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Really? The works were done over 20 years ago. If nothing has happened to the structure over that period is it likely to happen now? When you sell your buyer will be looking back over nearly 30 years and will have the same decision to make i.e there is no piece of paper relating to works done which have had no physical impact on the property. Like others above I'd not worry about getting this regularised. If you like the house and it's in a good location then it'll sell again.

Light bulb removal tool? https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166489861049?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=sjounk96tlg&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=SHn2lQD2QEu&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

So time for a "finished" couple of pictures. First the outside finished and with all trimmings. The whole design idea of the slim door framing with the door opening going right to the corners worked well. Framing a bifold door with a track across the top is a lot harder to get right than an ordinary door. I started with the door track fixed direct to the 3 by 2 framing, i.e. not a finished surface. I then fixed 12mm Oak trimmings either side of the door track to give the finished surface to the top of the door frame, effectively making the track recessed into the door liner. Otherwise just fitting the door track to the finished surface of a normal door liner would have looked horrible. The slim moulded Oak profiles to finish off the edges worked well as conventional architrave would not work with this door right to the corner idea. Then there was the shelving for the inside of the short wall. I was looking for some shallow shelving for tins, jars etc. We ended up with this. This is shelving units quite cheap from Temu. They do them as solid flat shelves or baskets. The flat shelf ones work best being exactly 2 tins deep and 4 tins wide each. 2 more are on order so when they arrive, this will be re jigged to give virtually floor to ceiling shelving with the baskets at the bottom and the solid shelving ones higher up.

Love the survey question format! (although note in Q4 you reframe your answers from describing the non-smart system you did install to a hypothetical smart system that you didn't install, which is a tad confusing to follow) Here's my view, all answers relative to the smart system I actually installed: Would or did I bother? - yes Is my life richer or poorer with or without smart switches? - richer, yes, marginally. mostly because smart switches enable other automations (time & motion based lighting, automatic lighting when out or cooking or playing a movie etc). But we've also appreciated being able to easily repurpose switches (inc double/long taps) to do non-lighting things on occasion. Future proof? - yes Could company remove functionality of the smart switch? - no, all locally controlled. Works even if the network router goes offline. Short life when installed? - possibly, but see examples elsewhere on how my design minimizes the risk Will I be able to get spares easily? - yes so far. Using a lot of commodity hardware (basic retractive switches and motion sensors) has improved my odds Will it [did it] cost more to install your lights? - yes. (DIY installing it minimized the biggest hit though, that being paying someone else to design+program it) Will you [did you] use all its functions after 5 days? - depends what is meant by "all", but yes we definitely use more functionality on a daily basis than is practical with dumb controls. (specifically, motion based lighting means we rarely use the switches) Would your other half or a new owner of the property or an electrician fix easily if you are not around? - most likely not, but a growing network of professional Loxone installers exits so I'm less worried about this than when I decided to go with it in 2018 Can you or the electrician get spares today? - yes (can order today, about 2 days to be delivered) Can you switch your lights on if there is a hardware or software issue? - possibly not, a weakness of Loxone is it does introduce more single points of failure. Have I got home assistant? - yes Do I have smart relays? - yes Are they the best thing ever? - no, great sometimes. Are smart things a good thing? - yes. Certainly not necessary or life changing, but they're good for me. Note I go to great lengths to avoid cloud-dependent and wireless connectivity except where unavoidable (cloud for weather forecasts and push notifications; wifi for retrofitting). I wager anyone doing all wifi and cloud dependent lighting controls will not have a good time.

When we built the house, the pantry was always intended, so that corner of the kitchen and the place where the fridge sits, does not have UFH under it. Now it is finished, the pantry does seem to remain cooler, subjectively. But I suspect that is more a case of when we light the stove in the evening as long as the door is kept shut, the pantry does not warm up like the rest of the ground floor of the house. I must put the min / max thermometer in there to see.

