- those Eastern European evergreen forests, primaeval as they may be, are nothing like the dense broadleaf woodland that still clings on here. I've been in wooded Welsh and Cumbrian valleys (fenced off, as you say) and even at those altitudes it's basically the same mix of trees (more rowan, less beech and chestnut). It's quite an odd experience climbing up past the natural treeline, and watching the oaks get smaller and smaller until they become perfect dwarfed versions of themselves... and then quite suddenly and along a defined border, disappear.
The great European forests just look like Forestry Commission plantations to the English eye :-(
Rabbits aren't ruminants, in the sense that they lack a rumen and don't produce any more methane proportionally than a horse or an elephant. I hadn't considered the effect of over-grazing -- my assumption was that the Australian government finds it more politically expedient to blame the nasty invasive animals for their emissions problem than, for example, to take steps to reduce their energy consumption for road traffic and air-conditioning :-(
(Technically speaking, rabbits aren't native to Britain either, of course. I don't know if we'd have more hares if we had fewer rabbits...)
Bogs are a lot easier and quicker to develop than beds of coal!
I did wonder what happened to the underground sections of trees when they die and decay; but presumably the root systems which constitute a significant volume of the tree's substance also rot -- indeed when a tree comes down it often seems to be because the roots have died back.
It's an interesting idea that by preventing the wood from rotting you can effectively 'sequester' large amounts of carbon dioxide indefinitely, although if done on an industrial scale I can only see it leading to more Forestry Commission-style planting.
(Those plantations were of course laid out in an era when it was assumed that all the wood used in WWII would need to be replaced and future supplies guaranteed at a similar rate; by the time they came to maturity plastics and concrete had become ubiquitous.)
I still find it hard to see ruminants as an unnatural imposition on the atmosphere; vast herds of ruminants roamed America (the buffalo) and Europe (the bison and aurochs), before humans intervened, and still do roam the African plains (antelopes, gazelle, giraffes, okapi, gnu...), not to mention all the agile sheep, goat and deer variants. They are a basic part of the ecosystem that has evolved a very effective way of digesting the indigestible; the problem comes from overstocking (and wasting the ruminant's ability to digest cellulose by feeding it on a high-energy preprocessed diet).