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It'll be off a schedule of rates for the type of works, road, duration etc. they are making assumptions and taking all the risk. 3month notice will be a road closure. It's a fairly straightforward job and will be done before you know it.

Multi zone or single zone if all your doors are open, your rooms will generally be at the same temp. Close the doors there is some individual room temp control. But the output of UFH or radiators can fine tuned by changing the dT across either floor loops or across a radiator to fine tune individual rooms i.e balancing. You really need a zone to do that. To give you background I had a zone in every room a big 160L buffer, I slowly simplified and almost halved gas consumption. Applied the simple is best approach to the heat pump, last year it was cheaper than gas by a good margin.

aah that's a bifold, we haven't got bifolds so can't comment on those, but others I've read are quite content with their origin bifolds. The handles on the windows are a standard fitment, the distances for the fixings and the length of the thru bolt are available online from various outlets, honestly cannot remember the search term something like inline window handles or similar bought up some that available - Yale I think. I was just pleased I could get aftermarket, so when I've finished being a messy builder I will replace them!

It is often a good solution to take rainwater in several directions, to their own small soakaways or French drains. As soon a they are 5m from the house, you can use perforated pipe and the pervolation begins. Cheaper than those crates too. I'm still concerned about the cover and invert levels.

If your building controller is happy with that, then happy days. But if not, move the rainwater soakaway to under the front drive, leave a drainage field in the back for the plant. Or leave as is, and also have a soakaway under the drive for the garage roof and the downpipes on the front of the house.

Not in my airtight (<0.1 ACH) house with MVHR. I choose to have the bedrooms slightly cooler than living areas, and office slightly warmer. Possibly. If you have a single zone, you can still adjust the flow rate of each loop so that you control what proportion of the total space heating energy is sent to each loop. You can set those proportions so the rooms are roughly the same temperature, or with some generally warmer and some cooler. But, you are then fixing that proportionality. So, whether it's a shoulder month, deepest winter, over-cast or sunny, each room will get the same proportion of the total space heating energy. It doesn't allow the space heating to react to dynamic events that change the proportion of the space heating energy a particular room needs. ie. solar gain, occupancy, cooking the Sunday lunch. Although UFH no matter how it is controlled will struggle to react to short-term dynamic changes. This would not work for my house that makes best use of solar gain (during the heating season), which effects a third to a half of the rooms in the house. The reported benefit of a single zone seems to be the elimination of a buffer, or more specifically a 4 port buffer. That's not necessarily so, you could still zone without a buffer as long as you have sufficient volume of water always open to the ASHP, ie. a loop or loops always open with sufficient flow rate, or a 2 port buffer/volumiser to meet the manufacturers minimum requirement. To me that feels like playing a game with short cycling so that you are just above the minimum requirements from the manufacturer. OK, but not ideal. With my install most rooms are their own zone with modulating actuators all controlled by Loxone and I have a 200l 4 port buffer. In the heating season the ASHP generally runs for not less than an hour and from my rough calcs. achieves a slightly better COP than "advertised". My only involvement with the system is to decide the start and end of heating season, other than that it looks after itself. On days with a few hours of winter sun, the UFH in rooms on the South-East and South-West sides will be off, but those on the North-East and North West will be on, but after a couple of over-cast winter days, all rooms will need their UFH on. If I tried to run it as a single zone then on those sunny winter days I'd either be overheating on the South side or cold on the North. I could of course block out the winter solar gain, but that would increase my heating costs and spoil the views. There is of course an additional capital cost for the buffer and extra pump and additional day-to-day costs for running the extra pump and minor standing losses of the buffer, so you'd need to justify their inclusion. The longer ASHP run times provided by buffer can improve the COP, but others say there is an efficiency hit to the COP due to badly designed buffers that experience "mixing". I can't comment on the latter as I've never seen any evidence of it myself. Personally, I wouldn't put a buffer together with an ASHP that was not a recommended combination from the manufacturer, which would restrict the options. The other benefits the buffer provide me is to circulate the UFH without the ASHP on, to redistribute solar gain, and to also run a wet duct heater/chiller on the MVHR without the UFH on. The energy transfer of the wet duct heater is far below what the ASHP can modulate down to so it couldn't be run directly off the ASHP. Just to add though, the wet duct heater/chiller can only "trim" temperatures, it's seldom used on its own.

maybe its the design that makes the difference, we didnt really have Fleming in mind at first but thought we would use the free design service to get some ideas and ended up liking working with them so stuck with it. they have been very hot on keeping the design within the budget we gave them, even when we made the house bigger and wanted other changes they let us know straight away this would push our costs up and roughly how much, so Ive felt comfortable that we are in charge of the costs (as much as we can be) In the past we have worked with an architect on a renovation design and had no sense at all how much it was going to cost even when we gave them a budget, when we actually got quotes we realised we couldnt afford to do it so wasted money on the design. I didnt want to be in that position again. A friend of a friend used Potton so we had a look around their house, looked very nice and good quality so Im sure they would deliver a nice house. We also went and had a look at a Fleming house that was half built, also looked very good. Its so hard to choose between companies, if you can get out and look at half built or completed houses that might help

Exactly this is what I have in here, Linux with a Zigbee controller. I think I want to start with heating on/off, scheduling then I look into Zigbee radiator knobs.