Properly chuffed with myself how far i've progressed this year, but its a good time to take a break i feel, before the last huge job of doing the new bathroom, hopefully next year. Finished the external wall insulation off in the courtyard area, and got my new set of water butts all connected, should provide enough for the front garden and car washing (when i have the energy!) during a prolonged dry period. Just got the silicone to do on the corner and the join. Probably the most important job was the lower parts of the roof, to ensure the insulation was all good, and to stop any mice from getting in, which has been an issue the last couple of years around this time. Took off 3 rows of tiles and pushed the 4th row up, which got me to the natural overlap of the second row of felt, allowing me to take off the old battens, and put a new layer of felt under the overlap and down to the bottom. Also replaced the end of the dry valley, with a correct formed end, tiles need a little tidy up at some point, but its watertight. This was the mesh i used. It was then fully packed with insulation and overlayed with some ventilation trays which i didn't take a photo of. And the front was even worse, including the weather, of course it decided to pour it down the second i had the old felt off. Front existing felt was in very bad condition, and one of the battens appears to be fire damaged, no idea how The valley needs repointing, still on my to-do list. And a small indulgment, a bit of colour for the driveway, also filled with spring bulbs so hopefully will remain colourful right through to next summer

Hi all. I am just starting out in a career as a clerk of works aiming to get my building inspection level 6. Been a non member for a while just popping on and off but i hope to have more of an input from now on. Covering all aspects of construction work however i come from a carpentry background which is more my strength, looking at learning alot from other trades also. Thanks for the detailed comments!

It's best method of getting a good COP from an ASHP for sure. It will deliver each kWh of heat to your house at the lowest price. However as a method of least overall cost use I don't think it applies to a house that has high losses and is intermittently occupied. It'll need to run far too long when nobody's in to get to a comfortable temperature when everyone's home from work. Much of this heat will be lost to outside with no benefit. Unless you can convince your electricity supplier to drag a cable to your house that can power a 40kW heat pump I can't see ASHP's being a solution for most working people without tacking the house fabric first.

I think that’s the least of his problems.

A nice video that. Quite accessible. Did you consider oversizing even further and lowering the flow temp to benefit from a better COP?

You can. Four Allen bolts, remove the spacers, screw the rail back down directly to the chassis. Job done. Although, I'm unsure about those wago mains towers. They look too high even with the stands removed

So on a design day you can run the heat pump for 7 hrs and get a full 24hrs worth of energy into the floor.

We are talking about retrofit, not new build. So how do you do that, on lets say, my house. Half is an 1850's stone built cottage (with, currently wet walls due to cement pointing) And a 1970's cavity wall extension. With some but not all insulated plasterboard tent with hurricane behind. And a flat roofed bit on the side which i dont even know the construction of. That had a EPC bordering on D with an actual performance of about L. I guarantee, even a really good assesor, isnt going to get this right in a short visit. Thats not realistic. But everything about the installation hinges on this assesment being correct.

We have the same, and I really like it. Every bedroom, my study and the lounge has this. It is extra cost to do, but worth the convenience in my opinion. Particularly as I’m not much of a fan of ceiling lighting, so much of our lighting is a cocinaron of wall lights, table and floor lights.

That’s not what I said, That is what I said, I like to be able to switch standard and table lights from the door and if you fit several sockets you can move lights and furniture around and still control then from the door, usually only fitted in a lounge.

Pushed the button on this, let's see how it goes.

I think that's right. People now have a slightly distorted view of how big a heat provider thry need. They look at their little 30kw combi in the corner of their kitchen then Google a 30kw HP and are put off by the cost and size of one, unaware they probably only need a 9kw unit. IIRC the median peak heat demand for UK housing is around the 10-12kw mark, so a 10kw with 3kw booster heater would d do the majority of UK houses.

I don't think this sort of thing really worries buyers that much. Lots of houses have unauthorised things done to them over the years and they still sell. As the years pass, a buyers view of the situation will change. There is zero chance of the authority taking action (see above), the building hasn't suffered damage and so a buyer will be quite relaxed about the situation and will take a view. There'll be other matters they will be more interested in - location, size, appearance, schools etc etc. I really can't see this being an issue after so many years. Don't let it put you off if you like the house, and avoid regularisation; it'll be a pain for no real gain.

These and sockets are still available and I use them for lighting controlled by wall switches (hard wired ones!!,!,)

Our last house circa 1820 build, we had a full replumb, plumber sized the radiators and said we need 4 or 5 huge radiators in our lounge. This forced me to do my own calculation. Ended up with 2 radiators, no issues. Very little engineering going on, monkey see, monkey do.

I used a spreadsheet that I made to calculate the heat loss for each room (and used a few variations of insulation levels for comparison purposes). It's a spreadsheet that I made many years ago for our old house. The Heat Punk website (https://heatpunk.co.uk/) gave pretty much the same answers when populated correctly. I also used the Heat Geek guesstimator https://www.heatgeek.com/how-to-size-my-heat-pump-or-boiler-heat-loss-cheat-sheet/ for overall sizing, the Michael de Podesta rules of thumb and some others that I can't recall. Flow temperature was designed to be 35C.

