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Hi @Thorfun thanks for the mention ☺️ My thoughts……….. The general principle I use when designing wiring layouts is to run a tree loop around each floor connecting the presence sensors as they will all usually be within ceiling voids so easy to cable to. I then take branches off and drop down to switches which usually means only one cable at each switch. There are various options and it may come down to how easy it is to run cable in a particular space. The cat6/6A/7 debate is always interesting but I would tend to go with cat6A as the most recent IEEE ratified standard (AFAIK cat7 isn’t an IEEE standard). Colour coding is a sensible approach as you’ll end up with dozens, if not hundreds, of cables! Do not use the Loxone suggested tree cable. It is designed purely to provide partner installers with the quickest installation method but in my view is the worst option for cabling an installation as it completely cuts out any future options without re-wiring. The two 1.5mm cables are only suitable for extra low voltage fittings (e.g.24v) and do not meet requirements for fixed wiring under BS7671 (AKA 18th Edition wiring regs). I would always run min 1.5mm2 t&e to every light circuit as this will give you the option for any type of light fitting (24v/230v etc) as you can decide what you throw down the cable and even change it later without much hassle. Using t&e meets wiring regs for mains wiring so will never be an issue later. Don’t run t&e to switch positions as it’s unnecessary if you already have a cat cable/tree connection. If some future buyer gets stroppy about not having “normal” light switches, you can easily swap out the touch switches for standard looking Quinetic ones and fit the switching receivers in each circuit. You could probably sell the touch switches for more than the cost of the Quinetic gear 🤣😂 As I supplied all your kit, I'm always happy to offer any other advice, just ask.

Yup and yup. Always used this supplier and great service every single time. Got 5 of their setups to order in the next few weeks for 3 new full passive builds I’ve got on atm. Very happy with them, supplier and product, and prices are good enough for me to not look elsewhere.

I’m asking everything house related on here from now on, everyone’s been so helpful and given me lots to think about! And saved me a lot of money haha

@jack to keep all your cat6 type cables nicely terminated you could fit a 110 block outside the panel to terminate all the cables and then just bring in the pairs/cores you need. This one does 300 pairs (so 75 cables) for about £40. Yes, it's designed for cat5e but there's only a 0.06mm2 difference between 24awg cat5e and 23awg cat6/6a. Much cheaper to do it this way than using patch panels or the Weidmuller 8x8 DIN rail blocks.

To use the phrase @Nickfromwales and I use regularly … at least Dick Turpin wore a mask… The Sx unit on your quote is available on the internet with a 10 second search for £2200 inc the VAT… now work down your list and do the same - even using all the stuff they list (75% of which I am not even sure about) you can save 25-40% online. Same boxes, just not from CEF and your sparky (or whomever) quoting you list plus pricing … Either BPC or Blauberg can do all of that for less than £3k - it’s not rocket science and whomever is selling you the need for £500 CO2 sensor modules needs to be be shown the door and a size 9…

For simple DIY you want a radial system where semi flexible ducts run individually from each room vent back to a pair of plenum boxes near the actual MVHR unit. Start by looking at https://www.bpcventilation.com/ That is where I and a lot of other forum members have bought from. In my case the actual MVHR unit was an ebay bargain and I bought all the pipework, vent terminals and plenum boxes from BPC. What aspect of your quoted install has doubled? the parts cost, the labour, or both? EDIT: Just seen your quote. Don't buy kit like this from an electrical wholesaler, get a new quote for supply only, radial duct system from BPC

All it shows is using ANY form of heating is going to produce CO2. There is no neutral option available YET. That might come, one day, when ALL of our energy is produced by renewable sources, but only then if the CO2 produced actually making the generators can be offset somehow. We need to be honest, stop talking about CO2 neutral, and just talk about doing the best we can to reduce CO2. People might respond better when real achievable targets are set rather than some theoretical unachievable target that we all know will not happen so why bother trying? In my case I have done that by building a well insulated house that does not need much heat input, installed an ASHP to heat it, and some solar PV for some local renewable generation. I will probably do more in due course to increase local generation but to do that I will have to either fight stupid rules that limit the amount of PV I can have or just treat them with the contempt they deserve.

No the biggest reduction would be better insulated houses. Including your own. Also in your calculations you use the cost of a boiler as £2300, I paid £1000 for mine. Looking at Screwfix the prices vary from £500, upto about £2500, so you have chosen top end to suit your calculations. If you are looking to retrofit a HP the comparison is do nothing and keep gas (then only gas consumption is included), or replace like with like then a similar gas boiler would be chosen. Or replace gas with a HP, life style choice, most in this country cannot afford.

