Banning of electric hot water and regular light bulbs
- Thread starter poppy
- Start date
You must have got the pick of the bunch then.
I had no option to go for natural gas so I went for a simple large electric storage connected to Smartpower, $800 and 5 years warranty. My neighbor paid $2200 after the gov. rebate for a solar + electric booster with a 10 years warranty, without the rebate would have been over $4000. To keep it under warranty a plumber comes down every year to service it at $160 In the past 18 months or so he also came to replace a faulty pressure valve and a cracked filter box for which they got charged almost $600 because the 10 years warranty didn't apply to that. Based on my water consumption I worked out that it would take me around 15 years to recover the extra cost of going solar. Even longer if I used a lot of hot water in the evening and have to have the booster kick in. And that's without the servicing costs, repairs or damaged panels.
I did ask a couple of solar owners who had them for more then 15 years and both have spent thousands of $ to keep them working properly. Then I asked someone working for a solar HWS company who suggested I'd go for a heat pump unit rather then solar. I figured its cheaper to ditch a storage system every 5 years if necessary, although they should last much longer, rather then to go for a solar unit. If you look closely the numbers just don't stack up for a solar, which is why there is the need of the government rebate sweetener.
Don't take my word for it, just switch off the booster and see how well your solar does without electricity in the winter time. You'd be surprised how much hot water you'll get for $1000 worth of night time electricity with one of the new and efficient electric storage systems. If and when I have to replace the current system if I can't get the same then I will be looking at a heat pump unit rather then going solar.
Sure you can still get them, they use a heat pump rather then the old fashion electric element but they are still nice and chunky.
Bunnings has them in packs of 10 for around 3 bucks a pack. I'm sure we'll be able to buy them from eBay. What's the matter with the fluoros, you don't like releasing mercury into the atmosphere ?
Did you see the good news re WiMax for YP ? Who said things were slow your way ?
http://news.smh.com.au/business/sas-yorke-peninsula-gets-broadband-20080819-3y1j.html
Is there any information on units? My unit is in a group of six and it has an electrical HWS.
Aren't they the sort you can also retrofit to an existing storage HWS? Those are cool. I want one of those.Sure you can still get them, they use a heat pump rather then the old fashion electric element but they are still nice and chunky.
Speaking of cool, LED lightbulbs are also very cool, albeit expensive. We don't have any incandescant bulbs in the house now, all fluros, but they still blow after a couple of years and we're so utterly lazy we're moving to LED now. All that effort to get up on a (very tall) ladder and mess with light fittings ... barely have to do it once a lifetime with LED lightbulbs
One perk of the low-wattage bulbs is you can use a 100 watt equivalent with light shades that are rated sub 40W in a room that is too dark with a regular 40W bulb and not melt the lampshade. We were testing the lights in the IP with some old 100W incandescants from the back of a drawer and all the shades had 40W limits. How stupid - 40W lights in big rooms with high ceilings? No wonder the previous owner could live with the awful paint job in there. They couldn't SEE it.
How do they police that?
One of the things of concern about the cheap globes (both the original version and the new ones) is that they dont have an internal fuse in them. We had a cheapie, Mirabella, that exploded when it blew; apparently they can do that if they dont have the internal fuse. In our case, the white bowl around the globe was shattered!
Of course the Council cant police what goes into your closed rubbish. To make people take their globes to a particular disposal site is really naiive. They will need to make Post Offices and the like have container bins for such things, just as they do with printer cartridges.
Of course the Council cant police what goes into your closed rubbish. To make people take their globes to a particular disposal site is really naiive. They will need to make Post Offices and the like have container bins for such things, just as they do with printer cartridges.
