Articles about My House

So far we have reduced carbon emissions from gas and electricity from approximately 3.7 tonnes to around 0.7 tonnes, a reduction of 80% with no loss of quality of life – in fact the house is warmer now!
I am on a mission to reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from my house, ideally to zero.
This page contains links – see below – to all the articles I have written on this project over the last few years. Some more recent articles also include videos.
If you have any questions or would like to comment, e-mail me here.
Summary
- I began by taking weekly measurements of:
- gas and electricity consumption.
- outside temperature.
- This allowed me to assess how my house ‘performed’ i.e. how much heating I needed to provide to heat the house a certain number of degrees above the outside temperature.
- In Autumn 2019 I added some triple-glazing.
- In the winter of 2019/20 I could see 10% improvement in the performance of the house.
- In Autumn 2020 I finished the triple-glazing and added external wall insulation.
- In the winter of 2020/21 the house only required half the energy it had in 2019.
- In November 2020 I added solar panels and in March 2021 I added a domestic battery
- In summers this is sufficient to allow us to go ‘off grid’ for just over 4 months.
- In winters we buy electricity at night and use it during the day.
- In July 2021 I removed the gas boiler and added a heat pump.
- In November 2022 I added extra solar panels which I hope will enable to us to go ‘off-grid’ for 6 months a year – roughly from the spring to the autumn equinoxes. This should also enable us to export almost as much electricity as we import when considered over a year.
I’ll be updating this intermittently, but this household project is (I hope!) almost complete.
Articles about ‘the House’ on Protons for Breakfast listed chronologically
2022
- Setback: Should you lower your heating overnight? (19th December)
- Should you turn down your heating overnight?
- Estimating the heat capacity of my house (19th December)
- This allows me to work out the ‘time constant’ for my house.
- Assessing Powerwall Battery Degradation (12th December)
- How does one measure battery degradation?
- Cold Weather Measurements of Heat Transfer Coefficient (11th December)
- Cold Weather is a great for measuring the true heat requirements of a dwelling.
- Annual variation in location of sunrise and sunset (5th December)
- Can help with deciding which roofs may be useful for solar PV.
- Is it possible to live a carbon-zero life? (21st November)
- I gave a talk to 6th formers about Climate Change
- Is it possible to live a carbon-zero life? (21st November)
- I gave a talk to 6th formers about Climate Change
- Energy Consciousness Raising (14th November)
- Reading one’s energy meters and recording results in a spreadsheet is a great way to understand the heat flows into and out of a dwelling.
- What to do on the coldest day of the year? (7th November)
- Cold Weather is a great for measuring the true heat requirements of a dwelling.
- New Solar Panels (27th October)
- Discussion of the rationale for installing new solar panels.
- Weather Compensation (21st October)
- Tweaking Weather Compensation on the heat pump to improve room temperature control.
- Review of Vaillant Arotherm plus heat pump (19th October)
- It’s a great heat pump but the manual and apps and software are abysmal.
- Heating my home (18th October)
- A rather silly video about how home heating actually works!
- Talk about Heat Pumps (5th October)
- (almost) Everything you wanted to know about heat pumps. View on YouTube to see the many insightful questions and answers.
- Finally off gas! Well, Almost Finally. (23rd September)
- The gas cooking hob and oven have been removed!
- It’s been a sunny summer (1st September)
- A look at solar PV generation this summer.
- Non, Je ne regrette rien: update (26th August)
- A look at the impact of increased energy prices
- What Else Can I do? (14th July)
- What else could I possibly do to minimise CO2 emissions?
- “Off-Grid” or Not “Off-Grid”? That is the question. (26th May)
- An explanation of what the phrase ‘off-grid’ means in practice.
- First Winter with a Heat Pump (27th April)
- A discussion of the performance of the heat pump.
- Could you heat your house with a hairdryer? (12th April)
- Even in the coldest weeks, the average electrical power used by the heat pump last winter was less than 800 watts i.e. less electricity than it takes to run a hairdryer – on its lowest setting!
- March (8th April)
- A review of heating flows and costs in March
- What Size Heat Pump Do I Need? A Rule of Thumb (5th April)
- A rule of thumb for sizing heat pumps based on gas consumption.
- View on YouTube to see the many insightful questions and answers.
- Analysis of 16 years of Solar PV data (16th March)
- Can one detect the decline in efficiency of solar panels?
- Heating Degree Days (15th March)
- Four articles on their incredibly useful idea!
- Heating Degree Days:1:
- A brilliant idea
- Heating Degree Days:2:
- Do they work?
- Heating Degree Days:3:
- How do they vary?