I think the term you’re looking for here is greenwashing as those statements are neither linked nor relevant. A boiler also has all these things… and therefore this can be discounted. You ignore end of life recycling in this instance though, and I would also be concerned about the question and quotes on leakage from transmission systems as they are random statements. If you want to make comparisons then they need to be whole life and not just bits you have the data for to illustrate a particular view.

I think that's what we all do but @pocster is one of the few to openly admit it! 😁 I always find those bits around soil pipes and other services to need some extra thought for plasterboard fixings. I find one of my most common questions to self is: how the hell am I going to make that work? Lots of spare battens come in handy, or some cls ripped in half. It's interesting that the carpentry/framing books all miss out the difficult bits too. Framing looks very nice...btw

spent a couple of days building the stud walls in the kids bathrooms for the Geberit frames. overall, I'm pretty happy. need to do some magic around the soil pipe going to the loft for the AAVs to get plasterboard fixed but in true @pocster fashion I'm sure I'll figure something out!

Is the temperature dropping as much in the lounge overnight as the bedrooms? Has the lounge had the heating on for longer than half an hour to heat up the fabric of the room more? As you say the lounge and kitchen will have a lot of heat input from ovens, TVs etc over the day. I am guessing that your house has 100mm of mineral wool in the cavity which is the bare minimum required to pass building regs. This gives a U-value of around 0.28 which is very poor today. The maximum roof U-value in England is 0.18 and the maximum window U-value is 1.4 Assuming these numbers the room will lose around 75W an hour through the walls, 35W through the window and 30W through the ceiling with an outside temp of 3C. If for example the bathroom or hall are not heated then further heat would be lost to these areas. I assumed a room size of 3.5x2.5x2.4m and 1.5sq metres for the window. These will give a rough idea. You can probably double the heat loss including ventilation losses, but this would be a guesstimate. Thus the room will likely need around 2-300W of energy to keep a constant temperature during the night. I am assuming a 21C internal room temperature and 18C differential to calculate heat loss. The heat loss is directly proportional to the differential, so if the outside temperature is 12C as it has been during the day recently, then the heat loss halves versus 3C night time temperature in the last couple of days. The day also benefits from solar radiation and heat generated by activity in the house thus requires a lot less heat input. Assuming that the room has a volume of 20m3, that is roughly 24kg of air. The energy required to increase the temperature of 24kg of air by 1C is roughly 24Kj. So to heat the room air by 3C requires 72Kj or only 20Wh of energy. However, assuming 120mm of blockwork/plaster. The outside walls of the room weigh around 1500kg. The specific heating capacity of this would be around 1Kj per kg. Thus to heat the walls up by 3C would require around 4500Kj or 1260Wh. I don't know what size of radiator you have in there but say it has a 3-400W output. It could easily warm the air by 3C in half an hour (20Wh required versus 150-200Wh of output), but you would need to run it for 3-4 hours for the walls to be up to the same temperature as the air. Once the walls are up to that temperature then you will only have to overcome the 200-300W heat loss, but initially you have a large deficit to make up. Net net at 3C outside during the night, if the heating was on for 12 hours, I would expect it to be actually running for around 75% of the time. (Very dependant on the radiator size assumption). The size assumption just affects the time the radiator runs for, the amount of energy required to heat the room is the same it can just be provided faster by a lager radiator/higher flow temperature. Basically you cannot run the heating for half an hour and expect the temperature not to drop quickly on a cold night. If you ran the heating for 4-5 hours in the evening I would expect to see much less temperature drop as the walls would be up to temperature. Their relatively high heat capacity would lead to a more constant air temperature. Basically set the thermostat at 21C at 5pm and leave the heating on until 9 or 10. It would not run constantly, but it would run a lot of the time whilst the walls warm up. Then I would expect a much steadier temperature during the night. However, the poor insulation levels of the house mean that even then I would expect it to be somewhat colder by the morning as you have quite a lot of heat loss at 3C outside. If the walls have not heated up and are materially colder than the air in the room, due to their dramatically larger heat capacity they will take energy from the air and cool the room down during the night.

The landscaping can wait whilst I relaxed earlier with a Ghost Ship 🍻

I thought JFC was a fried chicken shop.

