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@Gus Potter @saveasteading @ETC We are aware there are many professionals on here and generously give their time and advice on the forum. To that end there is a clear statement in the terms and conditions 6.3 We do not verify, confirm or accept any responsibility for any of the information, advice or material posted in any section of the website. If you use any of the information, advice or material posted you do so solely at your own risk. I regularly put on my posts that members should take professional advice - an Internet forum is neither regulated or guaranteed !!

The main house roof is taking me far longer than I expected Partly due to weather Mostly design issues We have 50 meters of valleys Whilst the floorboards haven’t taken that long The endless support noggings have Now the design issues are sorted with the middle section of roof I will be able to get it covered in and start fitting the lead work Then on to the slates

In cooling the heatpump will run the refrigerant in reverse in a way and dump heat outside while cooling your water in the heat-exchanger. You can then use the cool water for cooling. UFH is better suited for this as the surface area is large. With radiators you might not see a big difference. The most important thing is not cooling the water below your dew point as then you will have condensation on your pipes and potentially horrible water damage (mold, rot…). So always see what your dew point is (calculate it with your relative humidity and temperature) and run the water above that. From what i see in the Yutaki documentation, it can cool the water to 7’C degrees. You will also need the additional cooling accessory kit, but I think that’s just an electrical pin which activates the function. A better way to cool if you don’t have UFH is to pipe an additional water pipe with a zone valve to a fancoil unit installed in the rooms you want to cool. The fancoil unit cools the air with the cool water from your HP and blows it into your room. It also has a condensate drain, and you can use it for heating too if you wanted to.

I have long moaned about my roughly 75kWh "non heating" electricity use each week, and finding out what it is and how to reduce it. I have finally made a start tackling that. The under stairs cupboard contains a lot of essential stuff most of which is on 24/7 so seemed an easy place to start. This includes satellite tv receivers, the printer, and all the network gear including the router, VOIP phone base unit, NAS storage etc. All stuff than needs to be on 24/7 but I know it consumes a lot of power. So time to measure it. I rigged up a couple of extension leads to power all this kit from one plug and made a loop of cable to allow my clamp ammeter to measure the power consumed, and came up with a total of 0.5 Amps, rising to 0.6 of the printer is printing. That's 120 VA If I assume most of it will be a poor power factor, lets take a guess that it translates to 100W as seen and metered by the electricity meter. that's 2.4kWh per day or 16.8kWh per week or 22% of my "non heating" usage. And at the present capped electricity rate of about 33p per kWh it is costing £289 per year to power that lot. So thoughts are turning to how to power that lot by adding more renewable power? Being an almost constant load and low power, and all together in one place, this seems a possible candidate for a little bit of off grid renewable power generation with a small amount of battery storage. Initial thoughts? A 12V system based on a large leisure battery for storage, charged from a few more solar PV panels and also a small wind turbine. Rough costings: Cheap "500W" wind turbine £150, leisure battery £100, solar PV panels £200 Add in sundries and that is going to be about £500 of expense. Theoretical payback of 2 to 3 years perhaps. So I expect that will be the main content of the thread, to design such a system, work out if it will actually work, and cost it properly, including an estimate of battery life and periodic replacement costs. The choice of PV and a small wind turbine to charge the battery are to try and get more generation in the winter. And it will once and for all confirm if a small cheap wind turbine is any good in a domestic setting. Control will probably be an Arduino Nano. All it has to do is monitor the battery voltage, switch out some generation or switch in a dump load if the battery voltage gets too high, and switch on a mains charger if there is insufficient renewable power and the battery voltage gets too low.

Well done, keep going! We've just made the extension properly watertight and I was ridiculously happy!

yeah. that's the question isn't it. how far is enough? I'm pretty happy with my proposed solution but will check with these pump companies. I could have a separate float attached to a separate alarm that's loud enough to pi$$ the neighbours off so that if all else fails they'll come and see what the noise is all about. I will think about the power situation though as I have enough room in our CU for 1 RCBO per pump but I think that's excessive and I'm happy to run both off their own RCBO in the external garage CU. safe in the knowledge that I'll have separate alarms. will probably also keep the Shelley flood sensor going as well somewhere. for the cost of a CR123A battery every 18 months I think it's a good idea.

