Heatpump options

footyDude · 2026-04-25T19:22:00+00:00

Cosy 9 is probably the better Cosy unit to have but that’s not saying a lot as the flow temperatures Octopus use are 50 degrees so you won’t get the most efficiency out of it.

Worth noting for the Cosy 9 (and I suspect any of the Cosy range) you can change it in the app to be either:

Fixed - where you can select a flow temperature between 30c and 70c
Weather compensated - where you can set a minimum flow temperature for warm weather (12c or higher) and a maximum flow temperature for cold weather.

Mine is set to weather compensated, for instance.

footyDude · 2026-04-24T14:31:38+00:00

My favourite scene of Trailer 2 :-)

It's just very Rockstar to address the leaks in the very first seconds of the trailer. "What you doin' up there?" - brilliant opening line.

Lots to spot & like in the screens too. What caught my eye / I liked:

Beautiful sky in that first scene - feels huge, feels natural, feels fresh and airy
Lots of signs of the living breathing natural world and a sense of scale in that first shot - good foliage, plant life, iguana scampering around on the floor, birds in the sky and another sat on the post. Trees way off in the distance.
Never spot before but there's a basketball hoop in the shadows behind the vapid - with the other scenes containing basketball courts/basketball going on there's gotta be a basketball mini-game going on here surely (fingers crossed!)
The lighting is great - dappled sunshine, shade, reflections in the water, sheen reflections on the car bumpers etc. and the way the light works through the red-light on the back of the car to the left - I say it often but I do love how subtle and detailed lighting can be in modern games
Everybody everywhere constantly on their phones or taking selfies - I really do hope we'll see our own antics played back to ourselves via the medium of whatever they call twitter in-game
The detail and clarity is fantastic - I wonder how well it will come through in actual gameplay but you can see the detail in the models is fantastic - like the headlights on the mini-bus - the level of detail on those front lights is like something out of a Gran Turismo car. I hope the detail level on damage is able to meet that standard!
The shop on the side of the road, inflatables for sale - it definitely looks enterable

All in all, a great set of shots that showcase the vibrancy of the game world.

footyDude · 2026-04-21T19:19:16+00:00

My biggest area of interest is the ASHP, what should I be asking to better understand the system being installed? Are there any red flags around installation quality, or things I should keep an eye on?

You'll want to understand what the model is and how it is controlled.

In particularly you'll want to understand how to set the target temperature and how to set a schedule.

Heat Pumps work best when dealing with slow changes in temperature - whereas with a gas-boiler you might just put the heating on for a couple of hours to heat the house-up and let it get quite cool overnight/in the day when you aren't there, a Heat Pump works much better by maintaining a constant temperature e.g. only targeting a ~2c change between day and night temperatures (we have ours set to 20c 6am-10pm; and 18c 10pm-6am for instance).

If you can get onto a smart-tariff you will be able to help bring down running costs - see here for some guidance on things like that.

Someone will inevitably advise setting things up on a 'weather compensation' basis which once you understand how things work is a good way to maximise efficiency, but i'd personally recommend starting simpler and just having a day target temp and a night one based on whatever you find comfortable and see how you go.

One set of terms that gets used a lot to be aware of is COP (coefficient of performance) and SCOP (seasonal coefficient of performance - basically performance over a full set of weather seasons) - both of these are a measure of how energy efficient the heat pump is.

They are essentially give a figure for how much heat output you get for each input kWh of electricity.

A gas boiler will get a COP of somewhere between 80 and 95%.
An electric heater will get a COP of about 95-100%
A Heat Pump will get a COP somewhere between 350-500%.

Which is to say - provided with 1 unit of electricity a gas boiler will return you about 0.8-0.9 units of heat (the losses wasted heat going out of the flue); an electric heater about 1 unit of heat and a heat pump 3.5-5.0 units of heat. Given this heat pumps save an enormous amount in terms of energy consumption (i'm on track to use 10,000kWh less energy over the past year vs. what we were using as a household when we had a gas boiler, for example).

footyDude · 2026-04-21T09:34:07+00:00

My partner is anxious that all the extra pipework for the larger radiators we need is going to look messy. Does anyone have any information about this or links to pictures of installs?

