Underfloor heating actuators also known as electrothermic heads are used to control your underfloor heating system. Continue reading
Underfloor heating actuators
Types of pipe used for underfloor heating.
Strange that when years ago we decided to install underfloor heating years ago we made the decision to only install the very best products and that when it came to underfloor heating pipe that it had to be polyethylene pipe.
I know this is a really boring subject and most people don’t give a ‘monkeys ass’ when it comes down to that white bendy stuff with the hole running down the middle but then why bother having pipe made from different materials in the first place?
The answer is simple polybutelene pipe is cheaper to manufacturer than polyethylene the bottom line is you’ve guessed it it is nowhere near as good. Polybutelene pipe is the stuff they use for outside water mains not a problem when after a few years it start to get porous outside but is it the ideal choice for installing in your home?
The thing with polyethylene pipe is that in the manufacturing process the plastic molecules are cross linked and interwoven with one another thereby this makes the pipe very stable enabling it to withstands lower and higher pressures and withstand lower and higher temperatures.
Cross-linking in polyethylene pipe also provides stability in chemical corrosion guess what there are chemicals even in your drinking water and also this stability provides longevity over polybutelene pipe regardless what the guarantee says.
Finally and maybe most surprising but did you know that in the U.S and Canada they don’t allow polybutelene pipe – I wonder why?
Fracking is not the future!
Now that we have just about sucked up all the oil reserves in less than a hundred years our esteemed energy gangsters are now turning their attention to fracking and making sure they have all the ‘movers and shakers’ who allow for such decisions to allow it to happen.
It’s strange that while I write this the term fracking doesn’t appear in the spell check it is that new, but it already seems so widespread throughout the world yet i don’t believe that we are not yet up to speed on the utter devastation this could cause for future generations.
We live in a world teetering on the edge, freak weather, flooding, polar icecaps melting at a alarming rate and intensive farming attempting to cope with population explosion yet it seems we are determined to compound all this with playing Russian roulette with our last fundamental resource – OUR water supply.
Some form of Renewable energy has to be the future if we are to survive and we cannot keep passing on the problem to future generations. We have to act immediately and massive investment needs to resourced to develop new forms of energy, our existence should not be placed in the hands of individuals whose only interest is short term profit enable them to live a life of opulence.
As oil disappears in a hundred years we cannot afford the same to happen to our water whereby we will be left with having to de-salinate the oceans just to survive. Imagine that all brought about by greed, maybe by then we may have mastered space travel allowing the rich and connected to go off to colonise and exploit another world whilst leaving the rest of us to combat the hell they left behind?
Is there a future for renewable energy?
The future for certain renewable technologies in the UK appears to be on the wain, if the planet is to survive – if its not already too late then something more drastic needs to done to achieve this.
The only solution is that all homes should be powered by electric only after all when we receive it from the grid it is clean energy, the problem is at the grid the production of electric is a wasteful process but are the energy producers going to do something about this? Probably not because for them to divest huge amounts to develop cleaner more sustainable ways is going to make the shareholders unhappy and quite simply they put profit before anything else.
After all what would be there advantage to spend there huge profits so we can have a cheaper cleaner form of energy, in this day and age no new home should have access to gas to heat, cook and provide hot water in there home. It is dangerous, highly polluting and poisonous and about as innovative as a stone age fire. Oh ,and the real cruncher is that its going to run out very soon – unless the fracking cowboys have there way and really fuck up OUR Planet.
The bottom line is electric needs to be the same cost as what we are currently paying for gas, then our homes can go all electric as it is non-polluting, clean, and more energy efficient. When we have this our mentality will shift to producing more energy efficient products, then products such as heat pumps with the right investment would make leaps and bounds in low cost energy production.
Somehow though I get the feeling that is the last thing our energy gangsters want, you only have to look back in history and look at the treatment meted out to innovative pioneers and the treatment they received some strangely just disappeared. Funny that isn’t it!
How does a heat pump work?
The Heat pump principle.
The refrigerant in the heat pump evaporates (Boyles Law) at low temeratures, the source energy whether air or water routes through the evaporator (heat exchanger) where the refrigerant circulates. The regrigerant extracts the energy and the refrigerant changes from a liquid into a gas, a scroll compressor draws the regrigerant in and compresses it.
The increase in pressure raises the temperature. The compressor is is of a suction gas cooled designed so the energy/heat of the electric motor is not lost but reaches the downstream condenser together with the compressed regrigerant.
The refrigerant releases it’s absorbed energy to the circulating system via the condenser to the circulating system to the hot water and heating circuit, The expansion valve deduces the pressure of the refrigerant for the process to start all over again. To learn more and see a diagram please click on this link subheat.co.uk andit will take you to the web page.
Aside
Unemployed people, desperate for new jobs in a tough market are paying thousands for courses in plumbing – only to find they can’t find work and nursing a loan they find difficult to pay.
It is sad but true, I have just read this interesting article in the Guardian by Jamie Elliott about people desperate for work who are being cajoled into taking up ‘fast track’ plumbing courses. The link to the article is http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2010/may/15/fast-track-plumbing-courses
The bottom line is there is no work for the plumbers we have, so the only people who are making money are the organisations running the training courses.
Eco-house for Subheat
Subheat are looking for a small building plot to build a low carbon timber framed sustainable house which will be built to a ‘tight’ budget. It is our intention to demonstrate a cost conscious ‘low carbon’ dwelling can be affordable to first time buyers using the best energy solutions including a heat pump and heat recovery ventilation. All we need is that small plot of land in North Yorkshire.
New website
Hi,
I am just starting to get to grips with blogging, hopefully I can add a lot of useful content regarding energy efficiency for low carbon buildings and link it through subheat
Welcome to the Subheat Blog 