In the UK you can drive a light quadricycle on a motorcycle licence. There’s not much to these vehicles so this begs the question – could you actually just make one? I’m thinking pretty much on the kitchen table and using just regular hand tools.
Here the body has a frame made with these aluminium extrusions.
The ‘T’ slots enable panels of polycarbonate and plywood to be easily bolted on or slotted in. With a side profile of 1.2m x 1.2m at this stage it is still easily lifted off the kitchen table and with a plastic chair inside you can already sit in it. What makes it go?
There are loads of ads for electric hub motors for scooters and a pair of these at the back would be perfect. Failing that, a pair of decapitated scooters bolted to the floor would provide power and batteries all in one go. Just make sure you don’t exceed 6kW if you want to keep to a simpler light quadricycle. At the front you could use go-kart parts to provide brakes and steering although the front wheels you chopped off your scooters might do. Even better might be a ready made cyclekart front axle – see link below.
Lights? Just bike stuff, even torches. Speedo? Phone. Wipers? Nah, just prop open the screen. Suspension? Possibly not needed at such low speeds but tennis balls make cheap springs. Luggage? Box at the back doubles as a seat.
So, lots of ideas that might provide inspiration for a fun project and ultimately make the school run interesting and economical.
You might find it hard to tear yourself away from the cyclekart web site. If you are inspired in this direction have a look at the OriginalTwist 3-wheeler here which might tie in nicely. A cyclekart Morgan F4; now there’s an idea. My first car was an F4; great fun.
What if Morgan was an assembly only operation? All the tapping, hammering and sewing operations would go and all the components would come from outside.
Here all the oily bits come from a Mazda MX5 giving IRS, the best gearbox and the 2.5 litre Mazda/Ford Duratec engine.
Jenvey 45DCOE replica throttle bodies give the period look to the engine bay and are good for over 250bhp.
The structural bodywork can be even more woody than before. Just quick and accurate.
Aircraft grade birch plywood stuck onto an aluminium sheet is CNC machined away to leave internal struts for load distribution and pockets for plug inserts.
Mirror image panels are glued wood-to-wood and the outside aluminium edges peened over to leave a solid looking panel (but largely hollow inside) which will not only look good with complex curves but be very strong and light. Loads, from components bolted to the panel, are met by plugs inserted into machined pockets so that any through bolts can’t crush the wood structure when tightened. The plugs are fitted in pairs with a larger star washer in between so that the sharp edges crush into the plywood to give even more load transmission. Being CNC machined, identical complex panels can be produced quickly and with minimal labour cost. What used to take days now takes a few minutes and assembly is quicker because everything fits.
So now a lighter but much stronger and stiffer car is ready to receive the existing wings, bonnet and cowl. A nice pair of Recaro seats are dropped in and it looks exactly like a traditional Morgan.
So, production could be easily quadrupled, labour halved and maybe the price halved too. So, the best driving Morgan so far and at an affordable price.
If you’re building an EV or converting an existing car, why settle for ordinary when you can create something extraordinary? Enter the Emrax 348 electric motor—one of the most impressive motors available today. Whether you’re using one, a pair, or going all out with four, the numbers are jaw-dropping:
Emrax 348 Quick Specs:
Dimensions: 348mm diameter × 110mm depth (about the size of a wheelbarrow wheel).
Torque: 1,000 Nm—nearly as much as a Bugatti Chiron (1,600 Nm), so a pair of Emrax motors surpass it. Of course, the Chiron has a gearbox, but still.
Power: 500 hp per motor (1,000 hp for a pair). Although output is halved after 2 minutes, that’s more than enough if you’re hitting 100 mph in under 7 seconds.
Max Revs: 4,000 RPM—this limits top speed and influences gear ratios, making it a balancing act between acceleration and top speed.
Design Objective:
Create a modular unit that combines suspension, steering, braking, and drive—all in one elegant package. The idea is to keep it compact and cost-effective, but versatile enough to be used on any corner of the car.
The core of the module is a CNC-machined aluminium plate (approx. 60×40 cm). Mounted to it are:
Unequal-length wishbones shorter upper arms – longer bottom arms bolted at the rear through slots.
A universal hub carrier (e.g. Brypar Motorsport) for flexibility in steering geometry and the strength of Porsche-grade hubs and bearings.
Brake discs mounted close to the plate with callipers fixed directly to it, minimising unsprung weight.
Electric motor + bevel gear drive: Instead of mounting the reduction gear and motor inline (which causes width and cooling problems), we use a bevel gear connected to a short, angled prop shaft. The drive motor is then mounted elsewhere, anywhere along an arc—say, on the rear bulkhead behind the back seats —improving cooling, packaging, and polar moment of inertia. The gear ratio can be changed very quickly just by exchanging the whole bevel gear housing.
The suspension uses a pushrod-actuated rocker linked to a spring/damper mounted along the top of the plate—neatly tucked away and easy to tune.
Performance Examples:
Two-Wheel Drive:
Cap your top speed at 150 mph and the gearing and torque gives around 1.4 tons of thrust at the wheels. If your car weighs more than that—and most EVs do—you won’t hit the 1g needed for a 2.5-second 0–60 mph time although circa 3 seconds would be a reasonable expectation. So while a 1,000hp car will be pretty spectacular, to graduate from supercar to hypercar territory, you’ll need four-wheel drive.
