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I am sorry to say the whole house heating upgrade topic is being completely miss handled by the government. They think (at least this is the impression they give) just swap all the gas boilers for heat pumps and the problem is solved and we have all gone green. WRONG. The most fundamental issue with a very large amount of the UK house stock is the fabric of the houses are lousy, no or poor insulation and poor air tightness meaning they need a massive amount of heat to keep them warm. Easy to throw lots of heat into a house with a large gas boiler running on (what used to be) cheap gas. Not so easy ito do with a heat pump. Yes if you do the heat calculations a very large heat pump might work, but what about the radiator sizes? what about the hot water tank? What it the HP needs to be so large you need 3 phase but can't get it at your house? Offering £5K is just going to feed the cowboy "swap a boiler for an ASHP and do nothing else" brigade, result in a lot of poor installs that don't work, and give heat pumps a bad name (which many think they have already) WHEN are we going to tell the general public the truth? If you want your old poorly insulated house to go green, you are going to have to spend a LOT of money upgrading the fabric of the house first and properly insulating it, which will be costly and very disruptive. THEN it might be a good idea to heat it with a heat pump.

I have had 4 Mitsubishi LN A2AHP's installed roughly 2 months ago. they total 15.5kW output (2x5kW Kitchen and conservatory, 3.5kW in lounge and 2.5kW in main bedroom - we are in a bungalow 120sq/m). My heat load for the property is 12,500kw and water 2000kw. Until these were fitted I was running a pellet boiler for the past 7 years typical pellet cost was £1200pa I have been logging my daily running costs and room temps since the A2AHP's have been installed and comparing costs to pellets. From what I can see so far (only end Aug/Sep and uptown today) the running cost is averaging 79p a day (elec cost is19.3p/unit btw) Observations Temp set at 24c on all units (wife has illness needs high temp) all rooms in property achieve 23.5c or above. The airflow via the 4 units flows into other bedrooms, bathroom etc. I honestly thought we would need another small unit to balance the heat in all rooms but so far this clearly is not needed. running costs are very low in 65 days saved over £75 over pellets. Heat is far more comfortable than using boiler/rads stays very even No draughts or noise as always on they just tick over. Also the Mitsubishi LN units have a built in thermal camera that is used to detect people and can direct the airflow so that it doesn't blow on you (or you can set it to blow directly on you if you like) this also works as you move around the room really good feature. Down sides 4 units outside - you need the space for them or use a multi split unit ( I was advised against this as I had space - with one unit all internal units are on either heat or cool, with separate units you can mix and match eg 1 heating with 3 cooling etc etc. Also if one outdoor unit fails unlikely but possible the other 3 can continue to heat/cool) Cost wise only a few hundred quid between a multi split and 4 separate units. Water heating not possible with A2AHP - we have solar thermal and 10KW of PV so water heating is covered for us but something to consider if going this way. Below is a snapshot of my summary data I plan to continue to monitor for the full 12months and extrapolate the data to be able to predict my running costs based on outside temp eg 6 degree = £1.10 day, 12 degrees = 60p/day etc Feel free to ask any questions I will do my best to answer them.

I recommend the non-slip textured GRP tread covers for those steps. I fitted some to some knackered outside steps that I would otherwise have had to re-tile.

I find myself in the unusual position of articulating the climate alarmist position. If we accept the consensus view on global warming then by the end of the century sea levels could be 1 to 2m higher and the temperature 2 to 4 degrees higher than the pre industrial era. The alarmists also believe such a world will be ravaged by more extreme weather with hurricanes, fires, droughts, floods and agricultural failures on a biblical scale. Such a world would likely see 100's of millions of humans dying early in life and billions living in misery. The BBC wants me to believe the sky will catch fire as the world spontaneously combusts. Given such an outlook IB actions are rational. Based on current CO2 emission reduction progress we are unlikely to see net zero CO2 emissions eliminated within 50 years and global CO2 PPM will rocket towards 500. An emergency UK national insulation programme is the most effective route to reduce CO2 emissions by 2030. On balance which is more important, the death of a stroke victim or millions of avoidable deaths by the end of the century? But co2 ppm continues to rise. You are guilty of the same dishonesty you just alleged. You want to be in the cool gang of climate change alarmism but you are not prepared to enact the changes necessary to avoid a biblical climatic catastrophe that your gang predicts. I agree, most look like thrill seeking early retirees. They probably worked in the public sector in some clip board hugging role and have natural authoritarian tendencies.

