Now I think about it, all my household faucets have hot and cold through the same stream.
having two taps something that's becoming less common. if you look at bathroom sinks on the B&Q website you'll find 252 sinks with 1 tap hole but only 41 with 2.
Oh no, not trans plumbing. No wonder Casino is getting triggered by taps.
Rishi on X - he's going to use our Brexit freedoms to protect the traditional British pub.
"I want to protect the price of your pint at the pub.
And now the UK has left the EU, we can do just that.
So we’re bringing in one of the biggest shake ups to the alcohol duty system in the last 140 years."
"Your pint" grates as much as "our women" did in his pitches to the hustings last year. The person I go to the pub with most often drinks your glass of wine or your gin and tonic, both going up in the shake up. As is your 6 bottles for 25% off at Tesco which is the staple diet of his core vote.
Apart from that...
I hadn't realised that the alcohol duty system was a pressing issue that requires immediate prime ministerial attention.
The little shit must be the least authentic populist in world politics.
His biggest problem is whether to choose Coke or Pepsi. Or Irn-Bru if he wants to be exotic.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
Heat pumps are used in around 50% of NZ homes (climate, not so different from the UK’s), and more so in the colder regions.
So that's a full 325 people in NZ who benefit from heat pumps. Yay.
Typical head-in-the-sand arrogance.
Using simple arrows and highlighting please let me know where the heat pumps go here:
What percentage of Britons live in 1960s brutalist towers?
Brutalist towers should be easy: single central heating and cooling system for the whole building as is the case with office blocks. Community heating, ideally with its own solar generation covering at least some of the electricity requirements.
That can be either ground source heat pump or air source or CHP hot water. Equipment on the ground / basement or roof.
The European countries where heat pumps have taken off include several with far more apartment living than the UK.
I did assume something like this.
I really can’t understand why there is so much resistance to heat pumps, when they are mainstream in growing parts of the world.
It’s like the British insistence on bad dentistry, or having a separate hot and cold tap.
What's wrong with having a separate hot and cold tap?
Nothing, if you are wedded to living in the 1950s.
Mad. Just mad.
Heh, I thought this was in response to a post on trans issues. If you're getting triggered by mixer taps, CR, then I think you may need another beer and a rest in the sun. Unless too much time in the sun is the issue.
I'm not. Just think this 1950s stuff over hot and cold taps is a bit barking.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
I still fill the kettle from the cold tap. I don't think it is controversial that sitting in the hot water tank doesn't do anything for the taste of the stuff.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
it is though
The only tap in a house guaranteed to produce potable water is the cold tap in the kitchen which must by law be mains fed.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
I still fill the kettle from the cold tap. I don't think it is controversial that sitting in the hot water tank doesn't do anything for the taste of the stuff.
The cold water from a mixer tap hasn't been in a hot water tank.
(if you have a combi boiler, neither has the hot of course)
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
it is though
The only tap in a house guaranteed to produce potable water is the cold tap in the kitchen which must by law be mains fed.
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
Heat pumps are used in around 50% of NZ homes (climate, not so different from the UK’s), and more so in the colder regions.
So that's a full 325 people in NZ who benefit from heat pumps. Yay.
Typical head-in-the-sand arrogance.
Using simple arrows and highlighting please let me know where the heat pumps go here:
What percentage of Britons live in 1960s brutalist towers?
Brutalist towers should be easy: single central heating and cooling system for the whole building as is the case with office blocks. Community heating, ideally with its own solar generation covering at least some of the electricity requirements.
That can be either ground source heat pump or air source or CHP hot water. Equipment on the ground / basement or roof.
The European countries where heat pumps have taken off include several with far more apartment living than the UK.
I did assume something like this.
I really can’t understand why there is so much resistance to heat pumps, when they are mainstream in growing parts of the world.
It’s like the British insistence on bad dentistry, or having a separate hot and cold tap.
What's wrong with having a separate hot and cold tap?
Nothing, if you are wedded to living in the 1950s.
Mad. Just mad.
Heh, I thought this was in response to a post on trans issues. If you're getting triggered by mixer taps, CR, then I think you may need another beer and a rest in the sun. Unless too much time in the sun is the issue.
I'm not. Just think this 1950s stuff over hot and cold taps is a bit barking.
Yeah, you're right. Separate taps were still common installations up until the 80s or so, I think.
Rishi on X - he's going to use our Brexit freedoms to protect the traditional British pub.
"I want to protect the price of your pint at the pub.
And now the UK has left the EU, we can do just that.
So we’re bringing in one of the biggest shake ups to the alcohol duty system in the last 140 years."
"Your pint" grates as much as "our women" did in his pitches to the hustings last year. The person I go to the pub with most often drinks your glass of wine or your gin and tonic, both going up in the shake up. As is your 6 bottles for 25% off at Tesco which is the staple diet of his core vote.
Apart from that...
The strategy is certainly clear enough. He'll either get the reactionary end of that Leave vote back in the tent or die trying.
He needs to push the ICE ban back tbh.
This is on sales of new cars, which is 2035 for hybrids. You can keep your gas guzzler going for longer if you want. So we're talking maybe mid 2040s for the elimination of ICE.
Rishi on X - he's going to use our Brexit freedoms to protect the traditional British pub.
"I want to protect the price of your pint at the pub.
And now the UK has left the EU, we can do just that.
So we’re bringing in one of the biggest shake ups to the alcohol duty system in the last 140 years."
"Your pint" grates as much as "our women" did in his pitches to the hustings last year. The person I go to the pub with most often drinks your glass of wine or your gin and tonic, both going up in the shake up. As is your 6 bottles for 25% off at Tesco which is the staple diet of his core vote.
Apart from that...
I hadn't realised that the alcohol duty system was a pressing issue that requires immediate prime ministerial attention.
The little shit must be the least authentic populist in world politics.
His biggest problem is whether to choose Coke or Pepsi. Or Irn-Bru if he wants to be exotic.
Rishi on X - he's going to use our Brexit freedoms to protect the traditional British pub.
He spins more than my washing machine.
