OneGuyFromBarlick

He's probably one of those who worries about the coming of the next ice age too!

Whippy, too many people fail to weigh up the relative costs (£ and CO2) of the trendy new technologies versus simpler approaches (e.g. wear an extra layer). We've avoided putting solar hot water panels on our roof regardless of the sales blurbs because it's simply not cost effective for us - just two of us, using an electric shower, no baths and with a little water heater in the kitchen because it's too far from the hot water cylinder. The £ cost of installing solar HW would be many times the cost for our extra electricity bill for the showers etc.

People have got carried away with installing heat pumps now for air source and ground source heat but there's a very good article exposing the real financial limitations written by Tim Pullen in the May issue of Homebuilding & Renovating magazine. A lot of the pumps are set up wrongly too, and the owners end up having to put in extra conventional heating.

Ground source heat pumps (what some people mistakenly call geothermal) use electric at maybe 3:1 energy gain which brings it nicely in line with normal gas heating on a cost basis. Of course gas heating doesn't refrigerate your garden........ (Somebody somewhere will be selling that as a benefit. )

Remember the Low carbon?

The trip to Prospects at Hyndburn is now set for 24th April. Meeting outside Ace Centre Nelson for transport to venue. Sets off at 10.30. Reputed to be food, but no confirmation on liquid refreshment.

You have to let Louise Hoole know at Pendle if you want to go. She might be the Localities officer for Southfield

HooleLouise <Louise.Hoole@pendle.gov.uk>;

I do not have an itinary, as the news report which is in today's B&E doesn't go that far. I understand from Louise that the visit includes 3 sites

http://www.prospectsfoundation.org.uk/

I've always said that the best heat pump is one where the cooling coil is in running water. My ideal would be a turbine making leccy and a heat pump working in the tail race from the turbine. I reckon that would be quite a good set up! Incidentally, from observing my mate's big turbine running it would also be a good thing to recover the heat generated by the gearbox on the turbine set. Amazing how the oil heats up when working at reasonable load.

You're just short of East Hill street being a lot steeper with a sizeable body of water running down it........

Some companies put ground source in too shallow and there isn't enough heat recovery in winter and they give a lot less than the 3:1 ratio. They forget that, as Pluggy noted, it's not geothermal heat - ground source heat is solar in origin, the warming of the ground by the sun. If you put the pipes in too shallow they are at a depth where the ground can cool off in winter. Stanley's running water is a good system if you have it - again, some folk stick the ground source piping in a pond and then wonder why it doesn't work, and why the pond is getting cold and the fish dying! OK if you've got a lake but an ornamental garden pond doesn't do the job.

On another of my haunts, there's a long thread about someone installing a heat pump using a stream as a source, built a nice weir so there was plenty of depth. It got silted up in heavy rainfall and wound up re-doing the source under his garden.

http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index. ... 388.0.html

Pluggy, he should have come to me and I could have told him how to construct his weir so that he could get rid of the silt easily. The old engineers cracked that one a long time ago!

Stanley wrote:Incidentally, from observing my mate's big turbine running it would also be a good thing to recover the heat generated by the gearbox on the turbine set. Amazing how the oil heats up when working at reasonable load.

Wouldn't this affect the efficiency of the engine and oil that has been chosen to operate at that temperature?

It isn't an engine it's a water turbine and the heat from the gearbox is pure waste, no detriment extracting it and recycling in the mill as warm air heating. Even with engines the same principle is used in combined heat and power systems. The waste heat is extracted from the exhaust and the cooling water raising the thermal efficiency from just below 50% to about 85%. Newton and I built one at Vicarage road in the 1970s and got over 80% efficiency. It reduced his energy consumption by 50%. We should have patented it.....
On another matter:
WARM HOMES DISCOUNT SCHEME

