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I will almost certainly use the one I have just bought for the downstairs manifold. Now I have put it in a spare DIN rail enclosure, it is such a perfect fit. Then I will use the one from @newhome with the yet to be bought manifold for upstairs.

Actually, I think the big lesson from that is the potential value of weather forecasts to improving COP. Most of the hot water will be used in the morning in an average household, and not further required until the evening. Putting an inhibit on the unit until 10am and then working at max power would be a very effective strategy on that day - whereas if it was cold all day then the best strategy would be to run at lowish power rates intermittently throughout the day and leave the unit to defrost naturally in between. The whole Internet Of Things will actually make this quite easy to implement.

Nope! Named by @Nickfromwales

I monitor the RH and Temperatures myself. Just a DHT22 and a Raspberry Pi. Easy and cheap to set up. You could try WeatherUnderground to find a local weather station. https://www.wunderground.com/

I caught @PeterW trying to smuggle it out in his y-fronts. @ProDave will have to use latex gloves whilst disinfecting it. . I only kept it to save peters shame. Its here next to me right now, strangely it seems to be attracting a lot of flies.

'one of my neighbours'... Lol

Errr no ..!!! Rubber will compress over time and your lovely wall hung pan will crack the plasterboard or tiles it’s hung on ..!! Noise from a WC is the transient noise as the flush hits the pipework - insulate that, not the frame...!

There is a time and a place for a wood burner. In a town or city or the bottom of a sheltered valley may not be it. But up here in the sparsely populated Highlands, where neighbours are not close, and it's nearly always windy, they really are not a nuisance to neighbours. Of course any law passed will be based on regulating their use in Central London, then be applied equally everywhere.

@Dreadnaught & @HerbJ Yes it should also prevent loss of heat exchange efficiency when temperature falls below zero in winter, down to -6°C according to Paul. I am sure at one point Paul claimed down to -20°C. Repeating the links I gave in an earlier post on this thread. Theory here:- https://www.paulheatrecovery.co.uk/components/moisture-heat-exchanger/ Edit: no longer seems to work http://waermetauscher.paul-lueftung.de/en/product-information/enthalpy-exchangers-erv.html 2nd Edit: @Dreadnaught managed to get a copy and saved as PDF PaulenthalpypageasPDF.pdf

I’ve got many zones as @PeterW says but actually I mostly use the whole house as a 4 zone affair; 2 upstairs and 2 downstairs, split into ‘rooms I use’ and ‘rooms I don’t use’. For the latter I have set them to frost setting, keep the doors closed, and the other rooms run quite happily at a temperature that suits me with downstairs set to 20c and upstairs set to 18c. The zones I use are set to lower temperatures when I’m out of the house at work and then about an hour before I return home it heats back up to 20c so it’s definitely not cooking on gas (or in my case electric) 24x7. My system performed so poorly before it was sorted out I was very sceptical about how it could possibly work efficiently but so far so good!

Every day’s a school day . Happy to oblige

Why not just stand on a stool to clean the flippin shower head like everyone else? I now firmly believe my en-suite will be finished before this bathroom, and I have not even yet set a date to START my en-suite.

@lizzie as @HerbJ says this isn’t something that needs - or should have - anything changed in a balanced system. The difference is the material the HeX is constructed of which allows vapour diffusion rather than like the existing plastic film unit you currently have. A lot of the humidity sensors are designed to trigger boost speeds at higher levels of humidity. They have no reverse function to slow the fans or increase humidity so would be fairly pointless.

Although it has cost alot of our contingency fund we are pleased we paid the specialists to do the job. Not something worth mucking round with. The fire option mentioned by @Nickfromwales was tempting but my Dad had told me about the explosion risk (he'd seen a house go up in flames and chuck asbestos bits out everywhere) and we have already upset our neighbour enough by just living here ?. The asbestos filled sealed skip should be on its way to Swindon this week. We do occasionally find bits of chrysotile buried in the garden so goodness knows whats going to be under this house...... Thanks everyone for the supportive posts. Our project is finally getting underway.

Or you just buy a set of benders and learn, I did that in Australia and soon had many contracts as I really loved bending the pipe to match the track alignment. I was bending multiple sweeping bends and after a while it’s just fun, simple bends like in the house photo would be easily mastered if your that way inclined.

