SteamyTea

"PLEASE ACCEPT MY RESIGNATION. I DON'T WANT TO BELONG TO ANY CLUB THAT WILL ACCEPT PEOPLE LIKE ME AS A MEMBER". G Marx

I think that is the way to go as it puts less load on the heating. If using timing only, it takes no account of of the load needed.

I still think they they don't need to spend anything like that. My phone now costs about £80 and probably does much more then most iPhones as it is an Android one. I had a friend who was a programmer about 30 years ago, she did not understand hardware at all, just some vague thoughts that her software had to runs on it. I think most housing lacks technology of all sorts, my car has more technology than my house. But we tend to place priorities on the wrong things. Lights and heating that work from a phone that is anywhere in the world is really a bit of a nonsense. They add nothing to your quality of life really, but would quickly take away from it when they fail. Then take kitchen appliances. Do I really need another digital clock on stuff, or a microwave that has 10 buttons and a couple of knobs. A cooker than can turn itself on when I am out. Really a case of planning ones life a bit better, not buying excess technology to cover every eventuality. Then finding out it does not work and you need to go to the Indian takeaway anyway. There was something mentioned about a vacuum cleaner on here somewhere. It had given two years trouble free use. WOW, does that may my 60 quid one that is now 12 years old 6 times better. My Aunt has a kettle with a variable temperature setting on it. What is that all about.

Do we know what temperatures the evaporators run at, I have -23°C in mind. If the air flow was faster though the evaporator, would that increase the temperature of the evaporator (of the fins really), helping to reduce icing. Would make for a noisier unit. Of course you can just get a larger ASHP and run it slower.

This serious, and possibly life threatening, wound was caused by technology. I dropped my phone behind the seat in the car, as I put my hand in to retrieve it, I caught the seat rail (thank goodness it was not electric) and maimed myself. This is a life changing injury, it has taught me to stop being a clumsy oaf (again).

I don't think that it is really possible to affect the local humidity as an ASHP draws in too much mass of air. Sticking one in the sun should help though as even at quite modest levels of direct sunlight will soon warm it up. Just think how easy washing steams on a cold day when the sun hits it. It may be useful, but would need experiments to find out, to blow air though the unit with the HP part turned off. If the HP part was stopped before freezing starts (should be easy to establish) then just pass ambient temperature air though, any condensation should evaporate, or get dislodged, fairly quickly.

@JSHarrisHow hard would it be to reprogram the unit to modulate the heat pump down a bit when it predicts the risk of frosting? Then it is just a matter of creating an algorithm (rather than a curve) that can control that for near enough all temperatures. Or it could just turn the heat pump off and let ambient temperature defrost naturally, may need a larger buffer tank though. Where @joe90 is not too bad for temperature and RH, so may not hit the frosting condition as often as you do.

The CH1 bottom floor temperatures seem to swing quite a bit. Can you plot floor temp against external temp to see the correlation better.

What goes on in the shed, stays in the shed!

That is an interesting problem @joe90 It is easy enough to make a sensor that can check temperature and RH, from that it is a simple calculation to work out the dewpoint temperature. Once that it known, and a few performance parameters of you ASHP installation, it is then just a matter of turning down the wick on the ASHP. I am not sure how easy that is to do, but probably not hard. I think @JSHarris ASHP has sensors already built in that can be used for this. SO other ASHPs probably have the same thing as it is pretty crucial to their performance (they need to know they are frosted up).

Hopefully you can open this and it makes sense. You will need to change the .txt extension to .dxf (can we change it to allow some CAD formats to be uploaded please). Basically a 8m by 4m two storey box. A little wider and I could turn the stairs around though 90° and stop the living room being a corridor. SteamyTea HouseDFX.txt

How have I managed to miss Node Red, seems my idea of making a fairly simple controller has already been done. Good, I hate all that poxy coding.

I come from a disgustingly long lived family too Takes that long to do just a bathroom, ask OnOff

Rather than pay out for a new boiler/ASHP, have a look at reducing your heating load first. Ideally you should be doing this anyway. So look at adding extra loft insulation and fixing any air leaks around windows and doors. I spend less than £200 on a few very basic improvements and have, over the years, reduced my annual usage from just under 12 MWh to just under 4 MWh.

Why not just sell up and rent?

Do they charge fees for this fantastic service? As they say in 'All The Presidents Men'. "follow the money"

I find things inside the house generally not a problem (I am small, fit, lithe and agile). But stuff outside is a real pain. Painting or maintenance mainly. So think about putting up scaffolding and ladders, how do you work over a porch. Shame that fixing points can't be built in, that a cantilevered work platform can be fixed to, is not standard. And never fit anything that is not a standard size. My bath is a bit smaller than most, and now it is going to cost a lot to change it.

Shall see what I can knock up later.

Just going to say welcome. And as an engineer, a house is a piece of cake, they don't have to land at 180MPH, at night, in the wet, with a cross wind...

Why not go for WiFi, gives you good flexibility and commercial kit is pretty robust. Easy to take with you and reuse somewhere else if the office gets closed down. to A lot of it also depends on the hardware setup. If you are going for up to 10 desktop PCs, that is a lot of heat being generated, and a lot of noise. Why not laptops with better monitors, keyboards and mice. Or, and I am not sure of the proper term, but thin clients or dumb terminals. Everything seems to be going via the cloud these days.

What, a plan of my house?

Interesting. My house is 3.5m wide inside, that 'narrow' house in the drawing is 2.9 m wider. Not what I would call a narrow site.

Joe I am sure you mentioned having a holiday there 10 years ago, why you asked to use it again as it was so nice.

This is really down to the price of energy in my opinion. The easy thing to work out is the capital cost of different systems, and the relative complexity of them. If you want the whole house heated, then yes, a 'single' system is probably the best. But, if you live a 'disjointed' life, i.e. different people living to different timetables, then a more controllable zoned system may be better. Also, as you have probably found out, there is a big difference when the sun comes out, if only briefly. That happens a lot where you are (usually, this last summer was very odd).