Strong - but not indestructible. I would say ‘no’ and in all the blurb I’ve seen regarding the pedestal system, I’ve never seen one where they use a central pedestal as well as the corners. Ours are 1200x240x20 they are supported at the corners and mid point at the sides so that means there are two 600x240 bits that are unsupported. These long tiles we have do flex as the central supports are a nats knacker lower than the corner supports (I found it impossible to lay them without them see-sawing otherwise). The flex is almost imperceptible, it’s probably only me who is aware of it. When you stand on the middle of the tile it settles that ‘nats knacker’ on to the pedestal underneath. I have no fear of that unsupported 600mm section either side of the centre supports breaking. Well none of them have yet 🤞🏻

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0143624420975707 > A whole house retrofit in-line with current Building Regulations reduces the heating demand and emissions by 65%, and lowers the input electrical demand for the heat pump to under 1 kW Not bad going, honestly.

This where I bought most of my parts Seem quite good prices and was good service. They do Iver mixers and manifolds

We are using a Reolink camera to monitor our site. It’s battery /solar panel powered and uses mobile data via a special kind of SIM card (£4 a month). I can view it on my mobile phone and can play back recordings.

I have a infra red panel that drops into a 600x600mm ceiling tile. its fine in the workshop when standing under it, but I wouldn’t want to heat a home with it

In conclusion the paper says "There is no clear up-to-date evidence behind the rule of thumb that says MVHR is inappropriate for dwellings with air permeability above 3m³/m².hour @50Pa. This analysis has shown that MVHR systems result in improved ventilation and lower carbon emissions for all levels of airtightness. There is a compelling case for MVHR systems to be fitted in all new dwellings and to be strongly encouraged in retrofits where significant reductions in energy demand are being targeted.?

>>> So it seems that even if something is Permitted Dev, planning can say no. Which kind of makes sense in the weird and wonderful world of British bureaucracy. Ah, yes it needs sorting out. It's worth asking what policies in either the NPPF or local plan they are using for their determination. These two plans detail most of the 'rules'. So if you're plans are 'breaking the rules' - then it's only reasonable for planning to point out which rule/s your are breaking. That is, this shouldn't just be a matter of the planner's own opinion. Alan

So your max heat demand in w/m2 is 1541/144=say 11w/m2 Using the attached you get the flow temp you need, but the chart needs extending downwards, mean flow temps are low/mid 20s. That is to balance heat loss with heat input. If you want to blast heat and use a thermostat just add a couple of extra degrees.

1950s house should be OK. Becomes questionable before say 1925, as cavities were still somewhat experimental.

That's probably because the Council did not consider ventilation properly. Sealing in a house that was designed to "breathe" through the walls makes it damp.

Probably another plug in radiator. Heat loss should be pretty low. I'll try to pick up a cheap MVHR unit somewhere. U values 0.2W/m2K to 0.13. surface area 200m2. Airtight + Windtight. Maybe 600w peak or so.

It all boils down to the dimensions of it. I had a good play around with resizing things. To have a wheel in the lane you'd need the other one in a planter or on the steps. Hopefully you'd notice before catastrophe struck and you became beached. I would echo @Ferdinands comment though. A robust method of not allowing the car end up in the living room is important. My idea was to make the last kerb from reinforced concrete. The car should bump off it to let you know to stop. And if it jumped the kerb it would only end up seesawing perilously over the ledge like the end of the Italian job.

It's not an assumption. Any conventional heater converts electrical power to heat with 100% efficiency. Not all of that heat is necessarily useful, for example if you have electric UFH then (hopefully) most heat will rise and heat the room but some will go down and heat the ground. But basically you won't get more than 100% efficiency - except with a heat pump. Heat pumps do what the name implies, they pump heat from outside to inside your house and with a decent heating system based around a heat pump you can aspire to 300% or more efficiency, that is you would get 3 kWh of heat for every 1 kWh of electricity used. So the running cost of a heat-pump based heating system should be 1/3 that of the infra-red heaters you are looking at. Heat pumps tend to be expensive to buy and install; I have no idea about the cost of infrared heaters.

Population growth has been a ‘concern’ for a few hundred years. It was wrong then and it’s still wrong now. It’s the same argument people use when they say the UK is being concreted over when, by any measure, it’s mostly green. The issue isn’t too many people it’s the disproportionate way in which resources are consumed and the amount of waste. The energy crisis is forcing changes to energy usage in a way that no nudge economics policy could ever have achieved.

