Leaderboard

Hi. Not sure if anyone will see this but I was searching around for this exact topic and found this so felt it my duty to respond with my findings I have a new build (~2018), north and north/east facing rooms/bathrooms have always been cold, like ice-boxes in the winter. After just making do and then going through covid, this year I'd had enough and thought this cannot be right! After reading through the replies here and asking around I was about to pay for someone to come round to inspect our wall insulation. I thought I'll just go into the roof first to see if I can see anything obvious..... well, I noticed a few gaps in the roof insulation and some insulation just randomly lose on top of another covered area. I simply "fluffed up" here and there and moved the lose bits to cover gaps. Honestly I'm amazed at the difference. I've bitten the bullet and bought a Hive thermostat and a few smart radiator valves to put into those cold rooms and to have easier control over adding heat to those rooms when needed (i.e. guests), but just simply fluffing up in the roof has already made a huge difference and I'm amazed. So - if you have a new build and its passed building regs, aside from a major screw up I'd be surprised if there was anything majorly wrong with your wall insulation. If a room is north facing, and has a window on the north and east sides like mine then it will feel colder than other rooms. BUT, I would recommend checking in your roof before forking out for any inspections etc. I've gone extra in going for smart heating but that is a personal choice and technically not completely required. I'm hoping though it makes putting the heating on more efficient and I will have easier control of what comes on when and to what temp. That's my two pennies on this subject - hope it helps someone

Item 1 on the latest list is complete 😁

If you need to ask whether to isolate before removing a cover, there's no question you should isolate before removing the cover.

Hi @Indy reading some of the replies above and based on my own experience i would agree with the fact that your architect has given you a build spec without any real consideration as to how difficult the wall and roof detail will be to build in the real world. The floor is a odd thickness, i was told a block is 225mm tall and the 1st row will sit on the B+B floor with a layer of DPM on top so you will need to lay DPM across the floor and up the walls 225mm, so you have 225mm to play with i opted for 175mm insulation and 50mm flow screed, your only adds up to 185 so not sure how that is going to work out on site for you . The walls with PIR are going to be a nightmare to install correctly personally I wouldn't even entertain the idea, I would even consider if you don't want to increase the size of the cavity going for full fill batts and accepting 0.017 u value done properly rather than 0.015 with PIR done half arsed. Totally agree with @Iceverge regarding the roof . IMHO putting PIR in between rafters should be the choice of last resort, fluffy stuff between the rafters and PIR above or below or combination of both . But most importantly whatever you choose to do make sure that it will be achievable on site in the real world, you would be far better of have a house built to basic building regs but done properly than having a higher spec but a difficult design and ends up being build poorly.

Success!!!!!! I wrote a stiff letter to the planning officer's manager yesterday as I know he had a meeting with her planned for tomorrow. Got a phone call from the planning consultant this afternoon to say that they are passing the plans. So excited! I have to admit to being a bit downcast the last few days, this really has cheered us up. We can now press ahead with getting the utilities onto site as I know that this can take a little time. 2025 is going to be a very busy year!

We have an appeal inspector now and hopefully will have site visit. On the bright side, I think we have somebody who can bring a balanced view to the application. Having read a similar one the inspector decided on, they had this to say on the 12m rule we are being subjected to: 'The amendments made to the previously rejected scheme are noted, as is the appellant’s contention that the western facing wall could no longer be regarded as ‘blank’ in terms of the Council’s TAN3. I share the appellant’s view that ‘the 12m minimum distance is guidance rather than strict regulation and each application can be reviewed on its own merit and the local impacts assessed’. Given we are at 11.5m, at an angle, don't have a blank elevation and much much better than guidance on the 25 degree rule I would hope that we can reach a similar accordance.

This one made me chuckle, uses actual footage from the show. I believe Kevin actually tweeted the link on his feed.

