Going Green isn’t easy

[ProfJohnL]

Has this affected your energy costs for better or worse?

Cost of energy is not a good criteria use, as prices are volatile and as most of us know as time goes by prices rise anyway so even if the energy consumption was exactly the same, the cost will invariably be larger.

Look at energy used.

however even that has its difficulties, as generally domestic energy consumption has a pattern that is the inverse of ambient temperatures, so short period comparisons might be quite different, so its sensible to make comparisons for period is excess of 3 months to help normalise ambient weather conditions. and other seasonal variations, such as hours of darkness etc.

 

[ProfJohnL]

8 bar reduced down might have given us a different choice as our water pressure from the mains isn’t great. Putting the outside tap on gives well over 25 litres a minute, but it dropped noticeably when I ran the cold tap in the garage sink. Quite sensitive to multi use.

A little thread drift here, but your experience of your long pipe run is the type of issue found on some caravan sites where caravans take water direct from the tap, and why many users find direct water supplies are not so good as using the caravans water pump.

 

[RogerL]

Cost of energy is not a good criteria use, as prices are volatile and as most of us know as time goes by prices rise anyway so even if the energy consumption was exactly the same, the cost will invariably be larger.

Using the cost of energy is inevitable as that's how most people make their decisions - it's perfectly valid to use the present cost of energy to do the comparisons.

The criticisms of air-source heat pump systems are fairly well known - my additional concern is that the recommended temperature goes up as the occupants get older and more frail - so not practical if it struggles to maintain temperature in colder weather - and the nature of the system means that keeping one room warm at the expense of other rooms isn't practical for those struggling financially.

In practice, we couldn't have an air-source heat pump without gutting the inside of the house - it was built in 1976 during some war in Africa resulted in a copper shortage so it's piped in a mixture of stainless steel small bore and copper microbore and the radiators would be way undersize for a heat pump so the whole lot would need to be ripped out and replaced - Mrs L refuses point blank to deal with that level of disruption!

 

[otherclive]

Cost of energy is not a good criteria use, as prices are volatile and as most of us know as time goes by prices rise anyway so even if the energy consumption was exactly the same, the cost will invariably be larger.

Look at energy used.

however even that has its difficulties, as generally domestic energy consumption has a pattern that is the inverse of ambient temperatures, so short period comparisons might be quite different, so its sensible to make comparisons for period is excess of 3 months to help normalise ambient weather conditions. and other seasonal variations, such as hours of darkness etc.

Most energy suppliers websites let you look at periods of up 12 months or more with cost or kwh readings available for both gas and electric, or individually gas or electric.

 

[Mr Grumpy]

Our village does not have mains gas anywhere. Our home is all electric and had night storage heaters when we moved in. Utter waste of time,
We were persuaded to have them ripped out and replaced with electric central heating. Fine until the bills arrive then it's nearly 2nd mortgage time.
We've reopened the original fire grate, had the chimney inspected and gone back to an open fire.
Much cosier and cheaper.