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Thanks - yes, it'll be 5kW nominal (Ecosy+ Infinity V) and the lounge where it will be is open to the hallway/stairwell. I chose the Infinity V as it has very low distance to combustibles: only 50mm

I am quite happy to do a design for you…..please let me know if I can help…..

No one mentioned net zero except yourself. To have renewables within the energy mix makes perfect sense for our energy supplies. It's pretty cheap, secure and could be all UK made with some law changes. Using additional measures to store otherwise wasted spinning reserve is sensible. Strike price of solar is one of the lowest for any generation methods. So why not use it. Line all the fields with vertical panels! Great for winter production and zero impact on the usable field. Fields with animals can co exist very happily with PV so fill those fields. Renewables can be in the form of hydrogen from excess renewable energy, this then back fills any gaps caused by clouds and no wind. But offshore Scotland no wind days are rare, hence lots of turbines.

We have two MVHR units one has automatic summer bypass, the other no bypass. Can I tell the difference, yes only by looking at a light on the display, does it make a material difference to house temps no. But it only changing once every 3 hours so why would it. Humidity does the same. Search on here there are several threads with attached papers showing a very close relationship between elevated CO2 and humidity levels. That's up to you, purist or not. But as pointed out by @jack your better using your heat exchanger to help you out. But flow should be so low anyway the airflow makes no material difference to room temps. So my view make life easy run 24/7/365

A little strong I think. I am quite happy with mixed energy generation, and with people having their own solar panels and batteries if they wish, and insulating their homes and other energy efficiency measures. What I don't see is any proper hard scientific evidence for anthropogenic global warming which remains an uncertain unproven theory, and in particular for the UK sacrificing it's own economy on the back of the highest electricity prices in the world when we account for 0.8% of CO2 emissions even if the theory turned out to be correct. We have most of the population really having no knowledge of their own but being fed a constant stream of anthropogenic climate change propaganda. We have active censorship and cancellation, and even calls for criminalisation of anyone that wants to question 'the narrative' and NO mainstream TV debate or presentation of the uncertainties and complexities. We have Ed on a personal crusade to 'save the earth' as he knows with evangelical certainty what is the greater good and is going to force it onto the country regardless of costs and economic damage. Such extremism is not neccessary or remotely wise. I am not a luddite and I am all for developing energy technologies of all types. They will and do all have a place in a sensible and diverse energy infrastructure. There are very real issues with implementing a renewables only energy system, and with its economic and security wisdom. I don't believe we should ignore those issues. And generally speaking when debate is cancelled and censored rather than taking place, it is never a good sign. I believe in the wisdom of free speech, constant doubt and questioning, and following the truth as it emerges and is understood, and always being open minded and willing to change your mind according to realities. The problems of intermittency and unreliability with renewables are hugely significant and not to be trivialised. Engineering a cost effective national energy infrastructure which is reliable, secure, and highly cost effective is quite a different problem from an individual householder going off grid. https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/07/11/battery-storage-for-grid-backup-better-keep-working-on-it/

I currently have one EV charger on my detached, double garage and am looking to fit a second, identical charger so there'll be one either side of the garage. Symmetry and practicality etc. My charger is a UK made Indra Smart Pro. The single phase, overhead, mains electricity supply comes into the main house. After the incoming 100A fuse the supply is split via Henley blocks to the house consumer unit and a 60A switch fuse. At the 60A switch fuse is a 100mA Type S RCD. This then feeds the garage. From the switch fuse a 16mm², 3 core, SWA goes to a new garage consumer unit. I've used the 3 cores for live, neutral and earth. The steel wire armour is also earthed. For the current EV point I have a 40A, C curve, 30mA, double pole, bidirectional, RCBO fitted in the garage consumer unit. The EV point is fed from there via a 10mm² SWA. The EV charger has current sensing. A cat-6 cable runs all the way from the EV charger to the house consumer unit where it terminates in a current transformer on the house incoming live cable. This ensures the EV charger cannot draw too much current if the house demand is high. I'm mulling a second charger from the garage consumer unit, again with a cat-6 cable running back to the house incoming live cable? I'm trying to think how it would work, but gut feeling is it's a non starter. The charger(s) is 7.2kW so a little over 30A hence the 40A RCBO. Two together would be over 60A so I'll likely need to up the switch fuse to 80A. Presumably if one charger was charging and you plugged in the second, the second would limit it's charging. If though in say the dead of night you had both chargers going at full chat then at the house whacked on say a 40A electric shower what would happen? Would both chargers see the increased draw at the house and limit their output? There are I think intelligent, third party current balancing devices for when using multiple EV chargers. As time goes on, this will undoubtedly be a thing. Something like this maybe: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Technical/DataSheets/SYEV/EV_Balancer_Instructions.pdf Anyone else done it?

