SteamyTea

Wrap the joint in composite plastic. A vacuum bagged and autoclaved wrap of carbon fibre should outlast most of us.

Sounds like you have normal condensation problems. Really a matter of how far you are willing to go to solve it. First things though, are there any problems with drains, downpipes, gutters, window sealing, roof, walls etc that may be allowing water into the house? Assuming there are not any, then it is a matter if controlling the ventilation. As a house can be thought of as a box, the less air that can escape it the better. The problem is, people breath out and sweat water vapour (about 2 kg a day each). If that water vapour is not removed, it will condense on the first surface it finds where the temperature is below the dew point temperature. This is usually windows, so quite visible. Thing is, not all the vapour will condense, some will work its way through floors and ceilings (generally via holes and gaps) where it can condense into timber joists, unnoticed. This is where the real problems start as rotting can happen. Old fashioned thinking was to allow cold, lower humidity air from outside to, in effect, carry the excess moisture away. Modern thinking is to contain the moisture laden air inside the building, then mechanically extract it. This is done with a vapour control layer, which is just a plastic sheet to keep the air in, an airtight bag if you like. Because it is airtight, and people are inside it, eventually the air needs replacing. This is why trickle vents were fitted to windows, and air bricks, now we fit fans, and some of those fans have heat recovery on them. So to sum up. Old method was to allow uncontrolled ventilation, haphazardly installed by the builder i.e. holes and gaps, so lots of air changes when windy, none when hot and sultry. New method is to have controlled ventilation which is at the correct rate to stop condensation and keep the air fresh. Simple really.

Not claiming 15⁰ is the minimum, but in the couple if flat roof installs we did, that is what I set the angle at. Both of them were easy to clean anyway. On the West (wet) side of the UK, setting modules flat has the benefit that in cloudy days they perform better than optimally angled modules. Only a small difference though.

I have played around with LISA and SolidWorks, but on here, it is usually a spreadsheet. The basics of thermal modelling are pretty simple, just areas, material conductivities and temperature gradients, plus ventilation. Where it starts to get complicated is where water vapour starts to condense, especially true when drying out a new building, or renovating an old one. The other thing people are interested in, is energy storage within the fabric of the building. This opens up a can of worms as some believe that adding more mass is better than lightweight structures where just the air is heated (or cooled). The waters get muddied when energy prices and CO2e are included. Solar Gain, which in most of the UK at least, has not been much of an issue, is starting to be thought about because of better insulated and airtight buildings, and Architects love of large windows. The usual mitigation method is to add blinds, reflective films or air conditioning. I usually find it easier to do a statistical model and then decide if there is a serious problem, or a very small problem. I would hardly want to pay out a few thousand to solve a problem that may only last a week, especially if it only happens every few years (had our very first extreme heat warning, where I am, 50°N, 5°W, ever last year, got to 26°C). Hardly a real problem.

I like the clock. Did you take the reflectivity and absorption of the glass into account, or just treat the window as an opening? You may find you are in great demand for thermal modelling.

Good stuff, just wait till @Adsibob reads this. Only GCSE stuff, just a case of learning the SI and SI derived units. At least you will be able to work out thermal inertia and hopefully explain it better than I have.

A few weeks back yes. Since then, not much rain. Today we had loads this morning, a proper SW amount.

I have been amazed about the lack of reports of modules coming off roofs. They do have a second line of defence in that the cables should stop them hitting the ground. I did see a ground mount system where just plain washers and nuts where used, thermal expansion and contraction and 'wind rattle' had loosened them. The installer thought that someone had undone them in advance of stealing then. But it wasn't. He went back the next day with Nylocs.

One of the problems with very shallow angles <15°, is dirt build up. Rainwater just starts to stick to the modules.

Do you mean this product, rather than any Medite product. https://mdfosb.com/en/products/medite-vent

Comes about from the MCS rules. If I remember correctly, 200mm from top and sides, 100mm from bottom. But may be more as the rules change. Wind and snow loading calculations should be done as well. Should be something on the MCS website.

Maybe something is introducing something that should not be there i.e. leaky gas boiler flue.

Going to follow this as I want to make my Mother a grab rail by her front door.

What are you doing for climate control and energy recovery? There have been some studies that show the workforce mood is improved if you let them open and close windows. It gives the impression they have some control, though I would not want to work in an office, in winter, with 2 women going though the change. If the temperature swing don't get to me, the wrestling would.

Drill and fit a real plug maybe. Or change the decor for the first time since the early 1980s.

You can usually find manufacturers charts to show the power output at different temperatures. Or just halve it as a rule of thumb. What you really need to do is a room by room heat loss calculation. Then you know the correct sizes needed. What are if science did you study?

Because you get a temperature gradient over the height of the storage cylinder (mine is about 25⁰C once settled), you may find circulating the water within the cylinder stores a usable amount of energy. Note I say usable. DHW and space heating water is of little use once below 30⁰C, but 500 Lt at 60⁰C is very useful.

That is the French for you. They have been using this line for at least a decade. Same line that petrolheads use about BEVs. It is bollocks and I don't even enter it that conversation anymore with them. Show they all the life cycle analysis and they will still not believe it. Not may people use them, most are evacuated tubes. Go to PVGIS and play about. Regarding You could be setting yourself up to fail, then blame the ASHP. Calculate it all correctly first, don't take a guess, or worse, an opinion.

Welcome. There are a few foolish enough to build/have built in Devon. Have you got planning? Forget about actual certificated standards, easy enough to build to a high standard of airtightness and insulation. Just a case of thicker insulation and filling joints and holes. No magic involved.

It is entropy. Thermal energy, in the context of liquid water heating, is quite disordered, so higher entropy. Electrical energy is much more ordered, so lower entropy. Lower entropy to higher entropy sit in the better (more efficient) corner of the Carnot Cycle. Efficiency calculations become a bit tricky when looking at renewable energy. If you calculate the area of land needed to supply just enough energy to heat a known quantity of water, a fixed number of kelvin, then ST looks impressive. But if you look at time a ST system sits doing nothing, maybe 22 hours a day in the summer, and compare that that what a PV system can do i.e. heat the water in say 3 hours, then help run the rest of the house for another 10 hours, you get a much better utility return. PV is now cheaper, simpler and more reliable. Roof integrated PV is a similar price to roof slating.

Success Planted 26 April, so 14 days. Time for the slug pellets.

Sum of Price of components times number of them. Easy.

Thankfully I don't have PV, it would just be powering my neighbours 500 W external flood light. Odd as she is in all day and night and never seems to notice it.

Welcome. Looks similar to my old place in Aylesbury. Is that mould growing around the downpipe above the porch? If it is, get that sorted tomorrow. If reroofing, and the orientation is suitable, roof integrated PV is worth looking at. Not as if you see the roof from the ground. Chimney may be a problem, but they usually are. Consider what you want to do with it. Insulation will almost certainly be internal, so that is the time to sort out the airtightness around joists. Or the problematic area as it is known. Heat loss, condensation and external water ingress do not sit well together in older buildings. Ask 10 people on here and you will get at least 20 answers. Good luck with living with the dust.

Michael Jackson is helping to push up daiseys. But Freddy Mercury killed pansies.