HWMBO

Those look like clay pipes of a type typically used from the 18th century onwards. Are they about 3" diameter? Normally laid loose, horizontally, to drain across fields. I wonder if there was a particularly persistent wet patch and someone used these vertically to drain down to a deeper stratum? They might have been filled with stone for that purpose.

evening all. hope you're all getting ready to sit down and enjoy Strictly at Blackpool. thank you for all the advice. I've decided to do this pump solution semi sensibly. I've been looking in to proper dual pump control systems using 4 floats to control them. like this https://www.pumpsukltd.com/puk-v2b-twin-pump-panel.html or this https://www.henrypumps.co.uk/control-pump-plus-single--twin-pump-control-panel-2397-p.asp or this https://www.tritoncontrols.co.uk/alarms-and-controls/twin-pump-controller.html or this https://drainstore.com/pumping-stations-pumps/pumping-station-dual-pump-control-panel-12amp/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI-sjqqeW6-wIVw-DtCh1rwgrGEAMYAiAAEgKFp_D_BwE or this https://pumpexpress.co.uk/shop/duplex-up-control-panel/ ok. I think you get the idea. they all seem to do much the same thing and have an external 12V alarm trigger which I can easily plug in to Loxone I would presume. Some even have GSM modules that can be built in. if I can also monitor the 2nd pump so that if that ever comes on I know that there's most likely something wrong with the 1st pump so I can get that fixed while the second pump is taking up the work. I think this way I don't need a 3rd pump as it should give plenty of redundancy and notification of potential issues coming. @PeterW I will contact the above companies and ask them to design the system to assist with any potential future insurance claim. anyone have any experience with any of these control panels? otherwise it'll be me just picking one on price and looks! 😉 oh, and I will also have a separate high water alarm sensor outside of this control panel in case of failure of the control panel. and with the house battery backup I think I'm pretty much covered and don't have any single point of failure.

Its a bespoke bit of metal, that I got cladco to make up. I was working in okehampton on Friday so i could pick up, i ordered it the week before. I provided them with the cad drawing of the size / angle I wanted and they made it up. Not bad for 16 quid.

If you fancy a couple of hour jaunt, Mike Wye stocks it. https://www.mikewye.co.uk/product/geotextile-membrane/ I used this stuff when laying a Limecrete floor.

If you are worried about joints, can you not have porcelain and all wear Garfield slippers 😁:

Some LED lighting systems use a constant current device that converts the mains AC current to one suitable for LED lighting. This can be switched either before the device i.e. on the AC side from a normal wall switch, or can be switched on the DC side, after the device. If it is switched on the DC side, the voltage conditioner is always on and may be using a bit of power. Why simple design is generally the most energy efficient.

Sorry, another related question. Anyone know how much heat an average sized male generates? My partner seems to be as warm as a small plug in radiator, and I am wondering whether he would actually warm up a well-insulated room?

Thanks, I asked for a comprehensive list from both BC and LABC(Warranty), but it didn't stop the Warranty guy adding items when he made his final items. Hopefully, we've got all of them covered but the BC guy is coming on Wednesday for his final inspection which gives me 7 days to correct anything he raises, get his sign off, get it to Warranty Man and get Warranty sign off - far closer than I'd like. And like I say, I wouldn't mind any of this if it they were not so intransigent about the deadline.

No disrespect, but if you have to tidy up for them then they are not real family 😁. According to the ghost of my mum, the only person you *really* clean up before is the .. er .. cleaning lady.

I use one of these. Additionally I use it for anything that requires good eye protection. Every other set of goggles that seal around your eyes for angle grinding etc fog up. It is a bit sweaty however.

Cut the angle first, then cut the other end square to the right length.

I like these as you get a decent air flow and they don’t get too sweaty https://www.toolstation.com/jsp-force8-mask-with-p3-presstocheck-filters/p80177 The air fed ones are really nice but I don’t have enough need to warrant one (not that it stops me buying stuff ..!!)

I forgot to put a vent position in the boot room - on the run between WC and Dining room, but I'm sure you already spotted that.

