Caddy

No it doesn't.

Dave, I think the original use for my house was an apple store and it was made to be a cold as possible (maybe a daft statement). The house /barn has been converted into 2 small cottages in the past sometime but is over 200 years old. I only have 4 windows and one door. All the windows are on the north side of the house and you see where they have been retro-fitted in the past. I had the stove serviced by a HETAS approved sweep, with new bricks, riddle grates, throat plate and door seal. I have a porch over the one door and cannot fit external insulation as it's in a conservation area and I don't want to being honest, it would spoil how attractive the house is. In the heat of this summer when 37°C outside, my living room was 17°C only with no type of mechanical cooling. Nice is summer, but cold in winter. Apart from digging up the floor and insulating and relaying and possible internal insulation on walls I don't think there is much more I can do. It's a small place and internal insulation would reduce already small rooms even more. As I said I don't mind it being a bit cold, I'm just trying to improve it a little bit.

I curently have a Highlander 5 (5kW) wood burning stove as the only source of heat in my small cottage. The stove is in the living room (5mx5m, low ceiling) but that has an open staircase to the upper floor. The house has thick stone walls, fairly new double glazing, good loft insulation but that's about it. The house also has solid floor downstairs and literally sits in a stream. The house is pretty cold (very cold to other people) and even with the fire roaring I never got the living room up past 16°C last winter. I'm not bothered about being cold but it does stop other people from wanting to visit (good and bad with that). My DHW is currently from a direct vented cylinder that is mainly powered from my PV and Eddie diverter. If the sun doesn't shine I just put up with cold water, I don't think I've turned the immersion on from the mains yet. I was thinking about getting a bigger stove to help heat the living room in winter a bit better and indirectly the rest of the house. I started looking at stoves and saw some with boilers which got me thinking. I could install a small wet heating system, I would need 2-3 rads and towel rail and upgrade the HWC to a vented cylinder with a heat coil to use some of the energy from the fire to top up the water. I see a lot of the modern boiler stoves are say 2kW room to 8kW water for modern very insulated houses but some still do a more 5kW room 5Kw water. So, my situation would be: Day, still no heating (unless I put on the fire), hot water from whatever spare from the Eddie provides from PV. Night: light fire to heat living room, boiler stove also heats some hot water for rads upstairs and tops up hot water. Better than last winter anyway. I know it would not be a conventional system but should this work? I would need a pump for the CH hot water and can I treat the DHW tank like another rad in the system or would it need like an S-plan system with a couple of 2 port valves? I don't want a complicated system, just if the fires on a get a bit of extra heating and HW from the boiler. Thanks (wouldn't be fitting this myself by the way, I'd get somebody in).

I think my problem with engineered wood is that they mainly only come in standard sizes i.e. 1981mm high. My door needs to be 1918 which is a 62mm difference and the engineered doors have ~15mm strips for trimming. A lot of places doing the solid wood doors are made to order anyway and they can reduce the height easily. I'll keep looking as I have nothing against engineered doors but I've not seen one in the size I need.

I'm looking for a stable door for the porch on my old cottage and was thinking to go solid oak for looks and hopefully durability. Is solid hardwood still the way to go or are composite doors more popular these days or something with a better U value than wood? I've seen this company and can get the custom sized door I need for ~£900 with prime grade oak and oiled finish. Anybody used this company or could suggest any others? https://wittswood.co.uk/quality-hardwood-products/stable-doors/exterior-stable-door-53-69-131-detail Any advice appreciated.

Bit late on this but I had the 9 of the same panels (390W Trina) fitted with Growatt Inverter for £5200. The panels are around £100 each so £8900 seems expensive to me.

I live in a small (60m²) stone built cottage in the Somerset coutryside. There is no mains gas (in the whole village) and heating is currently either a solidfuel stove or electric convection heaters. I am trying to decide whether to go down the route of installing a ASHP, potentially trying to get it in before the RHI deadline (a silly idea I know). The house is poorly (I think) insulated being solid (about 0.5m thk) stone walls and solid floors, but I think being so small it would not take a lot to heat. I made a start on increasing the insulation, replacing the tatty loft insulation with 100 PIR (got a load cheap) with 170mm normal loft inslation on top. I will also be insulating some internal walls where it do not make too much of a change in room size. I think the house is fairly air tight as there is only 1 door, covered by a enclosed porch, and 4 pretty small windows. The only other penetrations to the walls are 1 x soil pipe, 2 x waste pipes and 1 x extractor fan. I have checked these for leaks and they seem ok, although I will replace the extractor with something more modern I think. I also have a 3.5kW solar PV system on my south facing roof. I'm thinking of a simple system, just a rad in each room (4 or 5 depending if I put one in the kitchen) with no UFH or DHW from the heat pump. I have minimal HW requirements and either the PV heats the water or its cold if its cloudy, I'm not too bothered. An hour on the immersion heats enough water for me to have a bath normally anyway. The house averages about 11-13°C internal temp at the moment. This is fine for me and I only put the stove on if it gets below 10°C but this low temp must be bad for the buildings fabric and increasing the risk of damp and mould. It is also pretty uncomfortable for any guests who normally don't like to live as cold as I do. I would only be wanting the rooms to be around 17-18°C, as 20-21°C feels far too hot to me. Do you think I am a good candidate for using ASHP for heating? I think I would need a small compact system and I can keep the flow temp down pretty low as no DHW heating and low requirement for room heating, so hopefully should get a good COP. I can install the rads and pipework myself (sized correctly) and any of the monobloc that I'm allowed to do to try and keep costs down. Would shooting for the RHI be advisable or wait for the "grant" from April onwards? Any advice appreciated.

