Leaderboard

Ouch? In the context I was talking about the general benefits to the world/society. I don't think it's too contentious that an ASHP will produce a unit of heat for less CO2 than a fossil burner. And I don't think it's wrong to consider that a benefit. But, no, that's not my situation. I don't have an ASHP. In fact I first started asking questions on forums when I was considering getting one. The advice I was given was completely sound. Don't, until you've done as much insulating as you can do. That was a few years ago and since then "operation insulation" has been in play. I work full time and my budget is not huge, so I'm doing most of the work and learning as I go, whilst living in the house, and life is busy, so the pace is slow, and there is loads to do... And lots of unexpected issues... but I'm pleased that our gas consumption has already decreased from approx 24000 kWh/year to about 10000 kWh/year. Of course I'm pleased for both the cost benefit and the environmental one. I know in the grand context of things such a saving is a drop in the ocean, but it's the drop that I have control over!

You may have to cut the pipes back slightly. May the force be with you.

Isn't it just! Absolutely bonkers!!

This has been said here and seeing the statement out of context here sort of sums up the issue. As @SteamyTea points out it is, has been perhaps, so cheap that we have not focused on it in the bigger picture. There are several dimensions to the wider discourse here. Firstly, the planning system which itself has several dimensions. IIRC we had a discussion several years back about the need to revert to the much greener building standard that the current government (I get the difference between 'terms' but essentially the same government since Cameron) removed prior to 2016 - have I got that right? At any rate this would have meant several million homes, by now, would have been built using a lot less energy and perhaps the message would be plainer to the wider population. "Look at those people over there aren't they lucky to be living in one of these new homes with ultra low energy bills". In addition, planning is also stalling our ability to build on-shore wind farms and solar farms so we are not able to invest in RE at the rate we should. We are a mile from the Cleeve Hill / Project Fortress 880,000 panel solar farm and that has taken 6 years to get through planning and work started last month. (I wish I could buy solar panels at the price they will be paying!) Secondly there is the elephant in the room that nobody really talks about but @Roger440 hints at above. This is a simple, often missed fact, that RE systems still have a carbon footprint across their lifecycle. Even abundant free energy, as might (probably will be abundant but won't be free) be arranged from fusion reactors, is not going to be carbon free in the delivery of the power stations and wind turbines / solar panels have a carbon footprint as well. This implies that there is, as yet, no carbon footprint free form of energy generation so we should strive to use less of it wherever / whenever we can in my view. For instance even if they give the energy away from fusion, which they won't, I still would not wish to live in a swiss cheese house if it meant that there were 2 fusion power stations needed rather than one!

@Drellingore fair enough. You will always have more knowledge of your situation than anyone here, and those facts may of course make yours a valid approach in your specific circumstances. Most of the criticisms stem from the fundamental question of why you can't save all the hassle and have HoldCo lend the money to you personally. I did look back over the thread before I posted last night and I'm pretty sure you haven't addressed that. No requirement for you to do so, but given that seems an edge case - it would be unusual for a lender to be unhappy to lend to an individual but happy to lend to an individual's LtdCo given the much higher risk of default when lending to a company with no assets - it is not surprising that people have made assumptions as to what might be going on. Particularly also because as you've acknowledged there are tax & overhead costs to going your route that wouldn't exist on a direct loan, so prompting the question of what costs/risks/problems you are avoiding to make that worthwhile. And of course even if your intent & situation is entirely above board, HMRC may still turn up one day and ask the two questions I asked last night. So there's no need to answer them here, but I'd make sure you have a solid answer to each - ideally documented as part of the original decision making so that the intent of each company is clearly evidenced. But as I said some posts ago, not my circus, not my monkeys. One last comment is that you'll often find on BuildHub that we reply both for the benefit of the poster and also for future readers. If you feel people have taken unfair assumptions, it may just be because those are natural assumptions to make purely because of what's been written (and not written) in a thread. And we want to protect a future reader from making the same assumption and thinking "oh that's a great idea, I could do that" without the detail of your specific situation and without thinking through the ways an idea could go wrong. So please don't take anything as a personal criticism, or a pressure to share more justification, I am quite happy to accept you & your accountant with all the facts in front of you may have a plan that works. I just think it's unlikely it would work for many people, and should be approached with extreme caution.