Can you not get the supply to plot 2 laid in at the same time, but leave the supply head unterminated with no supplier appointed and no meter, hence no council tax trigger?

Hi @ETC, the window does have an aluminium cill under it, which has been powder coated the same as the aluminium window. I will check whether it has a drip profile. But why would this be relevant in respect of water ingress that is coming into the house from above the window, given the cill is below the window?

There does seem to be a 'mind set' that gas and oil boilers well always deliver, and if there is a problem, putting in a larger unit will sort it. I would like to see a 45 kW boiler heat my house cheaply, especially if the radiators were sized correctly for the heat losses i.e. 1 kW spread over 5 rooms. I am starting to think that the whole plumbing industry is not fit for purpose, and never was. It has only survived because real heating engineers, working for manufacturers, can design easy to fit systems that bail out the knobs that fit the units.

Did they also tell you the application will require parts of those previous works needing to be exposed, inspected and calculated? I wouldn’t agree to this if I was the current owner.

Conventional R32 and prior to that refrigerant would use two or more stages to boost the temperature higher each stage. Current propane refrigerant can take the water to 75 in a single stage, with most temps up that at a good efficiency. CO2 refrigerants do really high temperature in a single stage, but do not do lower temperature at all well.

I designed and installed my own ASHP. It works exactly as designed. It keeps the living room at 20C and the rest of the house at 18C. The SCOP since install is 3.96, CoP 5.2 over the last 24 hours. I hope to get it above 4 with a bit more adjusting. It cost me a fortune as I ended up replacing almost all of the existing system, but that was to some extent due to the existing pipe work layout being rubbish, some of the radiators that I chose were eye wateringly pricey, and I added an oem heat pump monitoring system. I could have installed a usable system for about £4000 using the heat pump that I bought but it would have been a bit less efficient and would have needed at lot of tweaking to get the flow rates right.

No but if kitchen tap was excluded (like is so often done with water softeners) not only would it cool the larder but raise the water temp slightly so heating for DHW was slightly less 🤷‍♂️ ha, others beat me to it 🤷‍♂️

The very last place I want my phone at night is by my bed. It gets plugged in to charge overnight in a different room.

My view, Would or did I bother - no Is my life richer or poorer with or without smart switches - no, make little or difference either way. Not difficult to flick a switch as I enter or leave a room. Future proof - no Could company remove functionality of the switch - yes if a cloud based system Short life when installed - possibly, see examples above Will I be able to get spares easily - who knows, will company or the same part exist in 5 years time? Will it cost more to install your lights - yes Will you use all its functions after 5 days - most possibly no Would your other half or a new owner of the property or an electrician fix easily if you are not around - maybe, most likely not. Can you or the electrician get spares today - most likely not. Can you switch your lights on if there is a hardware or software issue - maybe not. Have I got home assistant - yes Do I have smart relays - yes Are they the best thing ever - no, great sometimes. Are smart things a good thing, not really keep it simple - KISS

There are a couple of ways to think about insulation. It stops thermal transmittance by physically stopping warm material moving to colder material. This is often called convection. This is why windows are not very good, you want light to pass though but not thermal energy. The key to that part is the size of voids in the material, the smaller the voids (bubbles) the less movement is possible, but you get a greater ratio of solid material that may, or may not, have a higher thermal conductivity and a different heat capacity. The other way to think about it is at the sub atomic level. When a material is heated, the electrons become 'loose' and can eventually instantaneously jump up to the next electron orbital shell. If there is a space there for the electron, then there is no change in temperature, if there isn't a space, then, because of the exclusion law, the electron has to loose energy so that it can drop back down to the original orbit. When an electron does this, it instantaneously changes to a photon, then back to an electron, at the lower energy level. The excess energy that it had is released as radiation, which flies off following the sum of all possible paths until it interacts with the next electron, and the process starts all over again. So apart from physically stopping 'hot' material moving, all thermal conductance is actually a radiative forcing. This is why, in isolation, reflective materials can act as insulators, except the photoelectric affect allows some energy though the material and re-radiate somewhere else. In the case of 'normal' insulation, the key points are the void to material ratio, and their heat capacities (air is 1 J.gm-1.K-1, Polyurethane is 1.6 J.gm-1.K-1 and Phenolic 1.5 J.gm-1.K-1) and conductivities (Air is ,0.022 W.m-1.K-1 Polyurethane is 1.6 W.m-1.K-1, Polyurethane is 2.9 W.m-1.K-1, Phenolic is 1.45 W.m-1.K-1). The above numbers would imply that just an air gap is pretty good, but the problem with that is that air can move because of thermal expansion, which causes density changes, which causes movement. The above is not the whole story, and there is a lot more to it that I have tried to explain (if it was simple to explain, we would all know it). Have you got an infrared thermometer to see what the temperature difference is across the door. You may find it is not as great as you think. I have just looked at my temperature differences, it is 13.4°C outside and 18°C inside. That part of the door is 44mm of pine. The larger recessed panel is at 12.5°C outside and 15.7°C inside and is 20mm thick. The glass is at 10.7°C outside and 13.6°C inside, overall the double glazed unit is 24mm thick. If I have got my arithmetic right (very likely it is wrong), that works out at: At the current temperature differences (12 K) Thicker timber Losses 4.9 W.m-2.K-1. Thinner Panel Losses 15.6 W.m-2.K-1. Glazing Losses 14.4 W.m-2.K-1. Working out the areas, thicker frame is 0.625m2, Thinner Panel 0.335m2 and the Glazing 0.62m2. Work that lot out and it comes to 17.2 W That makes my door have an overall U-Value of 1.44 W.m-2.K-1. If the temperature stays about the same all day, that is 0.035 kWh/day. 10p/day at current electricity rates, so about £10/year extra on my bill. Not brilliant in todays terms, but it is 37 years old.