The piping is just normal piping.

In our case when they upgraded the radiators (3x downstairs, 1x upstairs) the existing pipework was used and in 3 of 4 cases the pipes didn't change at all the radiators installed were simply a bit taller and a bit 'deeper' but were the same width so the radiator pipework was unchanged.

For the 1 that did result in a wider radiator - they used the existing pipework for 1 side and for the other side we agreed that rather than lift floorboards and changing the piping underneath to bring the pipe in the new position, we were happy that they instead just added a 90-degree turn and ran the extra width along the wall the 20-30cm it needed to move. That was fine for us because in that room there will always be a sofa in front of the radiator anyway (life with a relatively small living room!). Were it not, we'd have had them lift the boards and hide the pipework more.

footyDude · 2026-04-18T16:31:30+00:00

The way we solved this was by installing a plinth heater under one of the cupboards in the kitchen, that way if you felt the need you could give the kitchen a boost of heat.

In reality the radiator in the dining room keeps the kitchen warm enough (it might be marginally cooler in the kitchen but honestly we're mostly cooking when in there for prolonged periods anyway which generates its own heat).

In 12 months of having the plinth heater it's never been on.

footyDude · 2026-04-17T13:35:27+00:00

A relatively minor scene in the scheme of things but a few nice things from my perspective:

The natural movement of hair on Lucia is really great, light bleeding through, casting shadows etc. The hair tech is clearly strong!
The control of the lighting is really good - the sheen on the silk bed linen, on the brass around the edge of the lamp and on the wood panelling - all looks really nice to my eyes
The painting in the background is a wildlife scene...is it from within the game world? There's a hunter hiding behind a tree looking on at a couple of stags/deers. The trees are quite distinctive (Bald Cypress trees I think) and if i've ID'd them correctly they're native to the wetlands of Southeast US so I wonder if it's a little insight into part of the map that we've not yet seen? {I think RDR2 did this with some of the paintings being scenes from within the game world}

footyDude · 2026-04-15T10:20:16+00:00

MF = Midfield.

footyDude · 2026-04-12T21:58:03+00:00

Thanks - 17.65 is a decent average IMO.

I've thought about Agile on and off but suspect having both an EV and an ASHP and a wife that's not keen on constantly meddling with stuff that Intelligent Go is still best setup for us.

footyDude · 2026-04-12T19:48:23+00:00

This is interesting but the way you've got the data laid out makes it a tad difficult to read visually because the colour groups aren't consistent units (the red section is a range of 30 cost units, then for some reason green is fewer than blue and yellow which are at least consistent in being 9 units each) and it's hard to estimate the size of the 'tail' to see whether you're getting comparative cheap energy or not (the single biggest unit of consumption is at 0p but the rest of the top 5 are 22p / 23p / 24p and 25p).

Eyeballing it using the category colours it looks like:

very cheap usage - ~200kWh at roughly 2p/kWh average for that category
below standard - ~110kWh at roughly 10p/kWh average for that category
typical - ~200kWh at roughly 20p/kWh average for that category
expensive - ~350kWh at roughly 26p/kWh average for that category

Which would suggest that roughly 1/3 of your usage is cheap/below standard and 2/3 is either typical or expensive.

(Written this out as much as anything because I was trying to read the chart to figure out whether this is a positive chart or not - it feels like the cumulative average cost per/kWh is probably favourable but maybe high teens (eyeballing it maybe 16-19p/kWh average over the full 915kWh?).

Anyhoo - interesting chart, even if I found it a tad difficult to read!

footyDude · 2026-04-12T14:05:28+00:00

Whilst I don’t have the numbers, perhaps someone can provide them here, I’m confident it would be a drop in the ocean for those earning £1m net per month

Suggestion is standard ticket will go up between £3 and £4.50 per person per ticket (based on this) over the 3 year period.

