Heating and hot water - advice

[tigersaw]

Originally Posted by Luckypants

If you have an old boiler, replacer with a new condensing type (and have porperly commissioned) The 30% efficiency saving will pay for the new boiler in a couple of years.

Our boiler is 36 years old, working fine, gas bill £40 / month.
Quoted cost of replacement, £2000 inc labour, making good and pumps etc.

Probably take 10 years to pay for itself, by which time the new one would be old and knackered anyway!

Originally Posted by CheekyLemon

I tend to put that on if the water hasn't been heated from the boiler for a few hours and I want a shower. I then turn it off again when I get out.

No point in this mate unless you put it on at least half an hour beforehand - it's basically like a giant kettle, so is a bit slow and very expensive to run. Always cheaper to let the boiler do the work.

I've got a system that burns recycled wood pellets, we've got the heating on and have had for a week or two, don't know how much it's costing, I have a HUGE pile of pellets in the basement, so it depends how long they last!

As others have said, if you have a new energy efficient boiler fitted it will pay for itself quite quickly. As someone else said, insulating is the cheapest way to save money.

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by Baph

At the moment, at home, there's a standard tower style PC, a ResearchMachines server, a SPARC-1, a Cisco 2500, my ETH modem/router and a hub sat on/bolted to my desk, all humming away gently. At first, it's a noisy setup, but eventually I'm sure the whole family will get tinitus.

Is THAT all ????

2 x ADSL routers, 2 x Shuttle PC's, Midi-tower for the mail-server, 3 laptops.

Due to get even worse once I get the File-server back on line, and the 3rd Shuttle set up and connected to the TV

Oh how I love being a computer geek....

David

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

Midi-tower for the mail-server

That won't be making much noise then, if it's JUST acting as a mail server :P

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

Oh how I love being a computer geek....

Great isn't it.

Oh yea, forgot my PDA that charges on my desk too, but that doesn't make much noise. If it did, I'd be concerned.

The Mrs hates my backups, so they're schedueld to run in the middle of the night & wake the neighbourhood cats up. 4 DAT drives all spinning merrily. (I prefer backing up onto DAT, mainly as it'd be a swine to have to re-write all my scripts to use cdrecord, tar is a much more beautiful binary).

Sorry to derail

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by Baph

That won't be making much noise then, if it's JUST acting as a mail server :P

Mail Server, DNS server, Webserver......

Originally Posted by Baph

Great isn't it.

Oh yea, forgot my PDA that charges on my desk too, but that doesn't make much noise. If it did, I'd be concerned.

A PDA - as in 1 PDA - 3, count them, 3 Sharp Zaurus's of various vintages.(all running lovely Linux) Not to mention 2 PSP's, 2 NDS's, a GBA, a GBA Micro, a Gamecube AND a PS2.

Originally Posted by Baph

The Mrs hates my backups, so they're schedueld to run in the middle of the night & wake the neighbourhood cats up. 4 DAT drives all spinning merrily. (I prefer backing up onto DAT, mainly as it'd be a swine to have to re-write all my scripts to use cdrecord, tar is a much more beautiful binary).

Sorry to derail

I dont count it as a derail - with this much computer gear running I figure I dont need central heating

Hehe

David - still trying to work out JUST how much of his puter bits he can graft to an SV.......

Whats this got to do with hot water?

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

still trying to work out JUST how much of his puter bits he can graft to an SV.......

Did you ever get around to the USB hub wiring? I forget if you ride a pointy or not but I've found an EXCELLENT source of 12v+. Next to the orange ignition wire, there's a spare. It has a fuse in it, and it's actually powered when the ignition is on. You'd need to solder a wire into it though.

Now THAT's a derail I do agree though, a lot of computer gear (and snake equipment) and you don't need central heating. But it's not that cost effective in my situation.

[SoulKiss]

Originally Posted by mysteryjimbo

Whats this got to do with hot water?

Want me to start on water-cooling PC's to allow you to run them at way over their rated speeds?

Lots of hot water (boiling in some cases) to be had from such a system.

But no, you are right, major derail

Sorry folks

David

Originally Posted by SoulKiss

Want me to start on water-cooling PC's to allow you to run them at way over their rated speeds?

Lots of hot water (boiling in some cases) to be had from such a system.

But no, you are right, major derail

Sorry folks

David

No thanks, I know enough about alternative PC cooling.

Am I allowed to mention super-cooling options?