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It has been 2 years since I installed a Brink 300/325. My main reason was 1- Hay Fever, 2- cleaner air and finally try and reduce the gas bills to help saving the environment and reducing the cost to achieve the first two. I have checked the gas bills the other day and it seems we were averaging 16K KWHr annually before Brink and it is in the 11K KWHrs afterwards. That is a 5,000 KWHr a year reduction helping the environment and a £500 saving a year for my pocket. So the payback for my DIY install at £3600 will be ~7 years. Just wanted to share.

I despair of journalists when I read something like: But no surprises when a boiler manufacturer writes an article trying to sway the argument towards hydrogen boilers instead. WHEN someone comes up with a cost effective way to produce a lot of hydrogen and zero emissions, and a reasonable cost perhaps we can take it seriously. but we are not there yet, not by a long way.

We had an issue with our Quooker Tap The lever had become disconnected Not hot or cold just boiling Quooker service came out today and said the tap was beyond repair and the boiling tank was getting to hot also He said whilst we are four years out of warranty It could be considered as a manufacture issue and replace the whole lot within the £150 call out Definitely be buying another for our current build

Having just done exactly this, I have to agree it's an easy win. <£700 for DIY unit and ancilliaries, installed in a day and currently offsetting ~60% of my gas heating use at a CoP of around 3.7. Gas boiler kicking in for HW and the parts of the house it doesn't reach. Heat pump technology doesn't need to be expensive to have a massive impact.

Isn't this the key point. Hydrogen isn't a viable alternative yet and may never be. Relying on something which doesn't exist to fix a problem which we have allowed to become urgent is a fools game, with the consequences selfishly foisted on our children. Leaky Victorian homes are difficult and expensive to heat irrespective of the heating technology. So insulate them! It's disruptive, but the consequences of global warming are orders of magnitude more disruptive. Then fit a heat pump. Unfortunately there are two many vested interests in prolonging the status quo for another decade or two, by which time the problem will have become even more urgent.

My manual silicone gun broke on site, and gave me the opportunity to try my hand at a DIY silicone gun. Some threaded M8 bar, some M8 nuts and some araildite metal, all hanging around the site. An hour messing about and I think that I have a passable, if rough version. Hopefully it will help with all the caulking and silicone of skirting boards / architraves coming up!!!

Point load will be your issue when the slab becomes a beam and bending occurs. 50mm is very strong however I would go 100mm and then chuck fibres in (steel or fibreglass will do) and it won’t go anywhere.

Levels and maths, plus foam or shuttering. If in any doubt, shutter the thing twice or 3x the size you may need, allowing enough depth to get 2x 15°, or 2x 30° or even 2x 45° male - female connectors in which will give you huge options to offset 110mm connections. Sit a 200x200x (x)mm EPS or PIR block centred on too of any 110mm risers, so you can get in, fit the reducer, and make off the small bore waste connections as you need to. Does GPS actually work that accurately? Like down to the 50mm increments required for this?

@RichardL like you I think A2A is a sensible option, even for for old properties. @Hanksy did a few posts a year or two back demonstrating this. Unlike ASHP you avoid heating any fabric (UFH) which in uninsulated houses is a black hole for energy use. A good unit can be installed for maybe £1500. One in the hallway or living room of every gas boilered house could significantly reduce gas demand (provided the power stations run on something low emission) . Minimal disruption Vs ASHP and better COP. Leave the gas in place for topping up cold rooms and DHW.

We all know they don't work in poorly insulated and leaky houses so that's fair enough. However, there is a political bias when it comes to ASHP. Google Telegraph and heat pumps then google The Guardian and heat pumps and you get this,

