Showers on 5 core cable?

Xertz

I know this is an electrical forum but we need serious joined up thinking about energy efficiency. It’s not all about deep retrofits. A lot of basic standards just aren’t enforced or seem to be seen as unnecessary.

If we’re going to be serious about energy consumption and it has a big impact on people’s costs of living and quality of life as well as being a more abstract environmental issue, we need to actually enforce standards and get down to the basics of good installation.

We’ve tendency to just let “cowboy” practices become the norm and then go off on these hugely ambitious box ticking legislative efforts. The reality is we’re coming from a *much* poorer general domestic infrastructure standard than most of Northern Europe. That may be in part because we’ve never had to deal with very cold climates, but it’s left us with very inefficient homes and a legacy of sloppy installations.

Some of the measures like lagging pipes and doing installations properly would save us a fortune in kWh and CO2.

I just find we tend to jump into trying to turn draughty 60s ans 70s houses into passive homes as the only things that can be looked at when there’s a plethora of basic mesures that would help enormously and aren’t that expensive.

2011

+1

Installing automated heating controls with multiple zone valves and stats can result in significant savings.

Xertz

There’s also a serious need to both up-skill and regulate plumbers. A lot of these energy losses are coming from lousy design and execution of plumbing installations.

At least the electrical contractors have been moving towards better regulation and there’s much more active development of the regulations both domestically and through CENELEC and IEC standards. I know that’s mostly driven by safety and risk to life concerns ensuring wiring codes are up to scratch, but plumbing and building codes are where we have a gaping hole (often literally) in energy losses.

Anyway, I’m gone off topic but I would just say to the OP : always consider doing the best possible installation and look at sources or heat like head pumps and solar but get the basics right, as otherwise you could well have lovely warm foundations.

2011

Xertz wrote: »

There’s also a serious need to both up-skill and regulate plumbers. A lot of these energy losses are coming from lousy design and execution of plumbing installations.

Especially with respect to heat pumps and any form of wet underfloor heating.
Almost every unsuccessful heat pump installation (there are lots of them) is due to poor installation and / or poor design.

At least the electrical contractors have been moving towards better regulation and there’s much more active development of the regulations both domestically and through CENELEC and IEC standards. I know that’s mostly driven by safety and risk to life concerns ensuring wiring codes are up to scratch, but plumbing and building codes are where we have a gaping hole (often literally) in energy losses.

There is still a long way to go in my opinion. When you look through this forum you see just how bad some RECs are. I know they are in the minority but they are out there.

I don’t believe the real aim of regulation is to improve safety. If it was restricted works would apply to industrial installations too. I believe it is to increase tax revenue. This has been done to death on this forum already.

Xwebstar2

As evidenced by the fact that everyone passes the testing and certification courses

And any electrician has an automatic right to be a REC

Once you pay of course

Xertz

With any regulation it depends on how it’s implemented. With a lot of these areas it seems to be more of a bureaucracy driven, box ticking exercise to make us look sensible in international comparisons etc but, without focus on the practical side or things, that’s all it ends up being.

Implementing world leading building and energy standards would require actually doing everything to high spec, starting at the bottom and working up. It means big investment in building inspection, installation inspection and so on. We’re not coming from a culture where that’s normal and we’ve tended to take our lead and benchmark against the UK which isn’t much different. Lots of ambitious policies and then self certification systems and so on.

Compare it to Scandinavia, Germany etc and we’re basically the Wild West. In terms of building regs though we get away with a lot because of the less harsh climate. If you’re in Finland or Sweden and you get the specs wrong, you’ll have icicles hanging off the door frames and frozen pipes.

Ubbquittious

Effects wrote: »

What kind of fluting around do you want to do with 3 phase?

Whatever comes my way really, one thing I had in mind was to make a machine with a hydraulic ram for crushing pallets. Or if there's anything floating around donedeal/boot sale that's going chaep and might be of use it would be handy to have the red socket on the wall for it. Have a chipper for small twigs that could do with being converted to 3 phase, not sure how much life is left in the petrol engine that's on it

I'd love 3 phase for woodwork machines,a metal lathe and a real CNC machine.
Pallet crushing and wood chipping is just plain silly.

Bruthal

I remember testing a 3 phase motor for someone at home before. Friendly neighbours and 3 extension leads needed.

Idbatterim

Would the money not be better spent on solar water heating etc than three phase ?

ercork

Just a quick word on electric immersion heaters for hot water - if you live in a house/apt without gas or oil it may be your only source of hot water for showers. Many people in this situation will be on dual rate electricity which is half price at night time. If you can do all (or most) of your water heating during the night time you will be getting hot water for 8 or 9 c/unit. This is comparable to using a gas boiler for hot water which might cost between 7 and 12 c/unit depending on the age of your boiler.

2011

ercork wrote: »

Just a quick word on electric immersion heaters for hot water - if you live in a house/apt without gas or oil it may be your only source of hot water for showers. Many people in this situation will be on dual rate electricity which is half price at night time. If you can do all (or most) of your water heating during the night time you will be getting hot water for 8 or 9 c/unit. This is comparable to using a gas boiler for hot water which might cost between 7 and 12 c/unit depending on the age of your boiler.

That still costs more than gas even when you take into account the lower efficiency from a gas boiler.

Go onto bonkers.ie to verify.