"imeasure" Quite interesting

[sleepybubble]

Pengchicken was originally 'outed' at the top of page 5 and I am still waiting for my 5 shillings

Rhea view, you are Pengchicken and I claim my 5 shillings

MT

Your quite right, missed that... have an applaud worth 1 shilling)

[petertc]

It's a shame that they don't give a break down when checking the 'club' off the carbon for the gas and electric.
our current electricity usage is 24 - 26 kwh per week .It would be good to check others gas usage.

we are in a new ish ( 2000) house and it would be good to compare the gas usage to others.

my guess is this week we should have used about 40-45 m^3 of gas for the cooking, DHW and heating.
This is a 4 deb detached house.

I think the competition that this could generate is  useful in helping all of us reduce the overall carbon foot print.

Perhaps they should add water use, car travel, flights etc.

[Rhea View]

MT - have another applaud - only 3 shillings to go now.

[Greenbeast]

JohnS. Most of us with the 'best' results have 'other' for man heating fuel, which I guess is mostly Wood, which tends to be largely unmetered, so that does rather skew the competition against metered gas-users. I'd _like_ to meter my wood use but haven't worked out a scheme that is actually practical. In theory each box could be weighed as it came in the door but that idea doesn't seem to have gained much traction with VTW, who does most of the wood-shifting at the moment.

i suppose the point of imeasure is to record energy use in terms of carbon output, using wood is carbon neutral and not in the same category as using gas/elec

for example, when i use my solar panels during the summer i don't record how much energy we use from them and i don't feel the need to put it on imeasure because that's not what its about, it's about the low gas usage i achieve because the panels are doing their job

[breezy]

I've just put my first readings into iMeasure, and I'm ranking in joint 3rd place with wookey (measured as Kg CO2 per person) but with the 2nd lowest Kg CO2 per household. This isn't entirely honest, as I see nowhere to feed in other fossil fuel consumption. I'm currently heating with coal (ouch), others heat with oil, or even a mix.

I was wondering if it would make sense to "lie" and claim to be using gas, but fabricate the number of gas units to the equivalent of the coal that I consume. What would be a fair number to use? In other words how much would, say, 100Kg of coal be worth in natural gas terms?

Edited to add: I can only see the "Top 5", where can I find the entire league table for the Navitron carbon club?

[breezy]

Partially answering my own question, I found this site:

http://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/coalequivalent.htm

If I've done my sums right, my daily (winter) consumption of coal is 5.7Kg/day to 8Kg/day (latter figure during the recent cold spell), which doesn't sound very much to me. And yet, if I use the "exchange rates" from that table, I'm using the equivalent of 46.4 to 65 KWh per day for space heating, equivalent to 9.5 to 13.4 CuM of natural gas, which seems to be an extraordinarily high figure.

What am I missing?

[StBarnabas]

Electricity can be converted to heat with a 100% efficiency. Depending on whether you have an open fire or a stove your efficiency may be much lower. An open fire may only have a 20% efficiency or even lower. Stoves can be as low as 40% or as high as 90%

[breezy]

Sure, I understand that. I have a small stove (claims to be 6Kw), but ignoring efficiencies (all I'm trying to measure is carbon emissions), is 8Kg/Day of coal really equivalent to 65 KWh or 13.4 m3 of gas?

[daftlad]

An open fire may only have a 20% efficiency or even lower. Stoves can be as low as 40% or as high as 90%

Open fires can even be negative.
To get 90 percent out of a stove it would need to be of the gassification type or erm, you know erm well just look at the bottom of my post.

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ta ta

[breezy]

According to this pdf from Sustainable Energy Ireland...

http://www.sei.ie/Publications/Statistics_Publications/Fuel_Cost_Comparison/Domestic_Fuel_Cost_Comparison_October_2009.pdf

...premium coal has a gross calorific value of 8.267 kWh per Kg (which corroborates the information on the other site that I referenced).

On that basis, the figures of 46.4 to 65 kWh/day seems reasonable after all. If I assume that my stove is 75% efficient, the space heating input to my house is 34.8 kWh to 48.75 kWh per day, equivalent to a constant heat source of 1.45 to 2 kW operating 24/7

I'd still need to input the gross figures to iMeasure, just to keep things honest.

My space heating "demand" therfore is approximately 19 to 26 W/m2, given a floor area of 75 m2

How does that sound?

My average Electricity consumption at 3.42 kWh/day (winter months) is dwarfed by the space heating requirements, so the biggest impact I can make to my figures is to get back to burning wood again....... Need to get the parts to repair my Jotul stove PDQ!!

[StBarnabas]

Looks around the right ball park. Gas densities are around 1kg/m^3 (air is about 1.2kg/m^3  at room temp for example). So ball park within a factor of two 1 cubic metre of gas should be equivalent to 1kg coal

[breezy]

My head is spinning here....

Now, I know that iMeasure isn't perfect, and I don't want to take this too seriously (it's just a bit of fun, though interesting).

I've estimated my space heating requirement to be somewhere in the region of 19 ("normal" winter day) to 26 ("very cold" winter day) W/m2
Let's say 22 W/m2 for an average winter day, with a heating season of 90 days and a heated area of 75 m2
22(W) x 75(m2) x 24(hours) x 90(days) = 3,564,000 Watt hours or 3,564 kWh
That equates to an annual requirement of 47.5 kWh per m2  - about 3 times that of a Passivhaus per m2 - or equivalent to a Passivhaus of 225 m2

If I were in a position to heat with natural gas, that would result in 734 kg of CO2 (3,564 x .206), giving an average of 14 kg a week
Heating with coal (assuming 75% efficiency in stove) 3,564 kWh consumes 560 kg coal, with CO2 of 1641 kg, average of 31.5 kg a week

My electricity consumption in winter is a modest 3.4 kWh per day (so, let's say 3 kWh average throughout the year), 12 kg per week.

If I had gas, my total building footprint is 26 kg /week averaged over the year

With coal, it's 43.5 kg week 

43.5 kg puts me right down towards the bottom of the pile of the Navitron carbon club, despite heating a very small and quite well insulated house

Even if I heated with gas (which is not an option) I'd be ranking 9 out of 25 at 26 kg

If I had a suitable supply of renewable firewood (and a suitable stove) I'd be where I am now, joint 3rd place with wookey.

At 3 kWh/day consumption, that doesn't make sense to me

Just out of interest, Rhea View, sleepybubble, wookey and alex2504 what are your space heating arrangements?

I'm so depressed, I think I'll have myself a large Jameson 

[petertc]

the house we have is about 8.5m x 7 m and 2 story in the cold weather we used 96kwh day for heating hot water and cooking
and last week about 70 kwh per day ,

not sure if this is good bad or indifferent,
I was looking at some web sites for the sizing of radiators and the larger rooms seem to have radiators that are smaller than they should be.
see attached pdf file

[wookey]

Your numbers look about right to me - which part of it seems wrong to you? Don't foget that coal is twice as bad as gas in CO2 terms for the same energy output. Combine that with coal burners normally being much less efficient than gas ones and your numbers seem OK (I've only had a quick peruse - trying to go home!)

[Ivan]

Hmm. I started entering data just now.

Even though it's the 31st January, I can only enter data for 'week ending 24th January' although I do have the option to state that the reading is up to 4day late. I wonder when the website gets updated.

Also, I find this 'week ending' stuff somewhat inflexible. Why not simply ask for the date that the reading was taken? That way, it would allow flexibility and compensate for late readings automatically.