• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

It's barely freezing! How bad can that be?

kirkpoore1

kirkpoore1

Old Oak
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A few pictures from a land where it can get cold, but not cold enough....

ice2.jpg


ice1.jpg


ice3.jpg


And I know some of you like your Weber grills:
weber.jpg


As ice storms go, this wasn't too bad. The streets have been mostly ice free, even without salt. I had to chip a good eighth of an inch off my windshield when I left work yesterday. The ice on the branches got as thick as 3/16" (4-5 mm?), mostly on the top. The pictures would have been much better if the sun had come out, but the ice would have melted faster too. Right now it's 33 F, and it's melting slowly.

Kirk
 
And I just got a 3 day window above 4 degrees for bricklaying - in Devon!
 
The temp's been 1-4 F above freezing all day, which has been enough to make all the ice melt. Now it's just cold and muddy.:)


Kirk
 
Sitting here in my study at 24c with just a pair of shorts on, it's hard to imagine that type of cold.

Even in the middle of winter we rarely go below 5c, but it is a very dry cold.
 
It was -1C last week when I set off in the car but -5C when I got to another village a couple of miles away.
We are on top of a hill (edge of the South Downs) but the other village is at river level and probably in a frost pocket? I was quite surprised at the difference.
Lowest I've recorded here, a few years ago was -11C. It lifted all my paving slabs but they all went back down ok when it thawed [emoji4]

A few years back I spent a couple of weeks in California in late February - the locals thought it very cold but we thought the opposite. At weekends when the restaurants were very busy we got tables outside and were served straight away.

Rod
 
One of my current projects is a weather compensating heating controller. Having fixed a few issues with my MK1 prototype hardware and software, I finally switched on MK11 this morning but the blooming weather is so mild here (14-15C) the controller (quite correctly) is backing the system to nearly off and so I can't characterise how well it is working.!
:evil:
Roll on some colder weather for a few days.....


Bob
 
9fingers":dlqwzd2c said:
One of my current projects is a weather compensating heating controller. .....
Bob
Click to expand...

Yes!! I designed the outline spec and software for one back in the early Z80 days. Worked quite well.
 
9fingers":wr1lppnn said:
One of my current projects is a weather compensating heating controller. Having fixed a few issues with my MK1 prototype hardware and software, I finally switched on MK11 this morning but the blooming weather is so mild here (14-15C) the controller (quite correctly) is backing the system to nearly off and so I can't characterise how well it is working.!
:evil:
Roll on some colder weather for a few days.....


Bob
Click to expand...

Bob, pardon my questioning of your technical solution, but isn't that called a "thermostat"?

:)

Kirk
 
kirkpoore1":o912m91r said:
9fingers":o912m91r said:
One of my current projects is a weather compensating heating controller. Having fixed a few issues with my MK1 prototype hardware and software, I finally switched on MK11 this morning but the blooming weather is so mild here (14-15C) the controller (quite correctly) is backing the system to nearly off and so I can't characterise how well it is working.!
:evil:
Roll on some colder weather for a few days.....


Bob
Click to expand...

Bob, pardon my questioning of your technical solution, but isn't that called a "thermostat"?

:)

Kirk
Click to expand...

No, the controller modulates the output power of the boiler. To maximise efficiency of the condenser, the water temperature needs to be as low as possible consistent with the output power being high enough to satisfy the demand of the radiators, each one of which is thermostatically controlled.
The controller is monitoring external conditions to predict the heat losses of the building and hence the necessary boiler power.
Eventually I shall also be monitoring flue temperature as an input to the process to try and maximise condensation. Possibly over the top but what the hell.....

Bob
 
An interesting approach, Bob.

When I did mine, the only control I had was on/off and so the model learnt over time that if the outside temperature was x degrees and I wanted the inside to be y degrees at such and such a time then it would turn on the boiler 'just in time'.
 
RogerS":uaeogtv2 said:
An interesting approach, Bob.

When I did mine, the only control I had was on/off and so the model learnt over time that if the outside temperature was x degrees and I wanted the inside to be y degrees at such and such a time then it would turn on the boiler 'just in time'.
Click to expand...

My previous boiler was a simple on/off type and I always intended to make some sort of predictive controller for it but never got round to it once I thought about what we really needed from it.

