Owning your own home

A friend of mine has one of these. He's owned it for 12 months and it's been with Volvo for 6 months of that.

He also had to sleep in a cemetery because of it.

XC40, although I nearly bought a Defender than had been converted into a pizza truck last night.

https://www.chimneysheep.co.uk/

Nice. Our moths are gonna love that shit, but better than eating my jumpers I guess

(apparently there are hemp based insulation products that are less likely to be munched)

lads pls take it to the owning your own car thread

We had a house with two decorative open fireplaces when I was young.
Absolutely beautiful the two times a year you managed to get it burning happily.
Not fun when you realised that air pressure was high and it would either not burn, or all the fumes where pushed down the chimney.

Then I had the pleasure of living in places with oven heating (wood back in switzerland, coal here in Berlin).
Terrible. But in Berlin low rent places like this still exist.

In my opinion, if you're not out in the open countryside burning your own forest, it's plain stupid to have any kind of real fire going on.

Sealing is better, but there's a scale of involvement. My folks have an overpriced umbrella thing in their basement chimney as there is an old fashioned coal stove thing there. It means theoretically you can quickly remove it.

Other ones are sealed just up the chimney with a black painted board with a square of insulation on top.

No one said living your best life was easy.

Does an open fire kill the owners anymore than a vehicle with a petrol engine, eating red meat, smoking or drinking though?

It's not about the owner for me, it's about what it will do to other people through no choice of their own, just because I wanted something because I thought it would be nice. I would love an open fire or a wood burner, but I can't justify having one where I live currently. In the middle of nowhere (like where I grew up), with a proper back boiler to contribute to central heating, then it's more of an option.

Yeah solid point. Although everything I mentioned has effects on others too.

I knew someone who lived in a bus in which he'd installed a wood burning stove and was doubtless spiralling down the off ramp to Hell.

They do, but cars are more of a necessary evil, currently. I would gladly have an EV or use public transport, but there isn't the charging infrastructure for the former and I don't have a driveway/garage to charge at home. The latter - pandemic. I stopped smoking years ago and would encourage anyone else to do the same. Red meat and alcohol - those are not going to give little Billy in the play park next door chronic asthma. There may be other knock on effects but they sound a little bit too straw man in a discussion about unnecessary combustion in the home.

I would strongly disagree but then maybe we are getting a bit off topic...

It would be useful if someone could knock up some sort of chart so we all know exactly where lines are drawn.

Daily Mail cancer list?

Help to make sense of the Daily Mail’s ongoing effort to classify every inanimate object into those that cause cancer and those that prevent it.

https://kill-or-cure.herokuapp.com/

I have a log burner.

BUT I live in the middle of nowhere, and only burn trees that have either fallen down or been taken down because they were dangerous. Oh and actually still burning all the wood we ripped out of the house, 250 year old 1ft x 1ft oak beams burn for a long time.

our chimneys are still open but it's highly unlikely we'd ever use an open fire or even the gas fire again. Do they need to be sealed or can they just be left as is? I imagine they are a good way to vent heat out but then there are probably worse offenders in our place.

I looked into this and got a lot of mixed messages.

Sealing is apparently the best thing to do, but you have to consider problems specific to your home that you may create... like the rooms not being able to breathe, and condensation in the chimney and what problems such moisture/water may cause in the longer term.

I bought a Chimney Sheep and just figured that's saving the heat I have whilst punting the problem of whether to seal or not far down the road.

Oh that's really good.

For me it's the look + heat, so the answer is a big fancy electric fire. They've come on a lot!

Negatively, obvs :) Do you mean you're tempted to buy a BMW SUV or your friend is/has?

I do have a car, powered by dead dinosaurs, mind. It does 50mpg which I doubt an SUV does though (at least a conventional one).

Something like this is up your street, surely? Definitely gets points for being fantastically expensive.

Yeah we have all original fireplaces so keen to get something that works with them.
It’s our pals who are buying the SUV, which makes little sense to us, but then we are not car people and just have an old polo we use rarely.
@6pt you’ve mistakenly me for someone else, I’m running on fumes so they would be well out of my price range.

Step 1: find something that looks good and does the job

Step 2: work out how to pay for it

I think I need to reevaluate my decision making process.

Smart Bell .. more like Bellend amirite

Anyone have an air source heat pump and are they worth it? For some reason I’m thinking @JonoMarshall or @Sam_w might ?

I don't, I am currently considering ground source. @JonoMarshall might be your man though, he has lots of that fancy stuff.

We considered one but ended up going with PV panels and a SunAmp UniQ unit for hot water and a Zehnder ComfoAir for the MVHR (with no heating option). Both units have been excellent.

We did consider going with a 'better' MVHR which had a heating function, but it was a bit louder/bigger for double the price. We never really had the space/budget for an ASHP.

Our choice was mainly down to cost (initial and ongoing) and also the SunAmp approach dramatically brought down our chance of over-heating in Summer. We're only a 100sqm Passivhaus so over-heating was a big concern.