What it is. The government is introducing a big increase in alcohol duty including on beer, but is keeping duty on draught beer as it is. It's good to see him using his Brexit freedoms when most EU members have lower rates of duty, including on draught beer.
But this is just the precursor to the BIG reforms (tba next week). The right to smoke to return, so you can have a fag with 'your pint', and the *really* big one, repeal of the drink drive laws so you can get there and back in your trusty old car.
I jest of course - but I do sense Tory Story plotlines are going to get increasingly tacky from now until the election.
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
What are you talking about? With a single tap you just adjust it left/right to find the temperature you want. Super easy.
Rishi on X - he's going to use our Brexit freedoms to protect the traditional British pub.
"I want to protect the price of your pint at the pub.
And now the UK has left the EU, we can do just that.
So we’re bringing in one of the biggest shake ups to the alcohol duty system in the last 140 years."
"Your pint" grates as much as "our women" did in his pitches to the hustings last year. The person I go to the pub with most often drinks your glass of wine or your gin and tonic, both going up in the shake up. As is your 6 bottles for 25% off at Tesco which is the staple diet of his core vote.
Apart from that...
The strategy is certainly clear enough. He'll either get the reactionary end of that Leave vote back in the tent or die trying.
He needs to push the ICE ban back tbh.
This is on sales of new cars, which is 2035 for hybrids. You can keep your gas guzzler going for longer if you want. So we're taking maybe mid 2040s for the elimination of ICE.
How much longer do you want for transition?
Why should the state tell people what type of engine they can use?
Negative externalities are already taxed through the roof.
Stop. Sodding. Banning. Things.
I think reversing the plastic straw ban would probably be a good idea too.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
We didn't. Given that good insulation is an appropriate target anyway.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
I can earnestly assure you that my 88-yo father does no live in a “scandi-noir cum villa”.
He lives in a 1950s wooden bungalow. And he has a heat pump. And, shock, a mixer tap.
Get into the 21st century, FFS. I thought you worked in engineering. No wonder HS2 is fucked, if this is the level of ambition.
Looking into heat pumps at the moment as planning a bit of building work. Several builders have said my house isn't suitable.
My semi detached engineer neighbour two doors down is going for it though. Sort of suspect that issue I'm facing is not that it can't be done, but more that I can't find someone who knows how to do it.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
I still fill the kettle from the cold tap. I don't think it is controversial that sitting in the hot water tank doesn't do anything for the taste of the stuff.
it may depend on the temperature difference but it's more efficient to fill the kettle from the cold tap than from the hot one. colder water heats more quickly than warm water
Rishi on X - he's going to use our Brexit freedoms to protect the traditional British pub.
"I want to protect the price of your pint at the pub.
And now the UK has left the EU, we can do just that.
So we’re bringing in one of the biggest shake ups to the alcohol duty system in the last 140 years."
"Your pint" grates as much as "our women" did in his pitches to the hustings last year. The person I go to the pub with most often drinks your glass of wine or your gin and tonic, both going up in the shake up. As is your 6 bottles for 25% off at Tesco which is the staple diet of his core vote.
Apart from that...
I hadn't realised that the alcohol duty system was a pressing issue that requires immediate prime ministerial attention.
The little shit must be the least authentic populist in world politics.
His biggest problem is whether to choose Coke or Pepsi. Or Irn-Bru if he wants to be exotic.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
You would think electric heating would be much simpler but I assume it is the cost of running such a system
they're not economical for most people because running a gas boiler is cheaper. if you could combine it with a solar plus battery storage system it'd be worth it. ultimately when I get to the point I need to replace my gas boiler with something other than a like for like I'll seriously look into it.
I have no doubt that running a gas boiler is cheaper, but as we saw last year that cheapness is much more volatile to changes in global energy markets in a way that a decarbonised energy grid doesn't need to be.
The question is what we migrate from gas boilers to. The cost of renewable energy is trending down vs gas, which if it continues will means electric boilers become more efficient over time.
Given concerns over how good heat pumps are at heating for some houses, and the disruption / high up front cost that they result in, why not just phase out gas boilers and phase in electric boilers in a similar way to cars.
Increase tax on gas usage incrementally over time to help subsidise the cost of switching.
Easiest to do this in a way where people don't notice a big disruptive step change in their lives.
Because direct electric heat costs 4x as much as using a heat pump & puts 4x the load on the electric grid.
This debate on heat pumps etc is exactly the problem and why this will become a really key electoral issue in time.
Who is making the decision on how we are replacing the method of heating in all our homes? Who is paying for it? What will it be? Will it heat as well as a gas boiler, or worse? How much will it cost to run? Will it fit on the house? What about [insert other living arrangements - flats, houses with no garden, terraces, buildings with odd boundary issues etc]?
I don’t have the blindest clue what I am going to be expected to do when gas boilers are phased out, and I have an interest in current affairs etc. Can we not see how mind bendingly confusing and concerning this will be to millions of people?
The decisions being taken at the top are woeful, the groundwork to prepare people shameful, the information is not there.
I agree with your point about woeful information. But I think you are stressing unnecessarily as a consumer. You buy from whatever is available on the market at the point when you need to replace your heating system.
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
What are you talking about? With a single tap you just adjust it left/right to find the temperature you want. Super easy.
But what if you turn the tap down because you want only a small amount of cold water in your bath and then, as is so often the case, the water stops altogether because you have turned it down too much and you end up with a bath that is too hot.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
Your rejection of scientific fact is woke nonsense.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
Or just live in another country where they seem to have no such problem.
Reminds me of Americans agonising over the feasibility of high speed rail or contactless credit cards.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
I still fill the kettle from the cold tap. I don't think it is controversial that sitting in the hot water tank doesn't do anything for the taste of the stuff.
it may depend on the temperature difference but it's more efficient to fill the kettle from the cold tap than from the hot one. colder water heats more quickly than warm water
Sure, but it's colder to begin with. And fairly good conductance between element and water.
By the time the kettle has put in x watt-seconds, the water that was colder to begin with won't be as warm as the watyer that was warmer.