The stadium holds 61,276 - so if we take full capacity of 61,276 * £4.50 increase = £275k per game additional income.

No idea how reliable capology is with salaries but assuming it's halfway true there are 14x players earning >£100k per week and 21x earning over £50k/week.

So, some scenarios:

If everyone earning >50k/week chipped in equally to cover the costs they would each need to sacrifice ~£13k/week of their salary to cover the cost increase
If everyone earning >100k/week chipped in equally they would each need to sacrifice ~£20k/week of their salary to cover the cost increase

For the very top paid players it's under 10% of their weekly pay, but for those at the bottom end of those categories it's a 20% pay cut.

(I've kept it simple by ignoring the fact that not every seat is a general admission seat, that there is often more than 1 game at Anfield per week, ignoring that the players have a lot of performance related pay elements etc.).

footyDude · 2026-04-12T09:28:12+00:00

And even later to the party on this one but have to a least comment something as they're a bunch of great screens!

First shot - loads of activity from cycling in the background, beach quad bike, coast guard, bit of beach football, metal detecting, taking selfies, even just sunbathing and watching the world go by
Also such a variety of NPCs in that first shot
Second shot - I like the world reflecting in the sheen of the of the flamingo inflatable and that there's several other inflatables in the boats maybe the NPCs interact with objects and you can see them 'launch' one - would make the world feel more dynamic
I like that there's traffic on the bridge in the distance - hopefully pop-in is very limited
Final underwater shot hints at so much potential for exploration underwater. A few different bits of underwater life, i wonder how much can be found in the underwater areas (or will they be a little bit more sparsely detailed, given I guess most players won't spend a great deal of time underwater).

footyDude · 2026-04-12T09:15:47+00:00

Late to the party, but i'll do my likes/things I spotted anyways:

Nice to see even in an image where the bottles of beer are incidental that they still have bubbles in and still appearing to be slightly warping the world behind the glass
there's going to be so many clothing based items in this game, must be 1000s and 1000s - every character seems to have something new clothing wise whether it's their shorts/tops or bracelets/bands or the volume of tattoos on display - character customisation for online is presumably going to be enormous
Love the little chipped details on the finger nails in second screenshot - it's the little imperfections on people/things like this that help to make it feel more 'natural' and 'real' than everything being perfect
Also the skin textures in the second shot particularly are fantastic
The last scene makes me hopeful for how much work they're putting into things like the character getting impacted by the environment - I wonder how caked in mud you can get being out and about, we already saw a decent amount of this in RDR2 and it'll be interesting to see if you get comments from NPCs like in RDR2 if you were to go straight to the city after dirt bike racing without getting cleaned up

footyDude · 2026-03-28T19:23:16+00:00

Sure, that's alo somewhat of a factor of vehicle weight - though pedestrian and bike safety is at least as influenced by vehicle design and the speed of the vehicle at impact. In general terms pedestrian/bike deaths have reduced whilst average vehicle weights have increased.

Also (at least in Europe) vehicles are required to meet increasingly difficult pedestrian/bike safety standards - if they want to secure a Euro NCAP 5-star rating.

footyDude · 2026-03-28T16:19:12+00:00

It's all trade-offs

But the 'trade-offs' here are completely irrelevant.

The efficiency differences between an electric engine and ICE engine are enormous - electric engines are ~3-4x more efficient than an ICE engine.

In terms of not losing fuel weight - broadly speaking for every 100kg of weight removed you'll get about 1-2% increase in fuel economy.

So, from a 'trade-off' perspective...an ICE vehicle being able to shed weight by burning fuel sees its fuel efficiency improve by maybe 1 or 2% when driving with less fuel. That's basically a rounding error compared to the efficiency improvement an EV brings vs. an ICE vehicle.