We made a good saving by realising that when we came in from work, the house only needed to be slightly warmer than we were for us to feel reasonably comfortable and there was no need to fire up the system much before we got in to achieve that. Also with no thermostatic rad valves, simply opening the living room door a bit before going to bed, warmed upstairs enough and we never used the upstairs radiators.

Bob
 
9fingers":2vx3bpa6 said:
The air temperature is the dominating factor affecting heat loss and is measured where the sun cannot get to.
Bob
Click to expand...

Our 200 yr old house is cold in the summer ! .. which is good in the summer :-)

My workshop , with loads of south facing windows, is toasty in the coldest days of winter, if it's sunny !

Iv'e considered cladding the south wall (house) with twin/tripple wall poly carb with a few inches air gap, so it can catch the sun in the winter. Hole in house top and bottom .. hole in poly top and bottom .. an a simple bi/strip green house opener for the summer heat, to vent outside .

at least for us, the sun makes a huge difference , regardless of outside air temp.
 
9fingers":2atjh6z7 said:
Andy,
On reflection I'm not sure what you were getting at and consequently if I answered your point?

Bob
Click to expand...
Bob, thank you but as usual I am not sure if I put my point across correctly. Using my house as an example I do not put the heating on ie light the fire, until I get a feel for how much sunshine there will be. Even when there is frost on the ground all day and the external temp is hovering around freezing if the sun is out then most of the house will be acceptably warm until dusk. Solar gain.
But perhaps you do not get as much benefit from winter daytime sunshine.
 
Our house rarely benefits from solar gain in the heating season.
The density of housing means that our chalet bungalow is overshadowed by a full height house just 3m to the south of our dining room window. Our main living room is west facing so any afternoon sun is too low by the time it is coming from the west. If we do get sun, one of the best heating strategies is to run the aircon in reverse from the free solar electricity* which warms the lounge.
*The panels are on the workshop roof at the bottom of the garden and have a much greater view of the sun all year round.

Bob
 
Ah. I didn't think about the issue of radiators and boilers and the lag time associated wirh them. I've only lived in houses with forced air natural gas furnaces. (In the current house I also have a wood burning stove to supplement the furnace.)

Kirk
 
Stranger here...not much forum time for me lately...sitting here in SUNNY SoCal, it is 65 at the mo' not leaving this for that,Kirk...I live in Michigan, as you may know...I do hope you will be safe, that stuff is nasty...bill....... :D
 
9fingers":2fb08yjw said:
Our house rarely benefits from solar gain in the heating season.
The density of housing means that our chalet bungalow is overshadowed by a full height house just 3m to the south of our dining room window. Our main living room is west facing so any afternoon sun is too low by the time it is coming from the west. If we do get sun, one of the best heating strategies is to run the aircon in reverse from the free solar electricity* which warms the lounge.
*The panels are on the workshop roof at the bottom of the garden and have a much greater view of the sun all year round.

Bob
Click to expand...

Ah, I see. I do realise how lucky we are to have not only a south facing aspect but also no buildings or tall trees to shield the low winter sun.
 
The benefits of solar gain.
I noted down some readings yesterday. Frost stayed on grass, where the sun didn't shine, all day so presume external temp around freezing.

Placed last log in stove at around 9.30pm
7am stove warm to touch but fire gone out. Temp in room 20°C
9am Stove cold. Temp in room 18.4°C
Opened shutters (external) 9.30
11am Temp in room 18.6°C warm enough for me when running around doing chores etc.
Midday 19.5°C
2pm 21.5°C
3pm 22°C which was when I lit the fire as I had to go out for a couple of hours and if I hadn't the room would have been cold when I got back.

Today very much the same so far.
 
I have no measurements to back it up but the frost stayed on non sunlit parts of the grass all day and there was no feeling of solar gain through the windows however the solar water heating was running well yesterday and the boiler only had to make about a 10 minute contribution to top up the tank at 5pm.

The 30 vacuum collector tubes are at the highest position possible on our roof and are not over-shadowed to the south by the house next door at all.
A nice self satisfied feeling of "something for nothing" here - well ignoring the capital cost which in turn is offset by the English RHI payments (not as silly a scheme as the one that brought down the NI government last week) but pays about £60 per qtr. for 7 years.

So far the weather is very similar today - ground frozen but sunny and air temp about 3.5C

Bob
 
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