Out of work electricians ?

[JohnW2]

The main 7 was for domestic hot water, not central heating, it had a pilot flame to turn it on, and the sensor in the flame generated to only electric power used. I think it was around 18 kW worked shower OK, but took ages to fill the bath.

Ah, I would not call that 'a boiler' - do I take it that you are talking about an 'instant water heater' (which my parents and grandparents would probably have called "a geyser"!)?

My (true) boiler also still has "a pilot flame" but that doesn't alter the fact that it needs electricity to work the gas valve. Both the 'enabling' and the local thermostatic control are 'electrical'. As with your Main 7, the thermocouple in the flame generates (a tiny amount of) electricity which opens the 'flame failure solenoid' in the valve, but that's a totally different matter, and requires no electricity supply. (it's always amazed me that a little thermocouple can generate enough electricity to do that!)

For me a petrol/TVO generator would be great, the 28 sec gas oil is nearly TVO so engine should run on that for months with a 600 gallon tank, but it is well down on the priority list.

Although I've had my (petrol) genny for about 20 years, it has only really been used 'in anger' a very small handful of times (far more often 'tested' than 'used in anger'). Although we have a lot of 'power cuts', they rare last for more than a small number of minutes (and, most often, only seconds).

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

Ah, I would not call that 'a boiler'

OK not really a boiler, however neither is the central heating unit, we have a true boiler at work, this has a true boiler it actually boils the water, and it has no pilot flame, it is lit with an oily rag, then wood, the old railings from around my balcony at the moment, and then steam coal, which it seems is going to be a problem as last UK source is due to close. The one shown uses superheated steam, it is on hire at moment.

But the two units one for central heating and one for domestic hot water were mounted next to each other in the garage, and the DHW one supplied all taps in the house, "a geyser" would normally supply just one tap.

The train does have central heating and it uses steam, total loss system, this was halloween 2019, in the summer coaches don't need heating, so yes it is a true central heating boiler, and the only electrics are also powered by steam with a steam turbine but only for the engines lights, power is not taken to carriages, for Christmas we use lead acid AGM batteries for decorations.

So only true boiler I work on has no electrical control. But I think we all call water heaters boilers, even if not true boilers.

 

[winston1]

Ah, I would not call that 'a boiler' - do I take it that you are talking about an 'instant water heater' (which my parents and grandparents would probably have called "a geyser"!)?

My grandparents had a small instant gas water in the kitchen, always called it an "Ascot" which I believed was the manufacturer's name. They also said that bigger "Ascots" were called geysers and that they were dangerous. Then a few years later when house hunting for my first house I viewed a non-renovated empty 1936 house. In the bathroom above the bath was what looked like a giant "Ascot" with Geyser written on it. Never saw another.

 

[JohnW2]

My grandparents had a small instant gas water in the kitchen, always called it an "Ascot" which I believed was the manufacturer's name.

Yep, I was brought up with an 'Ascot', in the kitchen, for the first ~6 years of my life (in the 50s). I presume that there must have been some sort of hot water in the bathroom, but I can't remember where that came from - perhaps another Ascot. If I recall correctly, the only 'space heating' was a coal fire in the living room, plus a "1/2 Bar electric fire" and/or some sort of paraffin heater when needed!

 

[bernardgreen]

Is that not a problem with all boilers? My ancient boiler (not to mention pumps/valves etc.) certainly needs electricity to work,

My shower works without electricity provided the water in the cylinder has been heated before the power cut.

 

[ericmark]

Aunt and Uncle lived in council house and they has Ascot in kitchen, and an immersion heater for bath the latter only turned on before having a bath. This was in the days of town gas, where we lived gas came a lot latter, and seem to remember the change over to North Sea gas had already happened, and the single point water heater had gone by then, the early houses I remember the gas points in the wall for the lights, although the lights had gone, and multi-gas heaters around the house not a central unit feeding all.

Schools had central heating with what is seemed old Lancaster boilers, although I don't think they were ever allowed to boil, think coal fired, the first house I saw with central heating had the water heater in cellar hopper fed with coke.

