Meter Office have extended the amber warning through to Thursday, and have increased the affected area to include Wales and the Midlands - almost all parts of the UK south of the Humber estuary.

Reader, it gets worse.

39C is 102F.

It's not getting any better, is it?

This Met Office "amber warning of heat" just popped up on my phone (I have their app, this isn't some sort of nationwide push message).

If you're in the UK, it's going to be hot next week.

(Rest of the world: this is mid-30s C, so 90s F. By UK standards this is unusual, even in the summer.)

I'm not quite ready to have tradies in my house for a proper fixed heat pump installation, but I wanted to get something a bit better (more efficient, less noisy) than my ancient single-hose air conditioner.

So today I've ordered one of these:
https://www.heatershop.co.uk/prem-air-eh1960-4-1-split-air-conditioner-with-app-control-12-000-btu

The SEER and SCOP look good, the quoted noise levels are reasonable and it's not quite as expensive as I expected (although half the price would have been nice).

Will share more info when it arrives.

RE: https://mas.to/@vrandecic/116607696355063502

An interesting poll and the linked Reason article builds on it.

Also, interesting that a higher % of Fedizens seem to think that Maria's statement was false when compared to the (more typical?) survey sample in the report.

On the plus side, I do now have two 450 watt panels installed* on the shed roof so tomorrow (if the sun shines) we'll see how they fare!

* As with most of my DIY projects, plans don't survive first contact with reality and so I need some additional brackets and screws and whatnot. But I can swap those another day.

Finishing some DIY off after a busy afternoon and realised just too late that I've crimped the wrong MC4 plug onto the end of a cable 😭

It's not a total loss; this cable was always going to be cut to make two (or more) shorter ones. It does however mean I'm going to be making up a connection on the roof rather than indoors next to the inverter.

Must be time to pack things up, have a nice cup of tea and think about bed.

Tea Dragon has arrived ❤️
@welshpixie

Today was as good as it gets for solar PV at my latitude; clear blue skies all day. But with only eight hours of daylight and a maximum solar elevation of 17 degrees, there only so much that you can expect.
Next door's conifers don't help, either - they're why the curve drops away so precipitously.
8.1kWh from 2.7kWp of rooftop panels.

Even here in dull, rainy England a hectare of crops will yield less energy than a hectare of solar panels. And that's before you go to all the time and effort of converting those crops into biofuels.