Four-Wheel Drive:
Use all four corners, and with a tyre speed rating limit of 186 mph, you’ll get 2.2 tons of thrust (or 2.67 tons if limiting top speed to 155 mph). With a 2.2 ton car that translates to 0–60 in 2.5 seconds—now we’re talking hypercar credentials. Tyres are usually grippy enough to allow acceleration of at least 1g. The chart below shows how long that takes to reach various speeds. Unfortunately, the faster you go, the more wind resistance bends those lines; even so, 0-100 in 4 seconds looks like a realistic target.
Braking Considerations:
Even with regenerative braking, powerful cars still need strong friction brakes. Freed from the constraints of wheel diameter, the brake disc can be as large as needed—and even have a second calliper. That means you don’t need massive wheels just to fit oversized brakes. Big discs and double calipers make no difference to unsprung weight – perfect.
Final Thoughts:
These integrated modules are perfect for developing a powertrain test mule. Any sturdy hatchback will do. With most of the engineering already solved, you can jump straight into drivetrain testing without reinventing the wheel.
And because they’re stealthy, we’re entering the golden age of Q-cars. That humble Citroën Berlingo sketched above? It could quietly hide 2,000 hp. Why the Berlingo? There’s loads of room in the nose for front motors, even more in the back, and already wide wheels with arches ready to take bigger tyres. Inside, you’ve got ample space for batteries, telemetry, and more. Why sit on the floor of a cramped supercar when a roomy Berlingo is just as quick?
In case you were wondering, the McMurtry Speirling fan car does 0-60 in 1.4 seconds – but you can’t get a sofa in the back.
If you fancy the Grand Designs Heating System but need a bit more power for a bigger house then you are in luck; bigger is even better. Rather than scaling up the ground source heat pump we can add one of the latest high temperature air source heat pumps to the mix.
That way we get the best of both worlds with the GSHP taking care of the cheap rate nightshift and the ASHP maximising efficiency with warmer daytime air. Both heat pumps can run together when needed and this layered approach will satisfy the heating seasonal demands of a wider range of houses. Heating with this system is unusually flexible. With energy stored in oversized buffer tanks, the heat delivery is governed by the rate at which it is pumped to the various emitters and not directly determined by heat pump power; it is even possible to exceed the power of the heat pumps for short periods.
Above is the heat pump pipework. All the input to the tanks is via coils except the air side tank (on the left) which is direct. We’ll go through this, bit by bit, and you’ll see all the clever stuff emerge.
Running largely at night and avoiding all the cold air and defrosting malarky that would plague an ASHP a ground source pump is the starting point. GSHPs produce slightly better seasonal COPs than ASHPs but we can raise that even more by putting extra energy back into the ground.
Concept number one:
This chart compares the COP of a GSHP with the COP variation of an ASHP over the winter months. The wide swings in air temperature vary the COP of an ASHP hugely (the area between the red and blue lines) and show how day time running might be a lot better than night time. The black line for the GSHP is steady but declines as the ground is cooled by the season as well as the demand from the heat pump. Note the huge difference between the blue line and the black line which shows why ground source heat pumps are generally better.
Our system seeks to ignore that horrible blue line (i.e. don’t run the ASHP at night) and to operate around the red line and the black line. Those lines diverge after January where the ground gets colder and day time temperatures start to recover and it makes sense to focus on daytime running of the ASHP. Here comes the big concept. We can also grab some of the day time warmth to benefit the GSHP and flatten and lift the black line to a COP of around 4. We do this with a tank and some air to water heat exchangers, shown on the left of the diagram above.
The outlet flow from the GSHP is typically around zero degrees, or colder, so the ambient air is nearly always warmer, especially during the daytime. The heat in the air is captured with three car type radiators and fans and circulated into the large buffer tank. This water goes to the ground loops whenever the heat pump and its circulation pump runs. There will be times when the tank is actually hot enough to feed energy back into the ground. Imagine a nice sunny day when the tank has been independently spooling up to 12c or so and the heat pump starts up and dumps 1,000 litres straight into the ground loops. This won’t happen often but the ground will rarely be fed temperatures below zero. Generally the ground loops start off warmer and are in warmer earth. The overall result is that we take a system that is intrinsically very good and make it much better. A higher COP gives much lower bills. A COP lift from 3 to 4 produces 33% more heat for your money; it’s that significant. That’s a good starting point but we can improve a lot more on that.
Concept number two:
Off-peak electricity can be had at night (for the car charging brigade) and when that is multiplied up by a heat pump the result is astonishingly cheap energy. A 10kW heat pump running 7 hours nightly for the whole 200 days of winter delivers 14,000kW.hrs for a mere £260. Crazy but true! The maths says it all; 7.5p for 1 kW.hr boosted by the COP makes 4kW.hr – divide 7.5 by 4 and you get 1.88p per kW.hr. How good is that? Well, gas is four times more expensive and electricity is twelve times more expensive, so yes, it’s good alright.
But it has to be stored ready for the next day, hence some tanks. Two 1,000 litre tanks for 2,000 litres of heating storage.
Although the ASHP is more suited for the day shift (nearer the red line on that COP chart) it makes sense to run it at night too when electricity is cheap. For example, near dawn while the GSHP tops up the domestic hot water cylinder the ASHP can be supplying much hotter water to the hot cylinder (red one on the right of the picture) for morning use on towel rails and fan-coils. The system can also be heating the concrete floor slabs at the same time so that’s more power used and stored.