Good on you. Its your drop that matters but most people dont realise that

A problem we have at the moment is just about every heat pump has a TOTALLY different way of connecting to the required controls and by default only operates from it's own supplied controller which tends to be a non intuitive grossly over complicated and awkward thing to use, such that the average home owner has no hope of even adjusting the time settings. In my own case I left the manufacturers controller as an object of curiosity in the plant room and integrated the system to a standard central heating programmer on the wall of the utility room. A user interface that most home owners are familliar with and they can easily turn heating and hot water on and off and program on and off times just as they have always been able to do with any heating system. But to do that was not easy as there was no hard wired hot water on and off input with my heat pump, so I had to fudge my own interface to allow the hot water to be enabled or disabled by something else. And the wiring is totally different between one make of heat pump and another. So an electrician going to wire the system if he has not done that one before he first has to read, digest and understand the manual. Only then can he work out what cable is needed between the inside and the heat pump sitting outside. You don't have this problem with a gas or oil boiler, they are virtually all the same control interface, permanent supply, call for heat, call for hot water etc. It would be good if the heat pump manufacturers could bang their heads together and come up with at least some standardisation.

Great stuff. I love reading this sort of topic. I guess the next thing is try it on your real boiler. If it works you just have to set the Pi to send the required temperature each time you change from heating to hot water. Storage temperature might be some combi boilers keep a small store of hot water internally for faster response to a hot tap being turned on.

Sorry about that, but you did. 😁 Clearly this kind of AI is going to be the future of search engines. ChatGPT gained 1 million users in under a week. Here’s why the AI chatbot is primed to disrupt search as we know it. If it all gets too out of hand you could always start another thread in Stoves, Fires & Fireplaces and not mention AI at all.

The problem is that heating system design work appears to require trudging about in mud and rain on a building site. My architect, structural engineer, lighting designer and MVHR designer some how all sat in comfy warm offices and did a perfectly good job. But my ASHP heating engineer, despite having the exact schematic I wanted supplied to him by the manufacturer *and* by me in my tender pack, still turned up with a bag of different parts, spent a while trying to convince me the design in his head was better than what they tendered, struggled to even read a plumbing schematic, didn't have couplers for the parts being installed, installed some parts upside down and other things like pumps in completely the wrong place, installed a mid position valve rather than 2 zone valves, required 6 returns to site to debug it all into working, etc etc etc the list goes on. So for me the issue is not that the installer wasn't smart enough to do the design: I'd already paid the smart people to do the design. The issue is that the installer is attempting to be smarter than they really are by doing redesign work on the hoof rather than meticulously follow the design given to them. It's like a builder deciding to alter foundation depths and move some supporting beams or change insulation thickness on the fly. Bad practices that used to be the norm but are being slowly pushed out the industry. My hunch is the scalable central design will only be financially viable if coupled with a monitoring and maintenance contract, probably with capital outlay financing rolled in. It's not impossible, but will take some major players to make it happen. Octopus are closest now, but BG HomeCare + Hive surely has to be planning how to pivot into this

Lost me at the second line of the fifth paragraph. But it is good to play with things and see what happens.

The stuff they insulate camper vans is good - its a stick on foam and you can build it up in layers so do gaps between ribs and then go over the top. It also helps with sound deadening too. Plenty of it about and on eBay - look for Dodo foam.

28mm stopcock won’t upset the flow rate. I wouldn’t fit another lever valve tbh.

I bought my ASHP from a business seller on ebay. It sat in my part built house for 11 months until I finally installed it, only to find it did not work. I got it replaced, but it took a fight. What a damned good job it was only 11 months after the purchase before I installed it not 12+ months.