Whew. I'm quite opinionated on this one. My *personal* view. The problems I have with Insulate Britain is that they are: 1 - Actively hurting the vulnerable in society by preventing patients getting to hospital, and impeding ambulances. And then publicly justifying it by stating - from the leadership down - that others' lives and health are a price worth paying because their cause and their opinions are so important. Here, for example, is a report of a stroke victim who was delayed for 6 hours in a traffic jam they caused, and ended up paralysed. There are multiple accounts of hospital patients being impeded. https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/mum-paralysed-stroke-after-m25-25015653 I don't care what they say, how much they know, or how important they think they are, bastards who do that belong behind bars for a very long time, or perhaps need to be sectioned. Were IB to be attacked by men with sticks and end up in hospital themselves with broken legs or broken heads, imo it would be pure poetic justice. 2 - IB are ignorant or dishonest, conveying misinformation. They claim, and try to convince people, that "nothing is being done". Actually the large ECO3 programme has been, and is still, running throughout - doing 100s of k of energy efficienccy measures. IB are preventing people looking for insulation, rather than helping. 3 - They tend to be privileged, narcissistic hypocrites We know that ER and IB trend middle-aged middle class, and are interfering with young families, older people, carers etc. Fine, some are goons who have been groomed into criminality; others are doing it willingly. But criminals deserve criminal sanctions. One of the four who smashed the windows of the city bank lives near me. 60 year old semi-retiree millionaire who lives in an old farmhouse (energy efficient?) renting out barn conversions (not very energy efficient ones - EPC 70) for up to £2500 per week. And takes it upon herself to wreck other people's lives on the basis of a set of arguments that are not even well-informed. Overall - beneath contempt. F

Too right, “insulate Britain “ is the right direction (even if they are pissing off the public by blocking roads!). YOU ONLY BUY INSULATION ONCE!

David Attenborough was saying this years ago, well not quite, he was saying that man ( over population) was the main problem for Earth. I did wonder if Covid was the planet trying to protect itself, the Gaia principle. ?

Don’t use a space heater - it will introduce moisture. Get a couple of big industrial dehumidifiers, turn them on and shut the doors.

Wilo Yonos 25/1-6 does around 3.3 cubic metres / hour on full so would expect it is closer to 2 on a normal setting. In 15mm pipe that would equate to around 3.2m/s flow rate.

Use a couple of bits of sacrificial timber and wedge between that. One thing that might work is beg, steal or borrow the biggest adjustable spanner you can. Slip it over the top of the bent plate and gently "tweak". The longer the lever the easier. Again put something under the jaws to protect the paint.

Yeah it was ‘bent’ before I put the treads in. Might try and knock a piece of timber in there to push it out

If anyone ever was wondering how unhinged their neighbours are, file a planning application.

The balustrade will bend to suit, don't sweat it. Other than that you'll need to jack between the bottom of the stringers.

Well, you can't do that can you? However the epc could be encapsulated and fixed in the plant room/next to the fuse box, and it could also say that Ferdinand built this lovely house in 2021 and gave a full maintenance manual to the owner. I tried this for a while, by summarising on an encapsulated A4, the building construction, eg the bricks are marley sussex, the tiles are redland xyz, and the insulation is 200 thick abc. the metal cladding came from..etc. and the epc is B+ . The client was not interested but did not object either. You can also direct the owner to the safety and maintenance manual which is both helpful to them, and there as a protection against future claims. Should have done it more often. Then maintenance manuals became compulsory and no need for the little notice.

too cheap. 2-3k now.

My favourite is "Council tax poverty" and it is the one household bill I can do NOTHING to reduce, no investing in insulation or switching providers possible.

Good wood glue and add sawdust, far better than any tub or tube stuff

Yes it will. The majority will be generated via renewables and some new nuclear. This should not come as a shock to anyone, it has been discussed, like Climate Change, for years. The people that need to do the work, not small builders and householder, but the infrastructure providers, know what to do, how to do it, and when it has to be done. None of this is an idea that popped into Boris Johnson's head last night. I also heard them talking about fuel poverty on the radio earlier. This really does need a proper definition. Many people still work on 10% of a household's wage. This is a nonsense number and was plucked from thin air I suspect. I am going to claim that most households are in 'vacation poverty', 'transport poverty' and 'gambling, fags and booze poverty'. I base that on nothing that prejudice and ignorance. But as a nation we are certainly suffering from 'educational poverty'.

