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If you get that it's just piss poor design from installer not the boiler. Mine was pretty much silent, directly connected to UFH manifold no mixer and pump. Just ran a steady 32 degs, and was managed by a low hysterisis thermostat. When it did DHW it just ramped up slowly to 60 degs, by the time it got the cylinder was at 52 degs.

Was a tricky decision, as I knew nothing about them and have always had gas in the past. I love my technology, but worried about earlier adopting, and shortage of skilled people on them. Had gas available and on site already.. So seemed mad not too just keep it simple. Even with UFH and the Grant... I still wasn't sure. Architect and builder both looked at me as if I was mad when I hesitated over ASHP, and explained the above.... I generally declined but said I'd think about it. The builder went ahead and costed and put it into the plans anyway. oooooooh were they correct. I love the ASHP, it works well, is cheaper then gas, with smart tariffs it's just brilliant. No gas standing charge , no big noisy boiler inside the house, no stupidly high flow temp to then try and reduce for the UFH.

Floor: 300mm mineral wool Walls: 150mm wool+ 50mm PIR Warm pitched roof: 150mm wool+ 100mm PIR Plus airtight membrane battened and taped. Windows are 3G with u values of 1.0 or less.

Due to damage I've had to replace a couple of aluclad units, and have decided to go uPVC this time. I was able to improve from 0.98 to 0.74.

New build. Had gas available. Chose ASHP because (i) fuel bills are lower; (ii) low-and-steady gives a nicer sense of warmth; (ii) cooling in summer; and (iii) and especially because it gives a whisper quiet home as the main noise-generating part is located outside.

It's been a busy weekend family wise so have not had a chance to talk about any issues but you may have hit upon one I saw on Saturday. I was running with normal settings 28 degree flow and trying not to fiddle so as to limit the number of variables as @SimonD encouraged me to. (Remember I am not using WC as I cannot control the end points of the curve yet and I am awaiting a response from the manufacturer as to how to set them - hopefully tomorrow.) and for some reason at 12ish the system just stopped. Well when I say stopped I mean it stopped producing heat and just ran the pump. Those dips at about 12:30 & 13:15 are me turning off and on again - making no changes. It was a sunny day so the room temperature is rising as is the outside air temperature (OAT) but the heat pump (HP) knows nothing of the Room Temperature and it has no 'stat' anywhere. Initially I thought that the problem was the OAT sensor of the HP because it is in direct sun - something that will be sorted when the bin house is complete but for now I may have to shield it. It was up at 24 deg C. So I left it and went out for the afternoon with my Valentine! Came back at 5 and tried to start it, now the OAT sensor was normal, about what the EMON trace shows (remember that the EMON trace is derived from the local weather station). Still it would not start and I was now quite worried - I have broken it! However at 18:00 I thought OK lets see what happens if you call for a domestic hot water (DHW) cycle. That started first time so the main workings of the HP are in order something else must be preventing it from delivering heat. Anyway while watching some telly across the evening I just prodded it with reductions in the flow temperature, a few times to no avail. I slept on it and this morning I decide to go the other way - upped the flow temperature setting to 31 and off it went. Nothing broken but something odd going on - now all I need to know is why this occurred. Reflecting on it all I think there are aspects of two things hitting the issues in this chart. The first is the OAT sensor - If it gets too hot it won't allow the HP to run anything but the pump, so I am going to have to shield it for now. ( I do assume it will allow the DHW cycle to run however even though I did not try this.) This ties up with your experience above @JohnMo. Secondly if the delta (Δ) T is less than some value, I think around 5, it won't allow the unit to start although it might allow less if it was already running. So as I lowered the setpoint down in the evening it was too close to the return temperature because the slab (hovering across this whole period at around 22 deg C) was feeding back return water at too high a temperature. If I increase the setpoint enough it would start without issues. I managed to trip the same behaviour on Sunday evening and it is clear that for this heat pump it won't start if the return temperature, after perhaps couple of minutes of the pump starting up, gets too close to the set point the pump won't start but that you can get it to start by upping the setpoint, letting it run for a few minutes and then backing the set point off to where you wanted it to be in the first place. So now all I have to do is find out what setting(s) causes this behaviour, perhaps its some sort of overlap between dead bands somewhere in the system or some such. I don't think we can turn this off on ours but I have to say I have not seen much, if any, modulation in output below about 3kW, I will hunt through the trends data and see. I already have all the flow meters wide open.

I just don't like the brittle nature, and I've done UFH with P5 + plywood so many times with great results, I just don't want to change. If it works, then happy days, plus the plywood conforms to the floor shape / undulations, whereas cement board will just snap or fracture, no Bueno afaic, sorry!

That's what I did in my porch, just forced the chipboard down onto the fibre-bouncy spreaders 👍 Thanks Nick, appreciate the info. Any reason for 6mm ply as opposed to a cement based board? I'm thinking for heat transfer.

Who are the intended occupants, and what are they going to do in it?

To go an alternative route to this question , if you were designing an off grid metal clad sheperds hut for one person for all year round use that will use the minimum of heating fuel how would you insulate it ?

