Comments by "Mat Broomfield" (@matbroomfield) on "Technology Connections" channel.

They installed heat pumps as a trial at multiple test homes across my estate and the estate-wide roll out was abandoned despite their greater efficiency. I guess people were not impressed.
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Sony's timing wasn't good. Archaic patent laws enabled them to stifle the entire television market for 20 years past the point it should have been, ensuring that only the wealthiest could afford their version and nobody else was able to develop a competing technology. This is the problem when it turns out that there is only one effective way to overcome particular technical challenges. Imagine if Sony are the first past the post in inventing warp travel. If no other means of exceeding the speed of light exists, should the whole planet be held to ransom by Sony for 30 years?
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@GeorgeWashingtonLaserMusket Wow, what's your problem? No, I don't claim to own the entire estate "My estate" means the estate on which I live. Way to deliberately misunderstand. "I hate explosion free means of heating that's cheaper on average" Riiiight, because that's the only factor. My estate is about 50 years old. Global warming was not an issue. It has a community heating system fuelled by a giant gas boiler that heats water and the hot water is pumped around the whole estate. It was originally oil-fuelled, but then switched over to gas when there was a massive price shift. Moreover, retrofitting massive heat pumps on houses that were mass constructed to a low budget, and have very little space to actually LOCATE them is no small task. "Throw some solar panels on and use a PWM system and it'll work if the grid goes down (you'll need battery's and a automatic cut off)." Solar panels in Britain are a big scandal. Everyone was told that they would pay for themselves in, I think 30 years, and now it has been discovered that that claim was BS. Solar is fine in areas with consistent sunshine. Britain doesn't have that, and large-scale batteries can only store electric for a relatively short period. It turns out that early generation solar panels are actually a net LOSS. "Anyone building a home without install geothermal heatpumps is literally ripping the buyer off I can't respect someone that buys an inefficient or poorly built home." Who cares about your respect? Indeed, psychologically, your derision is more likely to polarise people away from you, and shut them down from listening to any valuable advice you may have to offer in future. There's a massive housing shortage in Britain. You're lucky to get a house at all, let alone one that meets your standards (laudible though they may be). The government recognises the importance of the issues that you raise, but the laws requiring it have only applied to new builds for perhaps 15-20 years, with the regulations getting stricter and stricter. Post Brexit, perhaps the regulations will be adandoned in favour of the housing developers. Older houses are cheaper, and in many areas, you'd be lucky to afford one at all. There are MANY other factors at play than your criteria. Perhaps when you cease being so sanctimonious, you'll realise that.
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@superidot1 They disliked the noise. The efficiency was not the issue. We have completely silent heating here, but the heat pumps attached outside the houses with, I assume giant fans. You could hear them as you walked past. As for the name of it, it's not a national program. It was trialled by Basildon Council on my estate at Langdon Hills in the UK.
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@superidot1 I wasn't the one who implemented it. I'm just a tenant on the estate. There are, ISTR, 600 homes here. I was always a little skeptical because of the size of the fans. Knowing the Council (govt.), the trial was implemented in the cheapest, most roughshod way imaginable. If using rubber dampers would have increased the cost by £1 per home, but improved the usability 200%, they would have opted for the money saving option I suspect. When you see the quality of workmanship on other projects here, you'd be dismayed. There was DEFINITELY no soundproofing and the walls here are notoriously bad for sound transmission. Reading your comments, it sounds as though there was a lot that they could/should have done to make this more appealling. Now with our energy costs running at 200% over what they were a year ago, I imagine many people wish that they had persisted. In my case, it would have been hard to find a viable outside wall to mount it on, AND I'm exceedingly sensitive to noise, so I'm ambivalent about the result, despite desire for eco solutions.
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They're now taking pre-orders for summer 2025. 😞
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@hanvyj2 I think they found them too big and noisy.
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@superidot1 It was a trial test by people who wanted to opt in, so people predisposed to WANT it to succeed. They were told that it would be MUCH cheaper, but the negatives outweighed that factor.
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@Zraknul It was different according to each house and whether or not they were end or row (no detached houses here). Saw a few of them - one was on the floor outside the kitchen window. Another hung off the wall adjacent to the internal stairs connecting kitchen to bedrooms and upstairs living room. Can't remember the others.
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@superidot1 No, your guess is mistaken. They were tenants in government housing. This was a free scheme designed to produce more efficient and cheaper heating. People didn't like it for its own sake. There was no ulterior motive.
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ROFL!
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Damn, what a genius invention!
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Fascinating.
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