I guess this post doesn't really belong in Boilers & Hot Water Tanks so I'll offload it in this subforum. The central heating system in our house is fired by an ageing Glowworm Flexicom 30HX (heat only) condensing boiler. It's probably on its last legs but while it still works I'm keen to squeeze every drop of life out of it. The main drawback with it is that there's only one flow temperature (set on the front panel display with a couple of pushbuttons) for both heating and HW, with only one demand switch input. Because of this limitation I have to set the flow at around 65oC minimum in order to get anything over 55oC into the HWC so I can't have a lower flow temperature separately for the radiators - which would improve efficiency. Not without investing a few hundred quid in Glowworm's own external control kit that is... this kit talks over a proprietary serial bus called "ebus" and combines a switching unit with inputs for HW cylinder stat and room thermostat(s) for CH temperature and scheduling. Luckily for me, Glowworm were gobbled up by Vaillant before the Flexicoms were released, so under the sheet steel it's pretty much a Vaillant ecoTEC with some budget component choices so while Glowworms don't get much attention, plenty of people like to integrate Vaillant boilers with the HomeAssistant OS. For this reason I set about seeing if I could adjust the flow temperature over ebus using the RaspberryPi that already runs my CH system. If I can make it emulate the external controls, I can set a lower flow for radiators and UFH and implement an X plan scheme. The first step was to pick up a spare main PCB and display panel on ebay to mess around with (too cold to risk messing up the real boiler). Here it is dangling precariously on the bench: It's powered from a 240V isolating transformer so not quite as lethal as it looks. Not quite. The first thing I noticed was that, in its former life, it was a combi boiler (Flexicoms come in three flavours: CX (combi) SX (system) or HX(heat only) like mine). For giggles I stuck some 10K resistors on the NTC sensors and water pressure sensor to see how it would run. It still kept throwing faults until I did some googling and found out that the pump is tested on power-up by looking for a small increase in pressure when running. This was fixed by manually tweaking the pot a bit and kept it happy enough for me to play with the serial interface. That's about as far as it will go without an fan and ignition unit though. But at least I could connect it to an ebus interface and talk to it. There are some PCB's out there to interface ebus to RS232 but it's a simple enough thing to design so I built one on some stripboard that plugs onto the Raspberry Pi header: The two wire link is going off to the main boiler PCB (although the wire magically changes from black to white along the way!) If anyone's the slightest bit interested I can put up the circuit diagram for the interface board but it's just a dual comparator and a couple of opto isolators. Incidentally, this interface and topic in general might be of interest to anyone looking to integrate Vaillant boilers with other control systems as they don't talk Opentherm. The awkward thing about this particular hack is that ebus timing can be quite fussy when doing bus arbitration and the UART in the Pi has a fifo that gets in the way. However someone already fixed this with a kernel module called ttyebus dedicated to reading/writing directly to the UART. Then there's the oh-so-handy daemon for linux called ebusd which can interpret a wide variety of ebus device comms and access it all over TCP, HTTP, MQTT etc. On putting all this together, the automatic scan performed by ebusd instantly identified the boiler and loaded the appropriate configuration files for it resulting in access to a great many parameters: bai AccessoriesOne = extheatingpump bai AccessoriesTwo = storagechargingpump bai ACRoomthermostat = off bai averageIgnitiontime = 1.3 bai BlockTimeHcMax = 18 bai BoilerType = 6 bai ChangesDSN = 0 bai CirPump = off bai CounterStartattempts1 = 3 bai CounterStartattempts2 = 0 bai CounterStartAttempts3 = 0 bai CounterStartAttempts4 = 0 bai currenterror = 75;-;-;-;- bai DateTime = nosignal;00:00:00;-.-.-;- bai dcfState = nosignal bai DCFTimeDate = (ERR: invalid position for 3108b509030de500 / 072b080101010150) bai DCRoomthermostat = off bai DeactivationsIFC = 0 bai DeactivationsTemplimiter = 0 bai DeltaFlowReturnMax = 22.69 bai DisplayMode = 2 bai DSN = 8193 bai DSNOffset = 1 bai DSNStart = 8192 bai EBusHeatcontrol = yes bai EbusSourceOn = on bai EbusVoltage = on bai errorhistory = no data stored bai expertlevel_ReturnTemp = -1.81;cutoff bai ExternalFaultmessage = on bai externalFlowTempDesired = 90.00 bai externalHwcSwitch = off bai ExternGasvalve = 240 bai ExtFlowTempDesiredMin = 0.00 bai ExtStorageModulCon = no bai extWP = off bai FanHours = 1250 bai FanMaxSpeedOperation = 5780 bai FanMinSpeedOperation = 1500 bai FanPWMSum = 58260 bai FanPWMTest = - bai FanSpeed = 0 bai FanSpeedOffsetMax = -580 bai FanSpeedOffsetMin = 210 bai FanStarts = 30964 bai Flame = off bai FlameSensingASIC = 709 bai FloorHeatingContact = off bai FlowsetHcMax = 82.00 bai FlowsetHwcMax = 80.00 bai FlowSetPotmeter = 45.00 bai FlowTemp = 25.88;ok bai FlowTempDesired = 45.00 bai FlowTempMax = 116.06 bai Fluegasvalve = off bai FluegasvalveOpen = on bai Gasvalve3UC = off bai Gasvalve = off bai GasvalveASICFeedback = off bai GasvalveUC = off bai GasvalveUCFeedback = off bai HcHours = 901 bai HcPumpMode = permanent bai HcPumpStarts = 29164 bai HcStarts = 4500 bai HcUnderHundredStarts = 0 bai HeatingSwitch = on bai HoursTillService = 3100 bai HwcDemand = no bai HwcHours = 263 bai HwcImpellorSwitch = no bai HwcPostrunTime = 80 bai HwcSetPotmeter = 62.00 bai HwcStarts = 22600 bai HwcSwitch = on bai HwcTemp = 116.06;circuit bai HwcTempDesired = 0.00 bai HwcTempMax = 62.00 bai HwcTypes = 0 bai HwcUnderHundredStarts = 0 bai HwcWaterflow = 0.19 bai HwcWaterflowMax = 11.57 bai Ignitor = no data stored bai InitialisationEEPROM = no bai IonisationVoltageLevel = 72.2 bai maintenancedata_HwcTempMax = 116.06 bai maxIgnitiontime = 2.1 bai minIgnitiontime = 0.2 bai ModulationTempDesired = 33.0 bai OutdoorstempSensor = -60.44;cutoff bai OverflowCounter = yes bai ParamToken = 3 bai PartloadHcKW = 19 bai PartloadHwcKW = 30 bai PartnumberBox = 20 00 46 39 50 bai PositionValveSet = 0 bai PowerValue = 21 0a 50 18 64 1e bai PrAPSCounter = 0 bai PrAPSSum = 0 bai PrEnergyCountHc1 = 3291922 bai PrEnergyCountHc2 = 0 bai PrEnergyCountHc3 = 0 bai PrEnergyCountHwc1 = 994043 bai PrEnergyCountHwc2 = 0 bai PrEnergyCountHwc3 = 0 bai PrEnergySumHc1 = 776243897 bai PrEnergySumHc2 = 0 bai PrEnergySumHc3 = 0 bai PrEnergySumHwc1 = 383284736 bai PrEnergySumHwc2 = 0 bai PrEnergySumHwc3 = 0 bai ProductionByte = no data stored bai PrVortexFlowSensorValue = 0 bai PumpHours = 2157 bai PumpHwcFlowNumber = 0 bai PumpHwcFlowSum = 0 bai RemainingBoilerblocktime = 0 bai ReturnRegulation = off bai ReturnTemp = 25.75;65123;ok bai ReturnTempMax = 0.00 bai SecondPumpMode = 2 bai SerialNumber = 42 30 36 30 33 34 35 33 bai SetFactoryValues = no bai SetMode = auto;69.0;68.0;-;1;0;1;0;0;0 bai SHEMaxDeltaHwcFlow = 27.81 bai SHEMaxFlowTemp = 83.31 bai SolPostHeat = (ERR: invalid position for 3108b509030d7304 / 00) bai Statenumber = 98 bai Status01 = 25.0;25.0;-;-;-;off bai Status02 = disabled;76;38.0;80;62.0 bai Status16 = (ERR: invalid position for 3108b5040116 / 00) bai Status = (ERR: invalid position for 3108b5110103 / 00) bai StatusCirPump = no data stored bai Storageloadpump = 0 bai StorageLoadPumpHours = 630 bai StorageloadPumpStarts = 21447 bai StorageLoadTimeMax = 45 bai StoragereleaseClock = yes bai StorageTemp = -14.94;cutoff bai StorageTempDesired = 62.00 bai StorageTempMax = 0.00 bai TargetFanSpeed = 0 bai TargetFanSpeedOutput = 0 bai TempDiffBlock = 0 bai TempDiffFailure = 0 bai TempGradientFailure = 0 bai Templimiter = off bai TemplimiterWithNTC = yes bai TempMaxDiffExtTFT = 0.00 bai Testbyte = 3 bai TimerInputHc = on bai ValveMode = 0 bai ValveStarts = 12893 bai VolatileLockout = no bai VolatileLockoutIFCGV = no bai VortexFlowSensor = 0 bai WarmstartDemand = no bai WarmstartOffset = 0.00 bai WaterHcFlowMax = 0 bai WaterPressure = 0.974;ok bai WaterpressureBranchControlOff = off bai WaterpressureMeasureCounter = 231 bai WaterpressureVariantSum = 65534 bai WP = off bai WPPostrunTime = 5 bai WPSecondStage = off broadcast datetime = no data stored broadcast error = BAI broadcast hwcStatus = no data stored broadcast id = no data stored broadcast id = no data stored broadcast load = no data stored broadcast outsidetemp = no data stored broadcast signoflife = no data stored broadcast vdatetime = no data stored general valuerange = no data stored memory eeprom = no data stored memory ram = no data stored scan id = no data stored scan.08 = Vaillant;BAI00;0202;8001 scan.08 id = 21;10;31;0010005484;1300;021068;N6 So far, so good. But the fact this PCB was obviously out of a combi was bothering me so I went about finding how to change the ID. This turned out to be a simple matter of searching around for the correct button presses - which kind folk had already posted details of how to do it. Now it has a new personality, the same as my current boiler! Then things get a bit more hazy. Some people were looking at the ebus traffic coming from Vaillant controllers with the objective of emulating them but nobody was doing the same for Glowworm controls. It's an open question whether or not Vaillant controls could be used with Glowworms but I'd be surprised if they could. However, after adding an extra configuration for the Vaillant external controls I seem to be able to affect some of the registers relevant to flow temperature. For example, sending: ebusctl write -c bai SetModeOverride '0;50;70;-;-;1;0;1;-;0;0;0' results in being able to read back the following from the board: ebusctl read -f -c bai FlowTempDesired 50 ebusctl read -f -c bai StorageTempDesired 70 The first parameter for SetModeOverride is listed as 0=auto, 1=off, 2=water but the pump relay actually responds differently 0=off 1=on 2=on so I'm not sure what's going on. The second parameter seems to be all I need to set in order to adjust the flow temperature maximum and also shows up when using the diagnostics menu on the LCD in addition to being read back over ebus. I have no idea of the significance of the third parameter (listed as StorageTempDesired in the configuration file) but it seems only relevant to HW in the combi models. Maybe someone familiar with the Vaillant room controls might shed some light? CXdump.txt