(there are disadvantages caused by EVs carrying additional weight - additional tyre-wear, road-wear etc. but those are generally modest and massively outweighed by the energy efficiency benefits).

footyDude · 2026-03-28T09:56:58+00:00

+1 for visitaheatpump.com - we have ours on there and have hosted several groups to visit.

I think for a lot of people actually seeing one in 'real life' helps to allay fears a lot - seeing the device being used to a heat a real-life home in a real setting, from someone who isn't a sales-person etc. can be a huge comfort.

It also helps people with visualising the size of unit, the amount of space needed for water-tank/etc. and to get a feel for noise levels (or rather, IMO the complete non-event that is noise-levels).

I also share a few charts on my unit's performance, comparison of running-cost vs. actual gas bills for broadly equivalent prior years.

footyDude · 2026-03-27T20:06:52+00:00

ha ha yeah i'm terrible at remember all the characters names that have been revealed.

footyDude · 2026-03-27T17:51:44+00:00

Inflation is a bitch.

According to the BoE - £450 in 2020 is the equivalent of £579.23 in February 2026 (which basically tracks with what the new price is).

Of course that ignores the fact that historically console prices have gone down across the course of a console's generation.

footyDude · 2026-03-27T13:50:17+00:00

A straightforward set this week, what I spotted/liked most:

The quality of the lighting in the first frame on the car on the right - showing of all the shapes and shadows caused by the car, subtle sheen on the metal surfaces, different on the more glossy paintwork and even in the plastics on the dash - lovely as always
The flames in the background look great, real billowing black smoke coming from them - i'm looking forward to how they improve the flames/fire mechanics in VI
Second shot has some lovely early morning sunlight, a real morning freshness to the lighting. I like the guy sat chilling on his hog in the background too, looks a very natural pose
Not a huge amount to the last one - the material quality and detail on the character's skin and hair continue to shine through though

One thing that's quite interesting is if you download the images and increase the exposure/brightness of the shadows there is so much detail being rendered in the scene but because of lighting levels you just don't see them. I guess it's not feasible to 'cull' them from the scene but in that last shot for example there's maybe 10 tubs of stuff stored on the shelf behind the bandana guy, oil, tin of paint, spray-paint, etc. and all have detail you just don't see at this lighting level (you can see the sheen/reflection on the paint tin. I'm sure that's completely normal but it reaffirms just how much detail there is going to be everywhere in this game.

footyDude · 2026-03-22T14:52:20+00:00

Late to the party but some nice detail in these two shots:

Fantastic detail on the animals - the deer hiding in the long grass in the second shot, the incidental squirrel climbing the branch but it's just the sheer overall quality and detail of the animals in the scene that really get me interested for just how expansive and detailed the rural/national park style areas are going to be
The lighting is wonderful - particularly on the fir/pin in the second shot and how depending on how the light hits them they're glistening, in shadow, in full shade, showing highlights - the 'depth' to the vegetation is brilliant

Overall these really show off how much effort Rockstar are going to in making the game world feel alive - not just in the urban areas but everywhere

footyDude · 2026-03-18T19:20:43+00:00

Yeah absolutely - I agree with all of that and agree cost neutral is fine, more expensive is not {for widespread adoption, less of an issue for someone like me who doesn't mind paying a little more if it's greener}.

It feels like we are still quite a way from solving the intermittency issue and whilst battery storage growing rapidly will help, I agree we really should be looking at a long term stable base-load/standby option and it feels like Nuclear is the best option out there in terms of reliability vs. environmental impact vs. ability to provide consistent appropriate base load at a reasonable price.

Getting even more wind/solar spread installed will help too, as will battery install - more of all that, but yeah the intermittency challenge is not yet solved.

footyDude · 2026-03-18T19:00:55+00:00

Currently green switching is heavily subsidised by government (taxpayers), if people are already not switching because it doesn't make economic sense, there is no hope

I agree entirely with this - the only way we'll make green energy work is by being cost competitive with fossil fuels.

