New Grump of the Day

[Cubist]

Just finished stacking the last consignment of firewood, circa 12 cubic metres, for the coming winter. That lot plus the other 10 cubic metres or so stashed elsewhere on site 'may' get us through unless its a particularly bad one.

Grump enough in the stacking but all the more to come as those stacks slowly diminish as they are humped on a daily demand basis the 50 metres to the house! Much more GRUMP to come with the hernia risk and no wonder the family calls me the Grinch at Xmas - Bah Humbug.

 

[TudorCottage]

We have underfloor Electric heating in our cottage. It warms the place up a treat but is insanely expensive to use so is limited to really cold spells.

I’ve recently switched to an electric vehicle and to make that as cheap as possible to run I’ve switched to my energy suppliers night time tariff. It’s a quarter of the day time rate and saves me a good few quid compared to my old diesel.

I decided to experiment with the underfloor heating and crank it right up during the cheap rate and see if I could use it as a form of storage heater. It sits below some nice tiles that I was sure would hold the heat for a good few hours.

Cheap rate runs from midnight to 7am and it’s on the whole of that time. At 7am the cottage is lovely and warm and I was hoping to hang on to some residual heat until at least midday when the central heating could takeover for the rest of the day (the central heating isn’t enough on it’s own downstairs in cold spells)
Unfortunately it seems to have lost it’s heat by 9am

So it’s back to the drawing board I’m afraid.

One bonus is the dog likes sleeping on it during the night

 

[Cubist]

Unfortunately it seems to have lost it’s heat by 9am

I seem to recall from very early Science lessons at school, that the land absorbs heat during the day and releases it during the night and similarly that the sea draws heat from the land and warms it during the winter. Blessed if I can rely on such distant memory but your 9am watershed may owe something to that phenomenon - it certainly gets parky here a little before then most days. No doubt it will sound counter-intuitive but maybe you should consider inverting your approach? But of course - that will play directly into the energy providers hands just as they planned all along.

 

[a twig]

Pffft.... Who reads the manual anyway.

I do now since I used to write them and realised how much safety related “get out of jail free cards” were available as long as the risks were mentioned in the manual

 

[Cubist]

I do now since I used to write them and realised how much safety related “get out of jail free cards” were available as long as the risks were mentioned in the manual

I am so, so grateful that my days of having a lawyer hovering over my shoulder are no long gone. That said, I do wonder how Ikea's lawyers manage with that organisations penchant for Pictograms only in their assembly instructions?

 

[Flyfisher]

We have underfloor Electric heating in our cottage. It warms the place up a treat but is insanely expensive to use so is limited to really cold spells.

I’ve recently switched to an electric vehicle and to make that as cheap as possible to run I’ve switched to my energy suppliers night time tariff. It’s a quarter of the day time rate and saves me a good few quid compared to my old diesel.

I decided to experiment with the underfloor heating and crank it right up during the cheap rate and see if I could use it as a form of storage heater. It sits below some nice tiles that I was sure would hold the heat for a good few hours.

Cheap rate runs from midnight to 7am and it’s on the whole of that time. At 7am the cottage is lovely and warm and I was hoping to hang on to some residual heat until at least midday when the central heating could takeover for the rest of the day (the central heating isn’t enough on it’s own downstairs in cold spells)
Unfortunately it seems to have lost it’s heat by 9am

So it’s back to the drawing board I’m afraid.

One bonus is the dog likes sleeping on it during the night

Apologies if this adds to your grumpiness but I'm a big fan of UFH. However, my experience is that electric UFH is exactly as you describe whereas 'wet' UFH does indeed perform like a very effective storage heater. We had wet UFH installed in our kitchen extension with the pipework running through a 50mm screed sitting on top of celotex insulation, plus 20mm clay pamments. I program it to come on at 5am and off at 9am then 4pm to 8pm and that's enough to keep the large kitchen and adjoining room at about 19c throughout the day.

In an existing room, we had a limecrete floor installed (based on the Mike Wye model using foamed glass) but this time the pipework was running through a 100mm screed with the original 25-30mm pamments on top. This floor has a much greater thermal mass and the first time I fired up the UFH it took the best part of half a day to warm the room! However, the upside is that the floor and room remained comfortably warm for the next 12 hours or so and could be used to 'time-shift' the energy consumption. Indeed, the thermal lag has to be taken into account when programming the UFH heating. Having said that, being a mains gas wet system is no great help in utilising cheap overnight electricity (which I already do for my electric car and charging the house batteries, but that's another story).

Finally, when we refurbished a bathroom, we had electric UFH installed under the ceramic tiles and their thermal mass is tiny compared to our wet UFH floors so the thermal lag is only about an hour or so and therefore of little use when trying to 'time-shift' cheap electricity tariffs.

 

[fernicarry]

That question wouldn't even be covered by BS7671 in my opinion. That's more a matter for the Part P regulations

I think that's more the cooker manufacturer covering their backsides. They don't want Joe Bloggs on the phone wasting their time asking how to wire up his new cooker. Whoever does the work should do it to an appropriate standard, thats the BS7671 part. Depending on the work, local/national authorities may require that person to hold a ticket of some sort, for similar sorts of CYA and "we don't want to get involved" reasons.

Often these big hobs need 3ph to get their full rated output. Ours is on single phase so it you try to boost it on more than two zones it refuses because there isn't enough juice available. Haven't found this to be a limitation in practice.

 

[Zebra]

I agree entirely but here’s the relevant page on the cooker manual. I also can’t imagine having a 3 phase supply in a domestic kitchen
View attachment 14678

Don't pay any attention to that, they're just covering their own arses.

 

[fernicarry]

Took the french windows that I've been working on for weeks to the glaziers. Confirmed with the guy that I wanted linseed oil putty. Came back to pick them up and he proudly annonced that he'd bedded the glass into silicone!!!!

Now I'll have to clean up the squeeze out on the inside of the rebate before I can paint them. Doubly annoying because one of the old panes I took out was also bedded into silicone and it was an absolute mare to clean up the gunk from the rebate.

Also regretting asking for laminated glass as they are now *extremely* heavy so I'm wondering if the cast iron hinges will cope.