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Trifle is in the fridge trifling and mulled wine is on the stove mulling. We have a big year ahead of us with our build finally starting. I’ve learnt so much already from this great forum and will be asking a lot more questions once we get going. Thank you all for making this place the best resource there is for the self-builder. Merry Christmas everyone. I wish you and yours all the best.

£7 in the first 24hrs according to the Melcloud app and it's running 24/7. 20kWh input and approx 100kWh output. so first day was a COP of 5 which I'm very happy with. and last time I went to check the basement was up to 15.6°C so it's getting to the point where a commercial dehumidifier would start to make sense. but, for now, we have a couple of smaller dehumidifiers that are doing a job.

Merry Christmas and good luck next year. If we’re lucky we might be in our new place for next Christmas. And by lucky I mean winning the lottery tonight! 😂

Correct. Combining the two is fraught with compromises. A2A for space heating, ESHP for DHW and ventilation and solar PV to assist I think is a good combo. Low capital investment, excellent COP for both as each is doing a dedicated job. You get the energy recovery aspect from the ESHP so you might achieve passivhaus running costs even without the same level of airtightness. Occupant comfort might not be as good however.

Trouble with the small area on their own zone, is what happens when they are the only zones opens - your number of litres engaged with the heat pump plummet and you get short cycling. Your better keeping as a single zone and balance the loops to get the correct heat in the rooms. Upping loop flow rate increases heat output of the loop, decreasing, decreases output.

O/S MK2 Capri door, 28" CRT telly, soldering iron burns on the carpet etc.

That means I get a spanking

don't worry. he told me you're on the naughty list.

Merry Xmas to all Buildhubbers. Best wishes for a peaceful, successful and very Happy New Year

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to everyone. I still find the information, knowledge, banter, chat and drivel inspiring since joining you all.

A lot of my earlier career was involved with servo motion control of machines, so you would do that to tune them, put a step change to the position demand and watch the resulting actual motion and tune it to get the characteristics you wanted, be that maximum speed, or no overshoot etc. You could do that quite quickly with the position demand stepping backwards and forwards, and adjust it on the fly and pretty soon get the response you wanted. But a house is much slower time constants, hours not milliseconds, so to do the same with the heating system in a house would take days. More akin to tuning the heating system on a furnace to get to desired temperature as quick as possible without overshooting.

Indeed, Merry Christmas! Doing my best to support local business:

Yes merry Christmas one and all - time to hit the cans.......

Happy Christmas all, and thanks for the help and advice. I’m looking forward to make progress in the new year, slab is done so I need to crack on with walls and roof

didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that one!

So if the developer does not exercise his option after the 18 months are you free to do what you want with the plots? Do they (did they) have planning permission? Is there room (without knowing the dimensions) to divide the front and put another house alongside the existing? Garage would have to go to make access I suspect.

Yes easy with a petrol cut off saw or a 9 inch grinder. If I was desperate I could do it with a 5 inch grinder and the skinny 1mm blades.

To get a neat cut I would be looking to rig something up to make a "table saw" out of the grinder with a fence, so you can slowly feed the beam through to get a neat cut. Or if you have a table saw, see if you can get a grinding disc to fit it?

That looks to crying out for a house in the back garden. Is that what the house to the right of yours has done?

Thanks, the more I look at it the more I’m thinking I’ll try for full planning and a new dwelling. Not sure how difficult that would be but I’m hoping the principal of a large development has been established/approved. I’ve attached a location plan. I would probably need to replace the lost garage for the existing house but plenty of room on the other side for that.

Works perfectly for me. One core +24V and the other four for RBGW negative returns. My wiring scheme, fwiw. Random mix! Some cat6a, some cat5e, a couple are even on 8 core security flex. I'm using ESPhome rather than the Loxone 1wire extension fwiw, so if needed can add multiple gateways around the house at very little cost. I used trirated cabinet wire from TLC for must things, but stripped out twisted pairs from cat6a cables for anything using the little pushin wago 243-211 blocks that need solid core. Savvyspaces actually sell tri-rated solid core hookup wire if you want to be completely regs compliant (but the depends what regs your building to, init). I'd probably not bother myself, it's not like the external wires entering the cabinet are tri rated so seems overkill to insist all low current/low power internal wires must be

Hi guys I’ve discovered that dpm layer under slab should have been a Radon barrier and looks like a regular 1200g membrane was used. Trying to figure out best option to resolve and keep BCO happy. UFH and screed have been laid but not yet the finished floor of porcelain tiles. Is there an option to put radon barrier on top of screed and under tiles? I’ve also read that if you have MVHR then this can be sufficient to remove any potential Radon and avoid the need for a Radon barrier under the slab. Any advice appreciated.

Merry Xmas all . If we’re lucky I’ll be almost finished in 3 years .

