ON DEMAND HOT WATER

Hi all! Since I've been having fun reading all of Amanda's entries whilst I sit back and relax, it seems time for me to contribute something. By the way, Amanda says 'hi' to all, but as you may extrapolate from her last post she's not up to much writing at the moment. This morning I was especially struck by the U.K.'s seemingly inconsistent approach to energy conservation. In general, I'm really impressed with the care that's gone into the development of many appliances here (by 'here' I suppose I mean Europe as much or more than the U.K., which may explain why it seems inconsistent). In any case, the appliances that people purchase here. For one, the washers are really cool - they are front loading and have clear windows, so if you're like me you no longer require a television as watching your clothes being washed is about as much fun as ET. Better yet, they use very little water. They also do a much better job cleaning clothes than the top-load flavour, so the use of detergents is minimized. In a similar light, rather than keeping a tank of hot water available, we have an 'on demand' water heater. Basically, when you turn on a tap there's a 'woosh' as the burner turns on and presto - hot water. It takes a bit, but not so as you'd notice it taking longer than to purge the lukewarm water between your tap and a reservoir anyway. The same unit also supplies radiators in each room with hot water - these are individually controlled, so you don't need to keep the kitchen as warm as you might want the bathroom, for instance. I could carry on, but you get the drift... systems are built for efficiency. I imagine that in a large part this is driven by cost - our electricity is controlled by this nifty little box:

To get electricity into the flat, this little beauty is happy to munch on prepaid tokens - Amanda's written about our adventures with them before. So as for cost, electricity here is 7p (about 16 cents) per kWh. Go ahead, find your last hydro bill and work out what it would have cost at that rate... Sorta explains why people are willing to pay a bit more for efficiency. I'm scared to get our first gas bill! I started out on the inconsistencies in energy conservation, so I will tie it in to finish up. Basically, insulation here, at least in our flat, bites the big one. The window in our bathroom is (like they all are) single-paned, and has a vent in it that can't be closed. This means that the efficiency of zone heating is somewhat offset by the heat lost to the outside; additionally, it means that it’s very difficult to get our bathroom to a state you might refer to as warm. The upshot: this morning, after waiting for 10min for the tub to fill, I had a super quick bath in tepid water, 'cause despite filling it with straight hot water, by the time it encountered the near zero porcelain of the tub, the water wasn’t nearly so hot. I even filled it slowly to get hotter water from the continuous flow heater! Combined with the freezing draft coming in the window, it left me shivering as I washed and contemplated the oddities of energy conservation in England...