openspaceman wrote: ↑Tue Dec 27, 2022 5:30 pm
Stinsy wrote: ↑Tue Dec 27, 2022 4:42 pm
I’ve looked at those. Bulky and expensive beasts. I get the attraction but a standard cylinder with an immersion, solar and a ToU tariff makes more sense. And: yes you can extract warm air from your house and expel cold air to outside.
Oh well I may stick with my vented tank and immersion, it is all we need for half the year. Problem is the 3ft immersion only has an 18" thermostat so only the top 18" gets fully hot.
Saving a total of £200 a year on not using gas doesn't justify much spending and even at a COP of 3 I would have to use electricity from the grid in winter to run the air to water heat pump.
OGB's pricing looks good as a direct import and the space is available, Why not continue to run the heat pump on solar pv and then just boost with the immersion?
To be honest, I couldn't make the sums add up either at the time, so initially I fitted a normal hot water cylinder and immersion. My thoughts have evolved over the years, though, and I had a sort of deep internal conflict about why I was doing the things I was trying to do. I started off on the low environmental impact thing decades ago with a fairly techie enthusiasm for ways to reduce both our energy use and to make what energy we did use less harmful to the planet, very much the whole renewable energy ethos, so did Hugh Piggott's course, and that led to meeting someone that was active on the "other place", which in turn led to an interest in solar, and that led to an interest in batteries.
At the same time, ever since a lucky chance over 30 years ago that led to a walk around Mole Manor, I was absolutely convinced that I wanted to build a low energy home. That started as a desire to have low running costs, then I realised that focussing on that just made me a selfish arse, and that if I really wanted to reduce the impact we have on our fragile planet there would be a cost involved, and I'd have to get away from the crazy, "
let's get something for free and bugger the consequences" mindset and invest in making the planet a better place for our kids and grand kids.
That, sort of indirectly, led to me making a lot of changes, one of which was the decision to invest money in more efficient water heating, as well as investing in a better insulated house and a more airtight one, and investing in a more expensive heat recovery system and then, much later, investing in a small electric car. We have spent a lot of money that we won't get back, but what we have, I hope done, is play a miniscule part in making the planet more likely to be habitable for our descendants.
I can't put a price on that, or say what we've done has made any difference, but we have tried, and continue to try, as it seems to me that if we don't try to make our lives less dependent on resources that both aren't renewable and that harm the ecosystem we rely on, then as a species we are doomed. Heat pumps aren't the answer, but they are a way of using less non-renewable energy, and that's a tiny little step along what I think is the right path to take. Others may not agree, that's fine.
The real key thing for me, though, is trying hard to not be selfish, and do stuff because it's the right thing to do, not because it's cheap or gives me a buzz for having gamed the system somehow.
25 off 250W Perlight solar panels, installed 2014, with a 6kW PowerOne inverter, about 6,000kWh/year generated
6 off Pylontech US3000C batteries, with a Sofar ME3000SP inverter
. Under 2MWh to heat the first 3% maybe...? Even after airdrying my logs for 9 months there is definitely a hierarchy and an ongoing dynamic to the ebb & flow of a WBS. It has taken quite a while to know the right fuel type/ airmix to keep it chatting along within its daily burn cycle.
) is the in-house store which is 1.2x.5x.5. Even then, it’s only loosely packed, as is the main store that I eyeball. 