The reasons for using cold water is straight from the mains = better.
Especially the state of many cold water tanks in attics, whence the hot water is fed in older systems.
Interesting question. There are complex interlocking issues in the climate/environment (closely linked) issues. They are politics, policy, science, money, moral and ethical matters - right and wrong, and the global common good/tragedy of the commons.
The question in the header is about politics - elections. What will work in winning (unlikely) and doing better than wipeout (perfectly possible) for Rishi will depend on luck and mood as much as anything.
Plurality opinion veers between favouring a science, moral, global good, rescue the world approach; and a money, politics, anti-science, doomed anyway or hoax approach. Many people are mixed in their responses.
What on the whole works best with pluralities is what Rishi is trying: Science is true but imperfect; we are doing better than others and have made great strides; buck up you others (China, whatever); we support the stuff that is not directly too costly for you the voter; all important specified targets that cost anything are not in the period of the next government (2024-29); better burn our oil than Jonny Foreigner's oil.
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
What are you talking about? With a single tap you just adjust it left/right to find the temperature you want. Super easy.
But what if you turn the tap down because you want only a small amount of cold water in your bath and then, as is so often the case, the water stops altogether because you have turned it down too much and you end up with a bath that is too hot.
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
What are you talking about? With a single tap you just adjust it left/right to find the temperature you want. Super easy.
But what if you turn the tap down because you want only a small amount of cold water in your bath and then, as is so often the case, the water stops altogether because you have turned it down too much and you end up with a bath that is too hot.
What then?
At least the one I have you set the amount of water by moving it up/down, and the temperature by left/right. So you can have lots of hot or cold water, or lots of water at the right temperature. Similarly, a little hot or cold water or a little water at the right temperature.
I don’t think I’ve ever run a bath at the wrong temperature. You simply put your hand under the stream, adjust it to the temperature you want, then let it run. I literally can’t imagine ever being in the scenario you describe.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
We didn't. Given that good insulation is an appropriate target anyway.
So is world peace and look how we're doing with that.
All these noble and green aspirations cost cold hard cash and ain't no one got much of that atm.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
Or just live in another country where they seem to have no such problem.
Reminds me of Americans agonising over the feasibility of high speed rail or contactless credit cards.
Exactly. America has its own retardations. The banking system, for one.
Right now there are Americans probably moaning on USPoliticalBetting.com about instant digital transactions, because a three day wire is “better”.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
I can earnestly assure you that my 88-yo father does no live in a “scandi-noir cum villa”.
He lives in a 1950s wooden bungalow. And he has a heat pump. And, shock, a mixer tap.
Get into the 21st century, FFS. I thought you worked in engineering. No wonder HS2 is fucked, if this is the level of ambition.
LOL 1950s wooden bungalow. Plenty of those in Hackney I don't know what we are making such a fuss about.
Heat pumps are used in around 50% of NZ homes (climate, not so different from the UK’s), and more so in the colder regions.
So that's a full 325 people in NZ who benefit from heat pumps. Yay.
Typical head-in-the-sand arrogance.
Using simple arrows and highlighting please let me know where the heat pumps go here:
What percentage of Britons live in 1960s brutalist towers?
Brutalist towers should be easy: single central heating and cooling system for the whole building as is the case with office blocks. Community heating, ideally with its own solar generation covering at least some of the electricity requirements.
That can be either ground source heat pump or air source or CHP hot water. Equipment on the ground / basement or roof.
The European countries where heat pumps have taken off include several with far more apartment living than the UK.
I did assume something like this.
I really can’t understand why there is so much resistance to heat pumps, when they are mainstream in growing parts of the world.
It’s like the British insistence on bad dentistry, or having a separate hot and cold tap.
You aren’t going to be overly happy with your new place of residence then,
Not only do Americans have worse dental hygiene but there’s a higher chance you or your family will get shot or develop an opioid addiction. But at least you don’t have to tolerate separate taps anymore.
I think American teeth look borderline unhinged.
That said, I had occasion to park my car today on one of those slightly incongruous streets of council housing you get in otherwise lovely villages in Devon because all the chocolate boxey houses are now worth about half a million pounds and real rural England can no longer afford to live there - and was greeted by a man with the most British teeth I have ever seen. His teeth also looked slightly unhinged.
Rishi on X - he's going to use our Brexit freedoms to protect the traditional British pub.
"I want to protect the price of your pint at the pub.
And now the UK has left the EU, we can do just that.
So we’re bringing in one of the biggest shake ups to the alcohol duty system in the last 140 years."
"Your pint" grates as much as "our women" did in his pitches to the hustings last year. The person I go to the pub with most often drinks your glass of wine or your gin and tonic, both going up in the shake up. As is your 6 bottles for 25% off at Tesco which is the staple diet of his core vote.
Apart from that...
The strategy is certainly clear enough. He'll either get the reactionary end of that Leave vote back in the tent or die trying.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
We didn't. Given that good insulation is an appropriate target anyway.
So is world peace and look how we're doing with that.
All these noble and green aspirations cost cold hard cash and ain't no one got much of that atm.
I'm talking about one that *saves* good hard cash (not my fault Anabob, he started it). If a bank account had a payback rare that good I'd put 85K into it.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
I can earnestly assure you that my 88-yo father does no live in a “scandi-noir cum villa”.
He lives in a 1950s wooden bungalow. And he has a heat pump. And, shock, a mixer tap.
Get into the 21st century, FFS. I thought you worked in engineering. No wonder HS2 is fucked, if this is the level of ambition.
LOL 1950s wooden bungalow. Plenty of those in Hackney I don't know what we are making such a fuss about.
Do you think NZ wooden bungalows are better insulated than Victorian terraces?
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
Berlin sprung to mind immediately. But also the Normandy beaches.
Trouble is many UK battlefields have zero interpretation, apart from a monument, often in the wrong or at least misleading location.
There's Bannockburn, of course, with NTS interpretation. But it has changed so much since 1314. Also Culloden.
Which is what's great about Syracuse. Land changes, open sea is featureless, but a harbour remains a harbour.
