All Activity

Both my digital showers were an early design choice (thanks to my builder's recommendation). It seemed to be a good idea to co-locate all the plumbing sources. They are both located in the cupboard where the megaflo, the CH expansion tank, CH pump and control centre are located. All the wet stuff (except from UFH) is here Regards Tet

Definitely. You want the mixer somewhere you can reach in and turn it on without getting your arm wet when you do so, so you avoid the inevitable cold water deluge before the hot water arrives. Of course it also needs to be accessible when you are in the shower.

Our downstairs 2m x 2m bathroom is cold. It has slightly less UF heating than I wanted. Our upstairs bathroom is too warm as it has the non-TRV escape from the heating circuit. I'd like to change the escape rad to the downstairs bathroom Problem: I have no side or floor access in the downstairs bathroom. The only way to run pipes would be from above Has anyone got any recommendations how to install a top-fed towel rail? - I can get an 1800mm one that will help to minimise the visible tails Regards Tet

Too isolated an event to change the world methinks I’ve fitted a gazillion concealed showers, and the worst thing that’s happened has been the thermostatic cartridges need changing, which you do with the valve in situ from the front. I am a big fan of Grohe iBox’s, and the spares and support will be around for decades. I do like the simplistic approach of the digital showers, but having control boxes mounted remotely with electronics and mechanical gubbings, which do go kaput and need servicing / maintaining, is sometimes not practicable. Digital a good solution if you need pumped off gravity hot and cold water.

Space cooling for first floor?

In any authoritarian regime, there's always People Who Know Best, who everyone else have to obey. What if it isn't you though? The way we are chasing net zero IS currently to our economic detriment. We need to focus on what IS the cheapest way to generate the energy we need to grow our economy and remain competitive in the world. If we do not, then we'll see more of the same that the last 20 years has given us... falling living standards which leads to all sorts of problems including the social unrest we're seeing. PV and wind can be part of that, but we shouldn't be shutting down or underutilising gas fired power stations where the capital cost has already been paid. It's madness. Look at the costs to generate with gas around page 33 in the link below. They've included 'carbon' as a cost. This is just a tax that could be removed tomorrow and skews the figures. It's just disingenuous presenting the information like that. Anybody can see that a well utilised gas power station can be cheap to run. Especially if those taxes are removed and the capital cost is paid. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/696697d19d9b9da37c04c2e4/electricity-generation-costs-report-2025.pdf There's also the issue of baseload. Another reason to keep the gas generation, and indeed build more for the medium term, until we can come up with something else. If we want to keep the cost down, we could extract the mountains of gas we have in the North Sea and under our feet in shale formations that we are stupidly leaving in the ground, whilst importing from elsewhere. Just to 'look green'. Actually lowering energy costs significantly is not only possible, but would be the best way to raise living standards. Don't destroy economically viable generation. Do drill for oil and gas so we are again self sufficient in fossil fuels - what's the point in importing it?? Do build as much renewable generation as we can, only in the places that can utilise it without turning off baseload generation, that will only need to be kept on standby at great cost.

I had a concealed Aqualisa valve explode in a wall - never again Surface valves are OK - Grohe or Hansgrohe for me Digital showers are (IMO) the best way to go. Permanent access to the rainfall head and a single pipe in the wall must be the way to go. Then you can put your controls wherever you like I've got two - a Vado and a Mira I prefer the shower head of the Mira and the wireless control but I prefer the aesthetics of the wired control buttons of the Vado. I would never recommend anything else Regards Tet

Mixer to one side I'd say is definitely a good idea especially with a rainfall head.

No but they do let me suck on the beer mats for free. Is there any reason we don't use air heating and cooling? Surely it's an ideal fit for situations where active cooling is required required. Laying an A2W on top of an A2A system seems like unnecessary duplication. A stand alone ESHP for DHW would eliminate compromising heating the house from heating your bath and visa versa too.

Got a few quotes, including from an on-line national supplier, the latter seemed to get bored with all the re-qotes/questions i was firing his way and came back with something ridiculously cheap. I then took that to our local, preferred supplier who had a price match guarantee - they agreed to it, and the rest is history as they say. Just goes to show how much of a margin there is in these things though, so worth pushing and pushing some more.

To others : Always remember that opening windows creates strong draughts for the quickest effect when humidity is very high. You don't get the satisfaction of emptying buckets though. Machines for when you have a deadline.

