Now I feel like a proper home owner; we had to pay for a heating service at short notice as after a power on and off our boiler didn't come back. The solution was to replace its control board, so /something/ on here is broken. Technician reckoned a relay was the culprit. Don't think I have the energy to try and figure it out, but probably a cheap part that's not too hard to replace. Annoying when it's quicker to just replace the whole thing.
I have a special #heating today, which unfortunately also gives me a bit of a headache: all the windows are open because it's much warmer outside than inside. If I didn't know that the wind was coming from Africa, I'd bet on July, judging by the noises from outside.
I hope the washed clothes get dry before the #SaharaDust crumbles in them. Nearly 24°C in the sun, tomorrow we'll get real summer. Northern hemisphere! Eastern France.
(Yesterday 13°C with heavy rain.)
So much for “H2 ready“! As the first utility in Germany, the local utility of the City of Augsburg informed their customers that they will phase out their entire Gas network by 2040 and customers should plan ahead how to make the switch in the coming years. In my opinion: An important step in the decarbonization of our building stock!
We just received our "jaarafrekening". This is the final yearly invoice sent by our energy company. They are about to pay us €252, and we will continue to pay them €5 per month next year, just like last year. i.e. overall our energy company is paying us about €200 for last year's electricity. Everything in our home is powered by electricity. No gas connection. No wood burner.
Nothing that we've done to achieve a negative energy bill was especially expensive. In particular, our installation of a air-air heat pump and a couple of extra solar panels cost far less than several of our neighbours paid for the wood burning stoves they've installed, which stink up the neighbourhood all through winter.
We also don't have to buy wood to burn.
People concerned about the cost of heating with gas buy woodburners at a higher rate than heat pumps largely because they have no idea about the relative costs. If they knew, perhaps we could have clean air.
I'll write a comprehensive blog post at the end of March about energy consumption, costs & emissions due to the heatpump vs. gas this winter. I can tell you already that we using a lot less total energy now.
To summarise: In the worst case, our CO2 emissions are reduced by 95% vs. burning gas, we have no heating bill at all any more, and our home was warmer than before.
#ClimateDiary “The UK spends less on low-carbon energy policy than any other major European economy, analysis has shown, despite evidence that such spending could lower household bills and increase economic growth more than the tax cuts the government has planned.”
Don’t forget we have the worst insulation in Euope = most room for improvement. But no.
A lady who has breast and lung #cancer, has now had a FREE combination conversation completed by CPH CIC ( D.E.P.H.E.R )
She was looking at borrowing around £3,000 to have a new boiler installed, after her Back boiler was condemned.
#Heating and hot water is very important and essential, especially when you are terminal.
A debt while fighting such a terrible situation, would not help her at all, it would be a weight that she could do without 😢
I've done the sums regarding CO2 emissions for December 2023 with a heat pump vs December 2022 with gas heating.
Our emissions for heating and hot water were, in the worst case, around a third of what they were a year before, and about a seventh of an average Dutch household in a house like ours.
More broken crap! We're having quite the winter so far. Both cars needed attention, the well pump failed in the night and now the heating broke.
Pellet burner was beeping in the basement and kept flaming out. Seemed a problem with the pellet feed. Cleaned the screw conveyor in the hopper, but that wasn't it, so had to unbolt the burner unit and strip that too.
Cleaned out a lot of ash and soot from the auger and the motorized tray. Now it's burning!
Setting off with parcels today I stopped for a photo outside our home.
Our roof is the only one on the street on which you can still see some of the snow which fell yesterday. This is because we insulated everything in our home.
We also have the only house in the street from which the gas supply has been removed. Our heating now comes from an air-air heatpump.
Due to installing a lot of solar panels we have no energy bill.
There's no car parked on our driveway because we don't use motor vehicles, which also saves a great deal of money.
We have a low income and had to do everything on a budget. We had to save up for expensive jobs and spread everything out over years to get to the point that we're at now. But we live with a relatively small impact because of these measures. It's all described on my blog:
District Heating (DH) - Simply Costs Less & More Efficient
While #Scotland was only just waking up to the advantages of DH, #Shetland is way ahead of the game
The beauty of DH is that it’s community-led, locally owned so we have control over the production & pricing & not at the mercy of global events that affect electricity costs
Electricity costs have rocketed to around 30p/kWh, DH remains low, currently 7.5p/kWh
Our boiler flipped the electrics yesterday, and lost all power to the heating and hot water.
Once we managed to get electricity back, we are getting hot pipes internal to the boiler, but everything is cold south of the heat pump. Said heat pump is also leaking black gunk.
We have no hot water or heating - but the #nest thermostats think everything is fine.. just never get to temp.
So Justin #Trudeau, our "#unifying" prime minister who wants to "build #bridges, not sow #division", announced the suspension of the much-hated and regressive #carbon#tax on #heating#oil - but only in the Maritime provinces, because heating your #house shouldn't be expensive, and the #Maritimes are mostly oil-heated.
The west, which is mostly natural #gas-heated, or #propane-heated, which are also carbon taxed?
#Natural#gas is by far the most common #heating#fuel in the prairies, at least in cities of any size. If you're in a rural area, on a farm, a northern community, etc, you may have a #propane tank filled much like the oil tanks elsewhere. Propane costs a lot more than natural gas.
Electrical heat is far more expensive yet - because it generally means resistive heating. Affordable heat pumps that work efficiently in -40C don't exist yet.