Concrete, not really screed. We did a quite high slump so it could be pumped. You need to have all drainage pipes positioned for toilets, sinks, showered etc. I used waste bits of 100mm thick PIR as formers to exclude concrete where I was uncertain, back filled later as needed. You need any block work in place up to finished ground floor level. You need to pre-position UFH manifold. All pipes need to be protected from freezing if the container water. So either air test or water/antifreeze solution. Do not let UFH pipes goes under walls, as you are likely to someone put a hole in the pipe. So photo, all the wall sections are removable and we're moved during the job. Have shown, UFH manifold, main electrical cabinet and floor formers to exclude concrete. We used a pump to get concrete from A to B.

Hi Karl! There's always potential for ambiguity and different people's interpretations of tolerance, however notwithstanding this in my view if the tolerance is '3mm within 3m' then I'd take that to mean that over any 3m length the difference between the highest and lowest points should be less than 3mm. Thus your units could ripple like a (square) wave but if you were to locate the lowest unit then all the others must be no more than 3mm higher than that and you'd be fine. It might not sound a lot but 3mm is a fair amount for something that is infinitely adjustable. Do you want to elaborate on your situation? Did you cancel the templating or did the surveyor say it was far out? If the latter I'd expect them to be advising what improvements were needed and where etc. Gosh, this thread is a blast from the past. Funny reading back how concerned we were at the time... A few years on and we love the worktops and wouldn't change them for anything else!

All done. Bloody hell, suggestions to rip up oak floors, hire all sorts of machinery, all for it to end up taking 15 minutes, and 5 minutes to clean it all up. Barely any dust gets loose if you one-hand the grinder and hold a decent dust extractor right next to the cutter. For anyone else who ever comes across this thread during a Google search, here's what worked for me: 1. Set yourself up with a bit of plastic that you can tape off the room with. Takes about 5 minutes total. That way you can zone out 90% of the room and protect it from dust 2. Remove as much from the room as possible, and open up the top and bottom windows to create an air current 3. Make sure you set up all of your tools to go on the right side of your sealed off area - you don't want to open it up again while this happens. 4. With your vacuum or dust extractor in one hand and the grinder in the other, work at a moderate pace, with the vacuum attachment about 50mm from the cutting dust, and 90% of it will be sucked straight into the bag. 5. Chisel out everything with an SDS, chisel into the cut so as not to blow plaster 6. vacuum up all leftover bits, including the chase, and use a dustpan and brush for the big bits. 7. Leave room for at least 30 mins, then return to vacuum up the rest of the settled dust. A mask is essential. You wouldn't want to do this in a room with carpets, or, I guess, in a room you weren't planning to decorate again, for obvious reasons. The dust increases dramatically if you cut into brick, but then you just go slower so that the vacuum can catch more. It's an easy job, but the dust is definitely a nightmare. I cannot imagine how much you'd produce if you didn't seal off the room and work with an extractor. It would be like a sandstorm.

My last house was a circa 1700s stone farmhouse, concrete and tile ground floors. Extremely picturesque. Lovely to live in -- in the summer; f'ing freezing in the winter unless I had two downstairs multi-fuel stoves on the go and the CH cranked up. The exterior walls were typically cold (say ~10°C) to the touch. My new self-build is passive class. Jan and I were pretty anal about keeping U-Values to standard for class, and tracking down then eliminating / decently mitigating bridging. There were three bridging areas that crept into the build and that we addressed, but even so our house only performs at maybe 30% worse than the as-designed calcs -- but that's still 5× or more better than the typical new build. You have a huge insulation barrier internal to external in this class of house -- assuming that you haven't missed any bridging cock-ups in the build. The internal floor-to-floor barriers are extremely small in comparison so everything everywhere is at or near room temperature to the touch. We run our house as a single zone at around 22½°C though the CH algo only uses the cheapest Octopus half-hour slots so the temp does wobble around throughout the day by a degree or so. We heat the GF with UFH in slab. We also have a couple of free-standing oil-filled rads that we use in winter for top up on the upper floors (also CH controlled), and we have a electric towel rad in the master bedroom en-suite; other than that there is no heating at all on the two top floors, just parasitic heat from the GF. I once went around the house one winter evening with a spot thermometer: the ground floors, ceilings, internal walls were within ½°C of the same temp. The external walls about 1°C cooler and there was a cool hand's-width in the reveals around the external windows where there was some bridging through the timber framing of about 4-5°C but well above condensation thresholds and small in total W terms. Ditto the first floor, but this was about 2°C cooler overall. (This was before we used the top-up rad.) My son's bedsit is on the in-loft floor, but this is boosted by his games PC and two huge TV monitors. 🤣 So you can really run a passive-class house as a zone with GF-only heating. Simple boosts work, and are extremely cost effective. IMO, there is too much focus on getting run-rates to the absolute minimum, and not enough on overall through-life discounted costs. In our case we have an electric-only resistively heated house. This is still cheap to operate on an Agile tariff. We built it ASHP-ready but have never made the investment case to install one as it would take maybe 15 years to get a payback.