Have a Google for John cantor he’s been installing heat pumps for about 30 years he has a good book

perhaps not so small really but was stated by the installer as designed to be a combination of both low loss header and volumiser, and there's a few resources discussing such as this one https://www.hvpmag.co.uk/Benefits-of-a-combined-volumiserlow-loss-header-for-heat-pumps/14295

If the heat load is as low as stated, bloody good for a retrofit ( EnerPHit? ) his sounds like a candidate for a low loss header or very small wall mounted 2-pipe buffer with a constantly open bypass at the manifold. The manifold pump will happily ‘suck’ whatever heat it needs as and when so you’ll probably be fine with the LLH. If you go LLH then you’ll likely need a pump between it and the manifold, but if you go 2 port buffer you can just pump straight through it to the manifold from the pump in the HP. Doubt you need to complicated this much at all, just needs the water from the HP to be free running back on itself to smooth out demand vs relying solely on the value / temp of the return from the loop(s).

Put them on, see if anyone cares. Unless your neighbours hate you or it is obvious from the roadside then I’d say you’ll be fine.

Gorgeous. You are very lucky to have got the house of your dreams.

Congratulations! At least you know about the stress… My observation might be that it’s easier to live on site (rent can gobble up a budget with unforeseen delays). It could be a risky strategy to sell your house part way thru a build, because the subsidence claim might slow things down a lot. You have to accept roughing it tho’. Have you considered a renovation of a bungalow or similar?

Yeah, works fine. Mask up.

Have a good one then.

I made just this type of structure for my colleague as a mobile demonstrator. Joins up the thinking, between outbuildings / structures satellite to the main residence and grabbing a cheeky extra few m2 of solar revenue. It has a sniff over 4.3kWp on the roof. Loads of interest when we put this up at Bicester, and a few strange looks when I simply stated that wood has been around for a “few centuries” and solar panels a few decades……….just screwed one to t’other lol. Some random woman asked “what time is the car being raffled off?” Doubt that the BMW garage who loaned us the car would have been too chuffed with that lol. I’m ( before I die hopefully ) putting 18 panels at the top of my garden ( East facing ) and another 12 on my ( re-roofed to comply ) gazebo for West. Both elevations get smothered morning and afternoon so fingers crossed, and I should get good returns from both.

It is part of the planning permission unfortunately. I suspect it is because there are several sites. We also must be complete in 2 years, which could be quite tough. There are a couple of other quite restrictive planning clauses; as Jilly says, it is probably because there are 9 plots on the edge of a housing estate and they don't want the site to look an eyesore.

OK, it seems that I was being overoptimistic back then about being "nearly there", but I have now finally completed! Excited & terrified in equal measures...

48 degrees, found by experiment as the hottest task you normally have to perform is kitchen washing up and with no cold added, I can just, and only just put my hands in the water without it being painful. I see no need for any hotter than that, but if such a need arrises, there is the boiling water tap.

But are pushing themselves as an installer - makes you wonder. Sounds like your heat pump is either too big, you need a buffer or bigger one, or you have the system flow constrained with too many zones closing down.

Tremendous investigation and reporting, well done! Consider making a DIY fan to recreate this windy weather for your remediation efforts. As I detailed in the below post. Then you can go room by room and start sealing. You can temporally tape up an internal door to make a "cell" that can be airtighted from the inside out. You won't go far wrong using the illBruck i3 system. Others are available of course but I found their FM330 better than other foams i tried.

Sounds like an industrial sized pack of air tightness tape is called for! You have a lot of work ahead of you. Based on what you have said, i think you need a whole house strategy there. That way past tinkering.

When I say Thermal mass I mean Heat Capacity 🙂

Assume your heat load is at lowest temperature. So it will also need to 0.5kW when it's about 10 degrees. So basically you need a buffer. A decent combi of your choice with a good sized buffer. My heat demand is just over 3kW, boiler lowest modulation at low temp is 6.7kW. Have 180l buffer, with a thermostat set at 34 deg. UFH just draws it water from the buffer and pumps around UFH at 30. Currently getting 94% efficiency from the system - Gas in to heat water to heat taken from UFH via a heat meter.

Small, achievable steps. It will soon start snowballing.

Manage it in bite size chunks, make decisions once and stick with the decision. Changing your mind later costs money and time. Try to keep the design simple, complex can look good, but is a pain to construct. Use a build method that isn't much of a learning curve for the builder or you, if you are doing it yourself. Be careful you don't make rooms to big, it's very easy to do, watch out for evening heat gain from a low westerly sun. Good luck, but enjoy it. Try to get most the decision making done prior to build.

my brother

Here’s to more inflation, strikes and prime ministers. All the best, Scrooge

Accept the truth young Jedi …..

About the same time as @Thorfun

Wish I could do this, except the only time I need a buffer tank is during cooling season (FCU too small for the ASHP) so using the UVC to stash extra cold water isn't going to end happily

I got one from Lidl. Not that good at finding cables, or studs.