There are various reports and predictions on that. Currently electricity demand is due to decrease for a few more years, then build up again. Whilst a smart grid is in the works and new electricity sources are coming on stream. Lots of moving parts.

My understanding is limited on heat pumps and the UK grid. Does the expected increase in heat pumps result in the need for much more electricity to be generated, how will this occur, whilst already trying to increase the percentage from renewables at the moment?

I agree, remember my saying use a drill with a slip clutch or it could break your wrist if it jammed, also a jar of oil to dip the bit into, large drills generate a lot of heat if not used slow and lubricated. p.s. That’s not Pocster’s place, too tidy for him ?????, I know, been there ?

Slow speed and lots of weight behind the drill. ohh and interesting big hole you have there sir, you should build a house in it

? I think sometimes it's just that people don't understand the difference between "efficient" and "effective", as it's possible (but by no means certain) UFH could be more effective than some aging and poorly placed radiators. But authoritatively equating this to achieving an ecohome (whatever that is) on primetime TV is lazy and irresponsible. My neighbour, a lifelong builder, was raving about this programme this morning. The desire to learn more is there, but entertainment TV does not sound the best teacher.

Or a terminology one, they should be called convectors, not radiators. I do hope that science lessons in schools start teaching this stuff, it is all very simple, little mathematics needed and could make a huge difference.

We had a low temp radiator system running off a heat pump in our last house. Radiators were a lot bigger (surface area) compared to the size required for gas/oil system. Pipework was IIRC 22mm ring with 15mm feeding each radiator. Microbore would in my view need replacing. The customer feedback above is I think a little misleading - unhappy with heat - what exactly do they mean? Are they are trying to use a HP system like a gas boiler only coming on for a couple of hours in the morning/evening? Living with a low temp system is very different to a gas/oil rapid response system.

Why would she have a survey done ..??? Sounds odd … I’d smile and say that you’ve done nothing near that wall and carry on. And buy her some flowers and say sorry for the inconvenience of skips / dust / etc and when you’re finished she can come round for tea and see what you’ve been up to…. In reality, if yours was a knackered semi that you have improved then it’s likely you’ve increased her property value not decreased it.

it is not even double stack. There is a table of delta-T compensation values that most rad manufacturers provide. Stelrad call them operating factors in their documents https://www.stelrad.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/stelrad_technical_info.pdf

Flow rate to rads is a function of the heat transfer and pump speed. I would just turn up the pump speed but the pipework won’t be a limiting factor. The pipework is just providing heat input. The issue here @Ferdinand is the rate of transfer of heat to the room which is a function of the delta T between radiator surface temperature and room temperature. It is also psychological issue as people think radiators need to be “hot” to work.

That is a smart move by the Government because it creates a more viable pathway to ASHP conversion in future years and will also also encourage some house designers to improve insulation rather than increase radiator size.

The ASHP will require new piping from the ASHP to the Buffer/UVC/Manifolds. I can't speak for all, but thought most domestic installations required 22mm. Microbore pipes to radiators will need replacing through. Regs next year set the max flow temp to 55° fro all new builds.

Round here all the schools and public buildings like swimming pools and leisure centres switched to biomass boilers about 10 years ago on the mistaken belief that was "green" If your house needs radiators to run at 70 degrees to get enough heat into it, then you are going to be disappointed of you just swap the boiler for a heat pump and do nothing else. A lot of these are piped in radial microbore systems so quite likely won't get enough flow for the radiators, assuming you have actually swapped them for larger ones. A lot of us keep saying, there is nothing wrong with heat pumps, but if you swap half the system without proper design then you ARE going to get disappointed customers and bad press for heat pumps.

Don't it work because it takes time to charge up the capacitor, this is what shifts the phase. I take it that the capacitor/s are after the transformer/s. Can you work out the RMS voltage?

Disappointing? In my view it was the worst, most misleading programme about making houses more energy efficient that I've seen.

We had a lot of hot air ducted heating systems installed in the 1960s/1970s that came out on skirting or floor vents. As children we loves sitting in front of the vents. Making a comeback?