Flow screed isn't a bad idea actually. I forgot that it was above block and beam so 100mm of concrete wouldn't be really required. I can't see how the Architect could possibly get to a U value of 0.15 from 100mm PIR. Closer to 0.22.

Despite having fought planners a few times (and won) I have no evidence of corruption but I would call them generally inept, full of self importance and blinkered in their approach. I am sure they are also underfunded which can’t help.

It depends - as with many things.... Your base load will be between 250W and 500W depending on the time of day - more lights on more base load. There are many people on the forum that have their base load down to very small levels by disconnecting all wall warts etc. But let's say you're a typical family, so between 250W and 500W. The ASHP will draw it's 4kW continuously unless it's doing a defrost, when for a short period, it will draw a lot less. Your oven will draw about 3kW until it's up to heat - 5 to 10 mins? Then will turn on and off at 3kW when it needs more heat. Induction hobs tend to turn on and off repeatedly - more often on a higher setting. So assuming everything is on, that's at least 500W + 4kW + 3kW + 3kW as a maximum - 10.5kW but only 4.5kW is continuous. 2 x 3kW is on and off. If you have let's say a 4.5kW inverter, then each of those 3kW has to come from the grid, so at the expensive rate as it's during the day. And we've not taken into account the dishwasher, washing machine and EV charging.... If this is the case and I'm not sure it is, it could be because the maximum PV you can install without contacting the DNO is just less than 4kW, so a smaller inverter would match that. However, if you have a battery system sized for your typical consumption, in our case 15kW, then a larger inverter makes sense and means we almost never take peak priced energy, it's all at the 7p Oct Int Go rate, because we load the batteries at night and our solar does the rest. As for most appliances drawing a peak for a short time, this is true for washing machines and dishwashers but not for ovens and induction hobs and EV chargers and ASHPs draw at the peak rate all the time. And even dishwashers and washing machines can draw 3kW for 5 or 10 minutes as they heat the water. Hopefully your experts will be expert.... What's right will depend on the appliances you have, how often they are used, what your base load is and also, what you want to get out of this. Do you effectively want to only use cheap rate electricity, or is the plan to reduce as much as you can your use of higher rate at a reasonable rate of return for the investment. EDIT PS - the power output of your ASHP is the higher figure, the electricity usage is the lower figure

Mines still going strong! (Complete with CO2 monitor atop, DIY upgraded with esp32 connectivity 🤓) Christmas present 2006 ish I believe, before the Logitech buy out. Originally ran it from a Infrant ReadyNAS of similar vintage. Admittedly doesn't get so much use now, only because the LMS Spotify integration is rather spotty. (In name and in nature). Loxone audio server is more reliable. (Ironically the old Loxone music server was built on LMS)

I can’t guarantee that as all my speakers are really old gen1.