Go for spreader plates, but allow some rockwool under them, atop the PIR, so the plates are sprung upwards slightly. Then, when you screw the 22mm P5 deck down there will always be great surface contact between the aluminium plates and the underside of the P5. Without this, the heat transfer suffers somewhat. I've never used backer board and only ever 6mm or more of plywood (glued and screwed down) and then tile straight onto the ply. For 6mm ply and 22mm deck you use 25mm 4.0 x 25mm screws to lay the ply so you don't hit a pipe.

What kind and thickness of insulation have you got ?

There will be no connection to mains electricity. The reason for the wood stove.

Great progress again. Fingers crossed for the move in.

Evenin. I'm onto planning my bathroom and looking for advice and general opinions, which will be ongoing... Searching buildhub via Google seems to have gone by the wayside and I can't seem to word what I want in the site search so here I am. I'm going to extend my UFH to the small bathroom (3x3m) and I'm struggling to find the build-up that would be best. For info the bathroom doesn't really need it, putting it in just to take the edge off a cold floor when barefoot. My initial plan is PIR between joists, pipes clipped to it (or spreaders). The original floorboards need to go, so this is where I'm struggling for info. Replace subfloor with chipboard/ply? Then if I want to tile, do I need to go over this with say 6mm cement board? Insulated tile backer is adding insulation that I don't need. I assume I don't tile directly into the subfloor. Cheers friends.

...or "home slaves". MVHR just ticks over and you go about life. Just why would you go for anything that needed any such diligence aka compromise on lifestyle.

Good on you for doing the sums. They're the only place which hides the truth, forget payback times like @JohnMo says. Think thermal comfort. Once you get anywhere near Bregs airtightness and thermal bridging become massively more important than U values. Detailed excellently a 0.3 U value house would be very nice to live in. As for the windows why not PVC? https://sbwgroup.co.uk/products/veka-softline-82-md/ These are the same as ours (Different installer).They've been excellent. €16k inc VAT for 32m² of glazing in 2020. Gealan, kommerling, rehau and Internorm all do high quality units.im sure there's more, just avoid the cheap crap.

Interesting study that. Undoubtedly there's marked humidity buffering effect with the hygroscopic materials. The test was done in the presence of controlled mechanical ventilation. Had this been turned off I suspect RH would have climbed higher than desirable in both cases. Passively/manually ventilating can work with the proviso you have one of the following. 1. Heat driven stack effect. 2. Very large internal volumes. 3. Diligent occupants. Hygroscopic materials will undoubtedly help smooth out the worst RH extremes with the latter two. However for almost all owners I would think mechanical ventilation would still provide much cheaper and more consistent control over IAQ.

Rogue photo at the end for those who enjoyed the mud. 🤷‍♂️

No mains gas and used oil in the past. New self build, air tight, MVHR, 3G etc. 275sqm. RHI was available so paid for kit and install. Our personal use for 2025 was 2700kWh for hot water and heating. However, I would not recommend ASHP in average insulated home with mains gas available if cost is a major factor.