Not really news but I can't recall a heat pump manufacturer stating this so clearly... https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/03/14/heat-pumps-wont-work-old-homes-warns-bosch/

Hi, and welcome! I would seriously consider having the "builder" do the building, and then have kitchen and bathroom fitters / installers do the 'nice stuff'. If all has gone well with the TF, then you should have enough marbles left in the bag to choose, and direct, your own downstream trades ( for these individual spaces ). Depends on your nerves / balls / confidence, but with support here you should be able to add your own input / signature to the rooms which need this type of personal input.

Of course it won't happen. The plan is to get the votes of the gullible who believe it will, and then figure out who to blame other than themselves for it not happening.

There is no "running cost" of a kitchen?! Do try to say something relevant, it helps a lot

Not at all. My timber frame was stick built by a local building firm, so not quite a "kit house". After their initial quick assembly of the frame, it then took me 5 years to complete it myself. For me the main advantage of timber frame is almost the entire thickness of the walls can be insulation of some form or other. Vs Masonry where the actual bricks or blocks add little insulation. So you can get a very good indeed passive house level build with masonry, the overall walls thickness will be more than it could be with timber frame. A lot depends on what is normal where you are, in in this part of Scotland, Timber frame is normal so no problem finding a competent builder to do it right.

Thats what they are. Sometimes it won't get through but the second one will. Just make sure they are called 'heavies' or clearly states it is for hot-rolled steel like yours. Others are made to go through cladding and purlins so won't make it. Check the length of thread so that it catches the steel. They work best if there is minimal thread through the timber, but these 2 wings cut a wide hole through the timber then break off at the steel. All that for 9p each. Yours will be more as longer. A hex head works better than screwdriver head.