I had an original Logitech squeezebox player ( remember those ) . Loved it ! . Much later I heard about the raspberry pi version of this as Logitech had shut up shop on the player but had let Logitech media server be open source . Thought I would stick the original player on eBay and get maybe 20 quid for it . Actually sold it for more than I bought it for ! . So some people will buy the ‘obselete ‘ version so they can extend their eco system by delaying ‘upgrading’ .

Yes, I'm in this camp. However it's a bit more subtle. 5 years ago I bought top of the line cloud key and USG Pro (UDM precursor - pre Unifi OS/Protect even). I do get updates to the newest Unifi OS and Unifi Protect etc because this of course lets me buy the newest cameras. However what I don't get is basic feature upgrades. Like I've been bitching about the lack of DNS name aliases and port-forwarding support on WAN failover since I got it. I recently found this (as well as Teleport) are all supported on the newer UDMs but never "back ported" to my old USG, even though I'm nominally running the exact same OS and Net controller versions as the new hardware, and no reason why old HW couldn't support it. It's another form of enshitification, not really a vendor lock-in issue as good old planned obsolesce. My next gateway/router is unlikely to be unifi even if I keep it for the Wifi.

Try drying the fitting out with a hair dryer.

I’m assuming that the network is the balancing item/buffer in the system. Sizing for max need may incur a lot greater cost than is economically sensible.

You won't get far with trial and error component substitution. To make any meaningful progress you need an insulation tester. It's likely you have a faulty fitting, damp or damaged wiring. If you fancy a go yourself then you can buy a cheap old uncalibrated tester that will do what you want for not a lot on ebay, otherwise get your electrician to look at it. I guess one thing you could try is remove every single lamp, and see if the tripping stops, then replace one at a time if it does.

You need priory demand hot water (PDHW). Read your manual it may be equipped with most of what you need or some options may need adding. Search for PDHW on Google and have a read up. Avoid S and Y plan. Or a simple add on kit. https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.ephcontrols.com/section/pdhw/&ved=2ahUKEwikra_CwYuKAxVtWEEAHZmoAr4QFnoECEEQAQ&usg=AOvVaw1ZNV4XzRVOTkPHFUHziTIr You can also DIY it, with a resistor and a relay also. Basically you fool the boiler into thinking it's running weather compensation and break the signal (with relay) and the boiler moves to normal mode to heat cylinder.

I have recently used a fencer's spade for the first time. tapered to a smallish end, very heavy. I want one. I feel that will go through the wire with ease. Your fencers will have one. I think some are too lightweight.

Ok with that in mind I will revise your blockwork build spec accordingly. The U values your architect has specced are pure fiction. Floor construction: U Value = 0.13 W/m².K 100mm powerfloated concrete with embedded fibers and UFH. 500g. Polythene separation layer 100mm PIR from Seconds&co or 100mm EPS70. ( I prefer the EPS) Polythene DPM 100mm Pir From seconds & co or 200mm EPS. (I prefer the EPS) Concrete beam & block floor to manufacturer's design DON'T USE BOARDS IN THE WALLS. TERRIBLE IDEA!! My suggestion. Render 100mm 14N dense blocks. 200mm full fill cavity with EPS blown beads (or mineral wool batts) and stainless steel wall ties. 100mm. Dense blockwork. 15mm Sand cement render. 5mm skim. The roof requires some thinking about. I have come to the conclusion that it is far too varied and complex to make a good job of it unless you take the airtightness layer to the outside of the rafters. It'll be easier to build too. Get rif of the cold loft. Roof tiles 38x50mm. treated tiling battens 25x70mm. treated counterbattens. Screwed into the plywood deck with 200mm screws. Roofing membrane 50mm PIR joints taped layered over the rafter tails. 100mm PIR with joints staggered from above layer. 100mm rafter tails screwed into the true rafters with 175mm screws. 18mm ply with all joints taped and returned to the wall airtightess layer at the wall plate and eaves. 140mm rafters with 100mm of mineral wool insulation. 40mm service space 2 x 12.5mm plaster board layers Gypsum skim. This approach would require stub rafters to be screwed to the top of the existing rafters for rafter tails and overhangs. AKA this video. I would change some of his details though. This is a really risky approach unless you are hyper on top of your airtightness. Also it's tricky to joint to the pitched roof. I would more or less copy the above detail. However I would include ventilation below the deck as I don't like the deck straight on top of the insulation. It is very failure intolerant. EDPM 38x50mm. treated across the rafters. 25x70mm. treated counterbattens. along the rafters. Screwed into the plywood deck with 200mm screws. 53mm ventialted space with mushroom vents throught the deck and continious with the pitched roof ventilation. Roofing membrane 50mm PIR joints taped layered over the rafter tails. 100mm PIR with joints staggered from above layer. 100mm rafter tails screwed into the true rafters with 175mm screws. 18mm ply with all joints taped and returned to the wall airtightess layer at the wall plate and eaves. Tapered firing pieces to create 1:40 fall. 140mm rafters with 100mm of mineral wool insulation. 40mm service space 2 x 12.5mm plaster board layers Gypsum skim.