Malta, too, come to think of it (still reading my history of artillery there). Same applies.
Edit; there are some great battlefields along the Lothian plain - but little or no interpretation. You neeed to DIY, but the basic scenery and its constraints remain crystal clear. Some really good work has been done on Prestonpans/Gladsmuir and Second Dunbar. Though I daresal little rmains of Inverkeithing thanks to all the road and rail and harbour changes.
Other things to watch out for, either already trailed or a new front:
- more on imperial weights and measures - Relaxing the rules on parental smacking - repealing the sugar tax - More tax breaks for married couples - abolishing 20mph zones - Some school curriculum changes to emphasise the good things about the empire
These all have the benefit for Rishi of being cheap to implement, which is why you won’t see promises of more road building for example.
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
What are you talking about? With a single tap you just adjust it left/right to find the temperature you want. Super easy.
But what if you turn the tap down because you want only a small amount of cold water in your bath and then, as is so often the case, the water stops altogether because you have turned it down too much and you end up with a bath that is too hot.
What then?
Just have a little cry.
Tell me about it. The tears flow. Unlike the cold water.
This debate on heat pumps etc is exactly the problem and why this will become a really key electoral issue in time.
Who is making the decision on how we are replacing the method of heating in all our homes? Who is paying for it? What will it be? Will it heat as well as a gas boiler, or worse? How much will it cost to run? Will it fit on the house? What about [insert other living arrangements - flats, houses with no garden, terraces, buildings with odd boundary issues etc]?
I don’t have the blindest clue what I am going to be expected to do when gas boilers are phased out, and I have an interest in current affairs etc. Can we not see how mind bendingly confusing and concerning this will be to millions of people?
The decisions being taken at the top are woeful, the groundwork to prepare people shameful, the information is not there.
I agree with your point about woeful information. But I think you are stressing unnecessarily as a consumer. You buy from whatever is available on the market at the point when you need to replace your heating system.
But I think this is exactly the way that a lot of people look at this - they see these dates in the future being bandied about: “by 20XX we will be stopping selling/installing X/Y/Z” and the natural reaction is “ok, so what do I do instead?” [I pause for a second to acknowledge that a lot of these dates are just the end of SALE of products rather than all of them needing to be REPLACED, but that won’t have filtered through fully into consciousness yet].
And the problem is that at the moment either the significant practicalities of this transition haven’t been worked through or they’re being kept under very close wraps.
If you’re telling people change is a-comin, you owe it to them to explain how it’s going to work. Let’s take EVs - the charging infrastructure is undoubtedly improving but it’s still not anywhere near where it needs to be. So what is the strategy, particularly for people who don’t have drives? It feels like this *still* hasn’t been resolved, and my only guess is that governments are still hedging their bets on the state of technology etc in a decade’s time to work out how it all fits together.
The problem is that the ambition and desire is there from government, but people rely on their government to explain to them how it is going to work without unduly prejudicing them. And at the moment we’ve got the end point without details of the journey.
Pathetic defences of hot and cold taps on here. No wonder British shop stewards were so uniquely destructive in the 60s and 70s.
You like drinking mucky tanked water do you?
I don’t - and neither does the entire western world - who moved to mixer taps a very long time ago - drink hot water.
Do you?
Get into the 21st century. I know you are an antiquarian but you needn’t bathe like one.
There is zero chance of being given a lukewarm glass of water with a cold tap.
With a mixer tap, I'd say 1/3 of those I'm handed are not cold.
Depending on the distance the water has to travel around the house, the time since it was last used and the ambient temperature of the house, the first water from the cold tap may well be lukewarm. That's why we let the tap run a bit before drawing a glass of water, but there is a non-zero chance of the water profferer not doing so.
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
Somme. All day long. Looking out over that vast expanse of grassland (yes the odd poppy) and thinking: a million men died here.
Yes. This is why WW1 resonates and will resonate more and longer than WW11 in the UK.
Every village however small lost men in WW1, but not in WW11. In villages round here brief biogs of WW1 fallen are still read out in the open air on Remembrance Sunday. People still come. "He has no known grave" are the most haunting words I ever hear.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
Wrong.
Heat pumps work in houses built to modern insulation standards.
Underfloor heating helps, and is the default for ground floors in modern construction. Or remodelling.
Underfloor heating is just a really long hose zigzagging about under your floor.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
Or just live in another country where they seem to have no such problem.
Reminds me of Americans agonising over the feasibility of high speed rail or contactless credit cards.
Exactly. America has its own retardations. The banking system, for one.
Right now there are Americans probably moaning on USPoliticalBetting.com about instant digital transactions, because a three day wire is “better”.
And physical “checks” are just much more tangible and reliable than an invisible transaction like a wire in the first place.
This debate on heat pumps etc is exactly the problem and why this will become a really key electoral issue in time.
Who is making the decision on how we are replacing the method of heating in all our homes? Who is paying for it? What will it be? Will it heat as well as a gas boiler, or worse? How much will it cost to run? Will it fit on the house? What about [insert other living arrangements - flats, houses with no garden, terraces, buildings with odd boundary issues etc]?
I don’t have the blindest clue what I am going to be expected to do when gas boilers are phased out, and I have an interest in current affairs etc. Can we not see how mind bendingly confusing and concerning this will be to millions of people?
The decisions being taken at the top are woeful, the groundwork to prepare people shameful, the information is not there.
I agree with your point about woeful information. But I think you are stressing unnecessarily as a consumer. You buy from whatever is available on the market at the point when you need to replace your heating system.
But I think this is exactly the way that a lot of people look at this - they see these dates in the future being bandied about: “by 20XX we will be stopping selling/installing X/Y/Z” and the natural reaction is “ok, so what do I do instead?” [I pause for a second to acknowledge that a lot of these dates are just the end of SALE of products rather than all of them needing to be REPLACED, but that won’t have filtered through fully into consciousness yet].
And the problem is that at the moment either the significant practicalities of this transition haven’t been worked through or they’re being kept under very close wraps.