I probably made that sound more dramatic that it was meant too! The learning curve of figuring out what we needed to do with H&S when we didnt have a main contractor involved, we've done the pre-constriction plan, risk register, started the H&S file and construction phase plan we will have to decide who will be the 'main contractor' on site if we have a few trades at once but otherwise its just keeping on top of the H&S stuff as we go along. We had quotes for the PD role but after looking into it, as long as you are on top of it, doesnt appear to be something that cant be done yourself, others may tell me Im wrong though and I will look on here at CDM threads to make sure its the right way to go.

https://www.toolstation.com/safety-goggles/p69043 what I use.

+1.

But you are the PM and made a considered decision I assume. I have read on here of 'professionals' deliberately cutting pir well short of rafters and foaming it in place. My gut feeling is that this is wrong, perhaps emphasised by how wrong it is to insulate whole roofs with foam. What a good point. I can't recall ever seeing a spec that included expanding foam. Even the much lauded Illbruck,

Illbruck FM330 foam was the game-changer for me.

Sadly I’m also saddled with that belief. I just can’t see why I would design it in.

I would say that looks normal for mild weather. The HP accumulates error degree-minutes i.e. how much the integral of temp differs from the setpoint and switches the HP on when the total reaches a trigger value (by default AIUI -100 or maybe -60) and switches it off when it reaches 0 again. You can change the trigger value somewhere deep inside the installer settings but default is OK for many ppl. This accounts for the cycling. Up to 3 cycles/hr is reckoned OK and you have a lot less than that. Also depends on control strategy. If you have the SensoComfort controller it has 3 possible modes for "room temp mod": off, active and extended. Active uses the sensor in the controller to tweak the flow temp according to actual room temp so if yr controller is sensibly sited in living room you can probably use that. Extended turns the whole system off when the sensor is up to temp which is prob OK for you but no good for multizone systems. Arotherm FB page is good for this stuff also. Worth following for useful hints on setup though a bit repetitive. @JohnMo will no doubt be along soon to add to this, IIRC he has commented on the energy integral approach in the past so I imagine Ecodan use it too. Open Energy Monitor, has separate power, flow and temp sensors.

One of Parkinson's laws is that everyone chips in on an easy subject. Whatever fixings are used here no one will die. Roll on page 3.

More insulation the better. Go PIR for all of it at 150mm. So Celotex or similar. Tape all joints, foam all gaps, add a 25mm minimum upstand all round. Prior to screed a thin polythene membrane on top to keep the cement in the screed away from the aluminium on the insulation.

I think it'll be hard to assemble (giving me limited time to actually put the parts of a complex and large assembly together), and make it impossible to disassemble should I want to, without causing major damage to the wood.

i've had every single isolator wired back to the plant room, not that there is many of them. Nothing worse than seeing them splattered all over a build.

@Gus Potter In this particular case we are talking about a shelf in a pizza oven, hardly structural.

You are correct if the excavations do not go deeper than your neighbours foundations. However the work has already started, so the party wall act would not apply now. Just crack on. But note as the work isn’t covered by the act you can’t benefit from it’s protections from claims of trespass or nuisance. If your neighbour does something like appoint a surveyor at your cost, that will be an expensive mistake for them.

Excavation near neighbouring buildings (section 6 of the Act) 28. What does the Act say if I want to excavate near neighbouring buildings? If you plan to: excavate, or excavate for and construct foundations for a new building or structure, within 3 metres of any part of a neighbouring owner’s building or structure, where any part of that work will go deeper than the neighbour’s foundations (see diagram 6); or excavate, or excavate for and construct foundations for a new building or structure, within 6 metres of any part of a neighbouring owner’s building or structure, where any part of that work will meet a line drawn downwards at 45° in the direction of the excavation from the bottom of the neighbour’s foundations from. https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/preventing-and-resolving-disputes-in-relation-to-party-walls/the-party-wall-etc-act-1996-explanatory-booklet so my interpretation of that is if you don’t intend to go lower than your neighbours foundation. NO you don’t need a PWA.

ours is at the back of the drawer

I guess its something to do with being a single track lane that means road closure and more cost. As has been said the overall price isn't too high but its still worth seeing if any flexibility on the traffic management. I think its the road closure and associated pen pushing which is increasing your cost. My last connection was on the other side of the road and it was still less than this. That entailed digging halfway through the road and through path. Backfilling and resurfacing, then digging the other half and connecting. This was all done with barriers and iirc no traffic lights on that one. Cars just had to give way to each other for couple of days.