The stripper circuit
I developed this idea to preserve the precious heat in the hotter tank of a two tank system. It works a treat and will lift the performance of this system considerably. Here a three-port valve diverts water to the hot tank coil – if that incoming water is hotter – and the returning water then goes through the colder tank coil where the remaining heat is stripped out. If the incoming water is cooler than the hot tank then it is switched, by a simple Dt controller, directly to the cooler tank coil. So, if the supply from either heat pump was on a low set point, say to run the floors, then the hotter water tank, with high grade heat, would be left undisturbed. That hotter tank could also be heated further by a wood burning stove or a gas boiler (directly, no coils) – and that’s where they go if needed. They say that you can’t combine low temperature heat pumps with additional high temperature sources but they are wrong. This does the job perfectly. A wood burner might be high on your wish list especially if you have access to cheap wood. A gas boiler is also a desirable addition to the stack of power sources, providing masses of high grade heat and adding to the overall system reliability.
Day time electricity is much more expensive but solar panels can help to run the ASHP fairly cheaply (or free) and that high, warm day, COP makes a big difference. Don’t forget, the stored energy might be enough to get through most days without any additional heat at all. That’s the benefit of having two lower powered heat pumps – you are more likely to be able to run one free on the solar panels. Of course, on really cold days both pumps can run together and along with any stored energy there will always be enough power.
Transmission
Lets now add a few more pipes to the two big tanks on the diagram. With masses of cheap heat parked in them, sending it to towel rails, fan coils in bedrooms, under-floor downstairs and in bathrooms is all easier than usual. All independent of the heat pumps and fully timed and zoned. If the diagram looks simplistic it’s because it really is that simple.
ESBE mixer unit
This blends down the big tanks to suit the under-floor pipes and it does weather compensation too. Normal UFH mixers are fixed at one temperature but ESBE mixers vary according to the outside temperature and adjust the power of the heating as necessary.
The towel rails and fan-coil units are separately fed by pump(s) and timers and there is no problem with zoning them as much as is required. If any radiators are used the hotter ASHP will cope with these too but they are best avoided.
Naysayers will now be saying that buffer tanks are inefficient or that heat pumps should run 24/7 or that zoning does not sit well with heat pumps. They are right on all counts but they miss the point; our system is so efficient and cheap to run it easily trumps any minor gains elsewhere.
The tanks – all from OSO
The tech room will look rather impressive with three 1,000 litre tanks. One will be for the air side of the hybrid heat pump and the other two for heat storage. A fourth tank is for domestic hot water. (300 litres with a 3msq coil for heat pump compatibility).
EDDI solar diverter
The GSHP can produce hot water cheaper than a direct electric heater but the EDDI picks off solar excesses in short bursts during the day and runs the tank up to much higher temperatures. The heat pump will be all the better for not firing up all the time, the legionella will get regularly fried and a higher temperature effectively makes the tank size bigger; so wins all round.
Willis remote immersion heater
I like these because the circulation past the immersion element keeps the thermostat from shutting down under its own heat and also tank loading is straight into the top to maintain perfect stratification. Tank fitted immersion heaters can short cycle frequently and are harder to service too.
Air conditioning
Mmmm, how to mix heating the hot water cylinder with cooling the house? Easy actually; the GSHP and the Eddi do the hot water and the ASHP does the cooling of the floors etc. Both at once if you like. While this is technically possible I’d favour separate fan coil units.
Solar panels + Enphase IQ8 micro-inverters
Each panel has its own micro-inverter for long term reliability, performance and also power if the grid fails – you know, in a Zombie Apocalypse scenario. At least 18 panels (about 7kWp) would often keep either heat pump running during the day. Each heat pump draws just over 2kW so the panels should have that covered.
Electric car
It’s hard to get cheap off-peak electricity combined with a decent export rate so the car makes a good soak for any excess. You no longer buy petrol so that’s just as good as any export payments. N.B. There are no domestic batteries in our system – the money is better spent elsewhere. When the technology matures the car will be the battery anyway.
Solar tech room
This is just a fancy tweak – you don’t need this as part of the system; be cool if you did though.
All those car radiators and the ASHP would be neat and more efficient in a dedicated shed with glass sides for some solar heat. If possible, on a flat roof would be good. Apart from being neat and tidy the solar side helps to avoid the ASHP defrosting cycles with that bank of solar warmed water barrels. There is a COP lift too.
Summary
You’d need a huge house to justify all this but if you are in that fortunate position this maximises cheaper energy along with the versatility to cope with any demands. Some heat pump installations can be disappointing but this so simple and powerful there is no fear of that here, indeed you might have the best system ever devised.
Could this super cheap heating scale up for a really huge house? Absolutely, with reasonable capital costs and, with multiple power sources, better reliability too. Both heat pumps could go up to the next common size – 17kW each and then, if that’s still not enough, you could double up with two of each for a total of 68kW. More? Well, don’t forget that the hot tank is designed to receive direct heat from a gas boiler and/or a wood burning stove so if you need 100kW or more that’s no problem at all.
Compared with , say, a wood chip burning furnace this system is not only cheaper but easy to run reliably with lots of redundancy built in. Best of all though the extreme efficiency will get those bills down to levels you’d hardly believe.