Got another quote from a different plumber. If I supply the new tank, drain down the old one and remove the header tank myself, he will fit and commision new tank for £400+vat. He said it would be an easy install as all pipes are in the right vacinity and its HW only (Direct). That's more the price I was thinking it would cost. Very tempted now.

If I do get a new unvented hot water tank is there any way to measure the temp of the water inside? Are there wifi enabled sensors that can track the temp at several depths maybe? This site has unfortunately got me tracking every Watt I generate and use and next on the list might be tracking my HW usage and temperature. I thought I'd read something somewhere that some tanks come with pockets (?) that can have sensors attached. Did I dream this?

I've done pretty much the same. 100mm PIR in a strip down the middle where I have flooring and 100mm+170mm loft insulation towards the eves where I don't need the height. Seemed the best comprimise to me at the time.

Thanks Dave.

Hello I have a question about meters and CU for Economy 7 tarifs. My E7 meter has a 3 tail output into a twin 100a switch unit. This then feeds 2 tails each to the main CU and what I pressume is an E7 only CU with only MCB's for an immersion element and a storage radiator. Does this mean when the E7 period starts only the secondary CU is fed at E7 rates and the main CU is still at "day" rate? Or does the total output from the meter change and both CU are running on E7 rate? Hope that makes sense. Thanks

I think the building was pretty conventional barn to start with, it's the "conversion" that was interesting. Built next to the mill stream Corridor through building to get access to my front door. I have a single glazed window into said corridor...? I think this was the original door to my half of the building. You can see my neighbors front door with wellies outside. I think my original door was bricked up kind of when they added the porch to the back instead.

Hello All I have made a few posts on this forum and thought it only polite to do an intro. I have moved into a 2 bed cottage in the countryside in August. It has been rented for the previous 20+ years and needs some maintenance and renovation. I will mainly be asking for some advice on improving my DHW and heating situation. Situation when I moved in: Small 2 bed cottage, 1 upstairs bathroom and 2 bedrooms, livingroom and kitchen downstairs. Thick solid stone walls but no insulation, slate roof with tatty 100mm of insulation in loft, ground floor is I think old flagstone covered in concrete skim and carpet. Property (and village) not on gas network. HW from direct vented system with electric shower. HW tank 2 immersion elements, bottom one on E7 (no timer) and top one manual switch. No boiler or wet central heating. Multifuel stove in livingroom and 1 old looking storage radiator in livingroom as well, not turned on. Convection heaters on wall in both bedrooms and bathroom. I live on my own and I work from home but a light user of electricity normally. Laptop use and cooking, washing up and shower daily. The house sits next to a mill stream with the stream virtually touching the foundations. Situation now: 3.6kW Solar PV system fitted a week ago, which powers the house during the day and heats my hot water (when solar is available). Top immersion element connected to E7 and water heated for last hour before day rate. Eddi diverter connected to bottom immersion element to soak up any spare kW during the day. This seems to be enough HW for me so far. Cleaned out all the old insulation in the loft and the dead mice and mouse s@*t. Replaced over my bedroom with 100mm PIR I got cheap from a mate who had bought too much with 170mm of loft insulation on top. Rest of the loft with 270mm loft insulation. New insulated loft hatch. Near furture: Connect second output on Eddi to towel rail in bathroom. Might get a bit of spare heat on the odd sunny day and will probably use timer a couple of times a day to try and stop any mould developing. Bathroom to be renovated next year. Try to reduce humidity. Currently normally in 70%+ range. Might be difficult with foundations sat in a stream (about 1.5m below floor level). Not sure how to do this, so probably a dehumidifier for the short to medium term. Try to figure out how to heat the house, but mainly my office (2nd bedrrom) during the day. I don't mind the cold and currently 12° as I write this and multifuel stove on a night if I can be bothered ligting it. 15-16° would be fine for me, always lived in cold houses. Electric rads, MVHR, not sure really. Any advice appreciated. Internal insulation on some walls. Can't go crazy as the rooms are small anyway but some internal walls are single skin brick backing into an un-heated access corridor through the house (strange layout). Not sure on best method. Remove plaster and dot and dab insulated plasterboard or battens and PIR/mineral wool inbetween? There is cold bridging everywhere. Check for air tightness. Potentially change HW system to un-vented cylinder to get rid of electric shower or keep vented system and fit inline pump for hot water. The tan I think the building was originally an apple store for a nearby apple mill and was probably built next to the stream to keep cool and dark. There are only 4 windows and 1 door in the property so getting a decent level of airtightness should be possible. The house does feel cold. It was nice in the summer when it stayed cool but it currently feels colder inside than outside on most days. The windows are all north facing so not much solar gain availible. Sorry for the long post,. An all electric house for HW and heating is the expensive option at the moment (my decent current tariff runs out in Feb, gulp) and any ideas for making this house as efficient and cost effective as possible would be much appreciated.