Because I lived in a Steel town, coke was cheap, it was the small stuff too small to use in the blast furnace, gas was in comparison too expensive, even when also a by product of the same coke ovens, so it was not until the steel works closed that anyone used gas other than for cooking, and the early central heating was an as well as coal fires not instead. There was no room thermostat just a timer, and it came on twice a day to remove the chill from the rooms, pre-heating them before using the gas poker to light the fire.

 

[JohnW2]

My shower works without electricity provided the water in the cylinder has been heated before the power cut.

Same here. However, hot water was not the reason why I got the genny (to allow boiler to be used for CH) - we can live without showers and baths for the duration of any credible power cut, and our gas (LPG) Aga uses no electricity at all, so can always be used to boil kettles/pans of water.

In fact, if there were a protracted power cut (precluding baths/showers) during cold weather, we would probably largely 'live in the kitchen', since the Aga keeps it warm (no other heating in the room)!

Kind Regards, John

 

[JohnW2]

... I remember the gas points in the wall for the lights, although the lights had gone,

Such things were still present in my parents' house (in which I was 'brought up') when my mother moved out of it in 1987.

Kind Regards, John

 

[winston1]

Yep, I was brought up with an 'Ascot', in the kitchen, for the first ~6 years of my life (in the 50s). I presume that there must have been some sort of hot water in the bathroom, but I can't remember where that came from - perhaps another Ascot. If I recall correctly, the only 'space heating' was a coal fire in the living room, plus a "1/2 Bar electric fire" and/or some sort of paraffin heater when needed!

In my grandparents house the bathroom hot water came from an uninsulated galvanised tank that was heated by an “Ideal” coke boiler in the kitchen. This boiler kept the kitchen warm as well. In the summer it was lit on bath night’s only once a week.

 

[ericmark]

I missed the gas lights in the caravan. With our old Sprite caravan the battery was not required, it made life easier not having to press ones foot on the water pump and lights at the flick of a switch, but you could live without electric.

So we had split charging and a 60 Ah battery would easy last the three weeks holiday, and putting the battery in car boot we could do whole of summer holiday with limited battery power.

However with modern caravans that is no longer the case, on average the second battery with split charging will get one amp charge, so even an 8 hour run was only 8 Ah, I have yesterday yet again put my car on charge, it took 12 hours at average of 1 amp to flag as recharged, unless using some method to speed up the charge rate, with for example a DC to DC inverter, the whole idea of split charging with today's caravans does not work.

We call it progress, not so sure.

But if we want to reduce the carbon footprint, then huge hikes in fuel prices is not going to work, as we will find an alternative fuel, likely returning to wood burning, and the resultant deforestation.

Heating wood in a fractional distillation plant and removing the nasties to produce charcoal will produce a reasonably green fuel, but not when the charcoal is made in the traditional way, all that is done is release the nasty gases where there is low population.

Burning wood or coal, both basic same fuel, needs high temperatures to stop particular emissions, and carefully controlled burn rate. So since the amount of energy we need varies, only way is to store energy, so we can burn the wood say in the evening at a set rate, and store the energy by heating water, then release as required, it also means solar, and other forms can all contribute to central store.

Sounds great, but typical cost to install is £20k whole reason for no electric is can't afford it, so not going to install really expensive wood burners.

My friend would say, wood burners = theft, and he was not that wrong, there are some people who do either grow all their wood or buy all their wood, and use efficient burners, but for every one, there a 10 who are going to return us to the days of smog again.

People need to keep warm, and if the fuel price raises they will burn what they can. Be it wood which was left on the woodland floor to encourage wild life, or pallets, and the problem with used wood we don't know what it has been treated with, or even what wood it is. Hope not laburnum, and once leaves have gone can you work out what it is? Or if painted with lead paint?

 

[JohnW2]

... Heating wood in a fractional distillation plant and removing the nasties to produce charcoal will produce a reasonably green fuel, but not when the charcoal is made in the traditional way, all that is done is release the nasty gases where there is low population.

Even if one produces totally pure charcoal (i.e. just carbon) by a process which does not introduce any of the 'nasties' into the environment, charcoal will surely never be a particularly 'green' fuel, will it? After all, it's the CO2 produced, not other 'nasty' gases, that most of the excitement/concern is about.

