Wednesday 18 August 2010

Deliveries

A day working at home, and receiving deliveries. Most of them were related to the kitchen: the units were all delivered, and then the worktops; the in-line water heater, and the fridge (a Baumatic integrated) also arrived. (There were also some bike bits for Philip's new bike, which I'm ordering as apparently I know what I'm doing.)

I'm really hoping the water heater will make life better: because hot water is only available after oil-heating a whole tank, I boil a kettle to wash up. Not ideal, as I can never be bothered to wait for two kettles, which is what you need. The on-demand water heater (basically, like a self-heating shower, attached to the tap) should improve this situation.

The kitchen units look really gorgeous. They're made by PWS, and bought from DIY Kitchens. They're really good quality, and an extremely reasonable price. Hopefully they'll go in smoothly, and look as good in place...

Over my lunch, I also straightened up the workshop, which looks miraculously improved, and collected some lupin, tulip, and astrantia seed, which I hope to sow this weekend.

4 comments:

  1. Ian, I wrote a blog about building our house. We've been in it nearly a year are just now getting the bugs worked out as far as the solar/radiant heating system goes. We thought about a point of contact heater for our kitchen sink, but our plumber thought that a water circulator would work better. And it does. We also have a water storage tank that holds the solar heated water and a gas backup system but then again, we're spoiled Americans. ;)

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  2. Hi Paula: I found your blog last week :)
    I'd really like to install either solar water heating, or a combined space/water air source pump. It might be a little while off, unfortunately, but it's the direction I'd like to go, along with some photo-voltaic panels.

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  3. Hi Ian, We thought about payback. In NC where we have long hot summers, with a goodly amount of sunshine, the payback is I think 7 years. We also had a good tax credit that helped out with costs.
    In a perfect world, we would have had a bank as large as our lot in order to MAKE money, but we didn't have the capital to do that.
    Paula

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  4. The capital's the thing! I'm hoping to do a bit more research later this year, and get some costs. It may be possible to use some of the equity in the house to finance an array (on the basis that it generates an income, as well as power), but we'll see if that adds up.

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