@SteamyTea I agree with how you advised to set up my system and that is installed. The PV is fitted and the diverter is wired to the bottom element and the top element is fitted to the E7 feed. As suggested I would like to fit a timer to this secondary feed to turn on for the last hour of E7 to heat the top of the tank for the morning and let the PV heat the rest during the day if there is spare. I purchased a fused spur with built in electronic timer to control this but I may have run into a problem. My E7 comes from a split feed meter and the E7 feeds into a secondary smaller CU with 2 mcb's, for 1 HW element and 1 storage radiator and I pressume only comes live after 12am. Am I correct in thinking this would mean the timer would be running from the battery back up for 17 hrs a day to retain the time programing? The timer is a Timeguard FST77 and it says the built in battery retains the programs for 720 hrs, but I'm not sure if it's designed to be used in this way, going on to battery backup every day. Maybe a mechanical timer would be better?

The only potentially awkward part of this install could be routing of the drain for the pressure valves to the outside. I could do this myself in advance to save time (and money). Is this just a run of solvent weld jointed 20mm plastic pipe? I know it has to be to a low level drain so you are not potentially shooting hot water out of an upstairs drain and burning someone.

I think it's worse than that. I could get a quality 200l tank for ~£500 easily. No central heating connection required, HW only direct. The quote is so high it makes me think they don't want the job and so priced it to fail.

Just got my first quote for an Joule 200l unvented direct cylinder fitting, £2800. Looks like it will be vented and and pump after all. Wow....

Wonder is this one is dumb enough? https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/epph5w/electriq-epph5w?refsource=apadwords&mkwid=sl5VMKE2X_dc&pcrid=444691871515&product=EPPH5W&pgrid=101649716086&ptaid=pla-840173355027&channel=googlesearch&gclid=Cj0KCQiAys2MBhDOARIsAFf1D1doTUTYmvlbiuYfXgMEwJCQwUOCDByAq1RZ8sumAb7JISkFddn9MHIaAuVmEALw_wcB#!#maindesc No mention of Lot 20.

Just had a quick chat with tech support at Myenergi about this. The problem seems to be new electric equipment having to be Lot20 complient. and the use of open window sensors and other modern energy saving tech in these heaters. This equipment need a 240v constant feed for the heaters to work and it would be rare to get this from the spare solar PV. The Eddi would work with older heaters with mechanical thermostats and timers that work with a purely resistive load. I think this is what someone mention to me before in another thread. The Eddi can be made to run with electric underfloor heating though still apparently. Some things are currently not Lot 20 complient like towel rails. Maybe I just fit a towel rail in my office, lol.

Thanks for the quick replies. I think I'm a pretty low level energy user. I live on my own and even though I work from home my laptop and monitor don't seem to consume much. On the basic smart meter unit my base level during the day is 1p/hr currently (no heating on). I have one shower, so I don't think I'm a heavy water user either, so I'm not sure if the immersion will absorb all the spare, time will tell I suppose. Something like what ProDave has as some low level heating in the room I work in would be ideal if there was some spare after the immersion.

Hello I'm having a Solar PV system installed next week. Part of the system is to have an Eddi to divert any surplus to my immersion heater. The Eddi seems to have 2 output feeds and I was wondering if the other could feed to some kind of electric heater? Or is it only possible to feed some electric underfloor heating as shown on the Myenergy website? I have an all electric heated house (no main gas or oil) and trying to figure out if the PV can be used to heat my house in some way. One old storage radiator and several convection heaters do not make for cheap electric bills. On another thread someone mentioned that modern storage radiators probably cannot be charged with PV this way due more complex electronic controls.

