Interesting Links for 02-06-2023

[andrewducker]

1. Giant heat pumps are heating whole towns

(tags:heating heat Technology germany )

2. Senior Labour figures call for political reform of UK

(tags:UK politics reform )

3. The Dungeons and Dragons movie is even better with a narrator

(tags:narrative dungeonsanddragons movies )

Comments

[cosmolinguist]

I keep saying many more people would benefit from audio description than currently use it!

And the AD track in the D&D movie was particularly interesting, but I think audio description is always worth a try.

[andrewducker]

That sounds excellent!

[armiphlage]

(bias note: I just had a cold-climate air source heat pump installed in my house last week).

Except when you have a heat source to pull from that is warmer than ambient air (such as the seawater or treated sewage examples in the article), I don't see the advantage of a central heatpump district heating system over many individual heatpumps in each building. District heating systems are capital-intensive, require disruptive digging, and are hard to scale incrementally. Maintenance on the system means a whole neighbourhood goes without heat. Individual heat pumps in each dwelling avoid these disadvantages.

[channelpenguin]

Easier maintenance? Affordability i.e. For those who can't raise the capital to install individually. Apartments?(like most people in most of Europe live in).

I'm in a big, very old, draughty farmhouse. It CAN'T be insulated and sealed like a modern house, it would fall down from rot etc!

I've *room* for anything, including ground source - money, not. Installing solar/wind to power it might be very advisable.

Offer me a Pay as You Go central supply for hot water for heat at industrial temperature, not lukewarm domestic unit temps and I'd be ecstatic. But since I'm almost 1km from the village, not so likely.

[armiphlage]

Affording a standalone unit is indeed a challenge. My government is using a combination of grants and interest-free loans to make cold-climate air-source heat pumps accessible to everyone. Many companies are also offering rental heat pumps, with no up-front expense (but predatory monthly fees).

With respect to apartments, nearly all new condominium tower construction in my region is designed with individual heat pumps in each living unit, instead of central (building-wide) heating systems. Apparently it's cheaper and easier to comply with fire code than installing ductwork from a central system. Of course, that's with Canadian building codes, which differ greatly from those elsewhere.

(sadly, we have very little new construction of apartments in my area - it's all shoddy, overpriced condominums snapped up by investors and rented out at ridiculously high prices).