There are a couple of significant heating ideas already featured on this site. One, the hybrid combined air/ground source heat pump, where a ground source pump has a connected tank warmed by the ambient air. And the other where big water tanks store cheap off-peak energy.
The first concept produces astonishing coefficients of performance and the second produces astonishingly low bills.
For the Grand Designs Heating System, we’ll combine these concepts and serve them up as a benchmark for what is possible. Here we go.
Running largely at night and avoiding all the cold air and defrosting malarky that would plague an ASHP. a ground source pump is the starting point. GSHPs produce slightly better seasonable COPs than ASHPs but we can raise the COP even more by putting extra energy back into the ground.
This chart compares the COP of a GSHP (black line) with the COP variation of an ASHP over the winter months. We can ignore that horrible blue line and focus on the divergence of the red line (warm air days) with the declining black line for the GSHP. Our mission is to grab some of the day time warmth and add it to the mix and thus flatten the black line to a COP of around 4. We do this with a tank and some air to water heat exchangers.
The outlet flow from the heat pump is typically around 0c or colder so the ambient air is nearly always warmer, especially during the daytime. The heat in the air is captured with three car type radiators and fans and stored in a large buffer tank. This water goes to the ground loops whenever the heat pump and its circulation pump runs. The design power of the radiator/fan combination is roughly equal to the heat pump to try to keep the ground temperature from depleting. There will be times when the tank is actually warm enough to feed energy back into the ground. Imagine a nice sunny day when the tank has been independently spooling up to 12c or so and the heat pump starts up and dumps 1,000 litres through the ground loops. This won’t happen often but the ground loops will rarely be fed temperatures below zero as is typical with most installations. The overall result is that we take a system that is intrinsically very good and make it much better. A higher COP gives much lower bills. That’s a good starting point but we can improve a lot more on that.
Concept number two:
Off-peak electricity can be had at night, for the car charging brigade, and when that is multiplied up by a heat pump the result is astonishingly cheap energy. A 10kW heat pump running for 7 hours nightly over the whole 200 days of winter delivers 14,000kW.hrs for about £260. Crazy but true! The maths says it all; 7.5p for1 kW.hr on a COP of 4 makes 4kW.hrs – divide 7.5 by 4 and you get 1.88p per kW hour. Compare that with electricity which costs around 24p/kW.hr. The difference is astonishing but that cheap energy has to be stored ready for the next day, hence some tanks. Two 1,000 litre tanks combine to make 2,000 litres for the heating storage. N.B To remove that energy from the tanks we need to get the tank temperature back down to 30c or less and that will require, at least some, underfloor heating.
The stored energy might be enough to get through most days without any additional heat at all. If there is a shortfall any day time running will be much more expensive but the solar panels can help to run the GSHP fairly cheaply (or free) and that high COP makes a big difference.
Naysayers will now be saying that buffer tanks are inefficient or that heat pumps should run 24/7 or that zoning does not sit well with heat pumps. They are right on all counts but efficiency is not the point; we are using one third priced electricity which easily trumps any minor gains elsewhere.
The tanks – all from OSO
The tech room will look rather impressive with three 1,000 litre tanks and another smaller one. One will be for the air side of the hybrid heat pump and the other two for heat storage. The smaller tank is for domestic hot water. (300 litres with a 3msq coil for heat pump compatibility).
EDDI solar diverter
You could argue that the GSHP can produce hot water cheaper than a direct electric heater – the immersion – but the EDDI picks off solar excesses in short bursts during the day and runs the tank up to much higher temperatures. The heat pump will be all the better for not firing up all the time, the legionella will get regularly fried, and the tank size is effectively bigger; wins all round.
Willis remote immersion heater
I like these because the circulation past the immersion element keeps the thermostat from shutting down under its own heat. Tank fitted immersion heaters can short cycle frequently and are harder to service too.
Transmission
Towel rails, fan coils in bedrooms, under-floor downstairs and in bathrooms. All independent of the heat pump and fully timed and zoned. The big tanks make this possible and simple too.
ESBE blender unit
This blends down the big tanks to suit the under-floor pipes and it does weather compensation too. The towel rails and fan-coil units are directly fed by pump(s) and timers.
Mini-split
On warm days an air-to-air heat pump will be more efficient than the GSHP and it will be useful for topping up especially if it’s lower powered and often running free off solar. The blown warm air makes a useful laundry drier and the cooling feature sorts out the need for air conditioning. Cold air pours across the floors making a single source surprisingly effective.
Solar panels + Enphase IQ8 micro-inverters
Each panel will have its own micro inverter for long term reliability, performance and also power if the grid fails – you know, in a Zombie Apocalypse scenario. At least 18 panels (about 7kWp) would often keep either heat pump running during the day. The GSHP draws just over 2kW and the mini-split just under 2kW so the panels should have that covered.
Electric car
It’s hard to get cheap off-peak electricity combined with a decent export rate so the car makes a good soak for any excess. You no longer buy petrol so that’s just as good as any export payments. N.B. There are no domestic batteries in our system – the money is better spent elsewhere. When the technology matures the car will be the battery anyway.
Solar tech room
All those radiators and the mini split would be neat and more efficient in a dedicated solar shed. If possible, on the roof would be good. Apart from being neat and tidy the solar side helps the air powered mini-split to avoid defrosting cycles.
Conclusion
If you want your Grand Designs house to stand out and be the best of the best, this could be the way to go. What do you think Kevin?