I got quoted £5500 for water connection and kicked up a fuss as it was only 6m trench to my boundary, the contractor came for a pre visit inspection and quietly advised me to go with the flow, I live on a very busy A road and found out the water mains was the other side of the road, when work started it caused mayhem with traffic lights and cars were backed up half mile each way, the council inspector was on site for hours each day and the works took best part of a week, they hit a gas main so had 3 Cadent teams on site for a day repairing, The work was finished 6 months ago and we have just had completion sign off, i was dreading getting a revised bill for tens of thousands but looks like the £5500 was a bargain..

Can do what you like really, all my isolators are in a cupboard. Think there is an unofficial recommendation of having the oven isolator within 2m but it's not a reg.

We (the entire utilities industry) don't install meter boxes in driveways as they get f*cked up from traffic. That main is too close to the road to avoid closing it. You might get away with it, and probably could, but as a contractor I'd be playing it safe. A 15mm meter is standard for all residential connections. 25mm MDPE is as well for most scenarios.

>>> the LPA cited case law I would be interested to read that - presumably they quoted case references. They cited case law in the rejection of your planning application already? Next step is for them to file their statement of case, and then both parties can submit final comments. Don't hold your breath. FYI my LPA ignored the planning appeal procedural guide ( https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/planning-appeals-procedural-guide/f90d5f21-de2c-43cd-b743-6c81b9a1b70f ) in its statement of case and (a) bought up new issues, (b) didn't summarise the issues in dispute as required. When challenged, the inspector said words to the effect 'what can you do, it's only guidance' and allowed the LPA's new issues and their V-sign to the guide. He did award me costs though. If you detect any LPA dodginess, then file for costs (the principle, not the amount) straight away and keep a record or have some way to know how much time you and others have spent and therefore justification for the costs amount.

To add a more rounded picture, MVHR isn't all about cost recovery / return on investment - the same as many kitchens and bathroom suites will never recover their investment. Apart from any cost savings (which can be real), if MVHR is properly specified an installed it can filter the outside air, maintain a healthy internal atmosphere, avoid noise transmission through trickle vents, reduce condensation & mould risk, and avoid blowing warm air out through rattling extractor fans. And probably some other things I've not thought of. As for air-tightness, the Building Regs standards are very unambitious. Passivhaus requires no more than 0.6 air changes per hour under 50pa of pressure, and values as low as 0.2 are possible. However that is only achievable if the architect designs-in adequate airtightness measures, if the various contractors and installers know what they're doing, and if someone is checking the quality of the work and materials used.

The pipe will be 25mm but the actual meter, probably in a "boundary box" reduces it to 15mm for a short bit inside the meter.

My plant room / cupboard is a tight 1mx1m. But don’t give up the shower. You’ve got room elsewhere for your plant room stuff. Your Mrs is wrong on the lounge shape. I get your design idea for line of sight for the fireplace but I still think the lounge shape combined with that door location still creates an odd seating area at the end of the room and is a bit antisocial and will be dark despite the window nearby. I’m referring to the sofa backing into the study. But a good place to seat unpopular relatives . if you’re committed to that maybes consider building that dividing wall lounge/study as a stud partition without any plumbing, so you can easily shift it if you need to.

I disagree with a lot of the comments here, what we don't know are a lot of the conditions on site, percolation test value and another of other things. 4.10x4.50 is a massive soakaway, like huge (13m3) and we don't know the roof size. I agree a klargester is a dated design, but in reality, lots of architects use them as a reference point as its in all the BIM files and drawings etc, something like a marsh or a graf plant would be better. NRV on the outflow is a great idea for all PTP as it stops any back-flow flooding the plant. If you have a low percolation test value AND you don't have a high water table, there is no reason in theory that this will not work. For a soakway of that size, I would personally use attenuation tunnels, as opposed to crates, as these are EA/building regs approved with prior approval. They leave less internal structure for media to cling to, and all water goes direct to soil.

could put them in series, UFH on the return from the rads

Try Beswick stone in Cirencester. they have a very good selection of stone in store. might not be exactly what you want but worth a look.

Just check your radiators are sized correctly, 40c flow temperature on Ufh might exceed 27c floor temperature limit on most floor coverings. So if you want 1 circuit design you will need to take this in consideration.

I like that. It should save cost, and take up much less space. There used to be a standard EU design but perhaps that is superseded now, or simply ignored. Plus Klargester is part of Kingspan and I wouldn’t give them £1 of my money. Agreed. I intend to look up all the Kingspan brands, also St Gobain (who have sold off celotex), and avoiding them.

