General Chat

I’ve marked the heat pump one to wa tech but didn’t bother with the electric car one. I reckon the current car should see me out. Then where would I put access point.

If we are firced to have all these things then then the pump and access point would be fighting for space and then how would I guaranteee that I would get a parking spot close enough. Would I be allowed to have a cable crooning the oath which is budy( at school time) busy with small children, prams, little bikes and scooters.

Names on R2 today they were discussing how the battery in an electric car is made and maybe its not so environmentally friendly. Also the battery has a life span and when they need to be replaced, its fairly expensive,

My air source pump sits on a concrete plinth outside my bathroom window. The boiler is in the hall cupboard which is roomy and great for drying off clothes. The pipes as I have underfloor heating are under all the rooms except for the hallway and are not deep underground.

Im a bit confused as some were saying they need loads of land to have one?

The older council houses built in the last 10 years have radiators but this 2yr house doesnt have any but they have air source pumps in the back garden.

Its a Monobloc system that the new houses have here.

There has been a fatal fire aboard a cargo ship - thought to be a car battery exploding!

Florence, I think it was the ground source pumps that needed all that space.

Ah ok ty names.

Oh my, hope noone injured

Sadly a fatal fire.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-66310280

Well that was a waste of an hour last night. Thought the main thread if the programme was about heat pumps. It wasn’t. It should have been announced as a programme about the lack of power resources.
Now I still don’t have answers that I wanted about heat pumps. But I did like the idea it could take 400 years before everyone got one ;-) ( not enough qualified engineers)

I recorded it to watch later, but having read Names' post perhaps I won't bother.

When we were in Oz we had something similar to that described by Allan. It combined both heat and air conditioning using ducts. We never knew it as a heat pump - rather a combination heater/air conditioner - but this was more than forty years ago so they will defo been improved. I am not keen on ducts though.

Our LA offered discounts on heat pumps a couple of years ago and, at that time, I chatted with one of my brothers about it. We decided not to bother for a number of reasons and I am pleased we decided against it. The main reasons were that they seemed only to produce background heat - so we would need some other heat source on cold winter days, the back of our house is mostly glass; otherwise, our house is very well insulated and much warmer than most which is commented on by visitors regularly. In fact we have had family and visitors who ask if we have (or had) the heat on when they arrive - when we have not had it on. At the moment I am sitting in a sleeveless dress with bare legs and I am warm.

We are, though, more insulated than most because we have been lucky with the insulation. Wall cavity insulation had been installed before we moved in. We installed very thick loft insulation ourselves then the LA provided pensioners with a thick layer which, at first, we refused - until the installer told us that we may as well have another loft layer on top of our own as it was free …. and, boy, was he right. I am grateful to him for that.

Last year our neighbour took up the Council’s offer of a discount for a heat pump and forked out around £7,000 for the unit alone to do so which was the extra that was not council-covered.

The installer took ages and had to replace a lot of radiators, often with tall ones which she is not keen on. Floorboards had to be lifted and pipes installed and in many rooms (all of the bedrooms) carpets and other flooring ended up with holes where the original radiator pipes were. She commented that she would have to replace all of the bedroom carpets but as they needed replacing it did not bother her too much - but imagine having to fork out for flooring that would have lasted several more years. I asked her about the solar panels she had installed several years ago and she seemed a bit dismissive of them. Very recently she had a log fire installed so I am not sure what’s going on but it would seem that my brother was right about needing top-up heat.

All of the above deterred us, plus one of us is already 80 and the other will be 80 next year so decided we could not be bothered with the upheaval and expense.

Having said that, it seems to be ironic that when we moved in here more than 35 years ago and researched solar panels, we thought we would be moving again before we recouped the cost as we have never lived in any other house longer than five years. How wrong we were!