Central Heating

Just in time for the cold weather, the central heating system in my cottage has been completed. Its powered by the 14kW air source heat pump you see in the picture. I’m really impressed with how quiet the unit is. The icy air blast it produces is not that bad either. The 14kW is the heat output rating. The electric input is 5kW. I now have hot water again and the luxury of a warm cottage. I also had a new shower fitted which takes advantage of the new high pressure hot water system, and replaces the feeble electric shower I had before. Taking out the electric shower also freed up a heavy duty cable run to the back out the house to reuse to supply the heat pump. There is still more work to do, the heated towel rail didn’t arrive in time to be fitted, that will hopefully go in next week along with pipe insulation for the solar thermal installation. To fit in the new water tank and all the associated stuff a new airing cupboard had to be created by enlarging an existing cupboard in the spare bedroom by breaking through into the bathroom. The new back to this cupboard has yet to be built so more to do there. The new tank came ready plumbed with all the ancillaries for the heat pump already fitted. It doesn’t have an extra coil for the solar thermal, so a separate heat exchanger has been fitted along side the tank.
My planned winter usage is to run the heat pump for central heating from 7am to 5pm. After 5pm I switch to burning wood to keep the cottage warm. This way I make maximum use of the free electricity from the PV panels. The wood is still a cheaper source of heating after dark. Spring I’ll burn less wood and summer I hope to have all my hot water needs of the solar thermal and not need central heating at all. In summer I have plenty of heat available from the conservatory to warm the cottage on cooler days.
I now have a heap of manuals to read through for all this new tech. As is if I don’t have enough to cope with already.

The Peter Davies Rose Bowl

I won the cup! It has been awarded for my work creating a new website for the Wessex Strut. Its nothing special, just WordPress with the default theme and a few minor tweaks. The one it replaced was hand crafted HTML and hosted by the Flyer magazine for free. Now it has its own domain and is hosted using borrowed space belonging to our Co-ordinator. The Co-ordinator’s role is a chairman type role. The replacement means it is now much easier to maintain the site, so I have won a cup rewarding me for effort spent making my job easier. In moving to WordPress and issuing all the strut members user-names and passwords I was hoping to get the members to add content themselves. This hasn’t happened much, which is disappointing. I get to keep the bowl for a year. The committee will award it to some one else next year. I do get to engrave my name on it though below the names of previous winners.

DIY GM and Scientific Self Harming

I have been subscribed to Google group DIYbio which is forum in which people discuss amateur genetic modification experiments. The perception of genetic engineering has been that this has been solely the domain of large evil corporations like Monsanto. The guys posting to DIYbio want to change this and bring the hacker mentality to GM. This is allowed in the US but even in “the land of the free” they have trouble getting companies to sell private individuals the materials they need. Here in the EU (the land of the bureaucrat) you need to be licensed to do such things. There is a guy in Ireland who has succeeded in getting himself licensed though. My experience of coming in to the field from the outside (my degree is electronics) is that the terminology produces a barrier, but that once you know the terms to use then there is a lot of practical information out there about things you can do in your own kitchen. It’s doesn’t look too difficult to smash up cells to extract DNA. Persuading a bacteria like E.Coli to take in DNA is also kitchen doable. The hard part is selecting bits of DNA from smashed cells. Getting manufactured DNA to put into a cell is also hard and expensive, even if you can get a DNA assembly company to supply you.
So here is the thing. Smashing up random bugs and putting random bits of their DNA into other random bugs is something you could you could work out how to do in your own kitchen with a little research. Working out what you have done afterwards is very hard.
And now to the self harming. I found this youtube video on the DIYbio forum. It’s not about GM but about amateur experiments in implanting electronics inside the human body.

Don’t you get the impression this girl is really into the pain? She is called Lepht Anonym and that link takes you to her blog. She swears quite a bit but it all fits the context perfectively well.

And finally you may have noted that the blog posts and tweets have been a bit sparse recently. That is because I am overloaded with projects at home, see last blog post, work (boring), the last minute rush to get my tax return in (even worse), letting my flat, and helping organise a folk festival. I also have a new woman in my life. This is not of itself time consuming, but it is scrambling my brain. And now back to work as I shouldn’t be spending time doing this.

Solar Panels

As part of the renovation of my cottage I am installing solar panels for hot water and to generate electricity. I am also having an air source heat pump installed to provide background heat and top up the hot water.
The order was placed before the announcement of the cut in the feed in tariff. The announcement of the cut resulted in the in the supplier requesting a delay in the installation of everything except the PV to allow them to do as many installations as possible before the 12^th December deadline. This I agreed to. The PV is now up and working. I got the registration completed with just 5 days to spare. The supplier is Ace Energy of Shaftesbury.  Fitting the PV panels showed that the tiles on my roof had become thin and brittle. The guys from Ace were quick to find a solution and stay on plan to finish before the 12th. Their problem solving all along has been very good. The inverter supplied is a SolarMax unit from Sputnik Engineering. It has a PC interface using Ethernet for performance data collection. This uses a propriety protocol, but the software is free from the solarmax website.
The Feed-in was registered with Ecotricity I moved to them on the assumption that they would be keener to accept a FiT registration and this turned out to be the case. They opened their offices on the weekend of the deadline so as to accept the last minute registrations. Fortunately I didn’t need this but it was good to know they were doing this.
After the deadline the guys from Ace where back to fit the panel for hot water. This is not connected up yet, hence the tapes over the tubes in the photo. The scaffolding went just before Christmas. I’m now waiting for the date they will fit the replacement hot water tank and connect up the hot water panel.
The order with Ace does not include radiators for the central heating. Sourcing them is my next task.

Post from my new phone

Christmas means new toys for boys. I have a new HTC Sensation. This is my first post using new toy. I’m using WordPress for Android.

Jane Taylor Video

I love Jane’s music. Her voice is stunning and her song writing is the sort that grabs your attention and draws you in. Her songs will never be in the background. I found this clip on the St George’s Bristol website. It’s quite old I think as it has Bethany Porter on cello and maybe Roger Tarry on guitar. She now has another cellist. Enjoy.

You would think it was impossible to top this, but she has recorded songs even better than this, so go check out her album Compass which is just packed with songs as good as this. It’s one of my all time favourites, and there are something like 600 in my collection.
Jane is playing at St George’s on the 14^th Jan so go see her!

My First Loaf

Wholemeal loaf made by me I received a bread making machine for my birthday. This is my first loaf. I chose a wholemeal recipe out of the bread maker manual, but couldn’t resist trying a modification even on my first attempt, so swapped walnut oil for the vegetable oil in the recipe. It tastes good and is not too heavy. A success! It looks a bit flat as I only made a 500g loaf. Next time I’ll go for a bigger loaf, 750g. The machine copes with loaves up to 1kg. The machine is a Kenwood BM260. So far I’m very pleased with it.

Great NASA video to share

London Bulgarian Choir

I love their music. Here is a free track to promote their new album.

For details of where they are performing see their website

Had to share this..

I want a woman like this!
With thanks to Farmer Glich for finding this.