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We have just had a circular from the electricity supply company. They are offering a "smart phone" "APP" to go with their new "SMART" electricity meters. No "smart phone?" No "SMART" meter? Dogh! This means we can't compare our energy consumption with our neighbours. Oh, wow!
The circular was written in micro-text. As they do with everything these day. This is so you can't read the toxic symbols on everyday food labels. They assume everybody is carrying a tunnelling electron microscope "APP" on their "smart phone." No "smart phone" here! So I fetched one of several magnifying glasses we leave lying around and can never find. Then I washed my hands thoroughly after handling the letter.
Oh joy! The DHW [immersion water heater tank] is dripping this morning. You would not believe the catalogue of horrors this throws up! The bare tank costs £500+ plumber's and electrician's fees. I fitted it myself last time but I was twenty years younger then.
Our old wood stove has a heating tank which I installed years ago. The stove is arguably an antique and falling to pieces. We wouldn't want a replacement even if it were legal to buy one these days. It requires crawling on your hands and knees just to see into the door. It is also temperamental. Depending on wind direction, mood, etc.
No old stove + no water heater means we won't need the "gravity" pipes. Which I also installed years ago. The idea back then was to heat the underfloor pipe system. Which I also installed when I redid the floors. The floors proved to be so cold that the stove dripped tar inside. So we gave up on that idea and have never run the floor heating system again. The stove just heats domestic hot water now. Aided and abetted by costly electricity only when required. [Summers on Thursdays] The unused, circulation pump probably doesn't even turn any more.
Alternatives: Buy an Air/Air heat pump and get rid of the old stove. This won't heat the rooms away from the core of the house. Where the wood stove presently sulks as our sole means of heating. Get a simple water heating/storage tank.
1) Air/Air heat pumps are simple and cheap. They don't heat hot water. They don't heat floors. They are quick to install, don't need wall space for all the "TECH" and don't take up much room indoors. The indoor labour needn't be here for very long. Easy to control even if we don't have "THE APP!"
2) Air/Water heat pumps can do everything at four time the retail price + five times the labour charges and ten times the complexity. Hot water + floors + radiators [if required.] We are in the middle of a pandemic. So having labour indoors for several weeks/months/years isn't going to happen. "We" wouldn't understand the complexity of the "THE APP" control system anyway. Best not to go there.
3) Get a new and more modern, wood stove. Something with a glass door. Something which doesn't need a limbo dancer to feed and tend to its constant needs. The downside is reliably procuring the heavy briquettes. Our local dealer ran out months ago! Just as a record cold and wet month rolled over us like a tsunami!
There's a pandemic on. So shopping at the supermarkets for wood briquettes is a serious no-no. The supermarkets just aren't set up for bulk buying anyway. The trolleys will barely manage ten bags x 10kg. Nor can I any more! Every supermarket seems to have heavy inclines. Plus idiots who understand nothing of bump steer, inertia and momentum! I'm [officially] too old to wrestle a loaded shopping trolley these days!
We are both getting too old for handling bulky and heavy fuels. It requires the car, loading and unloading the trolley into the boot. Multiple handling and carrying at home. Plus [negative] indoor storage of bulky and unsightly fuel which often smells strongly of turpentine.
We have no room for a 1TON pallet full and the quality of briquettes varies enormously. The dust, the smell and constant labour/tending makes alternatives, like heat pumps, seem even more attractive.
4) Pellet stove in the living room. All the problems of wood stove, fuel procurement, purchase, storage and multiple handling. They also require electricity to run and there's the noise of built-in fans.
5) Despite the government's claim to be reducing Denmark CO2 bulk manufacture there is no sign of any serious effort to help the rural householder escape from solid fuel. There was recently a tiny cash pool for those who were already online. When the obedient, computer slave auction started. All the available cash was gone in minutes! The rest of Denmark spent several days waiting in vain to get onto the list. Just to get onto the auction site. Let alone actually being allowed to bid for a modest discount from the miserly, national, "Save the planet from Denmark's CO2" fund.
6) If you aren't on district heating then other, familiar alternatives, are also off the table. No rural district heating probably means no rural gas either. The big money guys have zero interest in digging up miles of farmer's field just to lay vast, insulated pipes to remote cottages and ex-farmhouses. Nor gas pipes for that matter. They are laying a gas pipeline right across Fyn. Which, judging from the earthworks, you could use as a [non-existent] motorway. So near yet so far!
7) Some choose to burn industrial pallets in huge, old, antique stoves. Bulky, seriously heavy, hideously unsightly storage and handling involved. Requires easy access for a vast tipper truck. Plus the screech of un-silenced, blunt chainsaws to make the filthy pallets into useable fuel. Then there's the constant stench of unknown timbers and smoke pervading the neighbourhood. Best not to go there either.
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