A friend went on an open day to the pumping station, it extracts water from an underground chalk aquifer to supply drinking water to Folkestone, Dover and district. Have you tried asking a water treatment supplier if they have had had previous job with similar restrictions in place? They may have some idea who to contact / how to show that discharge from a water treatment plant is not hazardous to local water supply.

I think you have actually hit the nail on the head. Except that population is used as a catchall as the problem, not the solution. I was talking to a St. Agnes resident yesterday about the latest sewage spill. The problem, according to them, is the increase in housing, and associated people. I pointed out that, as we were outside of a holiday period, the population was as low as it goes, so that can't be the problem. I then pointed out that over August Bank holiday, the same thing happened (actually told a well known actor to take his family to another beach). I also pointed out that the existing sewage system is no 'listed' and could be improved. So population, time of year is NOT the problem, it is inadequate infrastructure. Infrastructure is a political issue (may be local or national, but it is a human decision). Infrastructure costs often seem out of proportion to the local benefits. Ask each resident of St. Agnes to pay £1000 each to improve the sewage system and you will get a flat 'No Way'. They think it is the SW Water's job to do it. They think that SW Water should 'just get on with it'. So a £10m pound project, that would improve the environment, needs to have the load spread across many people paying, which requires people, lots of people, each paying a little. If you go back to historical times, villages, small towns and cities were highly polluted and horrible places to live (people moved out in the summer), but by spreading the load nationally, these places became nicer. So reducing population will only lead to lack of facilities, not better ones. It is all to do with distribution, there are no lack of resources.

And I think that is where this debate falls flat. I agree with @PeterW in that unless you consider the whole life-cycle of a product, your calculations about the overall carbon impact of a certain technology are incomplete at best. In addition, you've added 'once insulated' which also supports the assertion that the biggest impact is on reducing energy demand rather than finding a more efficient way to produce heat (and of course you haven't controlled for uninsulated context). As for the wider consideration, just like that ignored with EVs, is the wider environmental impact of large scale deployment of technology. As @SteamyTea alludes to this impact is rarely linear. Considering the installation of one heat pump, it may look simple, but take into considering the additional resources required to build and distribute heatpumps all over the world, just deploying, lets say 1.2 million per year in replacement for gas boilers in the UK, you're look at about 100-120kg per unit extra in steel, about 40kg extra in copper per unit etc. The wider environmental impact of this additional demand, including mining operations and so forth, and you have a significant problem, which will also affect costs where people incorrectly assume they will go down as a result of scaling - with demand on resources likely to increase, they will inevitably go up. Unfortunately, the arguments for/against heatpumps are not simple, nor are they merely at the final user end of the supply chain but it still seems to be a discussion that circles around and around.

I have been doing a lot of work on this 'at work' (the scale of our operation is a bit larger than domestic but not so much larger so the same principles apply) and pretty much come to the same conclusion. Once a building is tolerably insulated (ie do the things that are reasonably practical and reasonably easy given the historical construction - you don't have to aim for passivhaus standards) switching from gas (or resistance electric) to heat pump is definitely the big thing you can do. We have done this for two of our buildings so far and it reduced the carbon footprint (based on measured consumption, not just theoretical) of each by a factor of very nearly 4; nothing else we have done has come anywhere close. Better still the emissions will decrease year on year as the grid decarbonises. Running costs are about the same (as gas) or better (than resistance electric). Looked at that way its a bit of a no-brainer, certainly when the plant is due for or nearing renewal. Having said that ProDave is spot on with his comment as well.

@Radian I was planning to get a little robot one 😀 its a nice flat plot, and the lawn bit will be smallish by the time I've got a greenhouse & veggie beds on there.

Just by way of update, we are going to go (or at least, try to go) for the sump plug access option: Now starts the hard part!!!

You could also consider a fire curtain in certain circumstances. Cheaper than sprinkler system, but more expensive than FDs. Yes, planners won’t care, but you will if you later realise there is a better use of space that requires you to amend your plans. I wouldn’t rush this stage, it’s REALLY important.

Let me know if I can help in any way. The main roof is pitching the “wrong way”. Three storey means you’ll need a protected staircase - difficult (but not impossible) to achieve with trusses. Very small office in an out of the way location. I’d move it if you intend to spend a lot of time in it. A bit of “wasted space in the kitchen/dining and living room. Consider a single volume rather than multiple off-shoots. More economical. Why three-storey? Why not a single or two-storey dwelling?