and yes i know i'm just moving to another locked in system with Loxone before you say anything but my decision has been made and i'm sticking with it. 🙄

i'm one of those customers. Sonos quickly reverted the decision though and the old speakers can still be used with the newer ones afaik. we've only got old speakers though and probably won't ever upgrade them as i have the Loxone audio server waiting to be installed.

Passivehaus really isn´t about minimum costs (althought it can make finantial sence) , but rather a comfort, building longevity and efficency. Ok I´m going to throw a spanner in the works here. I don't think if you build a blockwork house you'll get better than 3ACH on a blowerdoor test. I read many times that before we built our house that most airtight house builders had abandoned masonary as it was just too hard to get a result. None the less I pressed ahead. We ended up with a blowerdoor test of 0.31 which I was pleased about. HOWEVER, i spent 4 years researching the topic to an obsessive level of detail. I was off work during covid so I was personally able to do all the detailing myself. I spent days on end with a DIY blowerdoor fan and a tube of airtight sealant assessing every crevace and corner. The amount of time and effort that went into it was huge. It would be completely unreasonable to expect any normal houseowner or builder to go down this route. If you want a truely airtight house I would consider other methods. Timberframe liek MBC's twinwall or ICF would be much easier. There is one possibility through. A product called Aerobarrier will use an airbourne caulk to improve your airtightness. I've seen videos and a few patrons of the forum have used it. It may be worth a look.

Similar route here. We have a block built passive class house. It's been running abour 17 kWh/m2 per year since we moved in. I was hoping for better but some of the bridging details around the windows etc aren't mega. During the build there was some things that you just give up on. We've just installed an A2A unit which has reduced our heating usage to about 1/3. Prior to that we were just using a single plug in resistance heater. In short if you make a very good job of the fabric you can forego a conventional central heating system. Its an approach I woudl only take if I was all over the airtightness and thermal bridging details however.

Hi @tdansmith Sorry if you know all this. Just some thoughts off your original posting.. The SSE, (Distribution Network Operator: DNO) valuated our system by the maximum the certified inverter would allow into the grid, not by how many panels we have (In fact the inverter allows about 25% more panels than that its limited wattage). Think carefully about future requirements! its costly to upgrade.. for several reasons.. I'm not sure about the design of the system your considering but please check that the battery storage capacity in your design would not be included in your DNO's calculation of how much power could flow back to the grid. ( as I understand it it batteries need to be controlled by the inverter and the inverter is limited, not the inverter and then the batteries meaning that both lots could go back to the grid) Not sure that you would not end up potentially crossing phases trying to supply from batteries more than one phase. Sounds like a high end inverter to do that.... Storing 15kW is only half the consideration. You also have to consider the maximum power level. Batteries have a limited percentage of their stored power that they can efficiently discharge. In my opinion low and slow is the order of the day.... Here's a tool to help you see what a 3.6kW system would do over the year. Start by zooming in to your home and then adding your proposed data. https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html I would suggest you look at the potential supply month by month and your requirement month by month. Good luck M