BTW If you own a castle or something and this looks a bit light on, then check out the meaty version on
There is a hard push under way to make us abandon fossil fuel boilers and adopt heat pumps instead. The trouble is they don’t seem to work for everybody and they are expensive too. So, in many cases that’s a lot of money for something we don’t even want. Don’t despair though, there’s a way through this maze and the outcome could be cheaper heating for less initial outlay. The trick, in a nutshell, is to have more than one heat pump; the one they pay you £7,500 to install and then a smaller one to back it up.
Learn to love heat pumps
Typically consuming not much more power than an electric kettle the heat pump will deliver about 3 times as much energy to your heating, often more. The power is increasingly produced by renewables so the heat pump is an essential multiplier of green energy. That’s why we love them and that’s why we should have them.
Overcome the issues
Heat pumps work well at lower temperatures but that drastically reduces the effectiveness of your existing pipes and radiators. The pipes – usually 22mm copper – are the first bottleneck and probably only transmit around 12kW. So, without a total pipes overhaul the biggest heat pump you can have is 12kW (4kW drawn power). Half that, 6kW delivered is very common and suits well insulated modern houses and that might be the one for you too but only with extra back-up power.
Down the line the radiators will need an overhaul though; either some unsightly bigger ones or, preferably, fan-coil units with smart radiator valves on them to make heat distribution more selective and locally more effective. I prefer my own design for a DIY fan-coil unit (obvs).
With a smaller heat pump in the mix the chances are you can cover most of the cost with the £7,500 grant. A good start but now we need more power to back up a system living on the edge.
First things last
Before you start the big overhaul it’s best to install the back-up element, a mini-split heat pump – those aircon units often found in a hot foreign holiday rental. You probably only need one and they are so effective it should be a low power unit. The 1.71kW Mitsubishi SRK60ZSX-WF, for example, bangs out a healthy 6kW. Expect to spend under £2,000 for each one fully installed.
With the heat pump makeover done the running costs will still be the same as oil or gas but now the fun begins as we can move to the cost reduction phase.
First off, solar panels. Fitted with Enphase micro inverters you can fit odd numbers in odd places without any problems and they should give 20 years of trouble-free power. String inverters? Cheaper but when it fails in ten years everything fails at once; is the installer still around? Expect a long downtime, lots of grief and final expenditure higher than the Enphase route.
Because your heat pumps are low powered you will often find you can run one for free even when panel output is reduced. Include a solar diverter (like the Eddi) and the panels can send their surplus power to the immersion heater. This fixes the problem of poor hot water delivery associated with low temperature heat pumps and is the reason you might get away with not changing the tank in the first place. Keep your old tank, spend the money on panels. N.B the reason why your installer wants to change the tank is that the new one will have a much bigger coil to reduce recovery times – if you can afford it then go for it. Now the heating and electricity bills are usefully reduced and maybe servicing costs too. Do you service your fridge every year? No; same for heat pumps.
What about batteries? They used to be expensive and they wore out too quickly to justify the cost. But now they are cheaper (check out the Fogstar site) there is a better case for storing cheap off-peak electricity and running your (low powered) heat pump on it later. This can literally halve your energy bills – see graph below.
There’s a useful tactic to be considered when you are finally persuaded into owning an electric car.
Some EVs can offer 240v vehicle to load (V2L) with around 3kW available from a socket behind the back seat. They imagine you might plug in a toaster when you go camping. Never mind the toaster, you could plug in a mini-split and use cheap off-peak electricity to heat the house. If you are looking for a box of tricks to make this work check out the Victron Quattro-II which has an extra 240v input. The idea here is to go for a domestic battery first but be ready for the EV when it comes.
This all gets you connected to super cheap heating and air-conditioning too.
As you can see, cheap off-peak electricity, time shifted then multiplied with a heat pump gives astonishing results. Vehicle to Grid charging is another way although not yet mainstream but V2L gets us there now without installing the expensive V2G charger and you can choose from a bigger range of cars.So not a Nissan Leaf now, more likely a Kia or Hyundai.The result; half price for a lot of your heatingif not all of it.
The picture wouldn’t be complete without mentioning off-peak energy storage in water rather than batteries. Check out the idea in Grand Designs Heating System. Water lasts forever, batteries don’t.
Of course, all houses are different but hopefully there are some ideas here to help make a complex topic simpler. Small heat pump + mini-split + solar – the way to go – then batteries or tanks.
It’s no good just working out how much per kilowatt hour a heat pump costs to run compared to, say, a gas boiler. What’s more to the point is what is the total hit to your pocket will be after a reasonable length of time. Your system might have to generate around 15,000 kW.hrs or more each year. After about 6 years that will come to a neat 100,000 kW.hrs which is handy for making the maths easier. Say you spend £5,000 on a gas boiler then the capital cost per kW.hr it makes over that time is 5p. Each £1,000 becomes pence per kilowatt hour. Adding to that the actual running cost of the plant in question and we can get a good idea of the total long term cost. Similar maths for the energy component. So12p per kW.hr for gas is £12,000 for the 100,000 kW.hrs.
Putting those together. A £5,000 gas boiler with gas at 12p/kW.hr makes a total of £17,000 for 6 years.
What about in the longer term when the cost of the kit is spread out? Below there’s a graph with the results. Double click on it to get a bigger view.
