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They are mandated for all new builds because at some point everyone will be driving electric. They are rapidly becoming the norm. When you build a house you have to comply with the rules for those coming after you. For the same reason, if you update the house electrics (add a circuit or whatever) you have to comply with modern regulations and update other parts of the system as required by the latest rules at the time of installation. Other wise we'd all be still on rewirable fuses. "They work well enough, and are cheap, why should I have to change..." Etc, etc, etc 🙂 If it is still possible to specify a 'dumb' charger I'd do it while you still can. From long experience with electronics, the more basic it is, the longer it will last. Avoid anything that needs a WiFi signal to operate because it will become obsolescent before you blink

This may be helpful, but I think that the bottom line is that anything other than the current marginal pricing scheme is lilkely to be gamed and hides true costs. https://www.carbonbrief.org/qa-how-the-uk-government-aims-to-break-link-between-gas-and-electricity-prices/

Thank you both markc and Mr Punter. Was thinking of getting ready made dry screed delivered to the property. From estimated I got over a year ago if memory serves me right I think cost of was in the region of £400 - £450 for the dry screed. Would imagine wet screed is going to be more expensive but I will be saviung on labour costs. Regarding the dry screed , delivery will most likely be dumped at the front of the prooperty. How do I make sure it consistently stays moist of enough for installation? Keeping adding every so often and mixing it

Fitted already.

it would be nice to see a comprehensive reasoned breakdown of alternatives to the status quo. Any suggestions for sources? Or we could all make our own armchair suggestions on here and start another shouting match... 🙂

It's a valid point Nick, I suppose there could be some short term variation room by room and, perhaps more so floor by floor with insulation between floors having an effect, but I guess overall the temps will balance fairly quickly with flow round the house via the mvhr anyway.

Eh How does one size the thermal emitters without knowing what they need to cope with. May as well go back to an open fire on an outside wall if RbR is of no relevance.

Thanks Simon. I've not had any contact with Panasonic, I've left that up to the person who doing the install - he seems to be struggling with a fan coil system design, initially it was a spec for the ducting but now seems the more complex issue of whole design for pressure drops etc if we went for a multi room fancoil. I think we've almost ditched that option now as seems far too complex to sort out so, looking to do individual fcu in each room instead, obv more pipework needed but I guess it's swings and roundabouts compared to the multiroom option.

Room by room is a bit pointless, imo, as the house will just do all it can to equalise the temps throughout. Add MVHR in to the mix and it becomes even less important.

This sounds sensible, thanks JohnMo. The ashp will be set up for wc and we're going with a single zone for ufh in the gf. Not sure about the ff/sf though, the Aquarea allows 2 zones so we could keep the bedrooms a little cooler I guess, not sure it's needed though 🤷‍♀️

I've only done the whole house calcs via Jeremy's spreadsheet. I will set to work with a room by room calc and see how the rooms compare. Our part O was fine so no issues with overheating but, we'd like the option to cool anyway.

The advice from @Russell griffiths was good. A labourer would be useful, but not if they don't know what they are doing. You may as well get them to mix (with a mixer) rather than have it delivered. Make sure is it just moist enough that it holds into a ball if you squeeze it, but not wet. You are best with a polythene layer on top of the Celotex. A laser level may be helpful. A long aluminium straight edge to screed with. Use kneepads. I wouldn't fancy doing this myself as I would be too knackered after the 2nd hour.

Dry screeding is DIY able if you get yourself organised first … or it can go horribly wrong. At 50mm thick, 21sq will be around 2100kgs so you are looking at 3200kgs (ish) - a lot to move for 1 or even 2 people. levels / flatness are your next concern. Set out your finished level around the perimeter.. small blocks screwed to wall work well. You can then use a long spirit level as a screed bar and work from your level blocks. get the screed mix into place and compact it well by walking around and/or an electric compactor. When it’s upto (slightly high) level, scrape it back to level and flat from the level blocks. ….. or just use wet screed and save a lot of effort.

Insane

The depth of 250mm is because i have to make up around 325mm-350mm ground to get to sub floor level. Using 250mm seems like a good way to this and bump up the ground insulation. I think we're now pretty set on going the foam glass route because it also seems simpler build wise.

