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General

Ground floor Nudura buildup and pour

We left you with a poured slab and we were chomping at the bit to get the ground floor Nudura walls up before the end of the year. Well, I am glad to report we got there - almost ?    After getting the slab done, I figured I'd get ahead a bit and it would be a good idea to talk to someone about the waterproofing we would have to put on the outside the walls before we started backfilling. To cut a long story short using waterproof concrete in walls such as these is a complete no

Heating a building using an ASHP

We don't have a big information system on our ASHP.  I decided just to add electric meters as a way of seeing what is going on. Our home is just about 100m2 floor plan bungalow.    Decided to run the water coils in the MVHR ducts just to draw out any air.  Left them on by mistake until we realised we were too hot but all the radiators were off!  After this I fiddled with the ASHP heating temperature. Decided to set the ASHP heating water temp to 31C last evening for the hell of it. Las

ASHP on a flat roof

Not really having much information to go on when installing an ASHP on my flat roof, we decided to go ahead anyway.    Questions that arose were about things like will it blow over, can the warm roof take the weight, can the warm roof take all the vibration,  will it wear away the EDPM, is the condensation OK to go into the soakaway, is there much maintenance required, how heavy is the ASHP,  can we get it up there, can we get the power up there, will the control cables reach where we

Well that's a poke in the eye with a pointed stick

I haven't posted to my blog for a couple of months, mainly because we haven't been able to progress until we got the Structural Engineers report. This was promised in 2 weeks and ended up taking 10.   I now suspect that this was because they didn't want to tell us the news.   Our build is a barn conversion so we've had to jump through lots of hoops. ,making lots of money for other people.   But, particularly for the SE, first it was the report where they said t
  • LSB

Water coil installation into MVHR

This is posted during the design and installation phase during the winter 2021/2022.  The cooling side results are not expected to be known until Summer 2022.   As the air passes through the water coil it changes temperature depending on the coil water temperature. If the coil is going to be used for heating only it can be used without a condensate trap. However as this is going to be used for cooling as well I have constructed a drain in the bottom.   Coil with lid off. Air
  • Marvin

A rather rapid (timber frame) erection

Greetings! Apologies for the crass title but I am still a kid at heart. ?   After a brief delay due to Covid-19 the carpenters were able to attend site and erect our timber frame. Thanks to the accuracy I insisted on and ensured for the coursing blocks the sole plates were a doddle and were done in no time at all although we did have a bit of rain and I had to get the puddle pump out!       We used Flight Timber for our timber frame and they have their o

Loft insulation

The existing loft insulation irritated the .... out of me. Mainly because I needed to change a lot of pipes in the loft and the roof is only 22.5 degrees and the fluffy was very thick.  What with the 150mm insulated MVHR pipes (190mm thick) 2 high and a roof at 1300 ish it was too cramped. Anyone looking at the ducting photos will see the loft was bare. Before insulating, the bungalow was loosing 87% of the heat through the roof because the rest is so well insulated. Gonna have to tur
  • Marvin

Loft insulation

The existing loft insulation irritated the .... out of me. Mainly because I needed to change a lot of pipes in the loft and the roof is only 22.5 degrees and the fluffy was very thick.  What with the 150mm insulated MVHR pipes (190mm thick) 2 high and a roof at 1300 ish it was too cramped. Anyone looking at the ducting photos will see the loft was bare. Before insulating, the bungalow was loosing 87% of the heat through the roof because the rest is so well insulated. Gonna have to tur
  • Marvin

MVHR Installation 2

More of the same...   When insulating the ducts I noticed that the top of the MVHR was not insulated so I have installed flexi conduit on the cables ready to throw fluffy over the top.       This is the inlet pipe running under the ridge. 150 diameter with insulation held on with cable ties     An installed air damper in red. More about these later....     Water coil with thermal lid. Lid made from PIR.    
  • Marvin

ASHP installation info

The viewpoint used to decide items is a balance between the outlay cost and the running costs. This system will not be the cheapest way to produce heating and hot water nor the most expensive installation system but a balance related to the existing equipment and personal requirements.   BEST ADVICE: Read the manual of the product you are proposing to use BEFORE you buy, especially regarding the installation and check that it will work for you.   Choosing the ASHP: The s

Heating and cooling assumptions.

