19.11.2022 How to use a heat pump in a real house?

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 Saturday 19th 33F/0.5C. It held 62F/17C overnight upstairs. The stove was almost out at 11pm at bedtime. Though the soapstone cladding was still very warm. Up at 5.10. A misty, crescent moon was shining through the bedroom window.

 8.00 First white frost on the lawn and ice on the puddles. 55F/13C downstairs.

 9.15 36F/2C. Overcast. Back from a walk along the road. Fleeting sunshine added drama. I lit the stove and had morning coffee. I badly need a continuous heating system. Just as the estate agent clearly indicated. Home buyers are usually working and cannot feed a stove all day.

 So I have requested three fixed price offers [online] for installation of an air-to-air heat pump. Two have answered so far. One suggested a smaller model to heat only the areas not served by the wood stove. The other suggested a heat pump to heat the whole house. If I only wanted to heat smaller areas then the heat pump could easily manage this too. 

 So I did some research online. Some "experts" say that the heat pump must be closely matched to the heating needs of the entire building. Or only the rooms to be heated. Over-sizing was strongly condemned.

 While others claimed the larger system would be cruising effortlessly. Using the analogy of a large engine in a car. Compared to a smaller one. The latter would be working hard all the time. So better suited to heating a smaller space.

 If only life were simple. I could heat the whole house simply by opening all the internal doors. Where would the internal "blower" be sited to achieve this? Ideally in the kitchen. So it could simultaneously warm the bathroom via the small entrance hall.

 Which begs the question: How well would heat then travel to the lounge [via the small front hall through two doors. Then on upwards to the "living" attic space? 

 Vents in the kitchen ceiling to the attic might be illegal. [Fire hazard?] As well as letting the heat and cooking steam/smells escape all too readily upwards. Resulting in a damp, overheated bedroom. While the lounge would and could be left well behind. 

 Putting the internal blower in the lounge would deny heat to the kitchen and bathroom. Not the idea/ideal situation at all. Two heat pumps? At say roughly £2k equivalent each installed? Things are now getting as costly as a basic, air-to-water heat pump system. Underfloor heating and DHW combined. With space heating radiators where needed. Roughly estimated at £10k!

 Which is where my target for my last two day's walks comes in. They have at least three heat pumps easily visible from the road. The house is a modestly sized, 1½ storey, detached. Is one heat pump internal "blower" too inefficient to share heat with more than one room? 

 Or too inefficient to heat the house at all? Such that three heat pumps are needed just to cope? Perhaps they simply wanted flexibility and cooling in the upstairs in summer. I don't even want to think about their electricity bills. Of course I know nothing of their insulation standards either. If could learn a great deal from this homeowner.

 I drove along to ask. It seems they used a heat pump supplier/installer from further afield. They have three floors, including the cellar. Hence the need for three heat pumps.  

 I have been to town. Where I bought some inexpensive, digital thermometers. With usefully large screens and digits. I have been struggling to read my older thermometers in winter lighting conditions. I also bought a large, stiff foam [polyurethane] plasterer's trowel. The Danes don't seem to use hawks. So I improvised.

 The log I left in the stove when I left was still burning well. 64F downstairs. 63F upstairs. Heavily overcast with lighter winds.

14.25 36F/2C. It has just started snowing! Briefly.

21.15 34F/1C. Dinner over. Still feeding the stove. 65F/18C upstairs. All doors closed.

 

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18.11.2022 Now it's cold!

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 Friday 18th 39F/4C heavy overcast and rainy morning. Windy again this morning with light showers. Outside temperatures falling daily towards freezing. Possible snow in the forecast.

 Up at 3am with unhappy memories. Watched YT for a couple of hours then went back to bed until 8am. Cold indoors, despite the stove going well all evening. 59F/15C upstairs. 53F/12C in the kitchen this morning. 50F/10C in the bathroom and rear hall. 

