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Submitted on the 18th 22nd they emailed requesting i upload 10 specific invoices, uploaded that night. 26th, full claim amount landed in my bank account this afternoon new system seems pretty good!

Just a very short blog to show the windy roost ( not fully finished, is a self build ever?) plant room. I'm quite chuffed I got it all to fit, and I think it's quite neat. It's full DIY and house's the UVC and combined buffer, UFH manifold, MVHR unit, inverter, consumer unit, network hub. All in 4M³. Plus storage to come. Yes, the printer doesn't fit, but it's coming to its end of life so that's all it's getting for now. Jobs to do: Ceiling Insulate MVHR ducting / box in Shelves on the left hand side Clothes Airer ( a Scottish requirement to have one)

That’s not good, it’s been bugging me ‘what would I do’? I think I’d consider supporting the existing staircase. Chopping off the bottom to or three stairs. Completing the floor as designed and then re forming the bottom steps. How that would work in reality I don’t know but leaving ‘as is’ would be dire I reckon.

@Mike, thanks I was already aware of this and am monitoring it with interest. I think that Sonoff and Shelley have a somewhat different attitude to OS projects like Tasmota, ESPHome and ESPEasy. Sonoff are fairly open and publish circuits etc., and even application notes such as this on using OS firmware on their products, seeing this as an opportunity to extend their target audience. Shelley are a little more hostile and don't share info and state that using non-Shelley firmware will void their warranty.

Let's compare this with my installation: Annual heating energy (EPC): 15900 kWh Annual hot water energy(EPC): 2987 kWh Heat pump capacity: 12 kW External design temperature: -3.7 C Design Flow temperature: 50 C DHW design temperature: 55 C (max) My annual usage is: 5100 kWh So your heat load is over 25% bigger than mine and your 10 month usage is around 6000 kwH compared to my 5100 kWh in a year; that really doesn't seem too terrible from the economic point of view. And I bet you have room for improvement. The difference is that my system keeps us warm and provides all the hot water we need whereas yours does not. But again I think you will find you have room for improvement.

This metal post will be down the middle of a timber post that will add the vast majority of the strength of a solid timber post too.

That looks a lot stronger than most of the balustrades I have seen. Most are cheap wooden posts held on with a couple of screws and maybe some glue.

I think that it is quite different in scale of impact. In the peak winter months you might need say 40 kWh of heat input into the house at a CoP of somewhere between 3 and 5 so ~10 kWh electricity. The Octopus Agile tariff price today varies from 7.5p to 33p / kWh. That's an over 4× range. You know this 24 hrs in advance and want to be able to schedule the ASHP input across the day to make good use of this, but if you can -- as I can with my current Willis implementation then I see significant cost savings. I currently only have 1 working SunAmp and I just top this up to full at the cheapest rate I can buy. If I think that I am going to run out, I just click a button on my phone and dump another 3 kWh into the SunAmp. OK this might be at a bad time and cost me 50p or so than doing it at the cheapest rate, but who cares? Jan or I only do this maybe half a dozen times a year.

Probably, yes. They are paranoid about low flow errors and subsequent callbacks. Providing separation is an easy way to avoid this.

I would add to these: or it's an established domain specific standard with multivendor support, but designed multiple decades ago, antiquated and a pain to use e.g. KNX. or it is Matter, which is of course trying to be the one-new-standard to solve them all, but I see several issues with it, mostly: wireless focused no standardized wired support; slow development; only has limited device types/profiles and not a great playground for vendors to innovate new device types. So all in all not a good choice for integrating into the fabric of a new build, not now, maybe not ever. If https://www.1home.io/server-for-knx really works and gets traction, it could form the bridge between the incumbent wired KNX and new kid consumer friendly Matter, and perhaps be the best path forward, but it's early days.

Correct. Main thing I do is try and be consistent. You have to decide what makes most sense to yourself really, e.g. unswitched live feed always to the RHS of the enclosure (nearest the "Mains" side of the box), what to do with low voltage inputs, dry contact outputs, etc.

From memory (which is not great) that thread said linked fire alarms were cited as a means of passing regs and I simply agreed that that would be the simplest suggestion.