Initial design drawings posted below for context.

I asked for a list of outstanding items. He sent me a list. I did them and asked for the sign off certificate. He then found six more things , it turned out he had a checklist he was working through. As we were close to the deadline he had to give me six month extension. We got our certificate yesterday.

We’ve a wood burner in our first build 2 more going in our next There not that efficient But nice to sit round at Christmas I called to pick up a flu liner and was told from fitting a dozen per year They can’t keep up with demand Lots of hard up folk will be burning pallets this year

If you have any wood burners... Hhave you got air bricks or other vents? He may also want to see the rating plate for the Woodburner. There is an example in the relevant Approved Document I think.

If there's no sign of cracking due to ground movement caused by soil shrinkage or swelling already, then I wouldn't anticipate a problem with swelling following a tree removal. That said, if you are definitely on shrinkable clays and the house has shallow (<600mm) foundations, then as a precaution you could have the tree removed in two hits. Remove 50% one year and the rest the following year.

Many thanks for your responses. The building control guy is nice but very thorough. He needs part g (water usage), gas competence and part p. He rejected the part p I sent in because the electrician marked the basement as incomplete. To be fair, the basement has not been completed yet but I had asked the electricians to complete the electrics to the point where they were safe and would pass part p. Annoying. They are coming in Monday to address that. The LABC warranty guy is equally nice and just as thorough though he has a tendency to keep adding things in. On his last visit, he added that the smoke alarms weren't working in unison and a juliet balcony hadn't been fitted. Fair enough; I've had the electricians address the smoke alarms and I'm heading down to pick up the Juliet balcony on Sunday. It will be fitted on Monday. Aside from that he also wants gas competence, part p and building control sign-off. It's all doable, but it only needs either of them to call out something they're not happy with at the last minute to throw things into chaos. The problem with LABC is that they are split between building surveyors and insurance and while the surveyors might be pragmatic, the insurers are being intransigent. They did actually write to me a while ago suggesting that they might want more money for the warranty since prices had shot up. They certainly had, but was that my fault? I suspect they might be "shaking the tree" a bit now that the economy is retracting, to get rid of even the slightest risk and focus only on the most risk free warranties. I checked the terms and conditions an sure enough, there is a clause allowing them to cancel after three years if incomplete (without any refund I might add), though given that we are moving in on 28th and it's perfectly habitable, that seems a bit much to me. It's the implications that worry me, because effectively there is no plan b and, yes, I believe that the mortgage provider will want a structural warranty in place, which leaves me, if/when they find out that it's been voided, in a position where I will likely lose my mortgage and because I don't have a warranty, I won't be able to get another.

Eight octopoints to the penny, 12 pennies to the shilling, 20 shillings to the pound. 21 to a guinea, obvs.

A sharp letter followed by the Insurance Ombudsman would be my starting point. Basically, you’ve been sold an insurance product and they are trying (I am assuming) to change the terms by adding a clause about how long a build should take. Write back and ask in writing where they say there is a maximum time to complete, and then if there isn’t they have no case. They can change terms but only by mutual agreement - there will be cancellation and other items in the small print but this sounds like an insurer playing games.

A ten minute electric shower might use 1.5kWh. A conventional mixer would use about double once you take into account the boiler inefficiencies, storage and transmission losses and higher flow rate. A much nicer experience however. @Marvin has a nice priority list for improving energy use and very importantly comfort. AIM APE Airtightness. Insulation. Mechanic ventilation with heat recovery. Air Source heat pump. PV solar EV. You seem to be starting at the end. If you get the first 3 sorted you'll be shocked how little of difference the last 3 make.