My house is near-passive (0.12 walls, 0.1 ceilings. 0.08 slab, MVHR, triple glazed but sub-optimal solar gain). I've installed UFH in the ground floor slab but the 4kW ASHP is not on yet. Installing electric UFH mats and electric towel rads in bathrooms, otherwise nothing else. I can run the ASHP in cooling mode if summer heat is a problem. Had very high humidity after plastering (85% @ 12ºC) so brought in some dehumidifiers running 24x7 and a 3kW fan heater running for 6 hours a day to get the house up to 18ºC and 55% RH. Turning on the MVHR helped. I'm very hopeful now that I'm more than covered for my space heating needs.

Physics of a house energy out (lost to atmosphere) is the energy required for heating. A simple adjustable hysterisis thermostat, such as Computherm Q10RF or one with WiFi access if you want, use that to control House temp and switching on/off of an immersion relay. Get a wireless thermostat, then you can move to best place for the house temperature setting q. Set the immersion in buffer to a set temperature, say 37, driven from the relay. Any 20A relay will do.

Didn't check what I had written, spell check had taken over - should read, Hot water sorted, now get on with your life

You can get a range of contactors typically with 240VAC, 12VDC or 24VDC coil voltage. They all draw ballpark 1W to keep the contactor closed to the load on the control relay is ~40mA in the case of 24DVC, doubled for 12VDC, and a tenth of that for mains. I prefer using DC simply because all of the control stuff is low voltage which makes it easier to get signed off.

It's good in principle, however by using a contactor you bypass that function - it will only tell how how much power the contactor itself is using, not how much power is passing through the contactor...

Thank you, I do appreciate I am making this more complex than it needs to be. Part of the need for 'smart' control is that the setup is in the loft and I can't run any more cables. I would like to easily adjust away/holiday settings. @JohnMo sorry what does this mean? "Hot water sorted mice on with your life. Change from £30" I am now leaning towards simple timer switch for hotwater tank. Our water usage is 2 showers morning, 1 shower and bath(3 young kids) evening. Buffer supplies ufh only and in recent cold spell the flow temp of 37drgrees was sufficient (and still some more insulation and airtight work to do, loft hatches to close etc...) trying to run it as low as possible. I would definitely want on a smartish system for the buffer, Minimum remote control, love Shelly's power monitoring. @Mike thanks for that diagram, very helpful

My point is "chasing net zero" isnt (in the main)" to our detriment. The whole crux of the anti net zero argument is that it somehow is worse than the alternative, that is carrying on burning FF as our main energy source and not moving to a more advanced technological system. If we stay"as is" or worse yet go backwards we will be shooting ourselves on the foot whilst China and the developing works eat our lunch. China already has a massive lead on us. PV is the cheapest electricity source available, especially towards the equator. African countries have worked this out and are jumping straight to electrification. We are going to have to face economies with lower energy costs than us because they are either in renewables or have vast quantities of their own fossil fuels (or ones from countries they invaded) The countries at the bottom of the heap will be the idiots who have set their economy to rely highly on imported energy

You paid your electricity bill and taxes right? There you go. You paid for the coal fired power stations. (well actually taxpayers pre 1980's did as the big coal stations were built under nationalised industry. - private generators only came after the 90's.)

If you have issues just email them, they are super helpful. It's worth using a CT clamp on the diverter valve power feed, then the data is split for heating and DHW. Also unable auto cooling detection while you through the settings.

We don't need the immersion to clear the legionnaires risk the heat pump does that. So for now I have wired it straight to the CU breaker via a switch fused unit. So as of now we don't have automation of the immersion but there appears to be nothing preventing me using my contactor approach. The rules are clear that you can put stuff in between those fixed points provided it meets the wiring regs etc which is how the diverters do it. So I won't have any high current stuff on / around the tank other than the connection from Switch Fused Isolator to the immersion heater. Final job is to commission the heat meter & EmonPi. Hopefully Sunday, then I will have some real data to play around with and get an impression for how good or bad the system is.

I'm not sure what you mean. We, and much of the west, exported our manufacturing (and energy/fossil fuel consumption) to China. I posted the chart to show that we're chasing net zero to our detriment while China forges ahead. What's misleading about that?

It's funny how the cost of new energy infrastructure is added to energy bills like that. I don't recall in days gone by paying a levy to pay for all the coal fired power stations?

In fact, there are subsidies paid to the "community". It turns out our local community council receives payments from at least one of the nearby wind farms. I don't know of the history if how or why these are paid. The money is supposed to be used for the community good. One of the things they spend it on is a modest annual payment to each household to help with energy bills, with a higher amount paid if you are over state pension age.

£xx on every electrical bill for ever more