Hi there, no I didn’t, I put it to the back of my mind and moved onto another job. When it comes to my pre plaster inspection I’ll find out then. I do think that a 10mm notch won’t cause too much sleep loss. This scenario must crop up regularly in bungalows I’d have thought, maybe the modern way is to have fat dabs and pack out the plasterboard from the wall.

Ah you've hit upon the big problem with current home automation: either cobbled-together home grown systems which probably only you understand (and what will the next owner do) and which probably have reliability and maybe safety problems, or off-the-shelf (Loxone etc) vendor systems complete with lock-in / internet & vendor server dependence / limitations as what feature are covered. I plan to borrow what I can from grown-up office building automation systems (think big office buildings, KNX etc) and custom wired but upgradable industrial control systems (proper automation cabinets etc). All fairly properly documented. I figure the key thing is to get the wiring flexible and well thought out mostly back to central cabinets / then a fairly well built automation cabinet or two / then whatever software you need. The software - preferably you set it up and then leave it alone rather than tinker with it constantly. The software / automation engine can then fairly easily be switched out at a later date if necessary or as and when some new technology appears. I think consumer-grade is largely a waste of time and energy due to short lifetime / missing support / safety / fragility / security - although I do have cheap and cheerful consumer grade in my current place for the odd thing (e.g. switching outside lights based on dawn/dusk timing). Fine for experiment and 'user experience' testing, but there's always the 'will my wife ever learn to run this?' / 'what will I do when I sell the place?' questions. So no great answers atm, but maybe a strategy of 'enabling' a building with wiring and switching along with 'whatever works now' software - until a proper standard and some competitive substitutable offerings come along. The risk is that a technology appears that would really benefit from rewiring - but I figure plenty of network / mains / low voltage cable should take care of that.

Which is why a short pipe from the well head to a close by power station makes sense rather than a massive, distribution network to individual homes.

Please explain why you don't want to leave the hot water on all day letting the thermostat top it up when needed. Not wanting to do that is forcing you to devise a complicated strategy to measure when an unusual amount of heat has been extracted from the cylinder when the tank thermostat will do just that, if the heating were on to allow it.

I think you have to serve notice on City Fibre to remove their equipment from your land as it was put there without a wayleave or other permission to do so. you can't just take it down otherwise you may be liable for criminal damage to their cables. What sineage is on your Heras Fencing? i.e what rules have they broken by entering apart from trespass. Point out to them they will be answering a charge of criminal damage to your fencing and anything else they have damaged but you will not proceed with that charge if they remove their equipment swiftly.

AIUI @M0rtimer had an end-of-life oil boiler which was scrapped, there is provision to add a boiler if req but none in place ATM. LLH also allows mixing leading to increase in entropy and loss of efficiency hence poorer CoP. I thought @HughFyou said the PHX was ?only for warranty reasons when installed with a boiler. The unnecessary extra ?5deg temp drop will especially be a problem when trying to heat the HW given the high demand of 4 ppl going out for the evening. 270 sq m of UFH would I have thought be enough to provide defrost energy with a totally straightforward schematic, 100% of flow to heating or DHW. No buffer, no LLH, no PHX, no secondary pumps. Get rid of all that and you won't need any provision for a backup boiler because the HP will run so much better!

Then one of two things needs to happen. Build them accommodation or pay them more. The one of two things needs to happen, pay them more or the business owner needs to get a better business plan i.e. do they have a viable business. What was the rational for turning down suitable candidates, other than they were not local? Sounds like a bad policy to me, or bad business ethics.

Midea WC setup is part of the install process. It should have been setup. 55@-2, 37@15 are the defaults. Graham Hendra’s ‘Lizzie’ curve, named after his wife who complained the rads were always cold.

I found from my install of an ASHP, little changes can make a dig difference to how much electricity you use. There are several ways to have the circulation pump run, for example. Recently changed mine from continuous to intermittent as decided by the internal temperature controller. Thought it may save some energy - but just the opposite An image of the electric consumption but shows the ASHP starting and stopping. The left three peaks are letting the heat pump control the circulation pump, the other wider spaced peaks are circulation pump on all the time. First three peaks is the ASHP short cycling, plenty of electric going in not much heat coming out. The other two peaks show longer run times, but also long off times. It was 8 degs at the time and heat pump running very low loads. The main take away from the above, is you need to take the time to understand how your heat pump is running to get the best out of it. (Most heat from least electricity). Have also found leaving to run all the time let's you lower flow temperatures so you use less electricity.

