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certainly with the older coolenergy units there is a selectable overshoot as well as the PID settings being accessible

I'm still curious if wet plastering the tape in would save all this parging and excessive taping? Or would these areas be lined with plasterboard? Living in a 60s bungalow, the 'cavity closers' on my place are L shaped blocks, so the whole reveal is solid and therefore wet plastered

The distance back from the kerb depends on the road type. The gates take a while to open, so you don't want to obstruct traffic. If the gates are over 1m high you will need planning consent.

If you need to cover 100mm then you’d be looking at minimum 2 runs of 60mm tape to do that, I’d go 3 for robustness and to give a decent overlap. You can buy thicker tapes, but you just end up trying to buy the right thickness tape for xyz locations and as a contractor it just isn’t economical. Wider tape costs more than narrow tape so 🤷‍♂️. Yes, self builders are mostly all loonies, so I am making plenty of adjustments lol. Sand and cement doesn’t really parge well, unless you mix a bit of SBR in and get the consistency perfect each mix, then it still goes quite granular as you spears it out and the masonry almost immediately sucks the moisture straight out of it. Then it’s like making thin sandcastles on vertical surfaces, give it a go if you wish, which is where you will thank me. I accept all major brands of beer / IPA. Remind me are you using AeroBarrier or just tape / foam / parge / liquid AVCL? Are you saying you’re going to spray the whole house interior with liquid AVCL??

Yup. Let’s be honest, if you’re ‘accessing’ the plywood you’ve smashed all the tiles up and binning them so are ‘all in’. If you want the tiles to stay down, you go ‘all in’ on the installation and enjoy the longevity. You could always fit 27, randomly positioned access panels on the ceiling downstairs.

OK they've been back out. And ultimately said the overshooting is within tolerance and part of the design. They monitored it remotely with their software guy and said it basically is operating as expected. And claimed that the prolonged modulating down and overshooting is because of system balance. Which did sound wrong. But feels like ive exhausted all i can with that team now if theyre basically coming back and saying there are no problems. I could go to trading standards but not sure how id even try and prove their wrong honestly now. Regarding the hex pressure loss, he said they dont have that in the documentation for the system boilers, but its the same as the conventional boilers and sent me an image of what they are, which i've attached. Lastly when asked about running a second pump on there, he said absolutely not unless theres mechanical separation, as in an LLH. He didn't say why, but was very clear on that being a no-no.

190 sq m barn conversion dating from 1995. Kidde oil boiler not too difficult to keep running but last remaining service engineer (and source of spares) nearing retirement. No gas available. Oil-fired AGA which we have kept. Had already put in 8kW of solar, EV charging point and Victron/Pylontech ESS so HP the obvious next step. Had some difficulty finding an installer who would not insist on replacing the hard-to-get-at hw tank at great expense. Solved with custom 12kW design from Vaillant with thermal store and two heating zones. Eventually got 6 quotes of which 2 were realistic. Job finally done by Eljay in Ivybridge to a high standard, happy with result.

I am not doing a new build, i had some major renovations and extensions couple of years ago and now finally getting round to doing some externals Cheers

If you are doing a new build and it's not signed off, permitted development doesn't exist. You're legal obligation is to follow the agreed plans or do a variation. If you have a need for visibility splays, your into planning and highways approval. There is highways documentation that has full details of visibility delays (they change with speed limit and gate placements and how much of the driveway has to comply with highways road spec - that part only certified people can install the tar and sub surface.

You can do that, you basically connect to ASHP as two zones. Get the ASHP to control an electronic mixer to the UFH. Set the two flow temps in the controller and it will control fan coil and UFH flow temperature independently - note your heat pump generates the higher heating temp and lowest cooling flow temps of the two zones so you take a slight cop hit. Although set up as two zones, you operate as a single zone, so no buffer or additional pumps needed.

Ok, I think I was over complicating matters, by thinking I could run the UFH above dew point and run the fan coils at a much colder temperature to really make the bedrooms cool, but I suspect that running it at 16-17 degs is perfectly fine and will create a nice cold room for hot summer weather.

Have one fan coil in summer house and it runs same temperature as UFH. In cooling mode 16-17 degs, so have no condensation drains installed.

I assumed there was no mains electric but a £10 fan heater would be fine if there was. I have a 2m mini office. Good airtightness, 0.23W/m²K walls and 1W/m² 2G doors and a 3G window. dMEV. Average U value of 0.35W/m²K. Once it's up to temp a couple of hundred Watts keeps it cosy.

Some roads are very thick; others are not. This from an American living in Germany, a Youtuber - comparing German and Usonian roads. (German Autobahnn is twice as thick. UK motorway is halfway between at 18" thick.) Video:

This is exactly what I had recently with an ASHP installer. With regards to your configuration. Do you run your fan coils at a different water temperature to that of your UFH when you are in cooling mode?

Hi All I am in the early stages of doing my driveway and we are looking at options of if we want to install electric gates etc.. I have put ducting around the drive and house so cabling is not an issue One thing I am struggling to get a definite answer on is distance from the road the gate has to be, this will determine if this is suitable for mine driveway and then when the visability splays Will I be able to do this under permitted development and will it need planning. I have made initial contact with my council but as always its very slow progress at the minute Has anyone installed gates (over 1m) and what regs/guidelines did they follow? I even had an electric gate company out and they didn't know (which didnt fill me with confidence!) Any information/advice appreciated on this topic Many Thanks

Depending on heat pump it could be a screened pair cable or multiple cables. And ideally doesn't want to be in power cable duct.

