Wookey said:-
I had first bath of the year last w/e too. Lots of lovely hot water (after hard day's garage-insulating in my case). I may tell people off about carbon generation - I thought I was relatively lenient on water use :-)
Well that's just not fair, I haven't had a bath yet this year maybe that's why I'm loosing friends and collecting flies
Anyway, a quick update on "The Orifice Refurb", fitting 8cm of Celotex into the skeiling bit, blocking the airvent and fitting a decent DG window has made a very noticeable difference to the comfort in the room. I spend quite a bit of time in there in front of this blasted pooter running the J&H Builders empire
and it used to feel a little chilly sometimes. OK I know the weather has been quite mild since it was completed but it has made a difference, a bit less heat needed
.
So the next stage is nearly on us namely rip out the kitchen/utility wall, fit UFH to the new kit/diner and external insulation to about25m2 of solid wall. Talking through some of the plans with Mrs Desp, I thought I'd be cheeky and posit the idea of sticking a giant thermal store under the UFH, "as I'm digging the floor up anyway why not go a bit deeper and put a big tank in" I said trying to make light of the 30 tonne mountain of spoil that would come out. "Right.....................so how big is this hole then" she says "Well I guess it would be good to have say 20,000 litres under there" I say quickly "that's a big blooming hole" she said " yes but we could easily fit say 2*3*4m in there without getting too close to the foundation, so that 24m3" I say carefully sidestepping the fact that we also need shedloads of insulation round it all. To cut a long storey short to my utter amazement she agreed in principal to adding a seasonal store to the increasingly long list of craziness we have installed at Cactusville. I dunno why the poor girl puts up with me, I really don't. The new kitchen had better meet with supreme approval or my gonads could have a close encounter with the blender
So trying to put my sensible hat on
I am trying to work through the actual practicalities of doing this, the structural aspect is easy enough, shoring up the foundations is easy stuff in theory if quite hard in practice, building a tanked "basement"to receive it all again no sweat, but the Achilles heel I think is how the heck am I going to get a vast tank in the building?
? Having got the "hole" past SWMBO/PP I just know it's a step too far to demolish the front of the house for access. I guess it is possible to install small tank units and connect it all up, but the thought of loads of inaccessible plumbing under the floor is not particularly agreeable, fabricating something in situ?? not sure really.
I would dearly love to do something while I have the chance, but we are going to start in about 5-6 weeks so I need a plan in place by then. Realistically it doesn't sound feasible to get a load of tankage down there as a retrofit project if I am honest,, but what about some kind of slinky/borehole to dump and recover heat directly from the ground??
Anyone have any thoughts on this?, I will post a scale drawing of the ground floor of cactusville later so you can visualise it a bit better, but I better go lay down in the shed now
Desp