We used a house designer and structural engineer cost us around £2,500 in combined fees for bespoke planning and building warrant design fees. Our kit will be cut by joiners on site. We completed our foundations today and cutting on site allows our joiner to cut the kit to the exact size. I'm project managing our build with a RICS QS providing inspections at a number of intervals (5). I have found to date having good tradesman who know the standard of each of other work has really helped to make the project work well.

@Mr Punter as requested. The poor piano has been moved all over the place and is finally where it is supposed to go. That's me to give some scale. We love the way that the lights reflect off all the glass and the floor at night. These are basically the finished stairs. They still have lights to go in on the underside of the front edge of the treads.

I doubt that exposed conduit will be cheap. You need a good electrician to bend and thread galvanised conduit and get it looking sharp like that. I am willing to bet that will hardly be any cheaper than conventional wiring in a service void then plasterboard.

We had a timber frame (not a basic package however), with blocks on the outside. Timber frame made sense to us for a number of reasons. Firstly most builds up here in Scotland are timber frame, secondly as novice self builders it gave us the comfort that it was all being designed and cut to spec, and the sizes were correct for every component, and as it turned out it all fitted together very well. Thirdly once it was delivered on site it was up and watertight with astonishing speed (a bonus as the weather can be iffy here). We also needed the house to be habitable pretty quickly and as it turned out we moved in once we had a kitchen, shower room and living space. The rest of the house took eons to complete but that’s a different story! We kept costs down by sourcing every component outside of the timber frame package ourselves, and all trades were on a labour only basis. The housing market was very slow when we built our house and mainstream house builders had pretty much stopped building locally so there were lots of trades wanting the work so we got decent people (well mostly, still ended up with a few knobs!), and they gave competitive quotes (labour only) as they really wanted the work. So if you’re building a 112 m2 house, doing much of it yourself, sourcing all of the materials yourself including recycled where you can, getting trades in as and when you can afford to, and aren’t in any rush at all it seems achievable just about. If you want a house built quickly, insulated to within an inch of its life with a very high spec and finish then it’s not but as with most things in this life you pays your money and you takes your choice. Please do blog! This forum isn’t going anywhere so slow doesn’t matter,, and your approach to your build is different from many so will be of interest and provide a different perspective.

The vision vs the reality

There has been some mission creep already, for example she did not originally contest the notion that we could shower at a local gym prior to getting a finished bathroom in order to advance the move-in date a month or two. I have now added a free standing bath with cold and hot water to the move-in specification but so far she has neglected to clarify that the bathroom will have 4 walls ?

Complain to the manufacturer as their clearly not fit for purpose!!! Let them solve the problem. Does it say anything in the manufacturers literature about being non-slip / requiring slip mitigation ?

One of my neigbours was smoking (a lot of) weed at the weekend. It was really quite unpleasant with it drifting across our garden. Imagine that going into your mvhr intake!

Ah, I forgot, thanks for the reminder. Still, all the more reason to try and get solar gain under control. Also, these threads will likely be read by others in the future who don't have these limitations, so hopefully these thoughts will be of use to someone, some day!

@Ferdinand @jack forgive me for butting in but @lizzie will not want to be opening windows for the same reason that we don't, air quality. Ours is not an MBC build but some would say our multifoil insulation (due to relatively poor decrement delay) would more likely overheat in a spell such as that we've had for the last week (hardly seen a cloud before this afternoon), but we've actually managed quite well. The Sageglass has been busy managing the solar gain while the MVHR (once I realised the summer bypass had been set not to open until the extract temperature exceeded 24.5C) has been doing the rest. No windows have been opened and we haven't felt the need to put the heat pump into cooling mode. It's been interesting looking at all the houses around us, including the equally new (but developer built) two virtually next to ours, opening all their windows in an effort to keep cool at night, while we've been very comfortable.

Thanks Nick I have found a setting called 'party' ...if only.....that seems to have boosted the fan speed a lot.

Yes windows on east and north side open. It was reading 30+ on terrace outside south and west where all the big sliders are even so i kept some open in shaded area to encourage through draught. I’m afraid nothing worked. However @Nickfromwales advice to adjust mvhr has had an impact this morning with living area readings at 24 and bedroom at 26 which is positively arctic compared to last few days.