Interesting. I only use unifi for internet, and have frigate for nvr (with an edge tpu) but a customer has a full unifi Protect setup and it seems pretty decent (if you just accept the lock in). Scroll back and scrubbing through recordings in particular is really smooth compared to frigate. Last week I integrated it to Loxone for him, so object detection or even doorbell fingerprint scanner/NFC send webhook calls to the mini server to trigger automations, and was pleasantly surprised how smooth that works. All local API, zero cloud dependency for this (aside for the setup, but that's just a convenience for federated cloud authentication, I believe the UDM local console could do it all if I had a direct login)

Came to the above for the DNO in the S.E. England, no Idea if it,s applicable in Scotland. I thought an 80 amp supply was regarded as standard thes days. Does your voltage drop below the required mimnimum when you have a high load on?I think the required min voltage is 216 Volts.

You need to stop thinking that BC will pick up any problems, they are only looking at the very few items that need to comply. so they check a damp course is installed, but don’t really comment if it’s a sub standard job, as long as it passes a standard that’s it, not a good standard. after your up to damp course level you won’t see them again for a while. you really need to get to grips with the next stages and what is right and what is wrong, before you go up any further.

Yep but we need to get it signed off by building control, don’t we?

Hi there, Just wanted to say hi to the group and thank you to the admins for allowing me to join. I’ve just had UFH installed at my home and I haven’t updated a few questions as I’m completely new to UFH, so please be kind Thanks, Chris

Good luck with it all however you decide to progress. Our house is also 70's and we ended up keeping the ground floor steel ducts and adding a second zone in with new ducting and vents from the ceiling in the first floor. Obviously with heat pumps the supply temperature is much lower than gas warm air so you need to run the system for longer essentially to achieve the same input of heat. Most of the time this is beneficial because you can get the same level of comfort at a lower set air temp when the system is running. Ours feels a tiny bit underpowered when it's really cold. It still gets up to temperature but it takes hours to do so. Only seem to notice this at freezing and below, I think because of the heat pump defrost cycles and generally greater heat loss ( our house isn't that well insulated) I'm still not entirely sure how we got it wrong. The A2A heat pump itself is oversized so should be fine. My suspicion is that the 2 indoor air handlers are too small because the upstairs duct work is custom made so unlikely to be the problem. Either way, it's a bit annoying but otherwise the retrofit has worked fine. Much better than the 70's original gas system we replaced.

I've a SIPS house with renderboard (Knauff Aquapanel) and K rend TC15 finish. Lovely walls with no expansion beads or unsightly breathers. 20m run on 1 wall...looks mega. Zero brickwork. Noise is a zero issue. Feels solid always, there was a very slight vibration when we had an Uber storm (90+mph winds) but that's all I'd say. You probably wouldn't have that in a block work house. We had no issues with getting a lender, we are with Barclays and house insurance and structural warranty no issue. SIPS is stiffer than purely timber framed so that may be less solid but I'm not sure. Self_build_ayrshire on Instagram if you want a look.

Too late to do an edit...... @Archer - you were the OP I think - and I know you said my post was useful, so please take note of the above second thoughts......

Change your block type, nothing in the world would make me use both inner and outer skins in thermalite blocks. if you must use them on the inside then there only. 100mm celotex in the cavity only just meats regs, you need to improve this somewhere. how will you fit lights in the flat roof area, does this need a service cavity. no mention of vcl in pitched roof. no mention of vcl in flat roof. on the pitched section insulated at rafter level, change the insulated plasterboard for normal celotex, fit this directly under the rafters, then service batten then normal plasterboard. Again no mention of vcl.