You may remember me mentioning the end of the British Gas 'Essentials' tariff and the advent of the £120 per annum Warm Homes Discount. I said I'd report back when I'd bottomed it so you can alert anyone you know who qualifies.
I was informed about the end of the Essentials Tariff on 23 January and on 24th January my application for the Warm Homes discount was winging on its way to BG despite the fact that according to the wording of the claim form I didn't qualify because I am not in receipt of Pensions Credit. I had not switched to that scheme because nobody could guarantee that I would not be worse off so I left my benefit structure how it was.
The information with the claim form said that my application would be dealt with “within 28 days” and that if successful the discount would be applied to my first electricity bill after March 28th and that I would be registered for the scheme from April 1st 2012 onwards as long as my qualifications remained the same.
On March 22nd I contacted BG (0800-072 8625 is the number to ring) to find out why I hadn't heard anything. They gave me a case number and put me in touch with the agency to which the claims process had been outsourced. I was told by them to call back after April 12th as they were experiencing high demand and there was a backlog.
I rang them yesterday (Monday 16th) and got a recorded message that the scheme and the help line had been closed, deep joy! So I got back to the BG team to ask what was going on. The lady commiserated with me, had a look at the data base that the outside agency had provided them with and told me that my case was marked as 'unresolved'. She asked me to hold and had a word with her supervisor. After a couple of minutes she came back to me and said that there had evidently been some sort of error but her supervisor had instructed her to register me on the scheme and credit my 2011 electricity account with the £120 discount. She told me to give it 24 hours, open my BG electricity account and print the revised statement. I did that this morning and instead of a debit of £39.77 I now have a credit of £101.79. Result! Interesting that the payment is described as a 'goodwill compensation'. I am also registered for the scheme from now onwards.
I had a supplementary question for the lady about my April gas account as despite the fact that the Essentials Tariff was to end on 29th February I was still shown as being on the same tariff on the April bill. She told me that the only explanation they could offer was that the essentials tariff on gas had not been stopped and until further notice I was still on the reduced tariff.
Bit of a dog's breakfast isn't it. My interpretation from the clues I got during my conversation with the lady is that the agent to whom the process was outsourced had failed miserably to cope and BG have cut them off in mid flow. As in my case they are taking decisions locally on an ad hoc basis as this is the only way to clear the mess up. Keeping the Essentials Tariff on gas could come under the same heading I think because if they don't they will be open to criticism because of the terrible mess the outside agency has got them into.
During the whole process the BG hardship team have been brilliant and very easy to deal with, they couldn't have done any better and have obviously been let down by the outside agency.
The bottom line is that while it is too late for backdated adjustments to the 2011 account, a call to 0800 072 8625 will get you in touch with the hardship team and you can ask for the claim form for 2012 onwards to be sent to you. If you know anyone who qualifies, get them to apply.
It's been a long process but needless to say I am perfectly satisfied! Go to it!
SCG/17/04/12

Really? I thought all moving engineering pieces required lubricating oils because otherwise they wear out faster.

All oils tend to have ranges within which they work to maximum efficiency

Or I may have misunderstood by daughter

Found it difficult to change gear in a renault clio when the weather was cold, very stiff.

Read the original post about recovering waste heat from the gearbox again. Nothing about running without oil, simply capturing waste heat dissipated to the atmosphere.
News report this morning that many families with cars are spending more money on fuel than food. Doesn't surprise me in the least and a sign of the times. Energy prices are on an upwards trajectory and nothing I can see will alter this. It will get worse. Average 50ltr tank on a family car costs £70. Am I glad I ditched my car? Go figure......

Stanley wrote:Read the original post about recovering waste heat from the gearbox again. Nothing about running without oil, simply capturing waste heat dissipated to the atmosphere.
News report this morning that many families with cars are spending more money on fuel than food. Doesn't surprise me in the least and a sign of the times. Energy prices are on an upwards trajectory and nothing I can see will alter this. It will get worse. Average 50ltr tank on a family car costs £70. Am I glad I ditched my car? Go figure......