At a guess, someone painted them red.

Oi! I'm trying to sell a mower here 🤣

No you don't. .2 acres is 970 sq.m. By the time the house is built with drive etc there'll probably be less than half that, even less if you have an actual garden rather than just a lawn. Our back lawn is 700 sq.m. and I do it with a 43cm battery push mower. We had a number of ride on mowers in our last house, the best was a Stiga out front all wheel drive mower, but we had 6 acres of grass there. Normal ride on mowers have very poor maneuverability, they tend to compact the soil, they're noisy and smelly and generally to be avoided.

The main roof does not look that large, roof area is your friend with solar. Shading, of any sort, is your enemy.

Really depends on the level of insulation you have and how long you have the floor heating running for. Long run times let you have super low flow temps. Our flow temps at the moment are around 26, so floor temp is 21, no perception of a warm floor. As it cooler than your body.

This paper will be useful to you https://www.passivhaustrust.org.uk/UserFiles/File/research papers/MVHR/2020.04.27-The Case for MVHR-v7 new cover.pdf

Workbenches against a sloping ceiling? It depends what you want to do. My workshop is just for that, working on stuff, so I actually have 2 workbenches one in front of the other. the slightly lower back one holds all the test gear and tools, and the front one, larger and higher is for the "work" but this puts it further from the sloping ceiling.

@pocster yes, I'm hoping to do some of it myself. I'll be learning on the job a lot of the time, and I won't touch plumbing or electrics, but I reckon I can put the cladding on the single storey extension myself, for example. I'll be attempting to project manage it too - I have managed a number of projects before, albeit a while ago, but this could be a bit more challenging. @Radian yes, the plot is lovely 🙂 and the scope for a lovely garden is the main reason that I put the offer in 🌺. There are two big oak trees that I will need to be careful about, this is a general view of the plot, but I will also post the plans as @Iceverge suggested.

What comes out of a digester is not domestic waste any longer. In my opinion you would not get in any trouble.

Talk to the Land Registry and tell them of your interest in the land, as do your neighbours. Ask them to register the land in you and your neighbours names. Get the ball rolling.

@Alwayslearning22 Not sure what you tried in the end, but last night was the first proper storm to hit since I secondary glazed. Here is a few screenshots. First is weather map, then two of the sound meter. First SM is on the window cill, second is about a metre from the window. Not very noisy.

We've moved in and loving it!! Old house, adjacent, completed sale yesterday so can now pay off the build debt. Getting used to running ASHP and MVHR but no heating needed so far. Here's some pics

There seems to a lot of inconsistency in the way addressing and council tax liability is handled, from one area to another. Here I managed to get on the address database (after a struggle) by paying a load of money to the council street naming team, then chasing up Royal Mail who initially put us on the database, then removed the address shortly later without telling us, so I had to get it put back on again Council tax was a nightmare. We had the building site broken into by a lady from the council one evening (she literally climbed over the fence, ignored all the warning signs and peered through the windows, wearing no PPE at all). She was caught on CCTV, and I only discovered who she was when we received a very stroppy letter from the council accusing me of trying to avoid paying council tax. I got a lot of useful advice from this forum's predecessor, called the council back and quoted the law to them, and asked them for the name of their employee as I wished to make a complaint to the HSE about her, for breach of site safety rules. At this point the council very swiftly backtracked, passed me up the chain to someone more senior, who tried to make out that it was a "mistake" (it wasn't, it's standard policy here, I later found out). The useful thing about this debacle was that I discovered that of the house doesn't have a potable water supply, then in law it cannot be classed as a rateable hereditament, and if it isn't a rateable hereditament than it cannot be classed as a habitable dwelling and cannot be put on the valuation list for council tax. Because the council had really angered me by their underhand actions, I chose to play hard ball, and delay connecting a tested, potable, water supply until we had virtually finished the build. I would have been quite happy to do this a year or so earlier, but the council's behaviour got my back up. I also removed the implied right of access to all council staff, their contractors, sub-contractors or agents, by sending them a recorded delivery letter giving notice of this and by fitting signs at the site entrance making it clear that entry by any council personnel would be by appointment only. To the credit of the council they never again tried to gain access to the site, it seems that they did actually take notice of the legal warning (surprised me a bit, given the way they's ignored health and safety legislation).