 It never got above 61F/16C upstairs, or down last night. It had been 67F/19C over the last couple of evenings. Which lulled me into thinking the new stove would continue to achieve these temperatures.

 My thick, down, winter duvet is fine for keeping me warm in bed. A charity shop find many years ago. As is the down jacket I have worn every winter indoors for years. My wife had her own duvets and jackets too.  The old Jøtel stove was useless at keeping the house and domestic water warm. It seems the new stove can't cope either. Now it is colder outside.

 I had the kitchen doors open all afternoon and evening. To spread the warmth from the stove in the lounge until bedtime. This doesn't seem to work so well as outside temperatures fall. The gales probably haven't helped. The house isn't remotely tight against draughts. Though better than it was in some places. The balcony and the bedroom window are now better sealed.

 The planked, entrance door is absolutely hopeless. Daylight can be seen around the opening edge due to shrinkage. The same problem with the double doors out to the greenhouse. Where daylight can be seen at the top. Where the opener of the pair has warped lightly. No doubt a cross draught is dragging the heat straight out of the house. Due to pressure differentials on opposing facades. 

 The stove needs to be fed lots of air as well as logs. I ran an air hose indoors from the outside for the old stove. It was never possible to feel any air coming through the pipe. So I closed it off.

 I need to add a board to deepen the frame at the top of the hall/greenhouse doors. Otherwise no draught sealing can possibly work. I bought a roll of good quality rubber seal but haven't progressed. Due to more pressing and more "cosmetic" projects. 

 Draught sealing needs to become a top priority! I'll have to keep the intervening hall/kitchen doors closed from now on. To prioritise the warmth in the lounge and bedroom above. The open stairwell lets the heat rise fairly readily. With no sensible way to close it off. Even if I wanted to. You can imagine I have thought about this repeatedly for the last 25 winters. We moved upstairs almost immediately after purchase and stayed there. With the l-shaped lounge becoming more like a cool, storage room. With narrow aisles for access to reach the stove.

 The entrance door needs to be replaced but is very non-standard in size. [73x196cm.] So no off-the-shelf door will work. Delivery times are measured in many months for made-to-measure doors. I had foolishly hoped the entrance door would widen again as it became damper outside in autumn. It hasn't happened this time.

 A new door and frame could possibly push the dimensions outwards slightly. Though not by much. I should be seriously considering making a new door and soon. It would probably have to be assembled, glued and screwed on the bedroom floor. There is nowhere else left with enough floor space.

 One short term option is to add a board to the door frame on the opening side. Where daylight shows. Then I can add the rubber draught seal. This will require I cut back the three, timber cross-braces to make room for the thickness of the extra board. This will probably need the portable circular saw. Which should be possible with the door wide open. It won't matter [at all] if the cuts aren't pretty. My old circular saw [from Aldi] is damned heavy. I checked the DeWalt battery models and they are no lighter!  

9.00 I have lit the stove. Then checked every window in the house. To ensure they are not "on the catch" for ventilation. I will also turn on the oil-filled radiator. Which I bought last winter to stop the 'fridge from turning itself off. Because it was too cold in the kitchen!

 My wife and I discussed buying a heat pump for years. The Danish government also talked about subsidising heat pumps. Our problem was making best use of any heat pump. An air-to-air heat pump would only heat one room. A very expensive room heater!

 I had installed underfloor heating hose two decades ago. When I remade and insulated the floors. An air-to-water heat pump is far more costly than the air-to-air variety. So, we waited for years in the hope of the promised subsidies. Or falling prices for air-to-water systems. Neither happened. So we continued to freeze. Wearing our secondhand duvet jackets, fleece hats and long thermal underwear, indoors, every winter.

 No doubt the government's empty promises trashed the heat pump installers livelihood. Just as they did with solar, water heating panels two decades ago. Then the empty threats to subsidise new and scrap older wood stoves. Remember this when you hear them bragging about being global, climate leaders. 