I think he was concerned about if you extracted heat from the gearbox (and hence cooled it) it would affect the running properties of the oil (thickening due to the lower temperature). It wouldn't be a major problem, if it did take the oil out of spec, it wouldn't be a big job to put different oil in there to allow for the cooler gearbox.

Problem is he hadn't seen the gearbox running and how much heat the casing was giving off. Believe me, it wouldn't have affected the efficiency of the oil.
Interesting piece in PE by Old Sparky on page 9 about the inefficiency of the way the price of gas is arrived at in the European market. Too complicated to recount here but the effect is surprise surprise, that the smaller and domestic consumers suffer.
There's another energy related piece on page 29. 'Not so smart meters'. The department of Energy and Climate Change has issued a new set of regs for smart meters. They want them in 65% of homes by 2015. This is bad news for British Gas as the 200,000 'smart meters' they have already installed do not satisfy the new regs. Oops! The new rules allow the customer to opt for only sending simple meter readings but there are other problems. There is more about criminals hacking into the new smart meters and customers finding ways of adjusting the readings by hacking. In the US one utility company found that 10% of their customers had found that attaching a magnet to the meter stopped it! It all sounds like a dog's breakfast to me.

Interesting.

What is the One Planet Planters food growing project, is it a community food resource? I mentioned last year that here in Hoylake, an 'IncredibleEdible' initiative got off the ground last spring. This year, the numbers of beds around town containing veg etc has gone up 10-fold, and in the three (small) parks in town, fruit trees and bushes have been planted. In addition, those with fruit trees in their garden, and there's plenty of these around, are being encouraged to collect and distribute any glut for general passing along, turning into chutneys and jams by those willing etc. I'm up for the chutney making to pass on, as I've got into it a bit these past few years and if I say so myself, it's bloomin' good chutney. I'm going to give crab apple jelly and Pontack Sauce (elderberries) from foraged fruit a go this year.

Richard Broughton

Bumped up.....

http://www.prospectsfoundation.org.uk/

may provide the answers

My PV panels have been doing a good job of masking our increased electric consumption since the arrival of my granddaughter into the household.

The useage meter I fitted on the 5th of April shows us averaging 11.6 units a day. We imported an average of 8.5 units a day, and the nice old main meter which spends much time running backwards says we used 5.1 units a day. The panels have generated an average of 6.4 units day in that time. Before the panels and the baby we averaged less than 9 units a day. (In the same period last year we averaged 8.2 units per day and the same period in 2010, 7.5 units a day) The washing machine does a lot more work than it did.........

One of the advantages of being a singleton Pluggy. I only just scraped into getting my Warm Homes Discount because as my consumption is so low (the lady commented on this during the calculation) it drops my energy costs as a consequence. I have the discount for last year and this year but I suspect I shall lose out in the 2013 calculation because the stove has lowered my winter gas consumption and coal purchases don't count even though the rules state that 'heating costs' are the criterion. So, good insulation and careful usage can generate a penalty. Hardly fair but there you are. I think I shall have to do some persuading......

A good opinion piece on the Green Deal here:
http://carbonlimited.org/2012/04/19/how ... e-its-way/

I bought what is probably the last four bags of coal this winter. I have had 16 bags since January 11th, and have 6 bags in stock so cost has been £87 for 105 days, So 83P a day and very little gas used. I like it but have noticed that I've gone back in time and dust in the front room is demanding attention!

On the trip to the Prospects Foundation yesterday I managed to talk to a very nice lady about some of the stuff she had been doing in preston before coming to Hyndburn.

Summed up here:

http://www.centrallancashire.nhs.uk/Lib ... 220610.pdf

Of interest to some may be the firelighters from:

www.ifyoucare.com

They are available direct or stocked in the One Planet Shop which may have been Accrington (I flagged by the time we got there)

http://s355665157.websitehome.co.uk/oneplanet_site/

One Planet website, which I forgot to paste