If you’re telling people change is a-comin, you owe it to them to explain how it’s going to work. Let’s take EVs - the charging infrastructure is undoubtedly improving but it’s still not anywhere near where it needs to be. So what is the strategy, particularly for people who don’t have drives? It feels like this *still* hasn’t been resolved, and my only guess is that governments are still hedging their bets on the state of technology etc in a decade’s time to work out how it all fits together.
The problem is that the ambition and desire is there from government, but people rely on their government to explain to them how it is going to work without unduly prejudicing them. And at the moment we’ve got the end point without details of the journey.
It is going to be the biggest peacetime disaster in UK history. The reason Sunak isn't saying it will be put back is to put SKS PM in a quandary - does he ungreenly put it back himself while tories tut from the sidelines or does he take ownership of the fuck up and its consequences? 2030 will be in less than 6 years when he comes to power.
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
Berlin sprung to mind immediately. But also the Normandy beaches.
Surely it has to be turning points? In which case, the battle of Kursk/ Prokhorovka ? Battle of Hastings (wherever that site is). Trafalgar or Borodino? Lake Poyang? Battle of Saratoga?
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
Wrong.
Heat pumps work in houses built to modern insulation standards.
Underfloor heating helps, and is the default for ground floors in modern construction. Or remodelling.
Underfloor heating is just a really long hose zigzagging about under your floor.
Didn't this story begin with the point that heatpumps don't work well in Scotland where the ait temperature can be below -15 degrees.
I remember a story last week that Sweden has 200,000 heat pumps a year being installed and wondered what made Sweden different to Scotland. Turns out Sweden aren't installing Air source heatpumps they are drilling deep holes and installing Ground Source heat pumps instead.
Ground source Heatpumps cost a lot more money..
And yep - you need a well insulated house before a heat pump starts to make sense...
Heat pumps are used in around 50% of NZ homes (climate, not so different from the UK’s), and more so in the colder regions.
So that's a full 325 people in NZ who benefit from heat pumps. Yay.
Typical head-in-the-sand arrogance.
Using simple arrows and highlighting please let me know where the heat pumps go here:
What percentage of Britons live in 1960s brutalist towers?
Brutalist towers should be easy: single central heating and cooling system for the whole building as is the case with office blocks. Community heating, ideally with its own solar generation covering at least some of the electricity requirements.
That can be either ground source heat pump or air source or CHP hot water. Equipment on the ground / basement or roof.
The European countries where heat pumps have taken off include several with far more apartment living than the UK.
I did assume something like this.
I really can’t understand why there is so much resistance to heat pumps, when they are mainstream in growing parts of the world.
It’s like the British insistence on bad dentistry, or having a separate hot and cold tap.
2-3 years ago we were fitting plenty, now people have realised that they do not heat very well their popularity has collapsed. Just one of example of many, we fitted a heat pump system to a primary school replacing their gas boiler system. During the winter their classrooms were full of plug in radiators as the new system did not provide anywhere near enough heat. Two Local Authorities near me have stopped converting heating systems to Heat Pumps due to this (and the vast expense, they cost 5 times as much to install compared to a gas boiler system) and another installs hybrid systems with a heat pump but also a gas boiler as they know the heat pump will not provide enough heat on a cold day.
Heat pumps can work in very well insulated properties where widnows and doors are shut at all times. Otherwise on a cold day you will be cold.
If you’re cold in a house with a heat pump it’s because either the builder undersized the heat pump or failed to put large enough radiators in. Neither are a fault in heat pumps themselves: Heat pumps do exactly what they’re specced to do.
Occasionally the problem is user error - the kind of people who turn the thermostat up high when they get home from work because they think it will warm the house up quicker tend to really not get on with the continuous gentle heat that a heat pump likes. If they can’t feel the hot blast coming off the radiators then clearly the system isn’t working!
Pathetic defences of hot and cold taps on here. No wonder British shop stewards were so uniquely destructive in the 60s and 70s.
You like drinking mucky tanked water do you?
I don’t - and neither does the entire western world - who moved to mixer taps a very long time ago - drink hot water.
Do you?
Get into the 21st century. I know you are an antiquarian but you needn’t bathe like one.
There is zero chance of being given a lukewarm glass of water with a cold tap.
With a mixer tap, I'd say 1/3 of those I'm handed are not cold.
Depending on the distance the water has to travel around the house, the time since it was last used and the ambient temperature of the house, the first water from the cold tap may well be lukewarm. That's why we let the tap run a bit before drawing a glass of water, but there is a non-zero chance of the water profferer not doing so.
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
Somme. All day long. Looking out over that vast expanse of grassland (yes the odd poppy) and thinking: a million men died here.
Yes. This is why WW1 resonates and will resonate more and longer than WW11 in the UK.
Every village however small lost men in WW1, but not in WW11. In villages round here brief biogs of WW1 fallen are still read out in the open air on Remembrance Sunday. People still come. "He has no known grave" are the most haunting words I ever hear.
The best I’ve experienced in the UK was Battle Abbey (battle of Hastings). Good audio guides for adults and children.
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
What are you talking about? With a single tap you just adjust it left/right to find the temperature you want. Super easy.
But what if you turn the tap down because you want only a small amount of cold water in your bath and then, as is so often the case, the water stops altogether because you have turned it down too much and you end up with a bath that is too hot.
What then?
At least the one I have you set the amount of water by moving it up/down, and the temperature by left/right. So you can have lots of hot or cold water, or lots of water at the right temperature. Similarly, a little hot or cold water or a little water at the right temperature.
I don’t think I’ve ever run a bath at the wrong temperature. You simply put your hand under the stream, adjust it to the temperature you want, then let it run. I literally can’t imagine ever being in the scenario you describe.
Then there comes that dreadful moment when the water's running cold In the bath, in the bath! When the soap is lost forever and one's feeling tired and old In the bath, in the bath! It's time to pull the plug out, time to mop the bathroom floor. The towel is in the cupboard, and the cupboard is next door! It's started running hot! Let's have another hour or more In the bath, in the bath!
