Make a GREEN effort with Central Heating

[Syne Wave]

For ages now I have thought about all that lost heat which goes up my flue to warm the sky, not to mention the CO2. On cold nights, I also have the luxury of an open fire where I can again pollute the world a little more and burn all the wood from my trees and supplement it with age old trees in the form of coal.
Both central heating and the open fire have the possibility of sourcing some of the lost heat for their systems. The oil fired boiler from the flue and the open fire from a specially designed fire grate.
Anyway those were my dreaming moments and there are lots of different ways of making these things happen. BUT being one of natures most laziest creatures I thought I would see if someone else had actually produced a 'kit' that one could employ.
Failing that I will have to get off my bum and do it myself.

Thanks for reading.
Keep warm

 

[Agile]

Wonderful ideas but the usual way to reduce emissions and fuel consumption is to buy new condensing boilers and burn wood as this is a sustainable source although it produces CO2.

Why not plant more trees? They remove the CO2 from the atmosphere.

I have never seen the figures but guess you need an acre of larger trees to remove a small household's CO2 emissions and thats without taking their car into account.

Tony

 

[dolph]

Would not worry, it is believed the Volcano eruption this week at reunion Island has produced more CO2 in two days than man has in the last 12 months!

 

[Softus]

I have never seen the figures but guess you need an acre of larger trees to remove a small household's CO2 emissions and thats without taking their car into account.

A significant under-estimate Agile.

The car is a vastly efficient polluter, and I've seen it claimed that you would need about 500 full-sized trees just to consume the amount of carbon dioxide produced by the average car driven 12,000 miles per year.

You'd just about get that many trees in an acre if you felled and replanted every 10 years.

As for household CO2 emissions, according to the Energy Saving Trust, homes in the UK produce 27% of the national total, compared to 15% from passenger transport emissions.

So, nationally, if we planted three acres of trees every 15 seconds, then we could keep things on an even keel. But then there's freight, industry and aircraft to consider...

 

[Agile]

Would not worry, it is believed the Volcano eruption this week at reunion Island has produced more CO2 in two days than man has in the last 12 months!

Thats interesting! Those CO2 emissions are part of the way the world works and just means we will have to work a bit harder on the CO2. I had better fit a condensing boiler at home now!

I have climbed up that volcano and looked down the rim into the crater.

When I went it was only smoking a little but it had errupted a few weeks before and the lava flow was still warm and would steam if you poured water into it.

There was a nice villa with the lava stopping half way across the lawn about 2m high. I had seen that on the TV news with the lady shouting at the lava telling it to "go back" or rather "allez ezz" in Creole!

Another intreaguing thing was the way that they just sculpted the lava flow where it crossed the road so that you could continue to drive over it!

When walking up to the crater we met a party coming down and all said our "Bonjours" but the last one saw my "Fullers 50" tee shirt and said something like "My God you must be British!"

Tony

 

[Syne Wave]

.... buy new condensing boilers and burn wood as this is a sustainable source although it produces CO2.

Why not plant more trees? They remove the CO2 from the atmosphere.

Tony

Ah those were the days when I had money. Unfortunately I haven't got the £1K for a new boiler.
As for the trees ~ have you seen how much house building there is going on these days. TREEs don't stand a chance. As for my trees, I only have 1/3 acre and unlike all those residents who live nearby I do not avocate the chop-it-down mentality. I have 30+ trees in my garden and still the neighbours like to take swipes at their limbs. Oak, Willow, Beech, Silver Birch, Rowan, Whitebeam etc. I see birds by the dozen and at least a pair of bats every year. Wildlife haven.

BUT back to my problem. The world will have to wait a minute. I was thinking more of the ~ stick a coil of copper tube / cupra nickle up the flue of around 10mm i.d., using convection to get it all moving. It isn't going to produce a massive result, but if it saved 10% it would be useful for the environment and my moth eaten wallet. The rolls of copper etc aren't very expensive. (Thinking about it ~ copper is considerably cheaper than Cupra Nickle and easier to bend.)

Q1: Do I need a pump with 10mm i.d. and if so would it negate the gain?
Q2: Has anyone done this or similar.

We live in a bungalow so the flue is not very long and we have easy access to it.

As for volcanos, we are all living with the sword of Damocles over our head. When Yellowstone park goes B A N G and it's GOING TO ~ SOOOON we're told, then nothing matters much.....