Not all dMEV fans are equal, some are quite noisy, I installed one in the summer house, next day removed it as it made racket and installed Greenwood CV2, totally silent.

Benpointer on buildhub - "The ‘spaghetti’ in the bottom left corner is where all of our external service ducts come into the plant room. 17 ducts in total, including two spare at present, (I may have over-catered): 1. Power to ASHP 2. Power to garden 3. Water pipe to garden 4. Water pipe to workshop 5. Power to workshop 6. Lighting circuit - switched external lights 7. Data to workshop 8. Live power supply in (SSE - single phase) 9. Fibre in (Openreach) 10. Water mains in (Wessex Water) 11. Power to sewage treatment plant 12. PV panel in 13. PV panel in 14. Power to EV charger 15. Data for CCTV 16. Spare 50mm duct (to workshop) 17. Spare 50mm duct (to workshop)" You might also consider control cables for the ASHP ( @Russell griffiths suggestion) and data to the EV charger if not included in the power cable make-up.

Our summer house, is insulated, floor, roof and walls, double glazed wall with plenty of air leakage (rubbish design) and a dMEV fan. Insulation a country mile away from passivhaus, airtightness even further away. Heating is by fan coil as an extension to the house UFH system (all run as single zone), ASHP flow temp set at 28.5 degs. Heating consumption for summer house is the best part of nothing much, as it piggy backed on to house and summer house is sitting at 19.5 degs most of the time. If we need additional heat we flick on an electric heater and it bumps it up to 21 in 30 to 40 mins. Going passivhaus on a small building isn't worth the effort as with some insulation heat costs are tiny. Not even sure a diesel heater is worth the effort, small storage heater, electric panel heater or a room through wall heat pump heater, sized at about 1+kW.

Hi again Rick, really appreciate your input/ suggestions. Honestly, it's simply not a game I can possibly win here. Bar one room that is (actually two: I have a workshop room under my bedroom, 2021 extension, which CAN get warm even with 1 of the 4 walls an original stone.. but neither do I need, nor want heat in there: it dries my timber work out, so prefer this 1 rad out of the 12 in the house, off: just a fan heater to inject a bit of heat in, when I work, otherwise rad is off). If you came you'd understand. It's just one of those houses, like that freezing room you recall as a child for eg, always deathly cold.. my main 3 rooms, sit'room/ kitchen/ bathroom unfortunately all have this trait. 2 beds directly above, I don't use, much the same. It's simply lack of insulation. In my 3 main rooms: nothing under the floor, & nothing in the stone walls (bar a token gesture 1" rigid insulation in kitchen/ bathroom walls: ie next to nil). Sit'room has nothing in very low 6'3" ceiling too, just the two cold bedrooms above it. Basically, I have none at all. And whole cottage is just whacked down on -cold- clay too. I also have some damp upwards in the stone walls (not enough to mean odour- just black mould on lowest 1', a bugger to scrub off.. so I now just don't/ let that win too). Plus a stream -very- close & lower than cottage, likely aiding the cold ingress to the floor too. So it's no wonder I sit with the 2 sitroom huge rads on, now quite hot, but can still see my breath & cold feet, face, hands. It's like David & Goliath: I don't expect a small ammount of heat, to win over a massive ammount of cold. It's not physically possible. Thanks, Zoot

Yes, you could use pvc as well.

Hi Nick, when you say multiple runs of 60mm tape, do you mean all 4 sides of the window in one continuous swoop, then another over lapping the tape each time until you reach the desired width?. Or do you go 360 on the inside window edge and then 360 on the closer outer edge nearest to the room side? First option wod use a lot of tape. I got the flexi adhesive parge coat on yesterday, just scraped it hard to the block and it went on nicely. Was the thank me later to this aimed at longevity or ease of spread compared to sand and cement? I'm considering doing the inner walls the same now with multifinish before i spray them with airtight membrane (dont think my shoulder will thank me later), Could be over kill but self builders often aim high. Do you have a preference for tape brands you use or they all much alike?

Now you have the place to temp, what is you heating demand now?

If the heatpump is working as expected then I'm glad. Last thing you want is to be worrying about that on top of other things. It does sound like the cold home is really getting to you. I fully understand how annoying the cold feet feeling is. Now the heatpump noise has been solved maybe it's time to have another run at making things more comfortable? Maybe not for this year but to have a plan for next year (rather than spending a lot of energy now to dry the place out, next year plan to not let it cool down in the first place). If you have done enough sealing to avoid major drafts internally then it should be possible to keep the place warmer than it is. Maybe you can't get it to cosy, but I suspect you can do better than seeing your own breath inside and if the the main space can be got to a higher temp then then bedroom should be cosy. Failing that, maybe working out how to divide the spaces a bit better so the bedroom can be kept cosy without spending a load of money on heating areas with no impact as it does sound like the worst of all worlds ATM with the heating on a lot but not a lot of impact.