Stateing the bleeding obvious

[Naughty Cal]

27 minutes ago, Athy said:

Yep.

On a more serious nots, I'd guess that your new house's ability to retain heat means that it stays lovely and warm in winter.

It is brilliant in the winter. On sunny winter days the heating might not even come on. The heating bills are tiny.

 

We pay the price for that come this time of year though for the odd week when it is hot.

 

The garden gets a lot of use when it is hot. It is on the east side of the house so by 2pm at this time of year the patio is in shade and starting to cool down to a sensible temperature.

 

BBQ again tonight fo dinner.

[IanD]

Was reading through this thread and speculating whether an aircon system capable of heating and cooling might make sense for an electric boat, and the numbers actually add up...

 

Compared to using a diesel/HVO-powered heater like an Eberspacher (yes I know, I don't want a solid-fuel stove) the running costs are similar or a bit lower, even assuming that all the power comes from running the onboard generator (10kVA?) to charge the batteries (35kWh?). Taking a typical CoP of 3.4, one I've looked at with multiple internal units consumes 250W-1700W of AC power to provide 1.3kW-5.7kW of cooling/heating, which is similar to an Eberspacher (actually, a bit bigger range). Taking a generator efficiency when running of 25%, this means that 85% of the fuel energy ends up as heating/cooling, which is probably a bit higher than an Eberspacher (80%?), or about the same allowing for losses in the AC inverter.

 

Running at 4kW it would consume about 1.2kW, so running the genny for 1 hour would provide 8 hours of heating/cooling via the battery bank, but wouldn't need doing all the time given the battery capacity and power used for propulsion. However any spare solar power (2kW peak? 9kWh/day in summer?) could also be used for heating/cooling, which is not the case for a diesel powered heater. And in future if/when charging points appear on the canals, I wouldn't need to burn diesel for heating any more -- and would get aircon for free in hot weather.

 

The only problem is finding suitable units; you can get ones designed so that one external box will drive multiple internal cooling/heating heads (bedroom, saloon, kitchen/diner...) but they're a bit big, both the internal ones and the external box which is going to be difficult to find somewhere to fit on a narrowboat... 😞

 

So it looks like it could all work, end up cheaper to run (and greener in future) than a diesel heater, and provide cooling for hot weather. Wouldn't make sense for a conventional diesel boat, but does for an electric one.

 

Before anyone goes "oh no, more modern technology, what's wrong with a good old stove" -- firstly I don't want one, and I'm thinking ahead on how to heat/cool and propel the boat in the future, and heating is another problem that has to be solved just like powering the boat with electric. Don't forget that similar heat-pump based technology is also the green solution proposed for houses, all this is doing is applying the same thinking to a boat -- and getting aircon for free, which would be nice given hotter/wetter summers in the future 😉

 

 

 

 

[blackrose]

Gad it's hot!

[IanD]

After some more digging, unsurprisingly there are marine A/C systems which can heat and cool, fit in a small space (using ducted air), and have better CoP than the air-cooled ones because they use sea/canal water for cooling. Frigomar SCU16VFD can provide maximum of 4.7kW heating or cooling (can throttle down to 20% of this) from 1050W AC, similar heat range to the newest Eberspacher. A CoP of 4.5 means it will use less fuel than a diesel heater even if all power comes from a generator. Which is a good thing given the cost, a complete system including all the installation bits is more than £4k so definitely a luxury solution. OTOH that's still only a couple of percent of the boat cost...

[tree monkey]

2 hours ago, blackrose said:

Gad it's hot!

Is it? Hadn't noticed tbh

[Naughty Cal]

The heavens have opened here in Worksop. Getting a nice breeze as well. 

 

Not sure how long it will last though. 

 

At least I don't have to water the garden tonight.

[Jen-in-Wellies]

The 4G intertubes dongle thing has not been a happy gadget these past few days, slowing down the connection speed and occasionally stopping completely. It was very warm to the touch and clearly the heat in the boat was not doing the little electronic gubbins inside a lot of good. I have a bad history with these things, once destroying a previous dongle by leaving it in a south facing window on the hottest day of that year, which wasn't as hot as it is now.

Fortunately, I had a small spare 12V fan, purchased by mistake for another project. Also fortunately,  the ancient miniITX PC I use on the boat has a 12V supply easily accessible. A few minutes work with connectors, soldering iron, solder, heat shrink tubing, wire and a couple of cable ties and the dongle now has fan cooling! Seems to be working too.

 

Jen

Edited July 20, 2021 by Jen-in-Wellies

[Athy]

18 minutes ago, Naughty Cal said:

The heavens have opened here in Worksop. Getting a nice breeze as well. 

 

Not sure how long it will last though. 

 

At least I don't have to water the garden tonight.

It reached us about the same time. Similar thoughts regarding watering.

I am pleased that we chose yesterday evening for our barbecue in the river garden. B.B.C. reckons thundery showers until dusk (9 p.m. or do).

[Naughty Cal]

3 minutes ago, Athy said:

It reached us about the same time. Similar thoughts regarding watering.

I am pleased that we chose yesterday evening for our barbecue in the river garden. B.B.C. reckons thundery showers until dusk (9 p.m. or do).

Hmm. I suspect our planned bbq for tonight is going to become a mixed grill 🤣🤣🤣

 

Although it has stopped now and the patio is drying up a bit.

[Guest]

1 hour ago, Naughty Cal said:

Hmm. I suspect our planned bbq for tonight is going to become a mixed grill 🤣🤣🤣

 

Although it has stopped now and the patio is drying up a bit.

 

Just lighting up here in sunny Northumberland, been a decent 21 degrees all day.

[matty40s]

1 hour ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

The 4G intertubes dongle thing has not been a happy gadget these past few days, slowing down the connection speed and occasionally stopping completely. It was very warm to the touch and clearly the heat in the boat was not doing the little electronic gubbins inside a lot of good. I have a bad history with these things, once destroying a previous dongle by leaving it in a south facing window on the hottest day of that year, which wasn't as hot as it is now.

Fortunately, I had a small spare 12V fan, purchased by mistake for another project. Also fortunately,  the ancient miniITX PC I use on the boat has a 12V supply easily accessible. A few minutes work with connectors, soldering iron, solder, heat shrink tubing, wire and a couple of cable ties and the dongle now has fan cooling! Seems to be working too.

 

Jen

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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57901108