To make the idea a bit clearer, here it is shown in thicker green bits:

Think you might be pushing at an open door here. Get a grouting quote but when you do make sure you ask that the grouting company include for at least a 25 year warranty, full site remediation and with any luck you may have a couple of trees with protection orders on them. Basically get the highest quote you can with the full bells and whistles.. your SE will help you craft the brief. Then say to insurance company.. hey lets work together and we can both save some money.. if you go along with it you'll get no grief from us.. just we may need an interim payment or two. Can your Dad move into a nice rented pad or go on a cruise off the money. Knock it down and rebuild with the support of your SE. The ash is an interesting one.. if it has a high sulphate content then it moves about and attacks the concrete.. sulphate damage.. grouting won't help.. you often need to get rid of it if under the founds and that is not easy especially if the building is bearing on it. Also you need ask if what is the neighbours founded on etc.. do they have or will they have in the future a similar problem. Ask insurers, will they cover for next door compromising our works or if we do work will we do something that will lead to problems next door? Who is going to pick up the tab if we cause a problem next door while doing the work? In the round it seems like your Dad could end up with a new cracking house (and quicker too) and the insurer could save money? The hard part will be getting this point over to them.

Certainly the diverter is the ideal solution but £200 is about the minimum you have to pay for one, and it might prove difficult to install unless the immersion is near the main meter tails where the current clamp goes. If the water is normally heated by gas and the idea is to drop the tank stat to a slightly lower temperature (say 50oC instead of 60oC) and let excess PV top it up now and then, a simpler scheme like @Andrea C is considering might be worth doing. Going full Eddi with wireless communication to allow the CT to be placed remotely is a ~£600 proposition and displacing gas at £0.11/kWh means running an immersion at full power for almost 2000 hours with it before breaking even.

You don't just want to turn the immersion on or off with a remote switch like that. That will only be any use then there is 3kW of power spare from the PV. Most of the time there will be very much less than 3kW spare. Install an ordinary solar PV dump controller, that usually burst fires the immersion heater so the power sent to the heater matches the surplus from the PV. There are a few different ones to choose from, and a few of us have built our own. They operate completely on their own, they just monitor current flow and as soon as they detect power being exported start turning on the immersion heater.

Yes our diverter to the immersion is still heating our hot water tank. There are several systems out there which you can buy, we use a Solic 200.

I would keep it simple either A simple immersion timer or an immersion diverter. The advantage of the diverter is if you have 0.1kW it goes to the immersion, nothing more or less - not the full 3kW demand you would get from a simple sunlight sensor.

Yes, and we cannot read too much into the results. The main reason to have load balancing is to improve efficiency of our existing fossil fuel stock and integrate renewables into the system, it is not to give individuals a small cash bonus (equivalent to 2 cigarettes a day).

We recently got thd best prices from the local builders' merchant. Use the online sellers for the initial guide costs but beware delivery cost. Never ignore wickes and b&q...always worth a quick check.

Hmm.. We have AIM and APE. (Airtight, Insulation and Mvhr. ASHP, PV and EV.) I think if I did it again I would pay more attention to the Solar gain and make the systems able to alter the east and the west facing rooms inputs independently. I found, last winter, keeping the ASHP output temperature as low as possible but still keeping the desired temperature in the home, using the 'adjusted to suit our home' weather compensation alternative the most economical. Remember, the less the difference between the outside temperature and the ASHP output temperature the more efficient the ASHP runs. (But beware of short cycling) Good luck. M

Me too! I hope once the build is finished that it delivers on some of the promises. For me I’m enjoying the self build journey, but it is a real leap of faith. MVHR, ASHP, PV, airtightness tape! This is a huge spend. HeatGeek video on zones HeatGeek video on heating schedules