An Excel spread sheet has been used to calculate the heating and cooling.   One thing also calculated is that at peak energy the bungalow requires as much for the heating in the winter as for the cooling in the summer! So the hottest part of the hottest day and the coldest part of the coldest night need about the same amount of power! This is mainly because of the solar gain through the windows.   The calculations were compared with what has been used for heating and it is re

Assessing heating/hot water energy prior to Combo

Following  1 I try to detail the info so people can check...   The bungalow ran on LPG bottled gas for 3 years heating and hot water so I know what was used: I have used the worst 2 years:   I am using the conversion rate of  one kg of LPG gas giving about 14.091kW hours   In 2 years we used about 13277kW of LPG energy for heating and hot water. ( about 10 bottles of 47kg ) If we deduct a modest 2kW for ho

List of equipment being installed

The holistic set I am installing is:   ASHP main parts: : Air to water Cool Energy inverTech Air Source Heat Pump CE-iVT9 4.3kW-9.5kW Cool Energy 60L Stainless Buffer Tank CE-B60   MVHR main parts:  Domus HRX2-D Heat recovery System with "summer bypass" 125mm and 150mm rigid circular ducting and Domus duct insulation.     Electricity Generation main parts: PV Sofar Solar Grid Tied Inverter 6KTLM-G2 16 Longi  320W Mono Solar Panels

Assessing heating/hot water energy prior to Combo

I try to detail the info so people can check...   The bungalow ran on LPG bottled gas for 3 years heating and hot water so I know what was used: I have used the worst 2 years:   I am using the conversion rate of  one kg of LPG gas giving about 14.091kW hours   In 2 years we used about 13277kW of LPG energy for heating and hot water. ( about 10 bottles of 47kg ) If we deduct a modest 2kW for hot water each day ( total 1460kW) that leaves about 11,817 for the 2 years.

Bungalow history

The bungalow was built in the 1970's and extensively renovated in the last 4 years.   It has external block walls and timber suspended floor, timber frame including all internal walls and concrete tiled roof running east/west at a rise of 23 degrees.   Having never heard of, or gained knowledge from, buildhub I renovated and extended the bungalow as best as I knew. The garage was converted and has a flat roof. Fortunately the work included insulation, air tightness and a MVHR

Swimming in treacle, flying drones and generating electricity

As usual it feels like progress has been glacial. It probably hasn't but most of the jobs this month aren't exactly visible.   The first job was to construct a cabinet for the switch fuses and electric meter since the old back-to-back meter boxes had degraded to the point of uselessness. This of course displaced the drainage installation activity for a while. I did make some progress here too but we are nothing like finished yet as another tonne of gravel disappears into the ground...
  • dnb

Living Room DONE...

Wow that took me a long time, what a difference a year makes!   I did always know that it was going to be a difficult room to do, and also the largest in the bungalow, but I have reached completion, apart from the carpet which is on order.   So firstly there was the repair to the area under the window, which needed the brickwork rebuilding and then replastering...     Next I started work on the acoustic wall, comprising of a metal framing system fil

This is the BBC - Bars, Bolts and Concrete

... and so, in mid July, we had just a few things to do before we could pour concrete. <CUT, CUT, CUT> That's wrong again, you forgot the three spur walls and you've order some wrong parts. Go again, from the top   ... and so, in mid July, we had an unknown quantity of things to do before we could pour concrete ?    But before all of that happened, as a family we were all brought together for one of the inevitable things about life - every one must some day some to an e

Reflection/Garden

It's been over a year since we finished our home and I thought it would be good time to reflect. We have not had any major snagging issues with the house. The only product which required some additional work was the LVT flooring, we found thermal expansion was causing some warping. This has since been resolved with the addition of two expansion joints.  In my last blog post I discussed how we were heating the house with just a wood stove during colder times of the year. I

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