Market distortion happens everywhere, it is how markets work. If a local sells a house, say for £200k, and that place becomes a holiday let, then there is potential an extra £200k in the local economy. Say that holiday let raises £20k/year in revenue, it still takes a decade before it has recouped the original amount. But you have to add to the original £200k any money that the visitors spend locally, say another £20k/year. I think the real problem is locals don't want to get extra properties built. As you well know I am all for more house building in all places. I often wonder why people are so against new developments.

It’ll make about a grand on eBay, second hand…. You’d be better off spending the money on having it plumbed direct, ditch the plate heat exchanger and get the weather comp adjusted.

Excellent points Gary and @SteamyTea Could I just add one further aspect for potential self-builders to consider : optimism bias. A few years ago @Jeremy Harris ( the self-builders self builder ) wrote ( in a post started by @SteamyTea ) about the notion of optimism bias here He goes on to argue ( in the same thread) I would add that not only are we self-builders - that is people who are actually working on their build - likely to be optimistic by nature (?), but we also tend to solve problems by Doubling Down . And doesn't every self build have a good few times when gritting your teeth and JustBloodyDoingIt is what's needed. Doubling Down is not the only strategy we use. But I accept that that it's in some other contexts an over-worked term these days Doubling Down on effort and commitment has served many of us well : O Levels > A Levels > Trade Qualifications > Degrees > Professional qualifications > Doing More with Less > looking after parents > grandchildren > Nothing's Too Much Trouble .... until suddenly it is. Doubling Down doesn't work any more - because you just can't. Force Majeure. The point I want to make is that the self-build pathway is not only financial. It's not just about cost. And the problem solving strategy that you've developed in your professional career (Doubling Down) won't necessarily serve you well in a self-build. Which is another reason why BuildHub is such an excellent resource. The ability to share a FooKoop with interested committed online colleagues is invaluable

I would at least start by making your present timed periods much longer, so you are sure the cylinder has reached set temperature. Personally I would leave the HW on all the time people are in the house. If you really really don't want to do that, then whenever someone takes a shower get into the habit og pressing the +1hour boost button on your programmer. Your recirculating water pipes will be losing far far more heat than the tank, and that is where your attention should be, e.g make the circulating pump only come on when hot water usage is likely, e.g by motion detectors in the bathrooms.

It depends a lot on scope. I've done a few installs now and they all come in at 2-3x what you quoted, even with a degree of mates rates built in, but that's controlling all the lighting, providing the light switches and motion sensors, and perhaps comprehensive shading/stack venting and whole house music, in 5+ bed houses. (In a very expensive area of the country, and I'm expensive too don't you know lol). But that's excluding light fittings, 230V mains work, cable pulling and certs, all done by site sparky. For say just HVAC controls it could be done under £2000 in materials. A retrofit would suggest putting some wireless sensors and controls around the place which is probably tying into their proprietary wireless Air protocol which I've totally avoided to date. I hear it works well, I just dislike wireless. I totally agree the single vendor lock-in is worrisome vs open source, but on the flip side I can leave a miniserver running for 12 months and it looks after itself, whereas with any OSS you need great hygiene on admin work: taking backups and applying security updates (to OS and apps) etc and dealing with the fallout when stuff then breaks. The whole strength is plethora of hardware supported, but it's also the Achilles heal for a (progressional) production system as the more add-ons and integrations you use, the higher the odds (and seemingly exponentially so) that something will break with each update. I love Home Assistant for tinkering, and providing user specific customisation, but once I have a prototype I try and remove it from the "real" implementation in the fabric of a building. Fwiw if you can wade through the rambling, there's a bit at the end of this podcast about my thinking on that dividing line https://www.houseplanninghelp.com/hph334-combining-smart-home-technology-with-energy-efficiency-with-jonathan-dixon/

And as said.... Something isn't adding up, 6000kwh used for ASHP, assume 7500kwh for total annual usage, at 26p/kwh is only £160 odd a month. Probably a bit less with solar panel..... All seems remarkably normal?? Your problems are elsewhere, your ASHP is working perfectly fine! It's running for long times, at high efficiency, low temps, giving you a warm house for pretty reasonable heating costs. Edit... Also, we changed our hot water temp to 50 degrees for winter usage and the impact on things hasn't been much, certainly not enough for me to feel the need to change it back!! Yes 45 is more efficient, but probably only to the tune of a couple quid a week.