The blue bars are kit plus energy for 6 years and the grey bars go to 200,000 kW.hrs with the kit cost remaining the same Here the differences become even more marked.
These sums illustrate the danger of adding more kit to your mix. If you were to follow the government lead on hybrid heat pumps that would cost about £10,000 (after the grant) so you’d add about 10p/kW.hr to your existing set up but the 100,000 target doesn’t move. Add £10,000 to the natural gas bar on the chart and the total cost is worse than EVERYTHING on the chart except neat electricity.
Bearing in mind that the bottom scale shows your future heating bills and those figures are £thousands the differences are significant.
Electricity £1,500 for rads – Electric radiators are cheap enough to tempt one down this route but the sheer weight of expensive electricity has made this the worst choice by a long way. £70,000 for 10 years! Ads for 100% efficient electric radiators should be banned.
Stove and tank £5,200 – A stove connected to a heat bank is expensive but fares well compared to electricity. Even better if you can access cheap wood.
Heat pumps £10,000 – The heavy up front cost and use of the most expensive fuel makes heat pumps, sadly, the third worse choice. However, free power from solar panels makes a big difference. A smaller heat pump plus a separate mini-split is well worth considering.
Battery on Go £6,500 – An expensive battery grabbing cheap night time electricity from Octopus works out well but it’s always a limited supply.
Pellet boiler £4,000 – Who cares?
Gas boiler £2,500 – Getting better and reassuring seeing that this is what most people already have.
Oil boiler and tank £4,500- Expensive to buy and install. Expensive to service. We can do better.
Mini-split and battery £8,500 – Expensive battery meets cheap heat pump and the result is magic. Not the winner here because the battery will wear out eventually. Not shown on the graph but solar + mini-split is the way to go – this was only evident after the graph was there to see.
LPG gas boiler and tank £3,500 – Not too bad up front and cheap’ish to run. The winner by miles and leaves you much better off than with a heat pump.
Solar £7,000 for 20 panels – Not a fair comparison with this list as it would take 10 years to make the 100,000 kW.hrs but there are no running costs at all. Whatever you chose above, the panels will always be sort of better but you’d need them as well. Add a mini-split and that’s proper magic.
Conclusion – LPG gives plenty of power for not too much up front. Add lots of solar panels and a mini-split or two (without the battery) and you’ll be cushtie – relatively. Remember you will have electricity costs as well as all this heating and solar panels reduce this considerably and often run the mini-split free of charge. Free aircon in the summer is a bonus. A mini-split costs about £1,200 and it is a proper heat pump. So add £1,200 to the solar panel bar on the chart and you can see why this should be part of your strategy.
The choice for you? Take your quotes, add on the rate x 100,000 and draw it on the graph.
While I hope my figures are correct please check before making any decisions.
All this talk of nuclear fusion makes me laugh. Our area has been connected to a local nuclear fusion plant for ages and myself along with a few neighbours are already connected.
The benefits certainly compare well with other forms of energy. Unlike conventional sources there are no wires or pipes because the transmission is wireless. It’s hard to imagine how that works, but the energy is sort of beamed across the airwaves. It is necessary to have line of site from the reactor to the receiver so this may not be available for everyone. There was no cost to actually connect to the source reactor although the receiver was fairly expensive at around £5,000. Possibly the major benefit though is that there is no charge for the energy supplied as it is beamed, free of charge, directly to the receiver. In these times of hugely expensive energy, it seems impossible that this fusion power can be free but it’s true, there is no charge for the power and no sneaky daily charges either. Furthermore, the price is fixed at zero and it is guaranteed that there will be no price increases ever.
On the downside the transmission has been fairly erratic and a bit limited over the winter. This deficiency can be largely remedied by having a battery to tide us over the downtimes.
So far, reliability of the fusion reactor itself has been good and I’m told it is unlikely to fail for well past our own lifetimes. It is comforting to know that it has never been known to fail; unlike some other supplies.
So, you may well ask, if it’s free energy with free and quick connection why isn’t everybody doing it? Well, it beats me but I have noticed that a few savvy people round here have got the message and have fitted receivers to their rooftops.
You might not have heard about all this because the big energy suppliers want it to be kept secret. So, keep it to yourself. Mum’s the word.
Wouldn’t it be great to have something that is smaller than a caravan for easy towing but bigger than a caravan when you arrive at your destination. lt would be packed tight with all your kit and then be opened up on site at the press of a button. A full off-grid energy system built in would be the cherry on top and a motorised satellite dish that gets the footie running straight away wouldn’t hurt either. And that brings us to the ……. drum roll …..
Original Twist Camping trailer.
You know those tool boxes where the top parts push away to reveal the box underneath? Well this trailer is like a big one with wheels on. The door frames at each end support the roof and lift it just like a light four poster car lift. You arrive on site, the roof lifts up, the sides swing up and over then the roof closes down higher to lock and stabilise. You’ll see on the picture the links that let the side pods lift up and over to came down to rest on the sides They are steadied with torsion bars and chain and sprocket ties so powering it all is quite simple with one electric motor. The drawing shows one half closed and the other open; in practice both sides deploy together. The roof lift easily copes with the weight of the solar panels, dish, awning etc.
The side pods can contain beds with lights and TV built in and/or a kitchen unit. The choice is yours.
A shower room can be fitted over the draw bar as a separate cubicle that is entered privately from the main living quarters.