You could be describing our architect, and our experience with planning has been, perhaps partly as a direct result, a pleasant one. We did the actual house design ourselves, with a very carefully thought out aesthetic balancing our desires with what would look right in the street. Then that was drawn up and packaged by our architect, and I’m convinced that our application was received in a better light for coming from them than it would have been from us as individuals. So the usefulness of the hoary old whatsit role you describe I agree with, and I’d suggest that there are multiple sources of said experience.

Yes. This is it going on You can see the brushes we used to apply in this photo

Hi all My names Rich. im in the middle of a house renovation and extension. Im a chippy by trade so know my way around but its dealing with planners etc that spins my head 😂 Will be putting a post up about my trials a tribulations in a bit. All the best

Rats !! I could have saved that Alutrix money. 🙂

Thanks @LiamJones that's great to see the detail of the double eaves tray and deep flow gutter, looks like an excellent solution. I see you have EWI fitted - that's the next and last-ish of the big projects for me. Part of the roof refurb was to accommodate deeper soffits. I have lots of questions on this, but one thing at a time!

The differences are speed and certainty. With Full Plans the bco will bring up any obvious issues before you start. That might delay the start as you await approval, and dealing with any issues. but then you are pretty sure that it is going to go ok. With Building Notice you just start. If there are issues at inspection then you may have to stop, even undo or modify what is done. With both, there are inspections at key stage, so there is no difference in that regard. As a builder you will have met bcos, even if it was not your design responsibility. So you know that they are not designers. It is not their job to design the building and they are not insured to take that responsibility.. If a helpful one gives more advice then that is a bonus. It can be an issue if the inspecting officers don't agree, so you do what one wants and another disagrees....another reason for full plans. This confuses some people. But if you look at the building regulations (which you should already be doing) there is the statutory part ( in green at the start) and then the typical solutions. There can be different interpretations. Moral? if you absolutely know how things are done and don't mind the risk, then Notice is ok. Otherwise do the drawings and submit them all and await approval.

Hi MAB , Are you saying that you did building regs drawing for bco and is this mandatory? I've got an architect asking for £3750 just to add regs to my already approved by council drawings. Am I right in saying I can crack on without the architect and as long as I build to regs then bco will be happy without me using regs drawings? Also the link you added is a godsend, Thanks in advance

I have one of these, the aerona3 6kW using R32. Installed by a not-so-competent installer, emitters are radiators and there's a buffer tank. They offered to turn weather compensation off but I politely declined that ^^. Not sure what to tell you, it does the thing and isn't overly expensive to run. I'd prefer something with easy modbus integration for local control, but it's not a huge quibble.

Hi there, I only joined this forum to say thank you to the above member (@Europa) for the walk through! I had been having real trouble trying to get my Wunda underfloor system with Salus ABA's to work. Having read through the above and a couple of other posts, I noted three main things which helped me get the issues sorted: 1. The instructions are wrong (as Europa points out) and the LED's flash rapidly for the first 2 mins in calibration mode 2. You need to do the valves one at a time instead of doing all of them (5 in my case) at once 3. You need to be v patient (which I was not) and not just give up when they initially open and close again within a minute or so I rigged up a simple light switch on the live lead of each actuator and this allowed me to switch them off and on again independently whilst leaving everything else powered on. Honestly, the key is patience as Europa has pointed out. For me, I would say it took 20 / 30 mins + per actuator for it to be calibrated settled and working as expected. Below is what I did to get everything working as it should: 1. Rig up switch on each actuator 2. Set all actuator switches to off (in my case, this left all actuators in the closed position) 3. Get the system to call for heat 4. Make sure your flow has a decent heat (Mine was at about 50 deg) 5. Switch on the first actuator (LED flashes) for about 20 seconds, then off, wait 2 seconds and then switch on again 6. As above, after 2 mins, actuator LED flashing will slow and it will open fully 7. After about a minute, actuator will close (Don't get annoyed at this point) 8. Go away, leave it well alone for 20+ mins 9. When you come back, you should see that there is flow on the circuit 10. Leave the now calibrated actuator on and run through steps 5 to 8 for each of the other actuators in turn, avoiding the temptation to do more than one at a time 11. Leave the system for a couple of hours and you should find that it is then sorted and the valves as opening and closing to moderate flow I was making two main mistakes: 1. Not waiting for long enough and when the valve does it's initial open then close, I was thinking it was not calibrated properly and doing the procedure again 2. By trying to do all circuits at once instead of one at a time, I think I was letting the manifold temp drop too much and therefore messing with the calibration. Thanks very much for your help folks and I hope the above is of some use. I'm off to lie on my nice warm garage floor...

