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Buy a spare Combi Boiler or go "Heat Pump"?


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4 minutes ago, Charlie D said:

have to scratch the ice off the INSIDE of the glass

+1  Charlie. The only warm place in the house was a semicircle about 4 feet from the coal fire in the living-room.  

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The words "Coal fire" reminded me of a rather novel way that the locals heated the front room of a pub called “The Palace” in Leamington Spa. It was the roughest pub in town and it was known to have no furniture in the  bar.

Apparently one night the locals got fed up with the landlord because he refused to light the fire stating that he could not afford the coal. The customers then proceeded to break up the chairs and tables, place the bits in the fireplace, and set fire to them.

This happened every night until there was no furniture left to burn. They then did the same with the toilet doors.

Personally I never dared venture into the place.

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2 hours ago, RobH said:

+1  Charlie. The only warm place in the house was a semicircle about 4 feet from the coal fire in the living-room.  

Yep though we had the luxury of a paraffin heater at the top of the stairs to heat the whole of the upstairs.

Stuart.

 

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The problem with the old paraffin heaters was the condensation.  I remember that walls and windows would be running with damp when one of those was used for any length of time.  

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13 minutes ago, RobH said:

The problem with the old paraffin heaters was the condensation.  I remember that walls and windows would be running with damp when one of those was used for any length of time.  

Yep which then froze on the inside of the windows overnight as it was turned off to save fuel (Paraffin wasnt cheap back then) as soon as we went to bed.

Stuart.

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Hi

As a retired gasman of some 51 yrs (man and boy) experience I must agree that the older boilers lasted a very long time with hardly any maintenance and seldom broke down, when they did they were easy to fault and repair, some were however sometimes only about 30-40% efficient, If you buy a decent quality combi unfortunately probably German not British you should get at least 15yrs+ of service at 90%+ efficiency, (the reason they are condensing boilers is because their high efficiency produces the condense) Like lots of things if you buy cheap you buy twice, I am about as convinced about air pumps as I am about electric cars.

I think I will buy a new diesel car in 2029, if I am still driving, and a new gas boiler in 2034, if I am still alive!!

Phil..

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Maybe there's another way: heat the place where you are sitting, not the entire room or building. I'm thinking small radiant heaters triggered by motion sensor and/or switches fitted in seats.  Or heated seats as in cars.  Even electrically heated house-coat.  This approach could be much less disruptive and considerably cheaper than a whole-house retrofit, in both capital cost and running costs.   

( Says he who has just ordered 8 cwt of smokeless fuel for the log burner: nothing can replace, for me, the cosy glow of a real fire, its something elemental...

Peter

 

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1 hour ago, lynchpin said:

some were however sometimes only about 30-40% efficient,

I’ve often been on the roof and put my hand in front of the gas boiler chimney outlet and been amazed at how much heat is coming out, just going into the sky.

It occurred to me that you could use that heat to boil water in a tank, then use the steam produced from the boiler to power a steam engine, and get the steam engine to turn a dynamo. You might be able to disconnect your entire electricity supply and never have to pay an electric bill again.

Problem is that I have so many other projects on the go I’ve never got around to trying it.

Charlie.

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"Maybe there's another way: heat the place where you are sitting, not the entire room or building."

Wasn't that an original proposed use for microwaves? Just heat the water molecues in people and leave the objects cold. Slight problem with the practice though.

Alan

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1 hour ago, harlequin said:

The coal man delivered half a ton of smokeless yesterday, he was telling me that his house coal now comes from Colombia.

George 

 

and supplies most of Cambs with their coke too ?

:ph34r:

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2 hours ago, Peter Cobbold said:

Maybe there's another way: heat the place where you are sitting, not the entire room or building. I'm thinking small radiant heaters triggered by motion sensor and/or switches fitted in seats.  Or heated seats as in cars.  Even electrically heated house-coat.  This approach could be much less disruptive and considerably cheaper than a whole-house retrofit, in both capital cost and running costs.   

( Says he who has just ordered 8 cwt of smokeless fuel for the log burner: nothing can replace, for me, the cosy glow of a real fire, its something elemental...

Peter

 

This is a great thread, well done Andy for kicking it off…. 
 

I remember the the winter of 65 up in Liverpool with the ice thick on the inside of the windows, no one would surely believe the (true!) story of my sister and I getting dressed for primary school huddled around the gas cooker with our clothes warming inside…

 

Agree Peter about the real fire…… before ours is even lit in anger this year, I got warm today just shifting the couple of tons of logs delivered….. Although I will ‘duck and dive’ to keep the efficient German, relatively tiny, gas boiler for as long as possible…… don’t trust Putin not to close the gas supply pipe when ever suits him 

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Hello All

              We live off grid and our boiler was fitted by me in end of 1992 (2 wood burners  before and still have one with a small back boiler that will heat the hot tank)

This is one way I try and reclaim heat that goes up the flue the boiler is behind the gas fire.