 You could subsidize a lot of heat pumps with a windfall tax on energy and supermarket inflationary profiteering. Not that the money would ever end up keeping the poorer Danes warm in their homes. They have to subsidise Pootin's invasion of Ukraine and its countless refugees instead. 

 While quite another class of Danes keep their summer houses cosy. The Danish poor are frozen out of the energy market. By profiteering prices and unimproved homes. Note that I do not consider myself poor. In case you were wondering.

 10.20 It is still 59F/15C upstairs. Perhaps I should go and hang about in the Town Hall? I could take my bread roll lunch and a flask for tea. 😏

 10.40 38F/3.5C. Weak sunny periods and showers continue. I opened the door wide and used the bayonet saw. To cut back the entrance door's cross braces. Instead of using the heavy circular saw and a stepladder. Hard work and noisy but at least I am nicely warm now. 60F/15C upstairs and down. Thanks to four, split, beech logs and counting.

 11.15 A board has now been screwed to the door frame on the opening side. I added a doubled rubber seal to the edge for the door to close against. Though there is some warping near the top of the door it will still help. Better than seeing daylight! The antique [lever] door handle is now a nuisance. It gets in the way of the board unless I am careful. Trapped fingers is another possibility. That door definitely has to go! As does the recycled frame. Which now has lots of woodworm.

 11.30 Any glimpse of sunshine is now only a memory. It is raining lightly almost continuously. 62F in the lounge. 61F upstairs. It now feels very warm in the lounge as I come back in from working in the hall. 

 12.00 The wind is now easterly instead of SE. Did I mention that I found my cheap, LED projector, work lamp? It had migrated to the shed. Where I found it while searching for something else. The story of my life! The constant searching allowed me to remember where most things were. Until I actually needed them. 

 I am now spread over two sheds, the observatory building [on two floors] and every room indoors. Again on two floors. Mostly on the floor. So the original goalposts have not only been removed but sited somewhere else entirely. Probably in another dimension. I have literally been reduced to tears of frustration after losing things recently. I have added boot laces to all the separate keys. So I can tell from a distance if I have forgotten to lock a shed and remove the key. Or even the door to the house!

 If this missive grows any longer I shall have to start a Chapter Two on my afternoon activities. Just think of all the things I could do. Instead of typing furiously and then mending all the badly broken typos! My excuse is that I need a rest. Now and then.

15.30  I Went for a walk and was going to talk to a local home owner with several heat pumps. By sheer chance they drove away as I neared their house on the main road. I'll have to try again later.  

 18.30 37F/3C outside. Stars visible but the wind has dropped. 66F/19C downstairs, 65F/18C upstairs. Doors closed. The small, oil-filled radiator is maintaining the kitchen at 55F/13C. 

 The stove has been fed with logs continuously since 9am. The previous log has been allowed to burn down to a red fire bed before adding another. Air increased to obtain and then lowered again to maintain flames. I have checked the chimney is completely clear with the help of a small mirror.

 20.00 Dinner was mackerel on toast. Followed by tomato soup and a bread roll.

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17.11.2022 Alternative energy from tortoises?

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 Thursday 17th 40F/4C. Another day of overcast and gales is forecast.  Up at 6.20 after a frequently disturbed night. I had a cup of milky coffee at 8pm and it went straight through! At hourly intervals throughout the night.

 I spent a lot of time on my hands and knees in the hall working on the grouting last night. The edges did not clean up as easily as I hoped. So I had to scrape more than wipe. Just to get a clean edge near the walls. The skirting boards would emphasise rather than hide the unwanted grout. Though it will be much less visible when fully dried to pale grey.

 The Danish news is about the inability of farmers to get permission for wind, bio-gas and solar installations on their land. Permission is a local affair conducted by the council. Which puts local citizens rights [and votes] above combatting climate change. 