Or they are prohibited from replacing them with something better because of conservative planning restrictions. Yes, some dreadful buildings were constructed, often with dystopian social engineering at their essence. The resulting social problems were influential in their demise,as well as the delusion of a consequence free fossil fuel powered future. My point is that continuous gradual improvement isn't needed, it's just a waste of energy, we know the finish line already. Passive houses, made from stuff that used to be plants and with lots of renewables is the end point. There's nowhere else to go after that. Going half way there and spending a huge chunk of money doing so is a waste of resources. Say we have £300k to spend on 5 houses. We're better off to spend £30k doing simple attic insulation, airtightness and an A2A HP on 4 houses and £270k on replacing one house with a perfect one that'll last 500 years. Then doing the rest when the cash comes. Spending £60k on each house to be half way there is a waste as it's just postponing the problem. Ultimately they'll need to be knocked and rebuilt anyway and the entire £300k will be wasted. Looking at modern warehouses and industrial buildings I would have to disagree with you. They're largely steel portal frames, clad in insulted steel panels. Extremely fast to erect with great efficiency of labour. The materials may be dearer than concrete blocks and mineral wool batts but the man hours are so well spent that there's no economic case for old fashioned build methods. Given a system free from restrictive planning regulations and a mandate to build as much top notch accomodation as possible we'd be doing something similar for houses. Labour is an increasing problem as we shift further towards thinking jobs and not doing jobs and we collectively become older. With less "doers" we need them to be driving a crane installing a wall at a time rather than handballing a single brick into place at a time.

Now the other gang of the switch has failed. I pity anyone who's done away with hard wiring and just used Quinetic stuff.

https://www.roofingoutlet.co.uk/products/velux-vfe-white-painted-vertical-element?variant=16760668192839&gclid=CjwKCAiA4smsBhAEEiwAO6DEjTdkP2wiDCeRSFSKphfo94SI8-A4Vdj5oGlY6zYMajKKwaKLzJY__hoCLfEQAvD_BwE

UVC with large heating coil, circa 3m2. Size to suit the property, heat to between 47 and 50 from heat pump. I heat mine at 6am on E7, takes 45 to 70 mins, depending on its start temp and a top up if required at mid-day. Keep it simple.

Thanks. Though maybe not about the rabbit hole. Ive never done anything about my electricity supply as it just wasnt enough to worry about. At the new house however, costs are high as i have electric cooker and electric shower, and more demanding, direct resistance heating in the office etc in the barn. But as my previous post, theres not really anything to be saved unless i like lots of risk. I dont But as discussed before the alternatives will take loooong time to break even.

I've just DIY'ed my install. Heatpump cylinder from eBay (new) £650. Samsung Coastal 5kw heatpump £1690 ex vat Samsung controller (eBay new) £250. Pipework,valves,fittings, etc £400 G3 course £300. So £3290 I think @JohnMo got a good deal on his ASHP, I tried an alternative and it didn't work out, so ended up with time constraints and had to bite the bullet on the Samsung.