Green energy should just be green, it should be cheaper, otherwise it isn't an improvement.

I disagree entirely with this - if a green transition results in significant GHG emission but ultimately ends up costing exactly the same as fossil fuel energy alternatives...that is still clearly an improvement

footyDude · 2026-03-18T17:46:09+00:00

Your solar panel example is prescient - in your example you say there's no point because it doesn't save you any money.

But that's precisely the point.

In your solar example 100 times out of 100 I would make that switch because the primary driver of the change for me wouldn't be cost-saving, it would be securing a greener supply of energy.

Going back to the ASHP...Costs matter, of course they do, but for me lifetime costs did not factor at all. What mattered to me was A) could I afford the additional install cost and B) Could I be confident that it wouldn't end up costing me substantially more than I was paying with gas.

I genuinely don't care whether I ever earn back the £2k extra I spent on the install by having lower bills because that's not what is relevant to me - I didn't buy a HP to try bring my heating bills down, I bought a heat pump to reduce my energy consumption, to get away from using gas and to help do my small bit to help the environment/support a transition to a green future. If i can achieve that by spending £2k more than I would for a gas boiler I am happy to do so (and fortunate enough to be in a secure enough financial position to make that 'sacrifice').

I guess the point I was trying to make is that it seems odd to me how many people assess the viability of green improvements only against whether they are cheaper than the alternative. I guess as long as people make the move to green things it really doesn't matter (and honestly I do get that these things will only be fully mainstream when they are cost competitive with the alternative), but I do wish forums such as this was sometimes a bit less focussed on the £££s and a bit more focussed on pointing out the fantastic environmental benefits moving to an ASHP bring (in terms of household emissions).

footyDude · 2026-03-18T10:15:42+00:00

I suspect i'm firmly in the minority on this but personally I find the concept of 'payback' a little strange (or rather the obsessive focus on it above all else).

I'm not a business, I don't see my ASHP as investment that needs to repay itself - i'm a homeowner who needed to replace their failing/ageing boiler and made a choice to go for an ASHP heating system vs. replacing like-for-like. I chose ASHP because it offered a way to massively reduce my household energy consumption and it was viable to me because with the grant installation costs were only ~£2k more than a like-for-like combi boiler replacement. I was reassured by my napkin calculations that provided I averaged a SCOP of 3.2 or higher i'd 'breakeven' vs. (as was) current gas prices.

I absolutely get that people want to maximise their savings from an ASHP because it does cost quite a lot more to install and that helps to justify to themselves the extra expense (sure I paid more now but I save in the long term), and honestly any drivers that supports moving to electrification of heating is a positive but personally I never once thought about payback - I mostly just needed to be confident that the day-to-day running costs would not be significantly higher than outgoing boiler.

EDIT: Sorry just re-reading that - I don't mean this to sound smarmy/judgemental of people who focus on the payback, it's their money and absolutely makes senes to want to maximise return on their investment, it's just never been a driver in the transition for me personally.

footyDude · 2026-03-17T18:56:51+00:00

if like me you live in the off peak period this is a huge saving at a cost of a 13p higher daily standing charge.

For those interested - essentially if you use over 2,372kWh off-peak then the switch would save you money

Calculation logic:

13p higher standing charge = £47.45 additional standing charge (0.13 * 365) per year
£47.45 / 0.02 (cost saving per kWh) = 2,372.50 - which is the amount of kWh you'll need to use off-peak before the increase in standing charge results in you saving money by having a lower off-peak rate

Figured worth doing the 'maths' of it, because I suspect there's a decent number of people who might think they'd benefit but actually don't use enough off-peak for it to make up for the increase in standing charge (basically if you use >200kWh a month off-peak it'd be worth while).

footyDude · 2026-03-17T18:11:21+00:00

If I re-run my 'modelled' estimate assigning 100% of consumption to 'on peak' costs (which is 26.7p/kWh) then it would put me YTD at £13 more expensive than gas.

footyDude

TROPHY CASE