Well I liked that house in a ruin. I think everyone on here is being a bit harsh, what the two of them achieved through their own hard graft and plucky determination was a massive credit to them. Self builder is a broad church. You have those who 'self build' and sub contract the entire job and at the other end of the spectrum there are those like @pocster, @epsilonGreedy (to name two I know of) and others on here who are balls deep in literally doing it themselves. I'm towards that end of the scale so to see what they achieved I for one am impressed and was happy for them. I thought the roof terrace will be great when finished. Good effort?

why so keen to get tiles so close? and surely using only one baton will mean you end up with ledges for water and general dust and crap to gather up on as there will be no route from top to bottom for anything to pass I know my house roof was done without cross batons and 20 years on the amount of rubbish that had gathered up on top side of batons was huge-and was damp half the year which could cause baton rot ?

Possible, yes. Our last house we had low temp radiator system running from a heat pump. There's nothing special about the radiators, other than they have to be a lot bigger compared to your usual gas or oil system. In our case they were roughly 4 times the size (surface area). Pipework feeding also needed to be 15 or 22 mm (sorry, can't remember which) - microbore simply would not work. Our system ran at a flow temp of 33C at 0C ambient, but that was a new, very well insulated house.

On a calm night. Close all the exterior windows and doors. Open all internal doors wide open. Turn off any other heating and log burner. Put a cheap 2kW electric radiator in the centre of the house. Allow the temperature to stabilise overnight. Take an average internal temperature and an external temperature in the morning. From here you will have a pretty good idea of your heat loss. If your external temp is 10 and internal 15. You will use 2000W/5deg or 400W/degree. Assuming worst case of -5 degrees 25*400w= 10000W or 10 kW Add a little safety factor for a windy night, say 25% and you should be able to get by with a 12.5kW heat pump minimum (excluding DHW) Remember oversizing heatpumps is generally a good thing as they will return a higher COP and defrost less often.

don't rush into this. heat pumps are expensive to install and expensive to run, more so on older buildings. You may be better off financially and heat wise with economy7 night stores. Heat pump install at circa 10-15k will pay for a lot of electric before you see any payback. Not to mention without thourghly insulating and having massive radiators (treble the size of normal ones) you will be cold.

Best do some heat loss calculations now you have improved the building to get a better understanding of the energy requirement to heat your home.

Circular saw with connected extractor or jigsaw with long blade. I've used both the standard cross-cut and ripping blades on the circular saw with no problems but I'm using a Festool HK85 which is a bit of a beast - no real clogging problems even without extractor. On the jigsaw I used Bosch T1044DP blades the fibres do fill the teeth but you've just got to intermittently draw back the blade. If using an extractor stock up on dust bags, they fill up like there's no tomorrow! Can't believe how many bags I've filled up but the remains are great for lighting fires ? I've been cutting 140mm and 60mm thick boards.

We have B&B on both floors of our house. Has Insulation and screed on top and plasterboard below. Never had any blocks crack or fall down. Love it for the solid feeling.

I've got no problem with you "cracking on", but this is a public forum and the correct info may be useful to others. This is a recent change that is not well known, and the maximum penalties are extremely harsh.

I used my standard circular saw with a coarse blade. It was very prone to blocking with dust, until I removed one side of the guard around the blade and took extra care.

As you can see we used steel lintels for the wide openings (2m) on the external leaf. All The narrower ones (1m) were standard 100x50 precast lintels. This really is a question for your structural engineer though. If I had my time again I'd avoid precast floors. You end up with a very thick floor ~450mm, the added expense of including a suspended metal ceiling. They're a PITA to core through for services. Installing them without guys making ribbons of any airtightness tray is nearly impossible. Despite requests and being on site they still crowbar the slabs back and forward over the plastic membrane.

Worked fine with PVC windows for us. I made angled 18mm OSB boxes after the windows were fitted and concrete screwed them to the inner leaf. No need to cut blocks just set back the inner leaf by 100-150mm depending on the angle you desire. In hindsight it would have been easier to build the boxes in as the walls went up.

I had a 200mm cavity but brick outer skin, I also had “check” reveals. This means the inner skin has a bigger width than the outer skin and the windows and doors are fitted to the inside of the outside wall. Mine was held in place by stainless brackets and expanding foam strip between the window and outer skin. (I also had angled reveals giving better light into the rooms and looked cottagey.)

Nice to see a tidy site. Never been a fan of those trainer style safety boots though.

???

This is @pocster we're talking about so I doubt it very much.