You missed my point. Ignore the fact I have an ASHP, that distracted you. Your boiler should be "on" all day in DHW mode and a cylinder thermostat will fire the boiler whenever the tank needs more heat.

So ashp electric usage of 6000 kWh (plus a bit more for Nov/Dec) seems broadly consistent with the heat loss prediction you posted above. But you shouldn't be paying £7k for that much electricity surely? What's the total usage on your bill? Is something else happening?

I don't think 6000 for nearly a years usage is THAT bad? For an average newish home. Especially if you are also warming an annex etc. ASHP running for very long periods can be unnerving but it's what they do, you need to run them long and low!

@Mike, FR building codes are another ballgame. You might want to consider running Mosquitto, MySQL and Node-RED as minimal stack on this RPi. These will all run comfortably on a 2 Gb RPi3. You won't need USB3 class performance for the SSD either. It might be worth running a separate Broker on the separate HA system and ping this with a copy of every relay close / open command. That way you can have an independent watchdog on a separate system to open the relays if the CH+DW RPi dies with the Willis Relays closed. The last thing that you want is for the UFH to run away, though worst case I suppose the Manifold TMV will isolate the Willises from the UFH loops and the Willis thermostats will cut in, but even so a critical RPi failure could leave you with the slab on. Bad news. Far better to have an unattended failsafe reset.

Uniform/uniformly distributed load

Instead on sitting rafters on top of wall plate you could notch them over the wall plate and support the lower edge with hangers onto wall plate. This would reduce your height while keeping the full depth rafter

My attempt. Cheap eBay sensor with a 6mm probe. Drilled 4x 6mm holes in casing of the UVC down to 50% height. The 3rd one down coincides with the height of the secondary returns. There is about 4 deg under read compared to the thermostat pocket. But all good enough to get an idea of the hot water left in the cylinder. Especially good for a slim line cylinder. Night before temporary mounts with tape. Showing level of hot water (bottom gauge reads 20 degs)

UDL?

I was assuming a UDL of 0.36kN/m so total load of 3m * 0.36kN/m = 1.08kN

Cycling doesn't have a huge effect on efficiency, also you don't see too many complaining about the constant cycling with systems like Evohome which will still cycle a boiler even when the system demand is greater than the minimum (gas) boiler output.

I wish they would let you split the whole claim into say 3 individual claims. Quite a burden carrying the VAT for lengthy periods of time.

Building a habitable room under that roof without fully replacing it, is probably the silliest thing I’ve heard in a while. Any wind driven rain will just leak through onto the insulation, it will then track down the insulation until it finds a way out onto the plasterboard ceiling, you won’t be able to pinpoint the leak as it won’t appear where it originally came from.

i don't think that there is any issue in that, the key thing is get the CIL exception form in and confirmed by the council prior to starting work on site. I wouldn't want to take the risk of site clearance being deemed starting work without the CIL exception in place

The problem is simple, you have the wrong house for their way of doing things. Solution - change the house. Ignoring this though it sounds like progress.

Hello, joining as so many others to do some research and get some advice from more experienced folks. Can also give some advice on retrofitting underfloor insulation having completed the hall and living-room (following the approach set out in the Pebble Trust renovation guide). Andy

Dear all, I am a new joiner to this hub. Nice to explore the building related works and discussions which I am new to that area. I will post to the relevant section later regarding gas transporter and changing gas meter. Have a lovely day. Caroline

Morning all, Based in Surrey and just bought our first property. Very keen to learn about what we can and can't do to it going forward, and wanted to join to learn and ask questions! I've already seen a huge amount of expert help on here so looking forward to getting involved. Plans for 2024: - Sort out ASHP hot water going cold in afternoon - Build double garage - Sort some home automation. - Whatever else I can get away with without the wife leaving me.

