Still Here
Oops, it's been a while since I last report on progress. I've kept putting off posting until there's something interesting to see but, while I've been steadily doing stuff, I don't seem to have built up much momentum.
More...Oops, it's been a while since I last report on progress. I've kept putting off posting until there's something interesting to see but, while I've been steadily doing stuff, I don't seem to have built up much momentum.
More...Well that was an epic bit of ill-preparation and marginal weather but I did get to see something and take a few piccies.
More...Well, strictly, bolted to concrete but that's resting fairly firmly on Scotland so why waste a good phrase on such pedantry? That's the post-base brackets on which the house will sit which were bolted down by the builder (with some help and a little hinderance from me) yesterday and this morning.
More...So far this year has not gone too well. In my previous post I ended last year with the steel brackets for the house stashed away in my shipping container and reasonable hope that, weather permitting, construction would start early this year.
More...Hmmm, better have an update on how things are going with the house before the date clicks over the next higher digit.
More...Martin Holladay has just posted an article on the Green Building Advisor site: Solar Thermal Is Really, Really Dead.
I mostly agree but think there's a lot more to be said. It's a complicated subject and it's easy to get bogged down in detail so he's done well to simplify things for clarity but maybe he's gone a bit far and there are few other things people can usefully think about.
More...Previously I've said that a newton is about the weight of a smallish apple and a joule is the potential energy of an apple on a table. A tweet by @UnitFact reminded me to check.
A joule (J) is a unit of energy, work, or quantity of heat. 1 J = 1 N m.
— Units (@UnitFact)
October 9, 2014
More...Specifically, do the sort of metal devices that Europeans tend to screw to their walls and run hot water through in order to heat their houses radiate much heat, as opposed to transferring it to the room by convection and conduction? Similarly, what proportion of the heat emitted by underfloor heating is in the form of thermal radiation?
Of course they radiate some heat. However, it's commonly said that they work mostly by convection and conduction. I think that's right and it's quite reasonable to call them convectors for this reason. Unfortunately, some people get a bit carried away with this and say that radiation is completely negligible. I don't think that's quite so right.
More...I see a lot of confusion about infrared when it comes to interactions with buildings, astronomy and so on. Here's a bit of a brain dump to refer to in such cases which I hope will throw some light, of various wavelengths, on the matter.
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