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Should You Finally Buy a Heat Pump? What Has Changed?

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  Should You Finally Buy a Heat Pump? What Has Changed? The question is no longer simply “Do heat pumps work?” — it is “Will one work well in my house?” For several years, discussion about heat pumps has tended to become polarised remarkably quickly. One side says they are the obvious future of domestic heating. The other says they are expensive, noisy, incapable of heating older houses and certain to produce enormous electricity bills. Neither position is particularly helpful if you are standing in your own kitchen wondering whether to replace a perfectly conventional gas boiler. By 2026, we really ought to have moved beyond asking whether heat pumps work. They clearly do. The more useful questions are: How much heat does your particular house actually lose? Can your radiators deliver enough heat at a lower water temperature? What electricity tariff will you use? What heating system are you replacing? How good is the proposed design? What will the installation cost after grants? A...
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Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water in Britain?

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  Is Bottled Water Really Safer Than Tap Water in Britain? We happily pay hundreds of times more for water in a plastic bottle — but are we actually buying something safer? Walk into almost any supermarket, railway station or petrol station and there will be shelves or refrigerators filled with bottled water. Some comes from mountains. Some comes from springs. Some carries images of pristine countryside. Some is sold as mineral water. Some simply describes itself as drinking water. The underlying message is remarkably powerful: This is pure water. And, perhaps subconsciously: This must therefore be safer than the water coming from the kitchen tap. But is it? In Britain, for most people supplied by the public mains system, the answer is rather different from the impression created by rows of beautifully marketed bottles. Tap water is not an untested commodity pumped from a reservoir and sent directly into our homes. It is treated, continuously monitored and subject to strict legal s...
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How Many Home Batteries Would You Need to Survive a Power Cut?

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How Many Home Batteries Would You Need to Survive a Power Cut? A 10 kWh battery sounds enormous—until you start deciding what you want it to power. In my previous article, I looked at one of the great misconceptions surrounding domestic solar power: having solar panels and a battery does not automatically mean that your house will continue running during a power cut . The system has to have been designed and configured to operate in backup or EPS mode. The Energy Saving Trust makes the same point: solar panels and batteries normally need additional equipment and appropriate configuration if they are to supply the home when the grid goes down. Energy Saving Trust But suppose you do have proper backup. The next question is much more interesting: How much battery do you actually need? I have around 50 kWh of battery storage at home. Compared with the roughly 10 kWh that the Energy Saving Trust describes as a typical domestic battery system, that sounds enormous. Energy Saving Trust So, p...
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