This design could be scaled up or down. Pictured here it starts as the size of an SUV, for easy storage and towing, but still sleeps up to 5 when you get there. A bigger version; longer by one solar panel and with 4 wheels, would be sensational when deployed; imagine rolling into the campsite and opening up straight away, the satellite dish locks on, footie on, beers out, all in about 2 minutes. A caravan that’s 4 metres wide before any canvas extensions go out! Stand by for a crowd of onlookers.
The generous PV array makes this very much off-grid but also raises an interesting question. If your electric tow car also had panels on the roof there could be significant range extension when all the panels are combined. In the new electric era tow cars will need all the help they can get. Note that the PV still works when you get home so it makes a useful uninterruptible power supply for your house – unless you park in your garage of course.
So there’s the idea. Does it exist? No, not yet, but let me know if you would like to build it and I’ll let you know how all the links work.
Features
Fits in a normal garage
Easy to tow – only as wide and as high as a car
Aerodynamic for economical towing
Automatic opening out and closing in a minute or two
Moulded in satellite dish recess on one roof, covered when stowed
Enough solar power to run air conditioning.
A solar/battery powerhouse
The drawing is done to fit existing 400W solar panels. Imagine a matching moulded roof on your tow car with another 3 panels fitted. A fantastic look and 2.8KW in total which is over 3 horsepower. Quite possibly this combination might be more economical to tow than a car on its own!
It’s not just about touring though. Plug it in when you get home and watch those electricity bills crumble. At next winter’s projected prices that’s well over £1,000 worth every year. While turning over energy ideas consider that your electric tow car has the equivalent of four Tesla powerwall batteries built in so your trailer and car is not only a monstrous power house when on the move but potentially a major part of your domestic energy strategy. Vehicle to grid chargers are the next big thing and more suitably equiped cars are already on the way. Interested? Have a look at a collection of heating concepts here
If everybody in the U.K. was made to stand in line according to age they would make a giant bar graph like this. Your place is there too; as you grow older each year your own line takes a sideways step to the right, and so does everyone else’s.
The steep ramp down to zero starts earlier than you would expect, from as young as the mid fifties. This is due to population growth (fewer people were born in the past so the corresponding lines are smaller) and also early death. You don’t have to wait for old age to join the 542,000 deaths each year; over 300,000 die from cancer, dementia, heart and stroke, all of which can strike prematurely.
The chart illustrates how demand from an ever increasing population made the meteoric rise in house prices inevitable. Look at the biggest and tallest block on the chart – the sixties baby boomers. The biggest population surge ever seen, grew up, got jobs and bought houses as fast as they could be built. Easy access to cheap money accompanied the latter days of the surge so it was inevitable that the run in prices would continue into territory that now looks uncomfortably overbought. That is just the nature of markets.
Once the rush started a new ‘truth’ emerged. With prices perpetually rising, for many borrowers there was no question of repaying their interest only loans; they could always sell at a profit, pay off the debt, buy a car and live happily ever after. This sort of thinking actually worked when prices kept rising; even the lenders got sucked in as their loans appeared to be safe. Old habits die hard it seems but what happens to those loans in a stagnant or falling market? Debt is a deferred payment which has to be paid by someone. Could it be that current buyers are not fully aware that they will have to pay back every penny? Now those mad days are over some recent house purchases may never be paid for, much to the chagrin of the lenders. An unfortunate knock-on from this mistaken optimism is that it inevitably depletes the inheritance tally of the next generation and their ability to buy a house.
Today the bulk of the boomers are middle aged, employed and at the height of their earning power, they mostly bought their houses cheaply and have seen their equity rise enough to borrow against it. There is a smart car on the driveway (brand new for one in ten households), holidays, restaurants, life is good. The bounty doesn’t stop there though, their parents are dying, a house is inherited to be sold or rented out. If only life could be so easy for everyone. The chart says no.
After the peak of the boomers the birth rate started to decline, 13 years in a row, and that signaled the end of their powerful influence on property prices and a lot more besides. The big arrow on the left of the chart shows the annual birth tally in gentle decline for the last 50 years. For now, births still exceed deaths so the population is still growing but births initially make more expense for the very group that is already struggling with high house prices.
The arrival of the baby boomers caused some seismic but positive effects and now, as they start to retire, we can expect to see some negativity as those effects are reversed. More people will retire for each of the next fourteen years until half the current block of baby boomers is drawing pensions with the other half still to go. From 2020 on, retirees start to overwhelm the young earners (backward slope in their area) coming up behind them.
The chart has an even bigger story to tell. Note the two big arrows on the chart and the abrupt change in direction just where the baby boomers peak occurs some 50 years ago. This is a momentous event not seen before for centuries; it signals the end of population growth and the start of a new ex-growth era. The effects of this will be profound, affecting pensions, business, stock valuations and more. As the change takes place the money – that washed plentifully over industries like travel, baby goods, retail, house builders and automotive – is drying up, with results that have recently been all too obvious. Sector by sector is succumbing to a lack of cash. The change is well under way with a lot more to come. House prices will be next. Ironically, as the wealthy baby boomers decrease their spending the resulting job loses are born by the next generation and job uncertainty holds back house buying decisions.
