Back for a quick visit

Sooz and I have carved out a 4-day weekend and we will be back at our stuga next week. We'll close things up for the winter as usual.

We are hoping to use our new luftpump to enable weekend visits over the winter as well. I'd like to take more winter pictures like this one!

Stay tuned for another bunch of reports from our visit.

April's weather

April was a typical Spring month in the archipelago: windy, wet (although not wet enough) and not that warm. I added the indoor temperature which shows very clearly the days we were at the house!

We'll be back at the end of May and I expect it to be a lot warmer then. At least I hope so...

Gott Nytt År, allihopa!

Happy New Year to everyone. Here's to a better 2017!

Let's start the year with my monthly weather update. Not too much to report except a good period of rain just after Christmas. We certainly can use as much as rain as we can get!

The fun thing to see is the impact of my visit on December 19th. The indoor temperature, carbon dioxide, and especially the noise levels, all can be seen to jump on that day.

It will be interesting to fire up the luftpump remotely to warm up the house and monitor its progress.

Success!

I'm writing this from the temporary Saluhall in Östermalm this festive Monday evening. It's been a busy and successful 24 hours!

Yesterday's trip went like clockwork. Despite threatened train strikes and forecasted fog, I arrived to Stockholm on time, and my bus- train- boat journey out to the stuga went without a hitch.

It was just becoming dark as I disembarked the Waxholms boat yesterday, but I had my flashlight so the walk home was uneventful (if a little creepy).

The house was darned cold when I arrived, just a bit over freezing. I fired up all of the radiators but it took a few hours until I was warm enough without my coat. By bedtime, the bedroom was nice and cozy.

This morning, I met Andreas from Varmt och Skönt who had our luftpump, along with a load of extra parts and tools. It took two trips to get it all up from the dock.

Andreas went to work immediately. He was clearly someone who had done this a few times before! I tried to help, but frankly, my biggest job was to stay out of his way. When everything was done, I was amazed at how quiet the unit was—and how much heat it put out. The best part was the wifi connectivity, which allows me to run the unit from my iPhone anywhere in the world. I'll never again arrive to a freezing house.

Now I'm back in Stockholm, enjoying a little bit of festive time before I fly home later tonight. Thanks to the great wi-fi at the food hall, I'm able to upload all of my photos to a new album. Enjoy!

Installing a Värmepump

I've posted a few times in the past about installing a heat pump in our stuga. A värmepump would allow me to heat the house much more efficiently. It would also allow a bit of cooling in a pinch, as well.

Installing one has always been on my list of "one of those days" projects. The problem for me was the installation, as it has to be done by a professional, and delivery on an island makes the project quite expensive.

Olle sent me a message about a promotion run by our electric company, Vattenfall, a few weeks ago. They were offering a subsidized price on värmepumps, along with installation, an internet remote control, a 2 year warranty, and a discount on power charges as well. A great deal.

I got in touch and things moved rapidly. The company were very professional and not fazed at all about an island installation. (Nor were they troubled in speaking to me in English.) The upshot is that we will install my new Värmepump next Monday the 19th!

I am going to take a quick trip over to assist with the installation, arriving on Aspö late Sunday afternoon. I'll bivouac in the house overnight and meet the installation crew Monday morning. They tell me it should take 4-5 hours to get the job done. We'll all take a taxi boat back in the afternoon and I'll be home in London Monday night.

The big advantage of installing it now is that our ability to visit the stuga over the next few months is greatly increased. If we want to do a long weekend, I can dial up the heat so we arrive to a nice toasty house, and start enjoying right away!

I will of course, be updating on the whole process, so stay tuned.

Where to place a luftpump?

I posted a while back in September about adding a Värmepump to our house for heating (and cooling). Both Olle and Peter read my post and wanted to talk to me about it when I was over in October.

They both have a lot of experience with these units; in fact, Olle used to work for a company that sold them. They told me the placement of a heat pump was very important. I had intended to put it on the kitchen wall, as my little sketch shows:

The problem with installing it here is that airflow (as indicated by my red arrows) can only reach the central area. I can't direct air into the bathroom or either bedroom, so only part of the house benefits directly.

Peter said the idea setup would be to put it in the center of the house:

Although it would be most efficient for air circulation, it's not possible, as that wall of the house is all glass, so there's no place to mount the fan unit.

The third option would be to mount it on the opposite wall:

That gets air most everywhere, except, perhaps, the guest bedroom. However, one big drawback of doing this is what happens outside. That wall is the front of the house. I'd have to attach a decent- sized pipe along the front of the house down through the deck to the fan unit below. That would be unsightly, at best. Also, having the fan unit beneath the house at the front makes it visible from our new deck.


I'd have none of these problems with my original installation idea. The back of the house is not visible or trafficked. The fan unit could be installed safely and quietly out of the way. We would lose some of the whole-house efficiency of a front-wall installation, but it would look a lot cleaner.

The advice from Olle and Peter is excellent, but I wonder if I really need to worry about heating the whole house. We can heat our bedroom pretty easily with a small radiator, a nice comforter, and perhaps a bit of cuddling.

I will give this a bit more thought on these winter days. It is very good to have valuable input from my neighbors!

Värmepumps

Our summer visit to Aspö coincided with quite the Swedish heat wave. It got me thinking about heat pumps, or in Swedish, värmepump.

Why on earth would I think about heating the house during a heat wave, you might ask? That's a good question, and the answer is pretty simple.

Air-conditioners or furnaces use energy to create hot or cold air. A heat pump simply transfers heat from one source to another, and the direction is reversable. This means a heat pump can cool a house just as easily as it warms.

Värmepumps are installed in Sweden not for their cooling, but for their energy efficiency. Transferring heat, rather than creating it, uses far less energy. Heating our house in cold weather is pretty pricy with a Dyson and radiators. (Doesn't that sound like a 50's rock band- "Dyson and the Radiators"? But I digress.)

I posted recently about how my March visit showed my using about 65 kilowatts per day to heat the house on a cold day. I believe a heat pump would do that job at significantly less energy cost. It would have the added bonus of providing a bit of cool air on hot days, if needed.

Our house is pretty small, 62 square meters (670 square feet), so even the smallest unit would do the trick for us, at a price of around 8000 kronor. Olle is well versed on these units and gave me lots of advice about how to choose and install them. Polarpumpen.se has a wide variety of värmepumps available.

Another fun trick is attaching it to the cell phone network. I could then use an app on my iPhone to monitor and adjust the temperature remotely. It would be great to arrive at a nice warm house, or to ensure things don't freeze solid during a cold snap. Plus, it appeals to the nerd in me; I love controlling things with my iPhone!

Here in the US, these are called "split unit" or "ductless" heat pumps. The compressor is installed outside, and a tube is run along the outside of house to the head unit which is mounted to the wall inside. The photo above shows the two pieces.

I set aside space for a heat pump when I designed the house, and in fact, also put in the electrical wiring, too. So physically installing the unit should be pretty simple.

The complication comes with charging and pressurizing the unit. Specialist tools and skills are needed to get it connected and working. Polarpumpen quotes installation costs of 3000-5000kr on their website, although I assume the archipelago isn't in their normal price list.

I thought perhaps I could buy and install the unit myself, and only have the specialist come out on a short trip to charge it up and test it. That should be cheaper, although I'll have to ask around and get some concrete advice and prices.

Stay tuned for more on this subject in the coming months!