A friend of mine charges her car with a cable running from the house across the pavement and just uses a couple of these to cover the cables in a safe way. I just googled “cable cover floor”.
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You can bet some twerp would sue if they tripped though.
The issue I have with people running cords out to the cars, and not all people use safety covers, is that elderly along with very young kids out walking with parents or on scooters/bikes on the sidewalk can easily go down if not paying attention.
It is like the elderly and young kids have to risk injury just to take a walk. A broken hip for the elderly can be deadly and balance/tripping is more of a risk of older and young folks. So I imagine a few folks will be sued along the way.
I have seen some folks run wiring under the sidewalk out to the curb with a lock on the box so they can charge their cars.
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The people down our street washed their car in the winter, and as the water ran down the pavement, it froze, and a lady later slipped on it. Her son came around, threatened to sue, and they payed up. So do be careful.
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I started driving Electric Cars from quite a young age.
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I always thought they are the perfect city vehicles - no pollution and would make the commute to work far more interesting,
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This is the market working as it should, and it’s how we will migrate to new forms of transport - just as we did in the transition from horse and cart to internal combustion engine.
The value of this particular house just dropped a little, due to your decision. Once demand for houses with charging capability reaches a certain tipping point, owners of houses without it will be financially motivated to add it.
Good Morning All,
As maybe evident from previous postings I am something of an ‘eco-warrior’. We’ve had a ‘proper’ EV (not a Mickey Mouse hybrid - ‘self-charging’ or otherwise) for 3yrs now.
The charging infrastructure is a massive issue and there are indeed a great many properties which pose significant challenges.
Providing large numbers of chargers at places of work etc. needs a great deal of careful thought as we quite simply can’t get ourselves in to a situation where we increase the load on the national electrical supply by day.
A properly co-ordinated plan needs devising which would probably require a national assessment by suitably qualified individuals and plans drawn up accordingly to avoid things being rolled out piecemeal.
We are fortunate in that we live in a rural setting with 14 acres available to us but on the other hand I’m aware that there are areas of the UK with lots of terraced housing for which there is, currently, no simple answer.
I have little faith that this Government are capable of sorting this issue out given the total disaster that was the latest Green Deal.
I can’t be the only person in this country who might think we could take all the money set aside for HS2 and put it towards an EV charging network??
The Government also need to make selling houses more challenging if they don’t have such as a suitable EPC rating or an EV charging point or a ‘proper’ sewage treatment plant (+ other requirements which currently escape me).
As I posted elsewhere people still seem to buy older properties in rural locations where the cost of heating said property doesn’t seem to be a significant factor in the decision to buy.
The greatest driver might be to deliberately increase the cost of energy to a point where it becomes a greater driver??? (Low income families would need protecting from this)
Regards
Richard
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On the flip side, there simply is not enough energy-efficient housing for the population, whether you want to or need to live in rural or in urban areas. Net energy prices are forever increasing and will continue to do so - what is needed for starters is ban any home building or extending that doesn’t meet ‘passive house’ standards - which will bring down their cost.
And for transport what is needed - but requires a mammoth societal and political decision - is to remove private car ownership, putting in a comprehensive network of public transport, complemented by autonomous electric cars booked and paid for by the trip for when public transport is unsuitable (e.g. family with babies/young kids and paraphernalia going across country), priced so that there is a severe cost penalty for single occupancy (with similarly available autonomous electric vans for low person occupancy transporting goods).
Will these things happen? I think unlikely in the next 20 years, but maybe in the next 50. Of course nature may solve the human problem in its own way if humans don’t… (COVID?)
The cost for upgrading our downstairs bathroom is added to considerably by having to:-
- dig a big hole to install 200mm of PIR insulation
- rip the walls and ceiling out and re-install with as much insulation as fitting the new bath in will allow. This will include as much as 150mm in the ceiling
- fitting a small MHVR system specifically for this space
- fitting a new double glazed unit to the existing Velux window along with an energy saving (motorised) blind
- installing (wet) UFH
Added to the cost of the equipment + cost of tiles you’d be able to buy a pretty decent pre-loved car for what this improvement will be costing.
It will reduce the heating demand in the property but at no small cost.
The Living Room and Hall remain to be done…
I have to console myself with the fact that we are very much improved on when we moved in back in 2000.