Hi all, Nice to be here, just bought a new house in western France and looking to green it up a bit. First question is on our heat pump, so I'll post in the relevant place. Iain.

Thanks for letting me join the forum. The reason for joining is fir dome advice on a building/damp issue, which I will shortly post about All the best Ciaran

Everything kicked off on January 8th 2024 finally after 8 years of faffing about and trying to line up finances, finding someone to sign off building regs and a year of selling the old house eventually succeeded. There was about 120 tons of muckaway judging from the number of trucks. The guys brought a 17 tonne digger and were glad of it. The big roller they didn't use in the end but went with a more compact diesel unit. hardcore was added and leveled. The trickier element was getting a rainwater harvesting tank installed. It had to go at the back of the site before we could block it off with the next phase of works. I found the office staff didn't have a clue about the dimensions so how deep to dig the hole?! They did the next best thing and sent a guy out to the yard with a tape measure and I passed these info on. The crane used was impressive - 350K worth to move a 4.5tonne concrete tank into position. They then crawled inside it to commission the pump etc and seal it up until the next phase of adding power (need to drill a hold into the tank but they provided enough electrical cable to go back to the house to hook it up later. It holds 4,000 litres and needed balast to stop it shifting as even at that weight it can move around!! Got a hose and friendly neighbours to assist and half filled it up!! Only 1 complainer - a neighbour around the corner giving out when the flatbed dropped off the excavator, there's always one! Did get a site inspection the next day but only to confirm we'd started within the terms of our commencement notice I think and he seemed friendly anyway! I left the mortgage a bit late, still waiting on approval so am spending cash currently. Hopefully that comes in this week! The Timber Frame prep is starting in their factory - I think I'll be ready in 5 weeks or so or on March 1st. Onto the exciting portion - Foundation Screws, 1.5 meter long and will have a 300mm x 300mm plate bolted to the top of the screw head. They spend an entire day prepping the holes, measuring and remeasuring to ensure everything was fine. There was some confusion around the height the screw was to end up but the groundworks team had marking the fence panel and I put them in direct contract with each other and didn't hear a peep from that point. All was good. I was hearing 100mm differences in the levels one day and this changed to 2mm the next!! I was sick with flu so not being able to be onsite was a curse, you just have to hope it works out. They pre drilled down to break up some rock but nothing too severe. The delivery took a bit longer than expected, so they started later than I'd hope which means I lose the groundsworks team for a week at the start of February but what can you do. Some start when they say, others, well, it's a moving target!! But once they started they've been onsite every day despite the cold weather and are making good progress. There are 89 of these to be driven in to a level set by the laser. They use an electric motor to drive in the screw with an arm braced against a previous screw they leave half way up. Eventually all you'll see is a field of square plates. A raft is to be poured around these and the Kore passive raft is being delivered to site later this week for use next month. Yep, there's a second raft going in on top of the Kore - like a Kore Concrete Raft Burger!! Enjoy the photos!

In the lab yes, that is how they know it works at very high temperatures. From a quick read though of the article, it seems they are pretending that excess solar energy has zero value and thermal energy has a very high value. I would think that with a bit of digging you will find they are looking to raise funding, not actually sell a product that is useful. Do you remember the man that made a battery from aluminium cans a while back, I bet he has retired on the development money. Then there were all those micro wind and water turbines that would save us. Oh, don't forget the perovskite, that was all the rage 5 years ago. Meanwhile, back in the real world the big boys have raised PV efficiency a few percent and reduced the cost another 5 fold.

Restrictors.. https://www.screwfix.com/p/smith-locke-window-restrictor-white-200mm/218HR?kpid=218HR&ds_kid=92700058176431263&ds_rl=1244072&gclid=CjwKCAjw1ICZBhAzEiwAFfvFhFN_OVI9RzxY2CyRkjx1HrucCxIL8dzw2IjpXDPQSPMQABzDtOG0GxoC_XsQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Missed a detail - 50mm PIR insulation under the rafters, then airtightness membrane, all held in by 50mm batons screwed through to the rafters. That plus the gaps between 215mm rafters filled with rockwool will give you a u value of around 0.1. no ventilation required and no risk of condensation. Who's advising you re insulation? Architect?