- Heating Degree Days:4:
- Three numbers you need to know about your home
- Another reason to stop using gas (6th March)
- Cooking with gas emits more NOX into your home than traffic fumes!
- Heat Pump Explainer (24th February)
- Everyone is talking about heat pumps. But how do they work?
- Reducing CO2 Emissions from my home (4th February)
- A talk I gave to the local Friends of the Earth
- Carbon accounts 2021: looking back and looking ahead (2nd January)
- A review of how the reductions in CO2 are going.
2021
- November 2021: Heating and Carbon Emissions (1st December)
- A summary of the way all the elements of our retrofit work together in November.
- Insulation reduced heat demand by half
- Solar PV met 20% of our electricity demand.
- Battery allowed time-shifting, avoiding peak rate electricity
- Air source heat pump operated with more than 300% efficiency
- The Role of a Battery in Meeting Winter Electricity Demand(26th November)
- Details of how Solar PV with a battery saves emissions even in winter.
- A weekend away… (15th November)
- An article about Weather Compensation with Heat Pumps
- A Year of Solar Energy (8th November)
- Review of a year of solar energy data
- Heat Pump Operation: What it costs. And what it costs me (26th October)
- Details of what I actually pay to heat my home: almost nothing
- Heat Pump Operation: First Space-Heating Results (25th October)
- 1000 days of data (9th October)
- A review of the last three years of thermal data on the house.
- Controlling Tap Temperatures with a Blending Valve (October 6th)
- How to keep tap water temperatures safe even when the hot water cylinder is very hot.
- Carbonaut (6th October)
- Includes videos of a talk describing the entire carbon zero project.
- Legionella Protection with Heat Pumps (October 1st)
- Why Heat Pump systems need to worry about Legionella and what to do.
- Using Radiators with Heat Pumps (9th September)
- How radiators work and all that.
- Assessment of Heat Pump heating water to 50 °C and 70 °C (14st August)
- Looking at the COP of the heat pump when it gets very hot!
- Heat Pumps: Power, Noise and Condensation (31st August)
- How heat pumps work, why they are quiet, and how much condensation to expect.
- Heat Pump – First Operational Data (14st August)
- Dat showing how the COP of our heat pump is measured.
- Our Old Car is Dead. Long Live The New Car! (July 28th)
- Why we didn’t buy an EV.
- Back Down to Earth (June 22nd)
- Sometimes it just isn’t sunny – even at midsummer!
- Floating (June 16th)
- Reflections on a few days of using no gas and grid electricity: entirely solar powered!
- Boiler Killer Strikes Again (June 10th)
- A piece of nonsense.
- Heat Pumps#1 (June 10th)
- An article about how heat pumps work in a domestic setting.
- Estimating Rates of Air Change in Homes (June 6th)
- How to use CO2 meter to estimate the rate of air changes in homes.
- Gas Boilers versus Heat pumps (May 18th)
- Why gas boilers are still right answer in some circumstances.
- Air Conditioning versus Air Source Heat Pump (May 15th)
- Why Air Conditioning might be able to heat our hose with a higher COP than a heat pump.
- My Energy Performance Certificate (21st April)
- What does the EPC even mean?
- Battery Day: One month on… (20th April)
- Performance of the Tesla Powerwall domestic battery. Wow!
- Battery Day. One week on… (24th March)
- Performance of the Tesla Powerwall domestic battery. Wow!
- Battery Day: First Results (20th March)
- Performance of the Tesla Powerwall domestic battery. Wow!
- Understanding heat flow in my home: the key graph (15th February)
- Domestic Batteries: Purchase Decisions and Realistic Models (1st February)
- In the Bleak Mid-Winter (19th January)
- Domestic Batteries: Thinking More about Batteries (9th January)
- Domestic Batteries: Thinking about Domestic Batteries (3rd January)
- External Wall Insulation: Day-by-Day Analysis (1st January)
2020
- External wall insulation: How well is it working? (23rd December) after a month or so
- External Wall Insulation: How well does it work? (16th November) just after installation.
- The Beginning of the External Wall Insulation Project (15th October)
- Passivhaus? Or Michaelhaus? (August 26th)
- Measuring the thermal conductivity of insulation (August 24th)
- I am becoming an insulation bore. (August 21st)
- My House: comparing models and measurements (July 28th)
- Estimating the expected thermal performance of my house (July 22nd)
- Be Constructive! (July 5th)
- House of Shame#1 (June 24th)
2019
- The OTHER front in the fight against climate change (September 22nd)
- Why does heating my house require 280 watts per degree Celsius above ambient? (August 18th)
- What it takes to heat my house: 280 watts per degree Celsius above ambient (August 16th)
- Should I still be using gas? (May 6th)