Heating up

We have three heat pumps in our house. Two were installed some years ago high up on the wall in adjoining rooms, with the heat pumps virtually back to back, and running off the same outside system. It hasn't been the most successful approach, and the person who came to put in the third pump a couple of years ago pooh-poohed the way things had been done. By which time it was a bit late, of course!

The result of having both the pumps running off the same system, and of both of them being a bit underpar for the work they're supposed to do, is that in the room we use as our main sitting room, it can be warm up around your head, but cold around your feet. It always seems a bit ironic to be paying for a heat pump to function when we have our legs encased in blankets. Still keeping warm is the prime thing, especially as the winter draws on.

I was talking to one of my colleagues at work yesterday and she was saying that they have a heat pump up on the wall in their house too - it's common practice, of course. On the weekend they were experiencing the same problem as we have: hot heads, cold feet. Her husband went and got the dehumidifier, plugged it in, set it going, and voila! it drew in the cold air and allowed the hot air to move around the room.

Result: warm feet. Now, do we want to go out and buy a humidifier? And is the extra drain on the power bill going to be worth it?

The third heat pump that I mentioned above is installed in the hall, which, because of the nature of our house, is the coldest area in winter. When that heat pump is going, however, not only the hall but the adjoining rooms warm up. It's down near the floor, for one thing, and it's a bigger model for another. I guess in a way it acts in a similar fashion to the dehumidifier: it pushes the cold air around and pulls the warm air down (well, I'm sure that's not technically what happens, but it's something along the lines of what happens).

I'm thinking about these things more at the moment, because we've run into a cold patch, and as well, in three days I retire, and won't get the benefit of my workplace's heating during the day...!

8 posts to go....

...before I reach the magic 1000th post. Well, I've given myself till the 31st to achieve this, so here's one more step on the way.
The piano arrived this morning, rather later than expected because when the guys went to collect it they found they'd left some vital tools behind. I heard this from the former owner, when I finally rang her to see if they'd actually left her house yet.
I'd been told that these guys - or rather this company - had experience at shifting grand pianos, and maybe they have, but I'm not sure that the entire team that arrived had all had the experience claimed. Well, they got it to my house in several pieces (that's the way grand pianos travel) and put it back together without too much difficulty, so there must have been some experience there.
I gave them the option of taking it in the front door or in the back, and they decided on the back even though there are four steps up into the house at that point. (There are two at the front, but there's also very little turning room, as we've often found when we've taken something large into the house.) Getting the main part of the piano up the fours steps was a bit of an issue: one guy was doing all the hoisting up, it seemed, (puffing and blowing) while the other three did....something else. They were on hand, but you got the impression that they weren't always putting full muscle into it.
Suffice to say, they hoisted it into the house, swung it round through the kitchen, along the hall and with ease into the lounge. And, as I said, put it together.
And I played it. It's very bright sounding, which will take a bit of getting used to, and it needs a bit more effort from my fingers to move at speed on certain passages. It's not sluggish, just a bit tighter than my other piano.
We're going to have to reconsider where we put it. The current spot isn't quite roomy enough for me and the piano, and at the moment I'm the one who's getting the short end of the space. My wife and I will do some rethinking tonight, and see how we get on. I'm most concerned not to have it against an outside wall, as I've been told more than once that this isn't good for pianos.
Neither is sticking them up against a heater, or a heating vent, as Teachers' College, where we hold our church services, used to do to the very nice baby grand they had. I played it a lot, but gave up in the end when the other musicians could never get in tune with it. Now it's stuck out in a kind of sunroom area where the temperatures are alternatively very hot or very cold. Someone needs to have their head read - it's likely the piano will become irrepairable - or irreparable, depending on how you want to spell it.

Cool, Clear Water

Years ago it was the practice of our local City Council to send plumbers out free if anyone rang up to say their tap was leaking. Eventually some bean-counter decided this wasn’t profitable enough, even though it probably saved the Council hundreds of dollars in terms of water that wasn’t lost.
But in fact I’ve just been thinking today about an area in the water department, as it were, where water is wasted hugely, and not through anything dripping either.
Whenever we turn on a tap to get it to run hot, we waste several litres of water. I don’t know about other houses, but the water to our bathroom downstairs takes at last 30 seconds to come hot, and running the water upstairs takes even longer because it has to go a good deal farther. Of course some people have these instant heaters nowadays, but I would think plenty of other people don’t.
Wouldn’t it be good if somehow that water that we waste while we’re waiting for it to run hot could be set aside somehow? If we could somehow siphon it off and use it later to cool down the bath, or to brush our teeth in, or some other more environmentally profitable approach.
I’ll have to put my inventing cap on (such as it is) and see if I can come up with something.

Photo courtesy of Dan4th on Flickr.com