Actually, they were totally wrong. Those who are sad enough to remember that I shared dumping gas and getting a Fischer water heater last year, will remember that iI was widely criticised for being ripped off and not going the whole hog with gas, including replacing my broken gas water heater with an even bigger one and storing gallons of hot water in a hot water tank, plus then ripping out my electric heating and going full on with gas central heating, because the future is gas. Rubbish "advice" that I ignored. Well a few days ago (I can't remember exactly when) I switched off the Fisher water heater for the purposes of experimentation - and then forgot about it. Just as I finished washing this morning, the not water went cold. And then I remembered that I had turned off the water heater. Here, although we get regular power cuts, I've never had one go for over 24 hours before. After washing, I went and turned the water heater back on. I have been taking some electricity meter readings for my supplier over the previous days. I can say with a high degeree of accuracy, that the Fischer unit used 7 units of electricity to go from fully discharged to fully charged (that must of taken less than3 hours). I've got some money coming my way and when I get it, I will replace my night storage heaters with Fischer room heaters and dump rip-off economy 7. So all of you gas heads were wrong. The Fischer unit is not cheap but fecking brill! Very much like Ducati, that are not the cheapest but the best. Something that I would of thought would be appreciated here. Sadly, the gas heads don't get it....
You go gas purely for cost. 4p/kWh as opposed to 11p/kWh (prices just approximated (guessed)). However if you talk in terms of carbon emissions, then gas historically has had a lower emission value. But with the grid getting greener and more efficient this too is changing rapidly and now theyre pretty much at parity. But I wonder why store so much hot water? You just lose out to storage losses. Instantaneous hot water generation would be preferrable unless you live in a swimming pool and have loads of showers. Aircon is in the right industry as heat pumps are the future. If I used a lot of DHW, I'd use a heat pump as my energy input. Some of the CO2 ASHP's are very efficient with a sCOP of 4 and higher. Gas' days are numbered and you've probably done the right thing. Check your lagging, improve your water conditioning and you calorifier will thank you. Good controls too will save you money. Ducati are not the best. WSB and MotoGP results suggest otherwise. Ducati have won fuck all for years but their marketing boys are pretty good. My mates 10yr old R1 would still spank a great many of us mortals on our newer ducks. Obviously the track riders see the benefit, but us? Nope.
I didn't store hot water before and I do not store any now - nor, do I want to, or need to. That was the "advice" that I got here. I did look at heat pumps but didn't want the disruption of fitting them. Fischer came in did the job and fecked off. No sucking in air through the teeth and telling you that it is not a straight-forward job and offering to fiddle the VAT if you don't want a receipt. I just went with Fischer because they could do the job quickly and simply - in 2 hours. Yes, I do use a bit of electricity now that may. or may not be "green", but the long-term plan is to go with Fisher Heating and they do a battery that stores solar energy. So, I will get solar panels on the roof that will either feed the Fisher room heaters, or a battery that can drive the heaters later. For me and my house, this is a better solution than a heat pump.
The Fischer stuff is good but keep on top of the water conditioning to keep it in tip top condition internally. So as to avoid any 'kettling' of the insides. It is essentially just a box with a cylinder inside with some immersion heaters in it. If you havent soft water, consider a softner to protect your investment. No I dont sell them. Fitting PV to your roof is also a good choice as you can use this leccy to power your electric boiler. Dont settle for panels less than 22% efficiency.
Worked in a couple of houses laying floors, where they had installed ground source heat pumps and PV panels in the roof. But the thing that got me was, the electric was stored in a Tesla battery kept in the outhouse. The cost of the battery alone was £10,000 I have no idea what the total cost of the install was though, but judging things by the cost of the battery, how many years of free heat and electricity would it take to recover the total cost.
I've no idea how much the Fischer battery costs. When I have some money, I will enquire and see if it is feasible. Of course, once I had the battery then it would be interesting if I could charge it with wind power as well as solar. We shall see.... I am not expecting bargain of the century for any of this. The Fischer stuff has quite high capital cost with very low (or zero) maintenance costs. I accept that it may be more expensive than gas but I don't mind as I no long have to put up with "maintenance" people coming in to "maintain" a gas boiler, as in charging a fortune to hoover it out while sucking in ait through their teeth and telling me that the can't get the spares y'know and offering to take off "yer VAT" if I pay cash. Why is it that it is never the government's money, but always "yer VAT" as though it belongs to me to do what I want with it? Round her, it is getting pretty desperate as the gas people will not be able to spend Sumer in the Costas paying cash for everything. They seem a sadder bunch now but when I do my daily walk, I see their are still managing to use their old vans whist keeping the new, shiny Mercs and BMWs out of sight.
I see the Danish govt. is working on a scheme that will enable them to give renewable, clean, free energy to all their people. That's the future.
The Danes are pretty good at district energy networks and heat pump arrays too. Their Standards for DEN's have become the defacto standard over here. Theyre a bright bunch the Danes.
If the payback is >15yrs, it is not considered worthwhile. You want to be consuming everything you generate and not exporting. Storing it is fine as long as you use it. Its a simple calc. For any one wishing to assess PV generation, this free website tool is useful. PV*SOL online - a free tool for solar power (PV) systems. You can plug in your location, select panels and inverters and it'll chuck out an kWh.yr estimate of your generation. Then work out what your p/kWh is and Bobs your Auntie (in a simplistic calc way). Sunpower Max 3 400Wp panels are good spec. No, Im not a PV guy.
It is not a straight-forward calculation for me, as far as I'm concerned - but I will have to study it when I know what the costs are. My main goal is to dump so-called economy 7 "cheap rate" electricity. As I am home all day and I end up paying way way over the odds for standard power because of cheap rate (that's a laugh!) so I am going to dump that and buy the Fischer room heaters as, like my hot water heater, they use tiny amounts of electricity. That's a given. And all through the summer when the heating is off, I still pay a high tariff for my normal rate leccy. I will then have to decide (when I know the costs ) whether to get solar panels and the battery. So I can get from Fischer a guide to how much electricity I will consume with the heaters and work out if solar and a battery will pay. I am doubtful that it will be financially worth it but I may still go that way in order to be "green".