Pathetic defences of hot and cold taps on here. No wonder British shop stewards were so uniquely destructive in the 60s and 70s.
You like drinking mucky tanked water do you?
I don’t - and neither does the entire western world - who moved to mixer taps a very long time ago - drink hot water.
Do you?
Get into the 21st century. I know you are an antiquarian but you needn’t bathe like one.
There is zero chance of being given a lukewarm glass of water with a cold tap.
With a mixer tap, I'd say 1/3 of those I'm handed are not cold.
Depending on the distance the water has to travel around the house, the time since it was last used and the ambient temperature of the house, the first water from the cold tap may well be lukewarm. That's why we let the tap run a bit before drawing a glass of water, but there is a non-zero chance of the water profferer not doing so.
There you go. Inbuilt waste with mixer taps.
Eh? It's just the same with mixer taps. Whichever type you use, you need to let the water run a bit if you want to guarantee a cold glass of water.
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
Somme. All day long. Looking out over that vast expanse of grassland (yes the odd poppy) and thinking: a million men died here.
Yes. This is why WW1 resonates and will resonate more and longer than WW11 in the UK.
Every village however small lost men in WW1, but not in WW11. In villages round here brief biogs of WW1 fallen are still read out in the open air on Remembrance Sunday. People still come. "He has no known grave" are the most haunting words I ever hear.
The best I’ve experienced in the UK was Battle Abbey (battle of Hastings). Good audio guides for adults and children.
Interesting but before I confirm a visit, what kind of taps were available in the gents?
I fucking hate single taps. How do you know how much cold water you are putting in to a bath if it's all coming out of the same tap.
Eh ? You're trying to get a bath to the right temperature for you or a little one, surely more difficult to judge with two taps as you can't stick your hand under it and go "that's about right" (After initially running straight hot because the warm water is 'coming through'). Easier with a single faucettap
Eh yourself. You can't tell by sticking your hand under the water when it's just started running. You need to know just how much cold and just how much hot (which I do - for myself) and then do that and adjust it as appropriate. You can't do that if there is just one tap because you don't know how much you have adjusted it (sometimes the taps shut off altogether).
What are you talking about? With a single tap you just adjust it left/right to find the temperature you want. Super easy.
But what if you turn the tap down because you want only a small amount of cold water in your bath and then, as is so often the case, the water stops altogether because you have turned it down too much and you end up with a bath that is too hot.
What then?
Just have a little cry.
Tell me about it. The tears flow. Unlike the cold water.
Perhaps you have seen ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion? Or C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate?
Can't build HS2 Can't install heat pumps Can't build segregated cycle lanes Can't cycle 5 miles across Edinburgh Can't run a bath Can't run a tap
66 years between flight and the moon.
My wife says that one of the problems with Ireland is the emigrant culture. Any time life gets hard those who are most able and most frustrated leave the country. So the country is left with people who will put up with crap, don't recognise it's crap, or can't do any better. (Not sure what that says about us moving to the place, but we'll leave that for another time).
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
Berlin sprung to mind immediately. But also the Normandy beaches.
Trouble is many UK battlefields have zero interpretation, apart from a monument, often in the wrong or at least misleading location.
There's Bannockburn, of course, with NTS interpretation. But it has changed so much since 1314. Also Culloden.
I like driving around the country and seeing all those names that are so redolent - Naseby, Edgehill, even Newbury.
Couldn't manage all of those in one day on a bicycle.
On the Cotswold Way, there was a sign stating a civil war battle had been fought on the plains below. The night before, a father and sons had met up for a meal on the hill, before going into battle the next day. On different sides.
I think Uxbridge was the catalyst that sparked a whole new narrative not only about the ULEZ scheme but the rush to green policies that many cannot afford and especially with the cost of living crisis
Evs are not affordable for millions, heat pumps are not only unaffordable but in many cases not practical, requiring properties to have a 'c' efficiency rating to be sold is also unaffordable for many, and our 2030 ban on ICE cars is silly when the EU is 2035
I have no idea whether Sunak will benefit from his obvious move to differentiate from Labour, but there are 35 million motorists in the UK who are an important group politicially and indeed the Sun is taking up their cause judging by today's front page
Another one with “heat pump denialism”.
Silly comment just as is saying NZ is used in 50% homes in NZ ( actual figure is 40%) when properties in NZ are very different to the UK
This from the Guardian confirms the high cost and uncertainties chills the heat pump market
Can someone explain why electric boilers can't work instead of heat pumps? Much less disruptive in UK homes where space is very limited.
Electric boilers are only ~98% efficient but heat pumps are 200% - 400% efficient as they are using energy to transfer heat from the external environment into the house rather generating heat directly.
We comprehensively concluded on here yesterday that heat pumps are shit unless you have a Grand Designs Scandi-noir cum Roman villa home, which funnily enough most people don't.
Wrong.
Heat pumps work in houses built to modern insulation standards.
Underfloor heating helps, and is the default for ground floors in modern construction. Or remodelling.
Underfloor heating is just a really long hose zigzagging about under your floor.
Didn't this story begin with the point that heatpumps don't work well in Scotland where the ait temperature can be below -15 degrees.
I remember a story last week that Sweden has 200,000 heat pumps a year being installed and wondered what made Sweden different to Scotland. Turns out Sweden aren't installing Air source heatpumps they are drilling deep holes and installing Ground Source heat pumps instead.
Ground source Heatpumps cost a lot more money..
And yep - you need a well insulated house before a heat pump starts to make sense...
There are air source heat pumps on the market which are specced to work down to -30℃. I linked to a Samsung one yesterday.
Insulation is in some ways a red herring - the real question is can your heating system put out as much heat as is lost to the outside. You can spec a heat pump that will match the output & fluid working temperature of a gas boiler in an existing system, but it’ll cost more. Better insulation and larger rads / underfloor heating reduce the heat flow needs, meaning you can spec a smaller heat pump running at a lower working temp which brings down costs.
Again, heat pumps do what they say on the tin. If you (or your installer) fails to read the tin, that’s not the fault of the heat pump.
