Post
by helen&tony » Wed Mar 03, 2010 7:50 am
Hi
Those heaters are ideal for caravanning. You make a large box, insulated with 4 inches of foam insulation, plus a quilted lining, put the heater in with your aquaroll, and close the insulated lid....you can still have running water in one or two degrees of frost, but as to warming a room....3 x 60 watt light bulbs to heat a room???
Solar panels...We hardly have 3 months over here without sunlight with a UV content which will run a solar panel, so for an investment in solar energy, we looked into it. Solar panels of a suitable quality are immensely expensive, and to run a house it would take solar panels costing around £10 - 20, 000 when you factor in the cost of the controllers, and batteries to store the energy produced....now, I don't know how much a month your electricity costs, so I would suggest you think around £60.00 a month or more for a house....divide, say £15,000 by £60, and it would pan out at 20 years to break even....every time I calculate this out for each house I've lived in, factoring in the costs of current electricity bills, the cost of panels, and charging/ monitoring/ storing / distribution systems, it works out around 20 years to break even. This is alright on a new build house, as the house will, hopefully , appreciate in value, but it simply isn't worth it in a house not designed for energy efficiency in the first instance.
We have done a lot of calculations over the years, and the best cheap-to-run houses not designed for self-sufficiency in energy consumption are semi-troglodyte houses such as those in certain French and Spanish regions, and, of course Mexico, California and Australia....where they enjoy a degree of popularity...
Cheers
Helen
In the beginning there was nothing , then God said "Let there be Light".....There was still nothing , but ,by crikey, you could see it better.
electric heaters are draining my pockets.
One of these would nearly power it when it was aimed correctly in full sun 