This is another approach, that we used on house, that doesn't involve a retaining wall on the slab. We did this because the rear of the house has a level threshold and we wanted the rear patio at the same level across the whole back of the house. (The drawing is slightly wrong because external GL is actually the same as internal FFL)

Of cause it is, we are not talking cost of a kitchen. If you install something to save on gas as @Levo did (his 3rd motivation), that being MVHR, its running cost is relevant. If it cost £100 to run and maintain and saved £50 in gas consumption, it would be a waste of investment and would fail to achieve his 3rd motivation. In this case, gas saved is greater than electric used and filters, so win win.

The moderators decided to lock this thread as it continued to get off topic and personal.

Good point. I figured around £65 a year (20Watts continuous at 35p/KWHr) for electricity. Some of this will be offset by the central heating operating less so less electricity for the burner fan, the water pump etc. Say down to £42. Add two sets of G4 at £4 each set, so totals to £8 a year. That is 500 - 50 = £450. Still a good saving.

No only done one self build and that was enough 😀.

That's right, thank goodness 😁. The PHPP does do overheating, but it was just a comment about BC being able to be flexible if they want.

Different chemicals depending on the time of year? Red flames for Christmas. Green for St Patrick's day. A cheery yellow in summer.

As long as the truss supplier can make the hips as well. The problem is the height above plate being soo high that you would need 800 deep timber to hand cut it! I do like them for the reason you mention, makes insulating and ventilating over wall plate a lot easier.

Cemfloor have updated their website already and removed the incorrect information.

Yes . I do need to populate my new world at some speed ….. First up Nigella , she has two uses ; one is cooking . Then Kylie then ….. ( long list )

Fantastic, thank you! Feel much more comfortable with this approach! Another quick question if you would be so kind, I am hoping to take on the ASHP install, with the external unit outside the utility, where the 300l cylinder will be located. Would you typically take the pipes from the HP through wall (shortest route) or take it under the ring beam and up through the slab?

You need to offer shelter to several fit, young, good looking females. Otherwise, it will be a very dull new world for you.

According to hellohydrogen.com, which is the first hit I got when I googled 'how to make hydrogen', there are two ways to produce hydrogen. ' The first is through electrolysis, which uses renewable power to split hydrogen from water. The second is splitting hydrogen from natural gas and storing the remaining carbon dioxide away.' Now here is the interesting thing. The website features prominently a picture of a boiler branded, guess who, Worcester (Bosch). No further comment on bias needed.

That would only account for the 1.5kWh of Electricity it takes to make 1kWh of green hydrogen @ the electrolyser. It doesn't cover the power required to compress it to a similar energy density as natural gas and pump it through the gas network. Estimates I've seen are 1kWh - 2kWh of electricity to transport 1kWh of hydrogen.

If we make hydrogen by the electrolysis of water we can probably expect it to cost around 30% more than electricity by the time it gets to houses.

Do you need a support sleeve (will a support sleeve fit in the end of a hep2o reducer manifold? https://www.screwfix.com/p/hep2o-plastic-push-fit-reducing-2-port-closed-spigot-manifold-22-x-15mm/5243f There blank end of these above. I suspect yes but don't want to try demount it (impossible?) to check only to find that the answer is no. @Nickfromwalesdo you know from memory?

Just spoke to Cemfloor. They said the information on their website is incorrect and you can install thicker depths than 60mm with no problems. They recommend you don’t just for performance reasons. They are going to update their website with the correct information.

In a new electrical installation, but no policeman is going to put cuffs on to anyone with gas fries with no alarms in an existing dwelling / install. However, if a GSR'd engineer attends site, they really shouldn't undertake any works unless they've at least included this addition / upgrade in their fees. There are some things you just do NOT step around because "you can". On a previous major renovation I insisted that the client accepted my costs for replacing every existing smoke / heat detector in the house, even though they appeared to be working, as they just looked dusty and tired. When I explained why and the minimal costs they agreed and thanked me for my diligence. Some things are just a good idea, regardless of regs etc

Your post took me back to when I was going through this particular exercise. I went to several committee meetings and to the area planning committee meetings. I wrote up one of the meetings in a blog post here

Run the basin waste in 40mm until it rises vertically at the basin. That's longer than I'd ever run with 32mm tbh. I always take 40mm as close to the basins as is practicable. Pennies of cost for much better performance / longevity. 32mm starts to 'furr' up sooner than you'd think. As there's a long horizontal run you'll have a natural air break, so pointless fitting and anti-vacuum trap on the basin. Other than that, happy days. Identical to what I've done on my clients build, just the W/M is a water softener and MVHR waste.

pretty sure any of the fittings with a male on them have built-in reinforcement

The key is the planning officer. If he recommends approval and gets voted down you are virtually guaranteed a win on appeal.