I’ve got to be honest, there are times when it feels like we are inching towards the finish line ever more slowly, with lots of jobs nearly but not quite done. Pulling together this regular blog is really helpful in that respect: Every fortnight I start off thinking there is hardly anything to say so it’s probably not worth issuing an update. But once I start to look at what’s happening since the previous blog I realise that we have generally made good progress. And indeed it’s a case of more good progress over the last two weeks. It does now feel like we are nearly over the line. Several long-standing activities have been closed off thank goodness. So here are some of the things we’ve made progress on since the previous blog. (Confession time: I meant to take more photos of the bathrooms, kitchen and lighting but seem to have forgotten to do so, so you’ll have to wait for next time for those.) Bathroom After our disaster last time with the wall hung shower toilet, my brilliant brother came back over from Sussex to hang the replacement, even though he had managed to break his foot in the meantime - that’s what I call dedication to the cause! The (revised and up-to-date) instructions we were given with the replacement WC pan said to tighten the wall bolts to 7Nm torque. Which seems really very low - the sorts of torque used on bicycle parts. Anyway, that’s what we did to the best of our ability. It was just about enough to stop the toilet feeling at all wobbly and the good news is nothing cracked, nothing fell on the floor, and the toilet seems pretty stable. Especially now it’s been siliconed around the edges - though I’m sure the silicon doesn’t add any strength at all. While he was with us, Chris also fitted the small hand basin in our ensuite, tiled and grouted the splashbacks, then fitted a lot of sound insulation into the stud work between the three bathrooms (they all back on to each other, so good acoustic insulation is a definite plus!). He also bailed us out of a looming problem with our porcelain tile skirting… Tiling We were getting increasingly concerned whether our floor tiler would finish off the porcelain skirting tiles before we moved in. The quality of his work has been great, but since Christmas it’s been hard to schedule any time from him partly because he’s been ill and also he’s got a lot of other work, I guess. So we agreed to part company amicably, we agreed a payment for his completed the work, and my brother Chris stepped into the breach. Chris then spent a long day finishing off the skirtings, which really meant doing all the tricky mitre corners which had been left until last plus a few straight runs. For a simple, relatively open-plan house we had a surprising number of corners! Chris then went round and grouted 130 m of skirting. Great job Bro! We decided to hire a recommended specialist silicon guy to apply silicon around the bottom and the top of the skirtings, 260m in total. He did a great job, and very quickly. He is certainly getting a good rate for it! But I’d agreed a fixed rate and he did it to a good standard so, fair enough… Specialist siliconing is obviously where the money is these days! Anyway, all our tiling and skirtings grouting and siliconing is now officially… done! Kitchen Chris the carpenter has finished off all the outstanding jobs in the kitchen, including the final fit of ‘wall of ovens’ in the alcove where they sit. I’d been pondering the best approach to ventilation and with Chris’s help we came up with a what I think is a neat solution - creating a slender recessed ventilation strip above the ovens which is there but doesn’t catch the eye. Chris also fitted the plinths which make the kitchen look finished rather than work-in-progress. The Quooker tap is now powered up in as well as plumbed in and we have been using it for the first time over the past couple of days. I have to say I’m really impressed; it works really well and feels and looks great too. Electrics Progress on second fit electrics has been frustrating, I think mainly because our electricians have got too much work on and they’re trying to juggle multiple jobs. Also to be fair, our installation has been more complex than originally envisaged due to choices we’ve made. The rate of progress hasn’t been a problem until recently but it’s begun to feel like we might not have the electrics ready to move in: However, our main man Darren was in this week and made good progress, and we now have power and lighting throughout the house. All the kitchen equipment is powered up and whilst there could still be a fair few jobs outstanding after we move in (e.g. external lights) it’s clear that the electrics are going to be working well enough for us to move in as planned on the 23rd. Yesterday Nick, the electric contractors boss, demonstrated the seamless switch-over from mains to battery by switching off the mains supply without causing so much as a flicker to the lights. I wanted to try it myself when we had friends round later but Mrs P wouldn’t let me: “it’s not a toy” apparently. I was wondering whether we would actually know if we had a power cut, but the battery app sends us a message to say the power’s tripped over to batteries and then another one when the power is restored and it’s tripped back. I was a bit worried that, with the electrical work ‘growing’ and there being a fair few extras that we’ve asked for, the final bill was going to be way over the original quote. So I have been badgering Nick to give us a revised quote. He has finally done that, and yes, it’s going to cost us a bit more than he first quoted but actually not nearly as much more as I feared. Which is a result! Joinery Meanwhile on the joinery front, the oak we ordered to use as full width door jambs and the pocket door frame sections have all arrived. Mrs. P. has Osmo oiled them, fitting has started and they should all be installed by the time we move in. Rear landscaping Lots of activity is now underway on our rear landscaping. We have a fall of about 1.5 metres from the house finished floor level to the far end of the “residential garden“ part of our land. As I am a wheelchair user we are naturally wanting to have step free access to as much of that as possible. The garden design we have involves level access from the house to a terrace seating area, then 1:20 ramps down to three different further small seating areas between planting areas. That obviously involves quite a lot of low retaining walls and ramped paths. So given we are in the middle of the winter monsoon season, it was clearly an ideal time to start work on those walls, paths and terraces! Ashley and his team have made great progress despite the weather, as you can see - although if their landscaping work ever dries up (ha ha!) they could probably get good employment as World War 1 battle scene recreators. Front landscaping If the back garden looks like the Somme, in front of the house the parking/turning area is looking much more civilised. We debated about how to finish the surface, considering a number of options, but in the end we’ve gone for simple tarmac. Gravel is a no-no for the wheelchair, resin bonded is too expensive, brick pavers we don’t like the look of and need regular cleaning. In a previous house we had hot-rolled grit into tarmac and that does look nice but we found it collects dirt and is a recipe for bringing grit into the house, so we’re keeping it simple this time. The base coat is down and the front apron is being done tomorrow(!). The aim is to leave the top coat until all the heavy work in the back is done, to avoid damaging it. Ashley has told us several times we’re doing it the wrong way round - we should have started at the back and worked forward - but having that base coat down is transformational for me - no more wheeling through lumps of clay or getting bogged down in loose type 1. Preparation under way: Troy anointing the prepared sub-base. "May God bless her and all who walk/wheel on her": Laying down the blacktop: First flower bed planted! Focus for the next two weeks: Moving in! Dashboard: Contractor days on site this past two weeks: 45 Contractor days on site since build start: 572 Budget: No change - over budget but within contingency. Plan: Moving in on 23rd February. Issues and worries closed this fortnight: Hanging that toilet Whether the electrics would be ready Finishing the skirtings Current top issues and worries: Packing! (I expect Mrs P. has it all under control ;-))

Ah so a metal carrier then aluminium trim on the inside?

All the stone was cut to 50mm thick and stuck on, then with the big ones I cut a notch out of the back and they sit on a chunk of 50x50 angle the underside will have a coloured ally trim to match the windows and hide the angle.

At this point I was just testing if I could discount the option through on a cost basis. But you are well ahead of me in thinking of sourcing the skills, even if the work is affordable!

So did you cut the top ones like a slip?