All Activity

Anyone can put a G99 application in...you, designer, installer.

Are we talking copper wire as in ADSL? Or Fibre? A picture of what's behind the socket might help.

Upstairs. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0014pgk As for the rest, just do it. Been a long times since the GPO can lock someone up.

Hello. Do I have to ask for a BT engineer to move a BT broadband socket, or an electrician do ti? Our broadband/phone cable comes from a pole on the nearby lane to just below the roof above the 1st floor. Then it travels west about 20 metres along the front of the house before passing through the wall of the room at the extreme west end of the house. As the house is long and narrow, this arrangement isn't helpful. It was probably made like this because the previous owner had an office in that room at the extreme west end, and can't have had a wish for wifi reception at the extreme east end of the house. Wifi throughout the house would surely be much better if the cable entered the house halfway along the frontage. I imagine that "all" that needs to be done is: - drill a hole through the 10" wall of the house (wood-board, Kingspan insulation board, plywood board, internal plaster) - shorten the cable then draw it through the hole - reposition the BT socket on the wall, and attach the cable to it. - seal round the cable on the exterior side of the wall. Is this something a local electrician could easily do? To make wifi reception throughout the house as good as possible, should the new socket be positioned upstairs or downstairs? If the socket were to be upstairs, it would be in the large living-room in the middle of the house and the router attached to it could feed the TV directly via an ethernet cable. If the socket is positioned downstairs, it would be in a small room but still be in the middle of the house. Thank you for advice.

OK reporting back: after trying out lots of options, we cut the angle with a Proxxon Thermocut 650 and a home made jig. It lacks a bit of oomph and was fairly slow, but the flipside was that it didn't burn or smell much. We made the straight-through cuts with a big-assed circ saw - not crazily messy. You can get bigger hotwire cutters than the Proxxon and specifically for insulation, but we wanted to specifically cut 200mm deep. p.s. the wire is very thin and breaks quite easily. Although it comes with 30m of wire on a little spool, you might want some extra.

Hehe, what you've described is room influence, although the best room influence simply sends an additional signal to the heat pump to reduce the flow temps essentially modifying the WC curve. But if you have control from the room, that's room influence as it calls to the heat pump - nothing to do with actuators/open loop in an of themselves. Room influence is just about adding additional system control which uses the room conditions as input. 😁

It’s in the corner of their garden and away from their house, it is close to my house as my plot is of restrictive size, the front gable shall be clad with cement board and k-rend applied to match my house

unfortunately then it brigs the garage closer to the house or else I would…

I used these to get the snow clearance needed to comply with OEM requirements for snow. https://www.wolseley.co.uk/product/pump-house-1000mm-condensing-unit-mounting-block/?pid=P667987

No not room influence - whole house, one room sensor/thermostat for whole house. Hiaer doesn't have a thermostat built into the controller. It is connected to outside temperature sensor so also allows oat switching the whole heat pump off in heating mode when outside is an average (over 6 hrs) above 10 degs. No need to get excited, still single single zone, WC, no actuators, just an on off permission, mostly because running heat pump at 9 degs OAT on full WC at about 22 degs doesn't work, which is about the temperature it needs at that temperature. So heat pump uses a simple permission to run at 26 degs, runs for a couple of hours and then shuts off for about 18 hrs. The colder it gets the longer the run time. No setbacks just single room temperature 24/7. But really needed for cooling as I run a set flow temp with humidity over ride. So makes sense to flick a single switch that takes thermostat from heat cool and same switch moves ASHP between heat cool also.

Yeah, OK I've learnt that while some windows suppliers are keen to claim they 'offer the open/close contact option' - when you ask them 'great, so where should I place my cable ducts then' they go all 'errr, nobody here knows, I'll have to check with the supplier'. So, my advice is to start this conversation v early.

We have a concrete pad already poured for the unit to sit on. Its a few inches above ground level. Just seen this in my whatsapp from plumber/builder 🤷‍♂️

You don't need rubber feet on the Panasonics and you don't need to go to the expense of flexi connections to the heat pump either. You can buy and fit rubber feet if you want to and there is also a mounting frame available (with adjustable feet for uneven ground) if you need to install at greater height but this is usually only used for snow clearance. Yep, add another expansion vessel - shame it's not like the Viessmann boilers where there's a specified test procedure you can follow to determine if the built in vessel is sufficient, but it's quick and easy to add another.. Given your UFH installation, a full commissioning service to balance your UFH will likely take days to do properly given the lag in a slab and also is best done when it's cold out. Just buy yourself a few pipe thermostats and stock up on patience. Wow, I'm glad I was sitting down when I read this. @JohnMo has joined the dark side and gone room influence. I never thought I'd ever see the day given how adamant you used to be that it was akin to the devil 😉 What changed? Or is this another experiment?