To add. How you choose one aerobic plant over another will likely come down to which ones are stocked by your local merchants as they are expensive to deliver. They seem to broadly perform similarly in terms of the waste water produced. Why I chose the Graf system. 1. Price - although I got a reasonable deal. 2. Running cost - the blower unit has an on off cycle reducing electricity usage. I’ve not compared actual usage to the specification though. 3. The blower pump can be mounted remotely from the tank (up to 25m I think) Ours is in a plastic kiosk 1/2 of which is buried in the ground. This does mean you have the rest sticking out the ground. It’s not an issue for us but might be if it was in your front garden hence why it can be installed remotely. 4. It’s quiet although it vibrated really badly at first but this was because the electrician cabled tied the socket to the blower unit and had moved it off the recessed foot holes it’s supposed to sit in. After I rerouted everything it’s very quiet. 5. Built in sampling chamber 6. Relatively shallow install in gravel. We don’t have a high water table. 7. Graf do a free commissioning service. They have also been really helpful on the phone.

Based on that design you need to get a different person to design your drainage scheme. Drainages fields for treatment plants and soakaways for rainwater are two completely different things so solve different problems. Unfortunately the terms are generally intermixed though which confused me at the start until I understood it all a better. https://www.wte-ltd.co.uk/soakaways If you need any more info to sway you away from a biodisc to an aerobic system then visit the NSBRC in Swindon. They have a cut away of a biodisc and as soon as I saw it I thought what if that fails and you need to get in there to fix it. No thanks. Plus Klargester is part of Kingspan and I wouldn’t give them £1 of my money. There are a few common treatment plants used on here which are typically Vortex, Marsh or Graf One2Clean. We have a Graf system with a remote blower unit. It also has a built in sampling chamber.

@JohnnyB always a mystery why some topics get lots of replies and others are ignored. It doesn’t help that the forum has a dedicated ASHP section, which is separate from the Plumbing/Heating section. It is great that you have posted a detailed quote and others I’m sure will find it very useful. To me the quote looks fine. As @Bozza already mentioned, maybe £1698 for “general plumbing materials” is a bit high. The pricing of most of the kit looks reasonable. You might not need the Buffer Tank, depends on the volume requirements of the ASHP and how much UFH piping you have. I didn't go with Anti-freeze values and that is its own topic, but @sharpener is right, you will need a pair. The quote doesn’t include groundworks, but getting the ASHP as level as possible on solid surface will pay dividends over the long term. If you are going down the UVC route, you should take a look at the OSO brand. @TerryE, just had one fitted. For the extra cost you get a cylinder which is insulated with Vacuum Insulated Panels, which greatly reduces the heat loss. If space is an issue HeatGeeks have recently launched a very compact UVC especially for ASHPs, which comes in many formats, even one the size of a kitchen cupboard. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/39202-mini-store-heat-geek-newark-cylinders-for-ashp/ @Dam0 just started an ASHP design thread today, I sure that is an interesting read. It is often a case of deja vu with some questions as they come up so frequently. @TheMitchells had a thread back in July about his ASHP quote.

This.

Keep as simple as possible. Blending valve, buffer and all additional pumps delete. Run direct from heat pump circulation pump. Tee rads in upstream of the UFH manifold and the return after the manifold. Run all as a single zone. Have radiator valves to control bedroom temps. Upgrade rads if needed. Run Weather Compensation (WC). Set the flow rates for the UFH at the manifold and then heat pump circulation pump, if not a modulating circulation pump, set the speed to get the correct flow through the radiators. If modulating circulation pump it will sort itself. I have a similar set up, getting a CoP for heating at 9 degrees outside of just under 6. Mine system consists of an ASHP, fan coil, UFH manifold, 3 port diverter valve and a cylinder.

There were 28 cattery pens and an office building to get rid of. We really didn't want to have to pay to have this removed, so we put an advert on Facebook, and were inundated with calls. We sold the lot for 2.5k and after 3 days of removing the roof structure (didn't want to risk people falling through it), the buyers came and removed it. They left a complete mess, but I spent a further three days putting the remnants in one 4 yard plasterboard skip and 2 * 10 yard skips. This meant we were still up 1.5k, so not a bad result. Pictures of the site before clearance and afterwards. The next task is to hire an excavator and break up the masses of concrete slab. Hoping that it is not reinforced so that I can hire a crusher and recycle the waste into hardcore.

Sorry, pervolation belongs in another conversation.

i mean, from the description and picture it looks like it might be supporting a rolling pin and a jar of pizza base.

I got sent this picture and the only comment was: “Well, f*ck”

Then he will have 2 short levels. Win win.

if you're lucky