SteamyTea

Mate of mine, who lived in a large 9 Man Artic Army tent, used a free standing kitchen from Idea. Worked well.

Do you know who the architect was. Maybe a search on the planning portal may reveal a drawing with the architects name on it.

Like these on the Spax wedsite. https://www.spax.com/uk/products/stainless-steel/flat-countersunk-head/stainless-steel-screw-4-x-35-mm-200-pieces-partial-thread-flat-countersunk-head-t-star-plus-t20-4cut-stainless-steel-a2-4197000400356/pid-2255/

It is the Carnot Cycle Heat Engine principles. The electrical energy that you put into a heat pump just drives a compressor, fan and a water pump, the rest of the energy comes from cooling the air though the external heat exchanger. If you cool a mass of anything, it releases energy, how fast you do it is the power. Energy is measured in joules [J], power is in watts [W]. A watts (not Watt, as that was the man) is 1 J.s-1. If the ambient air is very cold, i.e. close to the temperature of the external heat exchanger, very little energy can be extracted, and what can be extracted takes along time, which is more electricity to drive the compressor, fan and pump When the compressor control gear senses these conditions, it turns on a very basic electrical resistance heater, this drops the efficiency to just below 1 i.e. more energy is going into the ASHP tan is coming out. Another way to think of it is as a lever with a moveable pivot point. When conditions are idea, a lot of mass can be moved with one stroke, when they are suboptimal, many strokes, of a small mass have to be used. So basically the compressor is spinning without compressing the refrigerant gas much, the air fan is at full speed, but little energy can be extracted from the cold air as it is almost at equilibrium with the expanding refrigerant gas in the evaporator. Luckily these conditions never last long in the UK (I expect not many people will complain about their ASHPs now that air temperatures have risen 15°C).

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/No3-4-6-8-10-12-A2-Stainless-Steel-Slotted-Flat-Countersunk-Wood-Screws-DIN-97/322452558445 There you go, I just used wood bolts in the search.

Pikey

It is the same joke I heard in the mid 70s about a pickled penis.

With all the fuss about flammable cladding on buildings, is it really worth doing if you want to resell. It does not matter what the rules say you can and cannot do, it is the toxic element in the buying publics mind that counts.

Most domestic ones are 2 kW, 3 kW will melt the plug and socket. I got a nice 400W one from the range, keeps the place warm in the shoulder months.

Yes, I can see it is a bit confusing. The external air temperature is constantly varying, what we know as weather. But inside the heat pump is a controlled environment, known gas volume and pressures, this leads to a constant temperature being produced (based on the ideal gas laws PV/T). So almost regardless of what the external air temperature is doing, once the cold liquid refrigerant that is pumped into the outside heat exchanger, the bit with the air fan, warmed up a bit and changed into a gas, recompressing it back to a liquid will produce the same set temperature, time and time again. It is this temperature that has to be significantly higher, or it will take a very long time to heat the water that is used for space heating or DHW. Heating is not a linear process, as temperatures get closer to each other, the time taken to transfer energy increases. This is why, if you leave the lid off an electric kettle, it will carry on boiling till it is dry. It is trying to heat the whole kitchen to 100°C. So imagine that, on the cold side of the heat pump, the gas is initially expanded, cooling as it does so, to say -30°C. As it passes though the external heat exchanger, it warms up to say 10°C on a hot day, or only to -5°C on a cold day. This 15° difference makes only the slightest temperature difference to the recompressed gas which may have a temperature of say around 70°C. But it does vary the efficiency. It is never possible to get your DHW (realistically the highest temperature you need) higher than that 70°C, and the last 10°, from 60°C upwards could take hours, so this is why heating it to a lower temperature, say 50°C is preferable. There will be a sweet spot, for any given external temperature, where you can heat the water to. This is a bit more complicated than purely a ratio between temperatures. This is because (with modern 'inverter' ASHPs) the mass of air that is allowed to flow though the external heat exchanger is constantly varied. Slow flow and more energy is extracted from the air, high flow, less energy is extracted, this is exactly the same as what happens with the internal flow rates around the plumbing system. There are two reasons to vary the air flow rate, one is keep the temperature difference between the cold and hot sides of the refrigerant gas at a maximum, and the other is to stop icing up. This is a bit of a balancing act, but usually works fine, though in the recent cold snap, some ASHPs have totally cut out, and other have frozen up, but it was extreme weather for the UK and we probably don't have the same set ups as they do in Canada, Sweden, or Japan. Possibly the second image may explain it a bit better. Worth noting that, as I said earlier, temperature and energy are not the same thing, though they are related.