@sameulepapi Officially you only need to issue certificates if the building is being converted to a charity building or similar. However they can help convince a contractor to zero or 5% rate if they haven't done it before. For a dwelling I suggest something like this.. I have read the relevant parts of Buildings and construction (VAT Notice 708) and certify: That, as the recipient of construction and conversion services, the development is a conversion from a non-residential building/barn to a residential building/new dwelling, and therefore qualifies for reduced rate VAT (5%). Planning Reference Number: 12345678/FUL Planning Title: Site Address: Contact Address: Telephone: Yours sincerely etc

On further thought, I think your company would be high on the list for inspection. * The absence of any other projects would be of interest. Their assessment of your benefit in kind would then be taxed as a dividend. That is assuming they considered you not to be evading tax. * friendly tax inspectors have explained that there are many markers that instigate a visit. New with substantial turnover is one. Closing down again is another. They then come and sit with you for a day or so, going through every single paper, with the occasional query. Nerve-wracking even when there is nothing wrong.

I would worry that you have published here that the company is formed solely for the benefit of yourself personally, mostly avoiding tax, with no intention to trade otherwise. Then distribute the profit back to yourselves. You get the advantages of cash-flow, and vat reclaim on plant and fees, which otherwise the VAT man would have. That information is now at large for any googler to see. I have not looked in the slightest for any backup on this, as to whether it is contrary to the principles of setting up a limited company' or re tax. I just have some decades ( and hundreds of substantial projects) of knowing that the tax man mostly left us alone, but many clients and subbies seemed to have had frequent 'discussions', mostly when trying to be a bit too clever. They may often have come to an agreed solution, eventually, but meanwhile guess who holds all the tax, or issues a penalty which you have to pay immediately and then have to fight. You might end up helping the tax man create new case law. As I say, I don't know, and have not researched it. Maybe you are the first in the country to think of this, and it is legit. The only way to know is to try it, and reserve a lot of money in case the worst happens. There is no point asking the tax authorities. 1. they won't answer. 2. you will have flagged it up.

Heating "engineers" that UNDERSTAND any form of heating are in short supply. Most will wire a standard S plan or Y plan heating system with a standard boiler by connecting the wires according to their colour in a standard wiring centre from the standard drawings. If it then does not work, they are stumped. If there is just one thing a little out of the ordinary they are stumped. I have lost count of how many wrongly wired / not working heating systems I have found and had to correct. And none of them understand a 3 port mid position valve and know the symptoms if it has failed and the heating or hot water has stopped working.

Expensive, but good. Worth the extra £10. https://www.screwfix.com/p/pegler-stopcock-22mm/18986

What spacing are your joists - 18mm is fine for 450mm or less, 22mm if wider or if you want a more solid feel.

Regarding the variable emissivity of the different surfaces, just put a small piece of black insulation tape on the surfaces to be measured and that’ll correspond well to the default calibration of the IR thermometer.

"It is almost completely air tight but at the small points where it is not...." Errrr....... Good luck with the 'negotiations'. Of course they may not entertain comparison with others' products but what your pics show is not typical.

Yep, you’ll need to either size the rads to suit the flow temp of the ufh, or run the system at a higher rad temperature then use a decent blending/pump station on the ufh. Hydraulic separation can come from close coupled Ts on the return pipework.

EWI = external wall Insulation I presume. If so then that makes sense, if the house is very well insulated then you don't need much heat input so the radiators aren't so big. It sounds like you may have happened across a pragmatic and thoughtful installer who doesn't insist on putting in every component under the sun as an insurance policy ... or of course a complete chancer!

I don't know if it is achievable but I strongly suspect that the balancing would take longer than any installer would wish to spend or that you would wish to pay for. So you might well end up doing that yourself.

Brick and block are definitely not a thing of the past We have chosen solid over timber Frame on our last build and current one partly due to the difference in cost I have worked on both for many years and prefer solids to TF But if you want convenience TF or Sips is definitely that Don’t be pushed into piling We used deep strip and Clay board on our last build Clay ground and hundreds of 10 meter trees to three sides Gas boiler on our previous HP on our Current build Expecting it to be significantly more expensive to run than our gas boiler But no gas in the area So not an issue All the build shows that we visited are poor r also ons of the NEC show Excellent

There was an interesting write-up last week of someone who put ChatGPT through some of the accountancy/audit exams https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/tech/tech-pulse/ai-chatbot-falls-just-short-on-accounting-exam It actually did relatively well and got quite close to a (low) pass on the paper with the more policy/wordy questions. However on some things it was very wrong. His conclusion was that at the moment: "On this assurance topic, I’d compare ChapGPT to a very recent joiner at an accounting firm – someone in the first few weeks of their contract. Unlike a new joiner, however, ChatGPT gives answers with an air of confidence even when it’s completely wrong. It’s not afraid to give a garbage answer and back it up with garbage. It’s like having a fresh-faced junior who’s always convinced they’re right, so users need to approach it with a degree of caution.”