 Why isn't there a national scheme to compensate those directly affected by the proposed changes? A modest but steady income from the profits generated by these installations?  And/or a home buy-out scheme. Where an installation is considered intolerable for specific homes due to close proximity. 

 There is a large area of solar panels a few km from here. Built by the dairy giant Arla. The low profiles of the dark panels. Undulating across the fields is visually striking rather than an eyesore. Though there is no high ground to provide an oversight. I have cycled there a couple of times to admire them from the quiet, rural lanes. There are very few houses in the area affected by the installation. It is claimed the area covered is the equivalent of 100 football fields.

Meanwhile, the city council has erected quite a small area of solar panels. On steeply sloping, north-facing ground in an industrial- big shed retail area. Which I find downright ugly. This is despite my lifelong fascination with alternative energy. I still have my library of alternative energy books from the 70s and 80s and later.

 These panels are arranged east-west like dark house roofs tumbling down the northerly slope. To my eyes it looks like the aftermath of a catastrophic landslide. I don't think I would be happy to wake up that scene every morning. Thankfully no homes are directly affected. Screening by trees on the roadside could easily be implemented.

 7.45 Time for my walk. The sky is distinctly dystopian and the trees already rocking. Gusting to 20m/s or 45mph again later.

 9.00 I was being buffeted by the cold wind. Except when roadside hedges provided shelter. My eyes were streaming despite have my hood up over a peaked cap. The GripGrab cycling gloves were far too cold for the conditions. So attempts to shelter may windward cheek had to be abandoned. The sky was racing over as the cloud broke up to sickly orange. With long strips heading westwards. The image above was the only one I managed. It was too cold for the bare hands required to operate the TZ7.

 10.30  Fleeting sunshine and gales. I have been cleaning the hall floor again. To remove the film of dusty grout on the tiles. Some offcuts of the narrower architrave profile 9cm looked best as skirting boards in this narrow hall. The wider 11cm profile looked rather like overkill as skirting. It drew the eye rather than letting it wander freely. I will have to buy more 9cm architrave for the hall skirting. 

 The front hall may gain from the wider skirting. Due to its much brighter and more opulent appearance. This would have been the main entrance door in the past. Before I enclosed it with the lean-to greenhouse and fitted tall, glazed, double, entrance doors. The exterior, sliding door to the greenhouse is anything but practical as an entrance. Thee is no parking except in the narrow drive. With the rear door, close to enlarged parking space, far more useful.

 I used  a combination of profiles around the rear, entrance hall doors. The glazed, lounge door had the 11cm architrave. To visually announce its status to privileged visitors. While the lowly bathroom had only the 9cm architrave. To match its more domestic place in the social hierarchy. 

 Examining the interior woodwork at the farm museum was useful as a visual guide. Windows and even the walls around the edges of the ceilings [cornices] were decorated with architrave mouldings. Though this was in the present dining room of the old farmhouse. 

 There is no connecting door to the original, farm kitchen. So it may well have been an important office in the past. With windows on both [opposing] exterior walls to keep an eye on things. It having its own [modest] entrance doors via a narrow hall. Accessible from both the inside and outside of the enclosed yard. 

 17.00 Back from the shops. Bought skirting boards and groceries. Netto tried to rob me again. It's the same every time I shop there these days. Regardless of branch. Prices much higher on the checkout compare with the displayed prices on the shelves. I can't find stuff they stock anywhere else. Or I'd avoid these crooks. 

 They are obviously taking advantage of the total lack of consumer protection in Denmark. They'd face huge fines in Gravely Blighted. Even 30 years ago there were retail chains being fined huge sums for this serial, criminal behaviour. 

 19.40 Dinner over. It was pasta, with scrambled eggs, fried diced chicken and mushrooms. I should have added tinned tomatoes to the pasta but foolishly thought it too much. I was wrong. The pasta was okay but needed something more. I used the large frying pan. So I could cook the scrambled eggs beside the mushrooms and chicken. Not on top. To avoid producing the usual ugly omelette.

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