From my second favourite film. http://www.geocities.ws/sbmoviemp3/mp3/wank.mp3

That looks like something @pocster uses at the Thursday threesomes.

His PI, or the Architects PI may still be valid, and have you had a word with Building Control? They were helpful when I was down there.

No. The ground will rarely get above 12°C, so even if air temperature is higher, you will still be loosing energy heating the mud. You can save cash or all those expensive 'nice to haves', posh kitchen (with or without island/breakfast bar), over the top bathrooms, expensive staircases, expensive glazing etc. All that can be replaced at a later date when finances are different. Design an airtight, well insulated, box with the internal walls where you want them. Make sure your thermal bridging is kept to an absolute minimum, design in the MVHR at the very beginning, so make sure the build is as airtight as possible (even if you do an interim test), fit UFH pipework, but maybe run it off a simple Willis heater, see what @TerryE and other have done, keep the plumbing and wiring simple, but maybe run ductwork for extra cabling later. Internal doors can start off cheap, then put a posh one in every year. Keep an eye on the professional fees, and make sure you are not in for any surprises i.e. connecting to services, ground conditions, storm drainage, environmental reports/mitigations etc, You can loose £50k on those alone @ToughButterCup was keeping a spreadsheet on these costs. Just keep it all very basic, but allow for easy upgrades later. Research all you can. Then do some more research. Only use a friend if you want to get rid of them, and they are well insured.

If I recall correctly, it is 55 outgoing and 54 on the return. If that is correct, it sounds like the pipes are just floating in a void, or well insulated. I think with the NHBC, you have to give the original builder the opportunity to sort the problem, then you have to argue with the NHBC, and loose your claim. You may find it does not cover heating system anyway.

Steam gets it off.

Those will be the ones that happen every 20 years now.

What I used this morning.

Welcome. As you have a top floor flat, you also have roof losses to contend with. But roll the carpet up and stand it up in a corner. Much of this will be a detection game. I had a holiday home in Turton Street. Wish I had kept it till the Olympics came along. No one thought that Weymouth would host the sailing in 1990.

I would be happy if my plastering was that good. Tried it 3 times, 3 total failures. I hate wet trades.

Welcome. Not sure where to start with explaining this. Heat is not temperature. Heat is the old word for energy. So don't worry, at this point about temperature differences too much. As your whole house is new, there will be a lot of mass that will absorb energy, without changing temperature significantly. There will also be a lot of moisture being evaporated, and this, by the very nature of physics, takes more energy than just heating up liquid water (air pressure and humidity levels make a difference as well). If you can, check that the ASHP is not short cycling. This may be a bit hard to establish from indoors if the circulation pumps are constantly running. As a general rule, energy transmission is most efficient at the median temperature. So if the flow is at 29⁰C, the return at 20⁰C, the slab should be, on average, at 24.5⁰C. This does not translate into the room air being at the same temperature as there are losses through the building fabric. Inside the heat pump there is a heat exchanger that takes the hot side of the heat pump and 'passes' the energy to the colder side, the flow to the slab. Generally, you do not have much control over how hot, or cold, the hot side of the heat pump is, that is a function of the refrigerant gas and the fraction of the Carnot cycle used. But as a general rule, you want the flow and return median temperature to be significantly higher than the highest flow temperature going to your space heating and hot water.

Nothing to do with Zoot's extension.

Yes, isn't that what I said. Yes, that is what bolting is. Are they screws or bolts, or hybrids.