Electric vehicles - dead technology or not?

[Woz]

I looked at ground/water source for the house. I live in a grade 2 listed building so have limited ability to add thermal stuff- I've done what I can (thick attic insulation, double glazed the non-listed windows) but I had a long chat with a heat pump specialist and he advised that there was no way it would work without digging up the whole of the garden for the heat exchanger coils. From memory I think I needed a 150m trench...!

Best thing I did (and it paid for itself in 6 months) was have a 300L system pressure tank installed to replace the old gravity fed copper one. It's so thermally efficient that even when it's full of stinking hot water, the outer surface is room temperature to touch. Really impressed. The boiler comes on for the minimal time to heat it, and when I had the boiler shifted and we had no heating for 3 days, it was still coming out of the taps piping hot on day 3.

Hopefully heating oil will go the same way as pump diesel, with it slowly being replaced with bio grown additives.

Oh and one of my customers for the engineering business is Drax power- all of their wood pellet goes through my kit. 1000 tonnes per hour of the stuff.

Still unconvinced by the green credentials of electric cars. Unless you are generating the power without burning fossil fuels, then you're just shifting the pollution from the exhaust pipe to a power station chimney. All diesel/petrol does is provide an energy store that's compact and convenient. All a combustion engine does is turn chemical energy into movement.

Plus Elon Musk is A grade a prick and doesn't deserve a penny from anyone.

[John63]

Still unconvinced by the green credentials of electric cars. Unless you are generating the power without burning fossil fuels, then you're just shifting the pollution from the exhaust pipe to a power station chimney. All diesel/petrol does is provide an energy store that's compact and convenient. All a combustion engine does is turn chemical energy into movement.

This

Plus Elon Musk is A grade a prick and doesn't deserve a penny from anyone.

And especially this

[notdeadyet]

I'm not a particularly great fan of electric cars either. But relocating emissions from one source to another isn't the whole story. A fossil fuel power plant doesn't get stuck behind a cyclist with the engine running about as efficiently as a Victorian steam train, run engines that are ridiculously oversized to shift a load massively overweight for the job being done or dump its exhaust at ankle level where people walk, work and live. Emissions are still there but are at least (to some extent) controllable, centralised rather than distributed on every street and go through environmental treatment that is still shit but not as shit as a car exhaust. There is also the potential for developments like carbon capture, better emissions scrubbing technology, retrofitting more efficient systems, etc. that a car doesn't have the option of.

[Barrygoss]

Thank you Dave. As you well know, we are all made of stardust out of supernovae. Well, that's what the so-called scientists say anyway (taking the piss OK).




That could explain why Chris' boiler might be coming on at night.

One of the batshit crazy things to come out of Rishi’s announcements yesterday
The quotas on the number of diesel and petrol cars already agreed to be allowed to be sold in law upto 2030 - will not be changed.
So the quota for 0 in 2030 isn’t being changed but common sense man has extended it to 2035…..

Lol gaslit much?

B

[Iain Smith]

I looked at ground/water source for the house. I live in a grade 2 listed building so have limited ability to add thermal stuff- I've done what I can (thick attic insulation, double glazed the non-listed windows) but I had a long chat with a heat pump specialist and he advised that there was no way it would work without digging up the whole of the garden for the heat exchanger coils. From memory I think I needed a 150m trench...!

The alternative is to go vertical with boreholes. I think we ended up with three boreholes, each ~100m deep, angled away from each other to maximise the volume from which heat is drawn.

[Chrisch]

....
That could explain why Chris' boiler might be coming on at night.

I thnk it does. Our hot water is there all the time.

Now we have a new boiler we also have the instruction book. A giant leap for mankind

PS the new one is too quiet so cannot hear it in bed.

[gobfish1]

The alternative is to go vertical with boreholes. I think we ended up with three boreholes, each ~100m deep, angled away from each other to maximise the volume from which heat is drawn.

Is that a lot more expensive
From what iv read it's about twice the price .
Is that correct?

[Paul Evans]

Is that a lot more expensive
From what iv read it's about twice the price .
Is that correct?

Towns and Cities = District heating.

Countryside = Propane Heat pumps.

As Woz says Graded buildings are very difficult to deal with, we have to make a decision if history is as important as the planet. stupid question really.

Hydrogen had a real place, think replacement for heating oil and diesel in Lorries as the key market.

remember there is great deal more VAT to be made selling heat pumps and all the shite that goes with them than setting up District heating......

However, the practicality's of what has to be done dont matter.

As Stuart has said, shouldn't we want to live in a cleaner world? Dont we have a Moral duty to start sorting this mess out for our children?

[notdeadyet]

s Woz says Graded buildings are very difficult to deal with, we have to make a decision if history is as important as the planet. stupid question really.

As much as I am a history and archaeology geek I think the whole pile of legislation around planning & listed buildings is wrong and needs replaced, and not just for thermal performance. I've lived and worked in quite a few listed buildings and none of them were nice to be in. If the cost/hassle of owning or occupying a building outweighs the benefit then you've absolutely no chance of preserving anything. Glasgow, where I'm from, is now one of the ugliest cities in Europe because planning policy made it cheaper to allow heritage buildings to dilapidate to the point of collapse than it was to reuse or redevelop them. Plus the number of genuinely important buildings worth conserving is minimal, too much stuff just gets a grade II slapped on it because it's old and not because it has any real value. Personally, I wouldn't list anything younger than 1800 unless it was something exceptional. Maybe not to the point of allowing demolition but, within reason, do what you like as you would with any other building.

[Chrisch]

...
As Stuart has said, shouldn't we want to live in a cleaner world? Dont we have a Moral duty to start sorting this mess out for our children?

I take it "we" in this context excludes Tories?