Ki d Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

Be it a solar panel which stops sun light hitting the grass under it, or burning grown material what is important is the time between growing and burning, and grown and burn in a 20 year period is not considered as producing CO².

It is where the time is 100 years or more between growing and burning when we worry about CO².

All parts of the common laburnum are poisonous – the bark, roots, leaves and especially the seed pods. They contain the alkaloid toxin cytisine. Consumption of this can cause headaches, nausea, vomiting, frothing at the mouth, convulsions and even death through paralysis. OK we all know laburnum is bad, what we don't know about is the rest. We also have the The toxins responsible for the poisonous effects of Rhododendron which are grayanotoxins. These are highly oxygentated diterpenoids that have been presumed to be produced elsewhere in the plant as a natural chemical defence against insects.

However also been known to kill lambs, so there has been a big move to remove them from the Snowdonia national park, and yew tree was grown in church yards again so sheep could not eat it.

So we have people who have not been trained over the years to know what they can and can't burn safely, so they walk through the woodland gathering fire wood, which was left to encourage the insects we need for a healthy environment and they produce fumes or other emissions which can either damage them or others.

And to be frank if I can't afford oil for central heating then I will burn what I can lay my hands on. I have an open grate so if it can burn I can burn it, but I would not have a clue what damage I am doing.

 

[JohnW2]

Be it a solar panel which stops sun light hitting the grass under it, or burning grown material what is important is the time between growing and burning, and grown and burn in a 20 year period is not considered as producing CO². .... It is where the time is 100 years or more between growing and burning when we worry about CO².

Hmmm. Is that not a rather naïve and short-sighted view, particularly in the case of trees?

If one burns a young (<20y) tree, then the resultant amount of CO2 in the atmosphere will be no greater than when the tree was planted, but, in the immediate sense, there will be more CO2 in the atmosphere than would have been the case if the carbon had be allowed to remain stored in the living tree.

Much worse, in the longer term, by burning the young tree one will have removed from the equation a tree which, if left alive, would have grown, removing (and storing) increasing amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere during the ensuing decades, or even centuries.

I agree that burning any (recently alive) tree is not as bad as burning fossil fuels, which have been storing carbon for vast periods of time, but it is still surely not a good thing, in terms of atmospheric CO2 in the short- and medium-term (regardless of the age of the tree), is it?

Kind Regards, John

 

[ericmark]

If one looks at the CO² released by any volcanic eruption then any CO² released by man is rather small, we have gobble warming, but as to if due to man that is another question, clearly we can increase or decrease the amount, however as to if by any significant amount is questionable.

Over time we have seen the earth increase and decrease in temperature, this is natural, and it is not proven that man is responsible for the increase seen at this time.

 

[JohnW2]

If one looks at the CO² released by any volcanic eruption then any CO² released by man is rather small, we have gobble warming, but as to if due to man that is another question, clearly we can increase or decrease the amount, however as to if by any significant amount is questionable. .... Over time we have seen the earth increase and decrease in temperature, this is natural, and it is not proven that man is responsible for the increase seen at this time.

I like the idea of "gobble warming"

You're jumping into a mighty big argument there, and may well attract a fair bit of flak

There are certainly cyclical changes in global temperature with (reflecting similar cyclical changes in CO2) a cycle length of around 100,000 years and with a magnitude of around ±6 °C (i.e. a min-max difference of around 12 °C) (as shown in graph below), and one of the problems we currently have is that the very substantial rise (in global temp) in the last couple of centuries started when we were nearly at the top of the cycle. Had it happened 50,000 years ago, when we were at the bottom of the cycle, there probably would be far less interest/concern about what is happening.

However, I think that there is pretty strong circumstantial evidence that man is probably largely responsible for much of the rise that has been seen in the last 200/whatever years, since I believe that it has been far more rapid a rise than has ever been seen due to 'natural processes' (I think that changes of similar magnitude due to natural causes in the past have taken thousands, or tens of thousands, of years) and, of course, the timings roughly correspond to that of the Industrial Revolution.

Kind Regards, John