I take the point about making building regs ever more stringent - insulation levels do reach a tipping point where the cost far far exceeds the benefits, but to policy makers, you can see the attraction of the passive house model, a house that doesn't need heating - great, we get rid of fuel poverty and reduce our carbon emissions. The biggest problem as I see it is the inspection regime (or lack thereof). You can see the attraction to developers - why spend £2 - £3K testing a house and having to install an MVHR system when you can use a default air permeability value and simply get away with trickle vents and a few cheap extraction fans. The vast majority of people I have spoken to see trickle vents as nothing more than a source of unwanted drafts. Likewise extraction fans, they view them as noisy. Nobody really stops to consider the impact of closing vents or switching fans off, they just go ahead and do it, then wonder why problems develop. It's not much of a leap to suggest the same would happen in a PH house with someone not interested or acquainted with what is needed. MVHR units get switched off because the householder is told / believe it is costing them money, they fail to check and replace filters, they refuse to increase ventilation rates etc. I did a bit of experimentation in our last house with ventilation rates. Day by day, I gradually reduced ACH to building regs minimum and then slightly below. The result was a fairly unpleasant internal environment and condensation forming on windows. Increasing the ACH got rid of these problems and led me to conclude that the prescribed minimum ACH was simply too low a rate to properly deal with all of the consequences of modern day living (especially drying laundry inside and daily showering). As every house (even when it has the same design / layout) will perform differently according its location, occupancy etc it stands to reason that every house has to be tuned / managed to meet the specific needs of its occupants. The only way of doing that is by trial and error, seeing what works and what doesn't. That brings us back nicely to the end user. If he or she is interested and prepared to go through that process, then they will have a very comfortable and pleasant house to live in. If they aren't interested, then their surroundings will always be a compromise and in some cases develop into some of the problems referred to earlier. Not an easy one to solve as no matter what handover information is given, some end users will choose to ignore the advice they are given. I for one, wouldn't even consider building a house without having MVHR installed. I'm currently renting a house without adequate ventilation and it is horrible. Properly managed (including getting the right rate of ventilation) there is in my view nothing to beat a well insulated and airtight house.

You are absolutely right to be concerned. I was - until I spent a few days researching the issue, and visited several passiv houses. @MrsRA and I always sleep in a draft: year round. Our Tomcat (Sid) will not use a catflap (we haven't got one) and so uses the windows. I work outdoors all day (on the build), and so loathe stuffy rooms. Sounds to me we are quite like you, therefore. In the planning phase, at one stage I thought we'd go 'hardcore' and have a naturally ventilated passiv haus (instead of MVHR) and read several research articles on the subject. As a spin off from that exercise I read about how common it is for MVHR installations to be 'tuned' badly, switched off even, unbalanced and commonly poorly maintained - filter left uncleaned, that sort of thing. Air quality suffers as a result. I have yet to choose an MVHR system, but in researching suppliers I have come to realise that there is a common conflict of interest: suppliers often both design and specify the system. And I have yet to find a supplier who is obviously competent at design. Maybe the sales reps I talk to -not one of whom is interested in design- simply fill me with dread because they couldn't give a stuff about the customer; they just want to close a sale. We went to Denby Dale passiv haus open day this time last year. What did we see? The owner chatting enthusiastically about how he leaves the window slightly open all night because he -like you, like us- can't stand a stuffy room. I think the answer is take great care tuning (balancing) the airflow, and, if needed don't be shy about keeping the window open a bit. Yes, it'll unbalance the airflow, yes it's counter intuitive. But nobody has ever said passiv hauses have to have the windows shut all the time. Not even us Germans.

hi all. woke up to a nightmare today as the single pump in our sump failed last night and with all the rain and underground water our sump filled, overflowed and found it's way (I believe it was under the sliding door) in to our basement. we were using the basement as a storage area for our household belongings that are waiting for the house to be finished. stuff has been ruined and we can't do much about that now but it has really pushed my need for quality pumps that have a reduced risk of failure that I can use for the sump. I have temporarily replaced the failed pump with a Titan pump from SF just to get back to a normal state but I want to get the proper ones in as soon as I possibly can. Can anyone please recommend a good pump make/model for a sump? I want to create a dual pump system for redundancy. Also, I need to create a high water alarm. eventually that should feed in to our proposed Loxone system but, for now, I want to run something that sits in the sump and runs up a long (4m) cable to the top of some heras fencing we have around the basement courtyard with a light on the end so that as we look out if we see a light on we know that something is up! I'm happy to build my own if someone can give assistance on components to use and wiring diagrams. I know it's all a bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted but I really don't want to go through another day like we have done today. it's definitely not been a good day. 😭

Farting couch pig

Sorry ! Re phrase “ Turn off my SWMBO “ - what’s the male equivalent of SWMBO ? ( going to Google that now ! )

I'm the SWMBO in my house 🙂

Must be all the driving I'm doing. Son broke his ankle do I'm having to drive four and a half hours a day.

Most HSE deem respirators useless with a beard Hence the gifted artist’s impression of me 😁

Yes but isolate it first or you will get wet ….