The first part of the flue liner is a solid steel pipe before joining the Stainless steel liner(left ove from log burners)

So I boxed the flue in and fitted 1 x 12volt fans at each side at the bottom and a grill at the top to let the hot air out(we have 24volt circuit in the cottage as well as 230volt)

So they are just wired in series and there is a small relay that turns them on when ever the boiler is on!

Roger

ps this another fan I have just installed so when the porch is warm a differential controller turns the fan on and draws warm air in to the cottage(the cold sensor is in the dinning room other side of the wall behind the coat stand>

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7 hours ago, Charlie D said:

I’ve often been on the roof and put my hand in front of the gas boiler chimney outlet and been amazed at how much heat is coming out, just going into the sky.

It occurred to me that you could use that heat to boil water in a tank, then use the steam produced from the boiler to power a steam engine, and get the steam engine to turn a dynamo. You might be able to disconnect your entire electricity supply and never have to pay an electric bill again.

Problem is that I have so many other projects on the go I’ve never got around to trying it.

Charlie.

The principle of a condensing boiler is that it extracts that extra heat that would otherwise go up the flue and uses it to heat the water.  The subsequent lower temperature in the flue gas can condense into acid which is why they have a drain off to an external gulley.  It's partly why they are much more efficient that an old cast iron back boiler or similar.  They also have smaller thin walled heat exchanger pipes for greater heat transfer but these, and the flue fan and the electronics that goes with them can be the reasons why they have a lower life span than the older technology.   I have a Worcester Bosch gas fired condensing combi and it's been no trouble at all or the nine years its been in.  I hope to get a few more years out of it yet.    

Paul

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Of course the real solution to all this is not a technological one.  We just need to vote out the group of virtue-signalling numpties in parliament who created all this nonsense, and vote in a different and more sensible lot who will repeal it.  :rolleyes:

(Trouble is - where are they?)

 

 

 

Edited by RobH
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Several years ago I was doing electrical installation work in a gym. The owner was concerned that the changing rooms needed to have fans in them to get rid of the humidity (There were showers in the rooms), but he did not want to lose the heat. He discovered a very clever, but simple, fan device which he got me to install.

It consisted of two fans. One drew air in and one blew air out. Each sat side by side in front of a revolving honeycomb aluminium drum. The drum moved at about 1 RPM

The warm air blew out through the honeycomb, heating it up in the process. By the time the drum had turned 180 degrees to be in front of the other fan it was hot. This other fan then drew air in from the outside, warming it up  as it passed through the honeycomb A brilliant and simple idea.

It was in the mid 1980’s and I think it cost about £500 then, but I guess in the long term it saved the owner some money.

It occurred to me that if you  could make a detachable aluminum honeycomb block and pass the exhaust gasses from your car through it, you could remove it from the car when you got home from a drive and use it to heat your house up.

As usual, I never got around to trying it out though.

Charlie.

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6 hours ago, Charlie D said:

Several years ago I was doing electrical installation work in a gym. The owner was concerned that the changing rooms needed to have fans in them to get rid of the humidity (There were showers in the rooms), but he did not want to lose the heat. He discovered a very clever, but simple, fan device which he got me to install.

It consisted of two fans. One drew air in and one blew air out. Each sat side by side in front of a revolving honeycomb aluminium drum. The drum moved at about 1 RPM

The warm air blew out through the honeycomb, heating it up in the process. By the time the drum had turned 180 degrees to be in front of the other fan it was hot. This other fan then drew air in from the outside, warming it up  as it passed through the honeycomb A brilliant and simple idea.

It was in the mid 1980’s and I think it cost about £500 then, but I guess in the long term it saved the owner some money.

It occurred to me that if you  could make a detachable aluminum honeycomb block and pass the exhaust gasses from your car through it, you could remove it from the car when you got home from a drive and use it to heat your house up.

As usual, I never got around to trying it out though.

Charlie.

Passive haus design uses air-to-air heat exchangers, fabricated from criss-crossed hoenycomb, to recover heat from air exhuasted from the house. Supposedly 90% recovery with just a fan to power.  There can be problems with condensation when the intake air is freezing cold. But with no moving parts except the fan they look to be useful when a house has been rigorously draft-proofed, and relatively cheap to buy. But the air ducts need installing to all rooms. Again, no easy answers with existing dwellings. Peter

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Charlie - the revolving mechanism which you describe is akin to the Economiser units fitted in Power Stations burning coal and gas.

However, the Economisers are huge (one could stand up inside them) and consist of sheet steel rotated slowly through the exhaust gas path on one side and the air inlet on the other.  Very crude and tend to be rather noisy as the vanes need to be a close fit and often touch the casing as they rotate.

Ian Cornish

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In France it will be illegal to install diesel boilers in newbuild homes and renovations from 2022 and the so called green restrictions on installing gas boilers are making them impractical as well.

I have installed a number of heat pumps and reversible air conditioners for heating purposes.
 

One monobloc heat pump  solution (the usual bi-block solutions have to be installed by someone who has training and approval to manipulate air conditioning fluids) whose installation is not beyond DIY is from a UK company in grimsby called cool energy, a nice easy install to replace existing diesel installations and cheaper to run than diesel .

cheers 

Alan

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