I need to dry screed the an area of 21 square metres of what is to become kitchen in a newly built extension, depth about 70 or 75mm. About to lay Cellotex insulation followed by UFH and then screed to finish of. Have never done it before but watched plenty of you tube videos. Was thinking of hiring a labourer to help with install. Can hire 2 labourers if required. Any tips/advice, is it a DIY job. Off course most crucial thing is to get a perfectly level floor.

Was pretty much ruled out. All mandatory options have now been ruled out, not just pay-as-bid. Decisive Government in action / Decisive Government inaction. What you think the market will bear (for each half hour slot), knowing that if you bid too high, you'll get nothing.

Option 1 is the way to go for old building with solid walls. RFG acts as a capillary break and also acts as hardcore and yes will need to be compacted. You have to wrap the RFG in a geotextile membrane. Have a look at Mike Wye and Unity Lime for drawings and detail. Out of interest you have mentioned 250mm RFG depth- is this to achieve a certain U-Value or something else. Of quoted figures for RGP depth is about 175-200mm.

Hi, there's a lot of different sands available, as with the lime, but I'm trying to avoid a couple of scarcely used big bags of material sitting and going off!

Hi Roger, thanks for the reply - but I'm not sure what the 'it' refers to!! Geoff

I get all sorts of headaches with dry air - same in winter when we have cold, dry periods. It's all sinus related.

No, that's accurate. Bedrooms are cool but acceptable (to me if not my wife!) in winter. This is the upstairs hall temperature in January and February (lowest is 17.4 °C, highest is 20.3 °C): I'll be tweaking the control loop for next winter to see what sort of impact I can have on the lowest temps, as I now have more info available to let me analyse what's going on. If I were doing this all again, I'd consider tiling upstairs with a wet UFH system. Rugs down in winter for underfoot warmth, along with intermittent mild heating to keep the temp relatively stable. Rugs up in summer, with cooling as needed.

From a conversation I had last night about gardens in new builds , they are lucky compacted clay is the problem rather that compacted bricks and rubble. Advice all sounds good. My approach would be to try to aid aeration by loosening clay with a long fork and spreading sharp sand ( concreating sand, not fine building sand) as well as organic matter. A modern fork will probably bend a 50 year old one probably won’t. Builders and developers do need to think about looking after the future gardens more. Top soil screening buckets are now readily available for diggers to clear a site of large rubble pieces and can be very effective. Our digger drivers idea of levelling the site was to track everything in and track back and too until level ! Soon stopped that.

Panasonic are an option. It's been over 10 years since I installed mine, but their technical support department was happy to take my phone calls to troubleshoot our installation, which I doubt all companies would be happy to do. I remember we were getting an intermittent error that we couldn't find the source of. They suggested a slight change to something like flow rate and the problem disappeared. Even as a pleb, you used to be able to get a login to the Panasonic Pro website, which gave access to all their technical docs that aren't publicly available. Again, this info is long out of date, but I did a comparison between the Panasonic 5 kW model I eventually bought, and a Nibe 8 kW model. As you know, the power ratings are somewhat nominal, but I didn't expect the comparison to look like this: One thing I'm not sure about is conditions under which the ratings are determined. For example, periods of low single digit temperatures when it's damp (common in many parts of the UK during winter), defrost cycles can have a significant impact on COP. A couple of other things I'd consider are: What sort of functionality you get without requiring cloud access. Surface area of heat exchanger. If you can find a low power unit with a larger heat exchanger, my guess is that it's likely to require fewer defrosting cycles in cold weather. I'm sure someone (maybe @JohnMo) has mentioned that some ASHPs have some sort of two-stage system that can operate very efficiently at lower power on one stage, then bring the other in when high power is required (e.g., DHW heating). Can't remember whether it's dual compressors or something else. I imagine this sort of tech is more likely to be available in higher power units.

A mate of mine was Electrical Shift Engineer or similar at the new Keadby gas fired station. Some government official at a presentation saying burning gas instead of coal would provide the lowest cost energy possible …hmmm 🤔. Then I did a load of work on Drax where burning local Reeds would be almost free fuel …. Not difficult to see that a few hundred acres of reeds wont burn for long and takes time to grow again.