Well, it's been like watching paint dry today, but, with just one loop left, i think it's safe to say i have finally succeeded! WF did send me a new batch of actuators (and it's those that ive been using), but i don't think its that that's made the difference. I think the key is simply patience! But, for anyone who's interested, here's the procedure ive used: 1.Switch off flow to all loops. Then, attach and calibrate one actuator at a time, as below. 2. Attach the temp probes onto flow and return pipes 10cm from the manifold (as per instructions) and screw on actuators finger tight. 3. Power up actuators and the LED should then rapidly flash at ca. 4Hz (not 0.25Hz as stated in the instructions). 4. After just under two minutes, the LED will change to a slow blink and the actuator motor can be heard moving its pin to open the valve if its not already open. 5. After a short pause, the actuator motor will reverse to fully close the valve. 6. This is where the patience comes in. Next it opens the valve at tiny increments (not perceivable) to find the point of min flow in the flow pipe. This can easily take another 20+ mins, and its easy to think that the actuator is stuck, but don't give up! Eventually, the actuator will kick back into life and, with a slow flashing LED, reopen the valve fully. 7. Shortly after this it will move to stable operation and calibration will be complete. You can then switch off the actuator and it should close the valve fully. 8. To be on the safe side, i waited 40+ mins before switching off. Hope this helps others.

The 0.6 ACH per hour standard you're referring to is the tested rate at a given pressure difference between inside and outside. In practice, the amount of air that will be exchanged in such a house will be far below this. In still conditions and where the internal temperature is similar to the external temperature, there'll be very little exchange at all. The ACH per hour I'm talking about is the MVHR setting.

With 50mm pipe that would simply never happen, I've got scores of private jobs done that way and not one complaint. They're all turbo wastes too so have very high l/per/min discharge capacity ( so 1 1-2" ( 40mm ) waste would not suffice, even on its own tbh for anything other than a very very short run to soil ). NEVER tee the two showers together, these must go on their own runs. Combining those runs with basins is fine, but never two showers on the same pipe afaic. Teeing a bath into a run with a shower and basin is pushing it, but if you have sufficient falls between each item or a good continuous fall from end to end, even that will work with an 'all 50mm' run to soil. Tee off the 50mm with 50mm pipe for the shower, and run 50mm as far as you can before reducing to 40mm, and for the basin, reduce at the 50mm tee to 40mm and run 40 as far as the vertical rise to the basin BEFORE reducing to 1 1/4" ( 32mm ) which will guarantee you never get anything coming out of the shower. If reducing to 32mm at the vertical rise, do so with a 40mm elbow with a 32mm reducer in the top of it. The sooner you upsize the pipe, the sooner you get the 'air break'. Im not a fan of strap on bosses tbh. The ones I linked are all solvent for the wastes ( if you select the one you buy accordingly and ask for the solvent inserts as required ) and push fit on the 110mm side so are very forgiving, easy to fit and no dodgy huge holes to drill and de-burr and then try to line the boss up spot on to. Fwiw I use SOBosses but only where I can get at them, or, if I've no other choice ( like on an existing / retrofit where I cannot get to the pipe to alter it ) but then I want the boss cut into the top dead centre of the pipe. Inwould never design SOBosses into a job where all the connections are under the boards / inaccessible, as the ones I linked are just far better, easier to fit, and far more reliable IMHO