Leaderboard

Yes I had some stunning bargains, 90% off door furniture, flooring and a whole lot more..... Christmas came early for me.

Just read the other threads on the matter here and you'll be fine. We submitted ours a few weeks ago. Immediately got a query back saying we did the wrong form (we did new build not conversion). We've gone back quoting their own guidelines and hope they agree. It can't be a conversion with no floor, walls, doors windows or roof!

It's all explained in the first few posts here including the links to the processs and forms etc. They don't need to be put in date order or categorised but you do need to give every invoice a reference that is the same as the reference on the claim form, and file the receipts in that order.

Would incorporating a breakfast cupboard help tidy up the main worktops? https://www.pinterest.com/pin/359232507770073269/

Hi on mixer showers the hot water goes on the left hand side, if you are looking at the shower from the front

That last post is a thing of beauty and poetry...didn't understand it all but get the gist. Arise Sir Nick

Change of £2.3k for the 12. Change of £2k for the 9, and ~£1000 saved every 10years vs owning ( and having to service / inspect ) an UVC. Couple that with no requirement for pressure reduction / relief controls / valves etc and the benefits soon outweigh the uplift in capital cost. Much simpler ( cheaper ) installation too, just cold in and hot out. I have just completed one, and am in the middle of another, spacious 3 bedroom property, ( for plumbing etc ), and both feature a HRC ( hot return circuit ). For the first one there are 10mm pipes to all the basins ( qty 3 ), and they have all been left without HRC, however the HRC has been awarded to the kitchen sink as its at the opposite end of the building to the plant room. The way that one is set up is so that the kitchen sink is the last outlet of the DHW manifold, thus heating the primary DHW 22mm pipework / manifolds etc and killing the dead leg of water off between the water heater and the manifold. As that is all larger bore, it creates a problem without a HRC as it increases the amount of dead ( cold ) water that needs to be drawn off by a sink / basin before getting premium temp DHW out of that particular outlet. As the kitchen sink HRC operates with occupancy, the manifold is always preheated therefore massively reducing the wait for DHW to the basins ( hence now not needing HRC loops to them ). The wait for premium temp water at the kitchen sink is sub 2 seconds, and the wait to any other sink / basin is sub 5 seconds. This house is often unoccupied so works well ( efficiency ) for 'stop / start' living. A side effect of heating the manifold is that all other non HRC outlets benefit from a much improved Dhw 'arrival' time. On my current project, I have gone a bit more complex as the house will be used almost immediately for a 'retired lifestyle'. First, some basics; With any HRC arrangement you need to bring all of the HRC return runs back to the point of origin and terminate them in an additional manifold. The reason is, that to be able isolate an individual hot feed to a particular outlet you'll need to do so simultaneously at both the DHW manifold AND also at the HRC 'return' manifold, in order to stop back-flow from the other HRC linked outlets. Because of this, I would recommend a single centralised manifold system and only distributing from there @Rich, if you do the manifolds as you've suggested you'll acually be worse off not better off as you'll have taken larger bore 22mm pipework all the way through the building and will have increased the amount of dead leg water volume significantly throughout. Running a basin from the upper floor manifold would be painful in terms of wasted water and time lapsed trying to get hot water there to wash your hands after a pee. Don't do the upper manifold. . For you, I'd recommend the single manifold and HRC with the UVC in the garage ( as we both know that's where it's going to end up ). Losses from an HRC are really pennies in the grand scheme so don't be put off by eco-warriors telling you the running cost will be high, it won't. Simply manage it with a timeclock so it's sleeps whilst you do, and it shuts off when you leave for the day. Insulate the hot and HRC grouped runs accordingly. See my next for a neat solution. Now, to clarify on HRC awarded outlets, you do not want to include any baths, showers, or other infrequent / high volume drawn outlets. If you run a shower then the longest you'll have to wait for premium temp DHW will be around 10 seconds or less, same or less with a bath. Reason for discounting those is that they're infrequent use / high flow rate outlets, and waiting a short while to get them up to temp is of little or zero consequence given how long you use them and the ratio of dead / lost water compared to the total amount drawn. A HRC is a great thing to have too IMO, when implemented correctly, as not having to wait for hot water eg to wash your hands quickly after using the loo / wanting to quickly swill something in the sink is something you'll soon get fond of. FYI my combi is about 2.5 and 4m away from both my basins ( all ground floor rear ) and less than 2m from my kitchen sink but I still get annoyed waiting for the 4-5 seconds to wash my hands after using the loo. Ok. On the current one we've gone for a full on, both barrels smoking HRC setup for instant DHW output ( at each HRC awarded outlet ) and I came up with a good idea ( IMO anyway, tin hat at the ready ) for managing the HRC to minimise these 'end of days' losses ?. As most folk will be installing an burglar alarm ( most, so no need to shout at me if you don't have one ? ) I decided to contact the alarm installer and ask for him to supply a couple of relay boards so I could activate the HRC from the alarm panel status; So :- alarm off = occupied = full HRC operation alarm full on = unoccupied = HRC off drumroll please........... alarm part-armed = no ground floor activity at night = HRC set to part coverage. In the part-armed state the ground floor HRC circuits ( kitchen sink / utility sink / cloakroom WC basin ) are shut off by some ball valves, and only the 1st floor master and ensuite basins have circulation to them. That's going to be achieved by separating the HRC return manifolds into 2 'groups' so they can be; "all off", "on group 1", or "all on", respective to the state the alarm panel dictates. Couldn't be easier. This dwelling has a reasonably sized multi directional Pv array with Sunamp ( x3 ) heat battery storage, so in actual fact running the HRC will likely never actually see a running cost. Battery storage ( AC ) is set to feature too, so not even running the HRC pump should have an impact. Re insulation of the pipes, simply do as I'm currently doing and run both the 10mm HRC and a the 15mm DHW pipe together and insulate them both with one piece of thick walled 22mm insulation. They fit perfectly. Terminate each dual run at the outlet with the 15mm terminating into a 15mm x 10mm 'centre' tee, the 10mm terminating in a street elbow, and the 10mm then fits in to the side ( centre ) of the vertically rising tee and you get the 15mm top of the tee left for the final outlet connection. @Rich, are you having Pv ?

Great part of the world, we live between Stroud and Cirencester, although our new build is in Devon. Suggest you do your homework re planning consents....

@Nickfromwales flogged them that load of cheap Chinese timers ?

Welcome to THE forum - but I guess you knew that otherwise why pop up. Good luck with the project, sounds interesting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comma-separated_values ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Hi, we are in Cirencester, building in icf, have a good company for topo, and lots of contacts for the tree clearance. Russ.

@ProDave, I see what you mean about PVGIS. I've just spent the morning doing battle with its non-CSV format .csv files. I seem to remember that the .csv files from PVGIS used to work OK, but now it seems they download minus the commas as delimiters, which makes them pretty awkward to use. I've also just been running some estimates of our energy usage through the year, subtracting the usable PV generation and trying to see whether or not it's worth opting for an E7 tariff or not. Not sure yet, but over the whole year it seems that we're probably going to be about 50/50 peak rate/off-peak rate, if I optimise winter loads for off-peak times. It all hinges on the standing charge I suspect, but I'll post the details of the sums in another thread, rather than clog this one up.

I left the light on all winter and I hoovered up all suspect dropping in the loft before the bat person came to do the initial inspection, she found nothing, but did the emergence survey ‘just in case’. Although we’re surrounded by woodland, thankfully none were roosting in the bungalow roof space. If nothings found you could be starting work next summer!

A few photos and the main elevation to give you a feel for what we're doing. FISH_LAY_03_O.pdf