I really like sand / cement screed laid by a pro. I would not tackle this myself. Get the plasterer to do it and you on the mixer / barrow.

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.

Yes there is thermal bridging, but you can insulate around it to mitigate that to some extent, joists have been fitted into pockets for 100s of years. If you were starting with new joists then you would avoid thermal bridges etc, but you have to take a pragmatic approach and go for the easy cheap big wins rather than expensive marginal gains. I doubt the cost of the works will ever be recouped by the savings you make on your heating bills in your lifetime.

Hello jayc89 I agree with George, quoted below. Resin anchor fixings, in fact any fixing has often has quite a lot less capacity than you think. You look at the fixing and think.. that looks sturdy..but it's the things round about that generally cause the issues. Some of these are: 1/ What you are fixing into. Concrete, natural stone, modern solid brick, modern bricks with holes in them, old say London brick clay brick.. a long list. The variation in load bearing capacity is enormous so please be careful. 2/ What you are fixing to the wall. Take a timber wall plate / bearer / ledger piece. The joists are connected via hanger to the timber, the load in the timber plate has to be transferred into the fixing. The timber starts to crush locally.. as you have a small bearing surface between the timber and the fixing. 3/ How much stand off do you have. You photo shows packers behind the wall plate. The actual behavoiur is very complex so will not explain in detail but touching on a few key points. The fixing deflects (bends) and this causes over stress at the fixing / timber interface. As the fixing bends it causes higher stresses where it enters the masonry as the fixing starts to act more "like a lever" rather than just acting in shear. One consequence of this is that the fixing develops additional tension and this causes other issues. 4/ Often the mortar is weaker than the masonry units / size of the stones if natural stone. The distance between the fixings and mortar joints is critical. For a bit of fun here is a real world example of how you design the fixings. I have screen shotted parts of the design. Let's take a house extension to a 1930's house.. old bricks, maybe some soft mortar. The key point is that for the fixings to realise their capacity they must be fixed nearly the centre of the brick and well away from the mortar bed. You can't control the floor height and you can't be certain that the brick coursing will be level. Thus you have to make sure that luck is on your side and you do this by adding in extra fixings. It gives the builder (maybe you) a fair chance to get it fixed safely, not slip later cause cracking, squeeky floors and so on. Remember that the new timber will shrink so while it may appear "rock solid" at the install it won't be quite so when it all dries out in a year or so. Example: Floor joist span 3769mm, joist spacing 400 mm The above gives the load on each joist. 0.81 kN/m is about 80 kg/m run of joist. Each end of the joist is supported by a hanger attached to the wall plate. The dead load is the self weight of the floor. The live load is you, furniture, book cases, having a party and this equates to about 150 kg per square metre of floor This is a code requirement that BC expect to see. The above works out the maximum spacing of an M12 fixing in a typical 1930's brick with the plate hard against the brick face. Each fixing can carry a permissible shear load of ~ 157 kg. But the test data is based on a European masonry size, not an imperial size! Thus while we can adjust do other calculations we apply some conservative Engineering judgement. The result is a detail like this. The detail below is a ground floor, vented solum below with PIR insulation. You can see that in actual fact you need quite a lot of fixings to make it fly and safe for the design life of the building. If you have read this far then thank you and I hope it helps.. a bit.

I wonder if you could do it from outside through the holes in the air brick? At worst case enlarge say 2 of them, one at each end with a drill to get the gun nozzle through Might help to have an observer inside directing the squirting. (having typed that I could see how that could go wrong......)

That is the difference between us.