The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery

Re:The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery by protocolture on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @07:13PM (#40664213)

A lot of that doesnt apply to old dwellings does it?

I recall in my great grandparents old terrace house, the kitchen was set behind the neighbors fireplace. The only rational place for the fridge stand effectively copped 50-80 degrees from the neighbors fire, just radiating from the brick. This lead to the fridge running constantly and having an extremely short lifespan (and sometimes not functioning at all)

That said because it was old everything was air dried.

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Re:The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery by Grimblewald on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @08:54PM (#40664824)

that sounds like it has got to be an outlying situation though, and things like this tend to work on population averages.

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Re:The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery by jfengel on Wednesday June 12, 2024 @10:46PM (#40665414)

The UK has a ton of old dwellings. Like, a three century old home isn't even a local landmark. It's just a house.

They have of course been retrofitted with electricity and plumbing and gas and modern insulation (usually), but exactly what you get depends on how recently it's been renovated. And "mid 20th century" is a very common answer.

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Re:The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery by physicsguy on Thursday June 13, 2024 @01:36AM (#40666284)

Not really, the U.K. has some of the oldest housing stock in the world. For e.g. my house is pretty typical, built in 1912, it has a double skin wall of bricks but with no cavity. It has three original fireplaces which are all very draughty. I have timber sash windows, and though I recently got double glazing my neighbours on either side do not have it.

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Re:The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery by londons_explore on Thursday June 13, 2024 @06:02AM (#40667761)

Buy a "chimney sheep". Made a huge difference to me.

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Re:The cement that could turn your house into a giant battery by protocolture on Friday June 14, 2024 @01:55AM (#40677918)

I had a look at their home town on google maps, and it looked like 1/2 to 1/3 of the town was still made up of old terrace houses. I imagine it would be tricky to selectively demolish them.

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