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
We have a gravity fed hot water tank. Once a bird had got into the attic, and ended up dead in the water tank. Hot water smelt bad for 2-3 weeks and probably wasn't drinkable. I suspect this is common in a lot of older properties (we will be upgrading to a pressured hot water tank soon, so the issue goes away.)
This debate on heat pumps etc is exactly the problem and why this will become a really key electoral issue in time.
Who is making the decision on how we are replacing the method of heating in all our homes? Who is paying for it? What will it be? Will it heat as well as a gas boiler, or worse? How much will it cost to run? Will it fit on the house? What about [insert other living arrangements - flats, houses with no garden, terraces, buildings with odd boundary issues etc]?
I don’t have the blindest clue what I am going to be expected to do when gas boilers are phased out, and I have an interest in current affairs etc. Can we not see how mind bendingly confusing and concerning this will be to millions of people?
The decisions being taken at the top are woeful, the groundwork to prepare people shameful, the information is not there.
I agree with your point about woeful information. But I think you are stressing unnecessarily as a consumer. You buy from whatever is available on the market at the point when you need to replace your heating system.
But I think this is exactly the way that a lot of people look at this - they see these dates in the future being bandied about: “by 20XX we will be stopping selling/installing X/Y/Z” and the natural reaction is “ok, so what do I do instead?” [I pause for a second to acknowledge that a lot of these dates are just the end of SALE of products rather than all of them needing to be REPLACED, but that won’t have filtered through fully into consciousness yet].
And the problem is that at the moment either the significant practicalities of this transition haven’t been worked through or they’re being kept under very close wraps.
If you’re telling people change is a-comin, you owe it to them to explain how it’s going to work. Let’s take EVs - the charging infrastructure is undoubtedly improving but it’s still not anywhere near where it needs to be. So what is the strategy, particularly for people who don’t have drives? It feels like this *still* hasn’t been resolved, and my only guess is that governments are still hedging their bets on the state of technology etc in a decade’s time to work out how it all fits together.
The problem is that the ambition and desire is there from government, but people rely on their government to explain to them how it is going to work without unduly prejudicing them. And at the moment we’ve got the end point without details of the journey.
Can't build HS2 Can't install heat pumps Can't build segregated cycle lanes Can't cycle 5 miles across Edinburgh Can't run a bath Can't run a tap
66 years between flight and the moon.
My wife says that one of the problems with Ireland is the emigrant culture. Any time life gets hard those who are most able and most frustrated leave the country. So the country is left with people who will put up with crap, don't recognise it's crap, or can't do any better. (Not sure what that says about us moving to the place, but we'll leave that for another time).
What's Britain's excuse?
Immigrants/emigrants, depending on your perspective, are generally the people with the most get-up-and-go, given that they have already, er, got up and gone.
Edit: As for Britain's excuse, my feeling is that our still-entrenched class system bears a lot of the blame, ensuring jobs at the top for so many people of decidedly modest ability. On the plus side, I think (hope?) this is improving, but pace seems slow.
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
Somme. All day long. Looking out over that vast expanse of grassland (yes the odd poppy) and thinking: a million men died here.
Yes. This is why WW1 resonates and will resonate more and longer than WW11 in the UK.
Every village however small lost men in WW1, but not in WW11. In villages round here brief biogs of WW1 fallen are still read out in the open air on Remembrance Sunday. People still come. "He has no known grave" are the most haunting words I ever hear.
Not every village lost someone. There are few ‘Thankful Villages’.
Having said that I used to live in a village where the Legion Secretary had lost two sons. His voice always broke when he got to their names.
Comments
It took years for my mum to trust them. She was apparently raised at a time when hot water tanks were seen as producing 'dirty' (non-potable) water, and she disliked the idea of mixing non-potable and potable water. The hot water was good enough to bathe or wash in, but not good enough to drink.
If it was the case in the 1950s, I bet it isn't the case on modern systems.
Now, if only he could get on board with house building, reducing the state and tax cutting, we might be on to something electorally palatable.
The only tap in a house guaranteed to produce potable water is the cold tap in the kitchen which must by law be mains fed.
Any other tap can be fed from a tank
So we’ve done CASTLES, how about BATTLEFIELDS - memorable, haunting, cleverly explained, simply epochal - what are the world’s top ten battlefields?
Top of my head:
Thiepval Ridge and the Somme
Berlin in toto: all the war damage everywhere which you can still see, from 1945
Franklin, Tennessee: hugely evocative, blood stained floorboards your can see where the surgeon did his urgent amputations
Aaaaand as I type that, the air raid sirens go off
(if you have a combi boiler, neither has the hot of course)
How much longer do you want for transition?
I jest of course - but I do sense Tory Story plotlines are going to get increasingly tacky from now until the election.
Negative externalities are already taxed through the roof.
Stop. Sodding. Banning. Things.
I think reversing the plastic straw ban would probably be a good idea too.
He lives in a 1950s wooden bungalow.
And he has a heat pump. And, shock, a mixer tap.
Get into the 21st century, FFS.
I thought you worked in engineering.
No wonder HS2 is fucked, if this is the level of ambition.
My semi detached engineer neighbour two doors down is going for it though. Sort of suspect that issue I'm facing is not that it can't be done, but more that I can't find someone who knows how to do it.
No wonder British shop stewards were so uniquely destructive in the 60s and 70s.
“What heat pumps mean to you”.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/p0fzltvd
Also on R4 PM this evening 17.00
What then?
Reminds me of Americans agonising over the feasibility of high speed rail or contactless credit cards.
By the time the kettle has put in x watt-seconds, the water that was colder to begin with won't be as warm as the watyer that was warmer.
The reasons for using cold water is straight from the mains = better.
Especially the state of many cold water tanks in attics, whence the hot water is fed in older systems.
Do you?
Get into the 21st century.
I know you are an antiquarian but you needn’t bathe like one.
The question in the header is about politics - elections. What will work in winning (unlikely) and doing better than wipeout (perfectly possible) for Rishi will depend on luck and mood as much as anything.