Ha, you're right, I used 16mm diameter for the UFH pipes, but the internal diameter is of course less. 😆 At 12mm ID the volume is just 118. That's more like it 🙄

That sounds a lot, are you sure? But if correct, you will need an additional expansion vessel. Too much expansion room is better than not enough.

First supplier I spoke to never came back with a quote after I told him I didn't want a buffer tank or actuators on the manifold. Second supplier should be delivering the panasonic heatpump in a few days time. A commissioning service is offered but no detail on pricing etc so I'm going to try to get this up and running myself. What could possibly go wrong 🤔 The plumber (and hence the builder) are adamant that I need to mount it on rubber feet, despite advice from Panasonic to bolt the unit to the slab. We'll see. The unit has an expansion vessel inside for the heating circuit but the manual advises that for volume > 150 litres an additional expansion vessel must to be fitted. We have approx 200 litres, so I take it the manual is correct and an extra expansion vessel is required?

i was planning on doing this, albeit through 40mm oak but sacked it off as the charging speed was a snails pace. Especially when its about a foot away from a fast-charging socket which charges at about 20 times the speed, didnt make any sense to do it.

I find this guy a bit dull, but e.g. (below) - he talks a bit about the export & inverter limits and how this varies with DNO and system etc. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvpl9pvg8zk >>> Where have you heard DNOs are interested in panel capacity?? Good point - I was extrapolating this from typical mppt clipping limits and no of mppts per inverter. e.g. Sig single phase hybrid has 2 mppts and max voltage & current limits giving roughly 46% PV panel over-capacity / clipping limit (depending on size of inverter). So, a limit on inverter size seems to result in an effective limit on the number of panels. A subsidiary question - what significance does the installer nomination have on the DMO application? i.e. can you use one installer to do the DNO application and another later to do the later installation. i.e. is the Spirit Energy offer a way of blocking in installs?

My slope path probably only about 5 to 7 metres. So it needs to be no more than 4.8 degrees for 5 metres down to 3.8 degrees if its any more. I could lower the whole of the driveway area to remove this wheelchair friendly path but then i have a steeper exit onto the road.

Automatic fire suppression systems aren’t ridiculously expensive (mist vs sprinklers) so if I had a building like this for storing / working on vehicles or storing significant amounts of ‘stuff that goes up real good’, then I’d fit a mist system. For all of my domestic clients projects I specify a 3-core cable from the house smoke detection system to both attached AND detached garages, so anything not smouldering / smoking / on fire is immediately obvious to the occupants, eg it is flagged as early on as is possible. Fitting a (wireless) ‘locate’ button in at least one strategic position within the house is also something that I spec (recommend), so basically upon hearing the smoke alarms all going off, every one of them in unison, where you’re possibly awaken, startled and worried, you simply hit the locate button; this action will silence every smoke detector except the one(s) that was triggered, meaning you can then make a bee line for the problem area to tackle the cause. If the house falls entirely silent, that’s your prompt to get your arse out the door, el pronto, to the detached garage / outbuilding where you’ll then hear that one wailing. Most modern homes now have plant rooms, attic plant areas, detached garages and out buildings, so it’s far simpler to have this ‘locate’ facility imo, so you can find the issue in seconds vs running to every room / space that (you can remember) has one. I recommend installing one inside a kitchen cupboard unit too, as with large homes with vaulted ceilings, if you burn the toast, you then don’t have to climb on stuff to press the ‘hush’ button on the detector (giving a 7 minute mute) as these wireless units also allow you to hush and test.

A while ago my next door neighbour locked themselves out of the house. After a while it was decided to break a window at the back to gain entry. I was voted for the job. It took over 5 minutes with a hammer to get through the triple glazing.

That's my understanding of how the DNOs operate. Our second system, sat in parallel to an older FIT system, had 8.5kw of panels but SPEN were only interested in the additional inverters rating that was much lower than the panels rating.

If a fire is about to flame-grill you, you’d be out the window like a 21 year old. I have advised exactly this for one of my current clients, eg that they stash drop down ladders in each of the FF bedroom fitted wardrobes, the type that hook onto the window frame and unroll to give a ‘rope ladder’. For £55, there’s no reason not to have at least one of these on the FF. I’ll take that over a pair of broken legs all day long.

It's a huge difference affecting ease of building and fire specification. Normally reduces foundation size too. Fire still applies though so do check it out.

This is such a no brainer! @Kevan Marshall, move it over 400mm and save all this feckin about!!!! 🤷‍♂️ Iirc, the 1000mm rule would be the absolute dimensions, so remember to allow for overhangs / gutters and downpipes etc.