We like ours, we also have a load of wood to use like @ProDave. On a damp cold day nothing better. Fire spec External air - primary and secondary air supplies Soap stone clad No bigger than about 5kW peak output. Then you should be able to knock it down to about kW output. Make sure heat can escape the room. Then learn how to manage it, ignore everything your installer says. This is how we do ours. Fire lighter break into two. 3 kindler sticks and couple of pieces about the same volume of a pint glass. Full air until a good flame then turn down the air to get a small stable flame. Leave it for 20 to 30 mins then add a small log. Your done for the day, if lots below zero maybe add another log. Note:MVHR doesn't help move the heat about very much.

Why is MVHR running any different from open trickle vents when you have a fire. The fire consumes as much oxygen as it can, the fire becomes a low pressure zone, sucking air via opening anyway. Running or not it will suck air through the MVHR or from other rooms via the plenum. If you want MVHR to not contribute to fire air supply you need a fire dampers also.

Yes, I understand it will be an expensive way of adding some heat a few times a year ...not sure why I'm going along with it!

Can MVHR be used to distribute gaseous fire suppression ?

On a personal level my weather dependent renewables cut my electricity bill dramatically. So what's mad about it. I use a battery to load shift. Commercial level, use battery, stored hydro, make hydrogen. Use home grown hydrogen to power gas generators to provide back fill electric when weather dependent electricity isn't available. All pretty easy and well understood technology. @Spinny your sort sighted and blinded by idiots you seem to follow. Unfortunately people like you become the next NIMBY and slow progress, instead wanting to live a life a denial and zero progress, plus a dependency on imported oil/gas and volatile markets.

But with batteries, smart grid, vehicle charging, vehicle2load, import/export and smart tariffs.... The peaks and troughs of weather dependant generation can be smoothed out quite easily. Why form a strong judgement, when you only understand part of the topic?

The benefit outweighs these ‘odds’, as the MVHR not supplying a fire with a plentiful feed of fresh air (to aid combustion) would be my preference; the significance of this was enough for me to consider it robustly, pros and cons, before suggesting it to my client. Any future electrician would be informed by the owner, before they took any tools out, and would also encounter printed labels on the CU stating the additional measures required. However, if that all failed, the absolute worst case scenario THEN, would be the owner eventually realising that the lMVHR wasn’t on then they’d simply go and reset it. Number of people who test their smoke detectors monthly? . Not so sure but I’d bet that It’s a VERY low percentile….. …..like single digits. Only the relay would wear, not the RCBO🙂, and this will likely be tested and approved for 1000’s of operations. In actuality, it’ll fire maybe 2-5 times per decade.

Aside from the whacky surprise it leaves to any future electrician working on it, I'd be concerned fire alarms come with a "test monthly" sticker or similar, and this thing frobbing off so regularly will decrease lifetime of the rcbo and relay base, and increases odds it gets forgotten and not re-enabled

Not exceptionally high, just 225 vs 178, so 47mm higher. Wall hung WC’s on frames tend to have this a lot higher up.