Plurality opinion veers between favouring a science, moral, global good, rescue the world approach; and a money, politics, anti-science, doomed anyway or hoax approach. Many people are mixed in their responses.
What on the whole works best with pluralities is what Rishi is trying: Science is true but imperfect; we are doing better than others and have made great strides; buck up you others (China, whatever); we support the stuff that is not directly too costly for you the voter; all important specified targets that cost anything are not in the period of the next government (2024-29); better burn our oil than Jonny Foreigner's oil.
It should work a bit, but hopefully not too well.
Bet accordingly: NOM is value.
Battlefields that no one has found yet.
China 1
77 mins
There's Bannockburn, of course, with NTS interpretation. But it has changed so much since 1314. Also Culloden.
With a mixer tap, I'd say 1/3 of those I'm handed are not cold.
I don’t think I’ve ever run a bath at the wrong temperature. You simply put your hand under the stream, adjust it to the temperature you want, then let it run. I literally can’t imagine ever being in the scenario you describe.
All these noble and green aspirations cost cold hard cash and ain't no one got much of that atm.
America has its own retardations.
The banking system, for one.
Right now there are Americans probably moaning on USPoliticalBetting.com about instant digital transactions, because a three day wire is “better”.
1) have the new seat boundaries been officially approved yet?
2) does anyone know when we'll get some nominal 2019 results?
That said, I had occasion to park my car today on one of those slightly incongruous streets of council housing you get in otherwise lovely villages in Devon because all the chocolate boxey houses are now worth about half a million pounds and real rural England can no longer afford to live there - and was greeted by a man with the most British teeth I have ever seen. His teeth also looked slightly unhinged.
Edit; there are some great battlefields along the Lothian plain - but little or no interpretation. You neeed to DIY, but the basic scenery and its constraints remain crystal clear. Some really good work has been done on Prestonpans/Gladsmuir and Second Dunbar. Though I daresal little rmains of Inverkeithing thanks to all the road and rail and harbour changes.
a) you aren't British; and
b) you don't live in the UK.
Can't you find a forum about Danish politics for Somali ex-pats living in Peru to comment on.
- more on imperial weights and measures
- Relaxing the rules on parental smacking
- repealing the sugar tax
- More tax breaks for married couples
- abolishing 20mph zones
- Some school curriculum changes to emphasise the good things about the empire
These all have the benefit for Rishi of being cheap to implement, which is why you won’t see promises of more road building for example.
And the problem is that at the moment either the significant practicalities of this transition haven’t been worked through or they’re being kept under very close wraps.
If you’re telling people change is a-comin, you owe it to them to explain how it’s going to work. Let’s take EVs - the charging infrastructure is undoubtedly improving but it’s still not anywhere near where it needs to be. So what is the strategy, particularly for people who don’t have drives? It feels like this *still* hasn’t been resolved, and my only guess is that governments are still hedging their bets on the state of technology etc in a decade’s time to work out how it all fits together.
The problem is that the ambition and desire is there from government, but people rely on their government to explain to them how it is going to work without unduly prejudicing them. And at the moment we’ve got the end point without details of the journey.
Can't install heat pumps
Can't build segregated cycle lanes
Can't cycle 5 miles across Edinburgh
Can't run a bath
Can't run a tap
66 years between flight and the moon.
https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-1048,00.html
Every village however small lost men in WW1, but not in WW11. In villages round here brief biogs of WW1 fallen are still read out in the open air on Remembrance Sunday. People still come. "He has no known grave" are the most haunting words I ever hear.
Heat pumps work in houses built to modern insulation standards.
Underfloor heating helps, and is the default for ground floors in modern construction. Or remodelling.
Underfloor heating is just a really long hose zigzagging about under your floor.
Couldn't manage all of those in one day on a bicycle.
Battle of Hastings (wherever that site is).
Trafalgar or Borodino?
Lake Poyang?
Battle of Saratoga?
I remember a story last week that Sweden has 200,000 heat pumps a year being installed and wondered what made Sweden different to Scotland. Turns out Sweden aren't installing Air source heatpumps they are drilling deep holes and installing Ground Source heat pumps instead.
Ground source Heatpumps cost a lot more money..
And yep - you need a well insulated house before a heat pump starts to make sense...
Occasionally the problem is user error - the kind of people who turn the thermostat up high when they get home from work because they think it will warm the house up quicker tend to really not get on with the continuous gentle heat that a heat pump likes. If they can’t feel the hot blast coming off the radiators then clearly the system isn’t working!
Then there comes that dreadful moment when the water's running cold
In the bath, in the bath!
When the soap is lost forever and one's feeling tired and old
In the bath, in the bath!
It's time to pull the plug out, time to mop the bathroom floor.
The towel is in the cupboard, and the cupboard is next door!
It's started running hot! Let's have another hour or more
In the bath, in the bath!
From In the Bath, Flanders and Swann.
What's Britain's excuse?
I’m trying to think of a really evocative battlefield in the UK. I can’t. Tho I’ve never been to Batfle in Hastings
The most powerful war-site in Britain is, to my mind, the extant bomb damage in london from the blitz
If you look hard enough there’s lots of it
(Hope I've remembered that correctly...)
Yet another indicator of how bestial war can be.
Insulation is in some ways a red herring - the real question is can your heating system put out as much heat as is lost to the outside. You can spec a heat pump that will match the output & fluid working temperature of a gas boiler in an existing system, but it’ll cost more. Better insulation and larger rads / underfloor heating reduce the heat flow needs, meaning you can spec a smaller heat pump running at a lower working temp which brings down costs.
Again, heat pumps do what they say on the tin. If you (or your installer) fails to read the tin, that’s not the fault of the heat pump.
Edit: As for Britain's excuse, my feeling is that our still-entrenched class system bears a lot of the blame, ensuring jobs at the top for so many people of decidedly modest ability. On the plus side, I think (hope?) this is improving, but pace seems slow.
You raddled old bigot. Vile, vile individual.
Having said that I used to live in a village where the Legion Secretary had lost two sons. His voice always broke when he got to their names.