The Government will have to fund all the extra draws on the NHS, pensions, debt funding etc. by increasing taxes or borrowing more. But with the number of tax payers declining the Government will have to sell more bonds and this at a time when pension funds become net sellers of bonds (to pay out the pensions of course). With fewer buyers for bonds the only way to make them more attractive is to raise yields and this devalues existing bonds so even more have to be sold to pay the pensions. This is just one example of how ex-growth U.K. faces some intractable vicious circles. The point though is that this puts upward pressure on interest rates. The bank base rate is now 0.75% so there is very little scope for a fall so when change does come it is likely to be bad for property prices.
Excess personal debt is a major threat to property prices. On the surface daily life looks normal and secure but in reality it’s artificially and precariously propped by debt. We’re flying by pulling on our bootlaces. Whether through poverty or imagined wellbeing, personal debt continues to grow. Average household credit card debt is now £2,603 – pretty astonishing for the average. It seems unlikely that anyone needing this much debt can pay it back very quickly and it is predicted that the figure will increase substantially in the next 4 years. Average adult debt for everything including mortgages is £59,823. With record debt there is hardly a wall of money heading towards the property market.
Then there is government debt. As the retirees swell to well over 17 million that produces an annual pensions demand of around £170 billion not including the extra demand on the health service. The pensions industry and the Government need to be ready for this. The former already have their prudence being tested (or exposed) by the ex growth phenomenon but the problem for the Government is more acute. Pensions have always been met by the expanding set of workers following behind; a system that always worked when earners were growing in number. After centuries of habit forming complacency that era is now over. The new paradigm must involve extra taxes and borrowing. In contrast to the private pension system there is no Government pension pot, just borrowings of over £1,800,000,000,000 which is £56,000 per taxpayer and nearer £75,000 when future pension obligations are added (a promise to pay in the future is a debt). With talk of ‘fiscal headroom’ and post Brexit expenses looming these totals will certainly increase. There is talk about the end of posterity but that’s a word we can expect to see again.
The property boom has divided society into two halves. The people on the right half of the chart live in houses bought cheaply and they are very well off. All the people on the left don’t have a house and can only ever buy an expensive one; after rent, rates, general living expenses these are the people with credit card debts instead of savings.
Take the younger group shown in grey; they are starting out on their careers with little chance of buying a house of their own except via inheritance or parental gifts. The national house price to earnings ratio might be at a peaky 6 but that’s an average. Take a typical cookie cutter house in the south of England for £450,000 and the average wage of £26,364 and the ratio is 17; totally unsustainable, especially as hopeful buyers trapped in expensive rental properties are more likely to be in debt rather than building a savings pot. Let’s be clear about house price to earnings ratios; if the ratio is 17 then it would take ALL your earnings over 17 years to pay for it, and that’s before interest. Potential buyers for houses at the current prices are not in this grey group.
Obviously there are buyers out there, not very many though and declining by the year, but there non-the-less. In the home counties in particular properties are being bought by new millionaire Londoners cashing in before prices retreat further.
And buying still makes sense right? The agents saw high demand for these high priced houses which were sold quickly too – business was booming. Hold on, hold on; that’s the first danger sign slipping by – high turnover. Turnover so high that your local high street can support several estate agents (but no banks) – something weird there. When there are too many buyers or too many sellers there is an imbalance and transactions are relatively low. When there is a transition from one state to another there is a period when sellers exactly match the buyers; perfect conditions for a peak in transactions and peak agents. Logically, when transaction volume is high the market is turning. What looks like a buying frenzy is actually a subtle warning sign. The bubble is about to burst. Is that now? The house builders, are no longer making hay – maybe change is in the air?
A market correction has never amounted to much before and setbacks have always been ironed out over time. You can’t go wrong in bricks and mortar can you? Well things might be different this time. At this point we hear the call ‘there is a massive property shortage so prices can’t possibly fall’. Actually there is a shortage of ‘affordable’ property, but there is no shortage at all of ridiculously expensive properties, the market is flooded with them. You might note how half of them have price reductions; they are not exactly being snapped up.
It would be no surprise if Brexit goes down in history as the trigger that turned the property market and burst some other bubbles too. The transition will certainly be disruptive in the short term. There are thousands of areas where there will be a threat to jobs and in turn a threat to property prices.
Watch the pound carefully while Brexit unravels. Any need to defend a weak currency could raise interest rates and that will make holding or buying property even more expensive. Actually it makes everything more expensive; a country with a huge debt burden can only expect huge interest burdens when rates rise.
It can’t be sensible to be invested in an overvalued asset class while all this is going on. Buy-to-let investors (already taxed and stamped) are reasonably liquid and might well see the sense in locking in profits right now. Any obvious downturn in the market will set them selling and after that most buyers will step back to watch the fall.
So, to summarise; property prices are unsustainably high, the money that bought them was easy and cheap but is now evaporating. The ex-growth G.B. effect has kicked in disturbingly early with still more jobs at risk. The market may be turning now, or very soon, and when it does the fall will be sudden and without respite. Bubbles don’t burst quietly.
Follow up March 2020: Well there we are; the pin to burst the bubble has arrived and all sorts of unexpected consequences are popping up. One yet to be seen is the effect on the lenders as their clients lose their jobs and maybe even their lives. In short they have lent on overpriced collateral to clients who can’t pay them back. A black hole in the accounts will decrease the funds to be lent. If turning off the money tap doesn’t trouble the property market I’d be very surprised.
Original Twist 