Any loose material alongside / under the pipes needs removing. Attempting to compact anything in this small void is completely OTT and (IMHO) a waste of time and effort. You’re far better off with the whole void fully filled in one sitting, as a single solid mass. Foot traffic is considered ‘light’, so fully encapsulating the wrapped pipes with 20mm over them will be fine. That compound I linked to is particularly well suited to this exact application because it has fibres in it, so it’s very tolerant of the tiny amount of movement you’ll get here. A wrap with duct tape will offer some more protection and ‘decoupling’, which os best practice vs just pouring onto bare pipes. You can do this in lots of little bits of tape and it doesn’t need to be perfect as every little helps.

Are we agreed thos could only ever be used in deep winter time, in a “passiv-esque” dwelling?

A lot of members here have been looked after by Trevor from Cylinders2go, and he’s also my go-to for cylinders and has been for a long time. Mention my username and the forum and he will ‘quote you happy’, minus the HG tax

Madness I know (IRL) and that was my exact concern. If I can buy one thing to be a maybe, or another that’s a definite, and the price isn’t hundreds apart, then I’ll go definite each and every time.

Yes SWMBO (as a fully formed fascist 🤣) is extremely self disciplined and charges overnight without fail. I am a night owl that then falls asleep as soon as I reach the perch, and generally absent minded, which I claim is because what is left of my mind is contemplating greater things - like what building disaster lurks tomorrow, whether the plumber will turn up, and the true nature of quantum entanglement. The other pain with charging cords is that we (well I) end up with them all over the house, and they regularly fail from too much bending about. As you say, a first world problem, compared with that guy in Lebanon some weeks ago whose amazing self build/refurbed house was blown to bits by a rocket. Fortunately rather than worry about that or how to get food, I can reflect on which is larger, a FIFA football, or my own prostate. Come on England ⚽

It’s a fair point if you want it to go off and stay off in the event of the smoke detector circuit going down.

Ours works well as long as you open all the downstairs internal doors to let the heat out to the whole house and as above don't put much wood in at a time. Fill it full and keep the living room door shut and you will be cooking. It helps that we have double doors from the room with the stove to the hall from where heat can go up the stairwell and it nicely heats the whole house. We only have it because we have plentiful wood. I would not have one if I needed to buy wood, and if I did not have one I would be giving away or selling wood for someone else to burn.

My son and I have recessed a wireless charger module into wood. The wood was made of lamination like thick veneer so the coil was only about 3mm below the surface. That worked fine. It's the top of a speaker in which we also put a Bluetooth power amp module and power supply. So it charges the phone while playing music through the speaker.

You need a stove covered in soapstone and a low capacity to slow everything down. After the first year lighting ours twice and melting, we tried the second time the following year. But now only add one small log at a time, turn the air down to lowest setting to still get a clean burn. Now that log lasts maybe 1 to 2 hours, the heat spreads across the whole house, 2 logs on the coldest day is more than enough. NO it leads to depressurisation of the house. You cannot install a WBS in a house with MVHR safety, unless it has primary and secondary air from outside. It is something the OP needs to think about and plan for. Where will they put the air duct, took us an age to find the correct stove

Not sure the price premium is worth it in the short or long term - yes you get a good CoP, but with something like Cosy tariff you can be paying 10p per kWh. A lot of reheats to get your money back. I have been using just the immersion for about a 8 months now. No intentions of going back to heat pump heating. ASHP has a simple life and you size purely for CH. A direct cylinder £450, HG £3000. At 10p kWh and CoP of 5. I average around 3kWh heating DHW - house of 2 people so 30p a day or £109.50 a year. At a CoP of 5 that's £22. So £88 saving £2500 / £88 so 28 years pay back. Add any clipping of solar PV in the summer and water heating becomes free anyway, if you time to coincide with peak solar production. Plus no CH/DWH diverter needed, easier plumbing, less wires. Simple immersion timer.