Here's one I did earlier. Well I only did the wiring, not the plumbing. UVC and volumiser supplied as a package with the ASHP. I am not sure I agree with the plumbing, but there are two UFH manifolds a second one just to the right out of shot and the only circulating pump in the system is the one in the ASHP. And no thermal mixing valves on the manifods so water circulates at temperature set by the ASHP.

Depends where you are in the UK as cement product prices between Midlands and Scotland are about 25% different so you may have regional variations to deal with.

70mm screed 100mm insulation 25mm sand blinding 125mm concrete slab (with A252 mesh) How about. ( With your SE's approval) 100mm concrete slab with mesh Slip membrane 300mm eps/200mm PIR DPM This is what the builder did on ours.

It's only 120mm. Im thinking fill in the web on the steel and concrete with timber. Then bolt several joists together to make up 120mm and fix to the infill. Might need some steel straps wrapped around and fixed to the blocks to keep everything tight up against the beams. At the unsupported end it might be possible to push the tails of a long tailed joist hanger under what's there and fold it down and fix to the other side of the wall. Or fix a wall plate to the wall across the stairs and fix to that. .

PS If that sounds unappreciative it wasn't meant to be. I am very impressed how much time people give to this forum. Its just that I know our place is a long way on the safe side of the CO risk spectrum.

The Thermino is a Sunamp, rebranded, eg the same device from the same people. I'm not a fan of the Mixergy tanks, too much complication / faff / additional components / additional heat loss from the PHE / cost of running and replacing the pump and so on. For DHW, simply follow the KISS rule. Adding a second low slung immersion in a well-insulated UVC is all you'll ever need, and you wont ever convince me otherwise. Just an unnecessary over-complicated re-invention of an already time-proven wheel.

ebusd plays nicely now with home assistant (auto config) via mqtt. I log into open energy monitor via node-red , using mqtt .

Hi Radian I'm following your experiments with interest as I have just started to monitor the ebus on my Vaillant ecoTec 418 boiler. I built a bus adapter from here: https://gitlab.com/fromeijn/ebuzzz-adapter It converts ebus to USB and works very well with my Raspberry Pi. Just getting my head around the hundreds of parameters on the bus (I have a VR65 controller and VRT392f wireless thermostat too) and wondered if you could help me identify the contents of the Status messages? pi@vaillant:~ $ ebusctl read -c bai Status01 63.0;50.0;-;-;-;on pi@vaillant:~ $ ebusctl read -c bai Status02 auto;60;65.0;80;60.0 My guesses after scanning the bus are: Status01: FlowTemp;ReturnTemp;??;??;??;Flame Status02: ??;HwcTempDesired;??;HwcPostrunTime;StorageTempDesired Also, what are you using to display your MQTT data? Thanks, Mike

You've got replies upthread suggesting two possibilities: Take the boost output of the Mitsubishi controller and instead of just wiring it to an immersion, wire it instead to an override input on a solar diversion controller. @PeterW suggests Eddi or iBoost controllers can accept this. Ignore the Mitsubishi's legionella feature and do it all in a separate controller. @Roundtuit suggests that Apollo Gem can do both solar divert and legionella cycle in one controller.

MVHR...less dust in the house, less pollutants like radon, off gassing from furnishings and carpets, people on here with allergies report benefits, mould issues reduced, constant fresh air.

Errrr.... Loop the Willis across the supply and return of the manifold. Need a fill loop and an expansion vessel (probably no more than 10 litre). Set the rod stat on the Willis to about 45c. Room thermostat calls for heat, trip a contactor/SSR with the immersion on and the pump on the manifold should easily circulate the heated water.