Pretty much yes. The survivors will be reasonable good or have some other feature interesting enough for people to spend money or effort to preserve them. I'm old enough to remember the redevelopment fever in the 60s and 70s when it was the done thing to demolish Victorian and Edwardian housing classified as slums. Another sweeping generalisation; many of the houses that were demolished were quite sound, if not well insulated and the replacements were often worse than the houses that were destroyed. It was also the era of system building (factory made panels assembled on site). That didn't go well either, many of those buildings have been knocked down in their turn. System building sounds good in theory, the trouble is that practice isn't ideal. Factory made buildings will have higher material costs than standard construction methods, relying on low site labour costs to make them economic. The trouble is that you need skilled and conscientious site workers to ensure that the kit parts are assembled correctly, something that seems to be in short supply in the UK. Its an appealling idea at first glance, but, like most things, it's not a panacea..

Proceed with the purchase without any documentation from the current owner. If it’s picked up at a time when you come to sell, do what this current owner is doing or take out Indemnity Insurance. As the works carried out appear to be minor, I personally wouldn’t worry about it. It it was an unauthorised loft conversion, then that would be a different conversation.

It’s your surveyor’s and solicitor’s job to point out potential problems to you, however minor. With their advice, you then make the decision how important those outstanding issues are. By all means get a formal statement from the sellers that the modifications were in the long distant past. Produce that, if needed, in 8 years time when you sell. Otherwise, I would suggest that all house purchase involves some risk (e.g. dodgy neighbours) which you can do little about. *Life* is risky and you can’t remove all risk from your life - even with the best solicitors and insurance. For new houses, NHBC certificates generally only last 10 years (because you can’t guarantee a house for ever, and at some point you have to say ‘this house doesn’t have any major structural problems’). Expecting to cover structural problems after more than 10 years with any house purchase is a little fanciful. Take a view, get the letter from their solicitors, and move on.

Only an architect or structural engineer would be able to answer that one. There's some good stuff at Graven Hill, Bicester. One of the show / experimental houses has sips roof. Well worth a visit if your ever close by as nearly every type of construction method has been done there and some of the results are stunning. I expect some of the owners are on here.

Really pisses me off, electric boiler are just a con praying on unsuspecting people! That being said, if people are to stupid to spend 30mins checking online checking electric boiler vs ASHP or even just asking around... Maybe they deserve it??

Oh dear. If only people had stayed awake in school science lessons. What sort of (expletive deleted) approves these installations.

Many thanks for this JohnMo. That's really helpful and we've gone ahead and ordered the 10W Grants which will be installed mid-February. Many thanks for this re-assurance Thank you also Marvin for confirming. So grateful for all the help from this site Apologies for the late response, but I've only just seen your two posts for some strange reason.

Is it hidden in here https://www.gov.scot/publications/regulation-electricians-scotland/pages/1/

Maybe I am reading this wrong but I would have thought that the sooner you get your pipes inside the thermal envelope of the house the better. No matter how well insulated, those pipes will lose some heat and if they do this inside the thermal envelope then it's not wasted heat.

If you go 32/150 Rauvitherm pre-insulated twin duct, your bend radius is around 1m plus, super stiff, so not really practical to install later. You can add bends but not sure how in concrete casting. I would go over ground, holes are easy enough through wall, pipe easy to insulate etc.

Heat pump sizing is simple enough. you need a heat pump that can deliver your required heat in about 22 hours, this leaves 2 hours for DHW heating. Other other thing to look at is output at your flow temp temperature and lowest outside temperature. This where you need to start looking at different datasheets. Some manufacturers quote the best output figure others the minimum, so headline 7kW doesn't mean the same thing, when comparing products. So you looking for around 8kW output at say -3 to -5 A 10kW Grant heat pump at -7, has a rated output of 8.1kW. So is fine, the next size down is 6kW and is too small. A 7kW Vaillant for example is fine until flow temp required at -5 goes above 45, at 50 it will struggle and outside temperatures below -5 would struggle also.

In my book (white male, <50 years old), you have this the wrong way around. Wired switches are always going to be more reliable and long lasting than wireless, however something digital ("smart") will allow a pair of wires to each switch to have infinite uses, and be software reprogrammable if needs change, without need for a wire per light Like others here I use Loxone, but other options like Rako exist. All that said Lutron have gone wireless only and it is the trend with other tech (ZigBee Zwave Bluetooth and Matter) so maybe I'm the luddite. I just hate wireless tech when a wired option is possible

Yes I do. I remember to turn things off when not needed.