@SteamyTea I read some of your posts about not bothering with an unvented cylinder and just using a pump and it got me thinking. I don't have heavy HW demands at all and the purpose of the unvented tank was going to be at least 80% just about water pressure so I could remove the electric shower. I'm thinking of removing the bath and just having a nice shower. The bathrrom needs updating sometime and whatever I do with the HW is with that re-furb in mind. Both replies have emphasised the need to insulate and make air tight first before deciding on energy requirements of a heating system. I agree with this, and I'm currently starting on this already. Insulation levels are bad but I think the house is pretty airtight. There are only 4 windows and 1 door. The windows are double glazed and the door is wooden but has a small covered in porch over it that stops direct wind ingress. The porch is only single skin brick and single glaze windows though so I might do some improvement to this area as well. The only insulation is about 100mm of dirty mouse crap covered loft insulation. I'm stripping all this out and I have sourced some cheap 100mm PIR from a local for between the ceiling joists and will add 170mm loft insulation over that, trying to be careful about ventilation. The walls have nothing and I'm a bit wary of reducing the room size of an already small cottage too much. I also a bit worried about stopping the building breathing if I insulate too much as the walls are stone and lime mortar construction. Maybe some wool based insulation and Fermacell boards would still breathe? Is it worth worrying about insulating the stud partition internal walls or is this overkill? The ground floor would be the next task but that seems a pretty big job. I would need to did up the living room and kitchen floor and lay some PIR with a floating floor maybe. Would need to consider if then would be a time to fit under floor heating or if its necessary. I don't like a too warm house. Questions, question, always more questions. Thanks for the replies so far.

Hello All I have only recently found this forum and have been reading the posts with great interest. I have just moved into a 2 bed cottage in the countryside in need of some renovation and some advice on my DHW and heating situation would be appreciated. Current situation: Small 2 bed cottage, 1 upstairs bathroom, livingroom and kitchen downstairs. Thick solid stone walls but no insulation, slate roof with tatty 100mm of insulation in loft, ground floor is I think old flagstone covered in concrete skim and carpet. Property (and village) not on gas network. HW from direct vented system with electric shower. HW tank 2 immersion elements, bottom one on E7 (no timer) and top one manual switch. No boiler or wet central heating. Multifuel stove in livingroom and 1 old looking storage radiator in livingroom as well. Convection heaters on wall in both bedrooms and bathroom. I live on my own and I work from home but light user of electricity normally. Laptop use and cooking, washing up and shower daily. Plan so far is to insulate where I can before winter and I have a 3.5Kw solar PV system being fitted at the end of this month. I hope to use most of the energy myself for my day to day use with any spare being diverted to my HW tank by a Myenergy Eddi. My thoughts were to leave the bottom immersion element on the E7 feed but maybe add a timer so it wasn't solely relying on the element thermostat to turn off and potentially be on for 7hrs a night. Then hook the Eddi unit to the top (more mid) level immersion element so that could top up the HW with any spare energy during the day. Do you think that sounds reasonable? I would also like to get rid of the electric shower as its power hungry and a pretty crap shower. I was thinking of changing to an unvented system (which got me looking at this forum) and I also started looking at things like the Mixergy tank and Sunamp. I'm an engineer and always interested in technology but I'm trying to not get seduced by the shiney new toys available. I don't have loads of money spare and some posts on this site made me think to keep the current vented HW system and fit a pump to create a decent shower. So I'm undecided whether to go unvented or to improve my vented system to get rid of the electric shower? The solar install is costing about £5500 and I have about another £5000 to spend on my current upgrades. About £500 of that has been spent on some insulation for the loft and some internal walls and I was thinknig about how to spend the rest to get the most bang for my bucks. I though a new unvented HW system would be around £1500 (?) or fitting a pump around £500 (?). I was considering batteries for my solar system (£3-3500) and I still need to sort out a better heating system than wall mounted convection heaters. Maybe a couple of new storage rads or IR panels (~£2000)? Luckily I'm from Yorkshire originally and don't mind the cold at the moment and the stove is enough. There is also a second output from the Eddi and I was thinknig of maybe electric unfloor heating for the bathroom, but not looked into the cost of this yet. I'm happy to spend money on the HW and heating before worrying about decorating and garden etc. Sorry for the long post, it was good to actually wite it all down and clarify (a bit) what I'm trying to do. An all electric house for HW and heating is the expensive option at the moment (my decent current tariff runs out in Feb, gulp) and any ideas for making this house as efficient and cost effective as possible would be much appreciated.