Regards
Richard
Having made very significant improvements to my house upon moving in 10 years ago, suffering significant turmoil, mess and inconvenience for six months (and more), costing a small fortune despite much done by DIY, I recognise it is not something most people will want to go through, nor indeed be able to afford. We are very pleased with the result, heating bills slashed despite enlarged accommodation, and greatly improved comfort.
Details here:
I don’t quite understand why the Goverment Feed In Tarifs dropped a couple of year ago making Solar panels less cost effective.
I just managed to get mine before it stopped, and I’ve now knocked £500 off my annual energy bill, which more than makes up for not having wall Insulation (which my wife is against due to the possibility of rotting the ties - another thread possibly). In addition I am also helping the local electricity supplier when I over produce by feeding locals houses with electricity including an EV vehicle 3 doors away. With more Solar panels around, it would help take the pressure off the electricity suppliers. But I do think that the electricity suppliers need to make some big investments for the future for better control, as from what I have discovered, they don’t really know what most substation are doing. E.g. our local substation had been spitting out an average of 255V for the last 20+ years (253V being the absolute top limit), which was only discovered recently by me.
I fortunately found it easy to solve the ‘where to charge’ issue. An electrician was able to add a circuit to our main box and run a 30-amp line into our attached garage and install a wall outlet.
In our new home that is almost ready for us to move into, I specified a 60-amp line in the garage early on and the electrician is ready any time now to install the Tesla wall charger.
At my prior job there was free charging in the garage where I also could park for free. These past 13 months have meant a new job (there is free charging in the outdoor lot) but but all work-from-home, so I’ve definitely seen an uptick in my electric bill. But it’s still very convenient for me; I charge at home.
You might have trouble getting a bus driver to agree to you hitching your caravan on the back HH!
Best
David
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I know precisely where you are coming from - the affordability issue alone would kill such projects before they even got off the ground in many peoples cases. We have kind of been able to afford it…
Regards
Richard
I have been driving fully electric cars for 6,5 years and there are persisting irritations.
The bigger problems with charging stations in my country is not the electricity but distributing it to lots fast-chargers. The network is not built for it. Most fast chargers here is 50kWh so while the new cars with long ranges say they can charge to 85% in 40 minutes they only do so with a 200-250 kWh charger - with 50kWh charger we are talking 2,5 - 3 hours so know which cars are in front of you in the queue at the fastchargers.
If you have an old house please have an electrician check the supply. The chargers need a lot of current for many hours and you need cables that can stand it without generating a lot of heat. The manufacturers also recommend being careful with cable extensions even with the small chargers.
During the cold wintermonths it is even worse with reduced capacity at the charging stations. Another problem if you charge at night outside during winter months. You park and plug the charge connector to a warm car - in the morning you may find the charge connector frozen to the car, usually rubber. Another winter problem with large heavy battery pack is the effect of that extra weight to breaking/curves.
Plug-in hybrids are the worst of both. You get two reduced capacity drive systems to charge and you are lucky if you can do it at the same time.
Re. improving your house/EPC rating.
I’ve been reading a LOT of these since we started looking for a new house. Generally the recommendations given in the report will NEVER pay back. In fact some of them are plainly insulting and ridiculous. For example
or
or, even better,
There isn’t anything on the report that takes less than a decade to break even and most things will never pay for themselves.
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My Solar panels are on target for a payback of 10 years, however with an outlay of just £5.5k (18 panels) which was paid when I was still working, I’m happy to dismiss that amount and now getting the advantage of cheaper bills during my retirement. The figures dont stack the same on new installation now that Feed-In-Tarifs are stopped.
Ironic really since we’re thinking how much does it cost to remove such panels when we see a 3-400 year old cottage with the roof covered in them.
haydj
I think your comments about hybrid cars is slightly wide of the mark. I suspect the reason plug in hybrid drivers wish to charge their batteries is that, for short journey use, they can and should be used in EV mode. This is typically in towns and eliminates emissions at point of use. For longer journeys, the ICE kicks in to provide a manageable range. What would be the point of having EV capability and running the petrol or diesel engine in order to placate EV owners? The fundamental issue is that EV growth is currently going to ramp up at a significantly greater rate than the required infrastructure is being provided in UK.
Peter