AliG

UFH can take a long time to warm up depending on many factors. Insulation levels sound ok based on the temperature drop you are seeing. Looking at my house rooms with tiled floors see very quick response to the UFH, but rooms with wooden floors can indeed take hours to heat a few degrees, they easily take 5x as long. However my flow temp is only set at around 40C. If the pump was broken it would likely not reset by switching it off for a while so it seems @Nickfromwales is likely correct. There is definitely something wrong with your system if it doesn’t like the kitchen and lounge being on at the same time. Again it suggests some issue with flow not being sufficient in the loops. I’m not sure but I doubt there is much benefit from trying to optimise the flow to the minimum level necessary. My system with multiple manifolds as well as heating the hot tank and a pool has a low loss header.

My guess is that the water is no longer properly flowing around the UFH loops hence it takes too long to heat the rooms and the massive drop in temperature whilst it is in the loops. Sounds like you have bled the loops already so not air. As @ProDave says it sounds like the pump is trying to turn and hitting something so maybe bouncing back. Does it ever run now without this happening? I did find a thread somewhere where someone said a broken flow valve like you seem to have was causing issues and replacing it fixed things, but I don’t see how it would affect the pump.

I tried drilling a hole in the skirting board but couldn’t get to it. I probably should have another look. There is no obvious draught. The IR camera is very sensitive so that area is just 2-3C colder. There might be a gap in the foam around the edge of the slab creating a bridge. I did find a gap in one room which I was able to foam up. Thet room is the gym and has never had the heating on. It gets heat from the UFH manifold which is in the wardrobe and maybe the pool room next door, considering this I am amazed how warm it stays. 23C in there today and we just exercised which has pushed it up to almost 24C just from our body heat.

The correct way to do it is to tape around the reveal between the frame and the wall to make it airtight. This might be on top of any foam to fill the gap around the frame. You would then probably use insulated plasterboard in the reveal on top of this. The issue is that depending on available space, width of the frames etc this is not possible, Within reason the small cold bridge is not the end of the world. The cold air getting in around the frames and behind the plasterboard is the bigger issue and if you can address anything this is what to look for.

@ProDavemight chip in, he knows a lot more about plumbing than me. I think it is maybe air in the system, although maybe the pump is broken. The pump is supposed to bleed automatically. To bleed the pipes, if you look at the manifold, there is a small black plastic cap on the RHS at the end of the manifold. Open this up until water comes out just like bleeding a radiator. The pump will need to be running. Depending on the make the cap should be left open as it might auto bleed.

I'd take this info with a pinch of salt, much as I am sure that UK houses could be better insulated. The current temp in Barcelona is 16C and Rome is 13C. It is highly unlikely that the average house in Spain or Italy is better insulated than the average house in the UK.

Keeping it simple. If the heating is off, do all the gauges return to 0? If one stays at 5, I would guess it is stuck as its pretty much impossible for the water to be flowing with the heating off. Is the "grinding noise" more of a groan. One of my blending valves has started to make that noise at it opens and closes. Does not affect the operation of the heating. Does turning the blending valve a bit stop the noise? We run ours at high 30s-40, 54C is pretty high and the floor should definitely be warm. I don't have a return gauge on mine, but a 16C drop seems excessive. Are your flow speeds maybe set too low. Mine pretty much just run at the maximum speed.

That is the coldest area in all the walls in my house. Almost my definition it will be. The walls are insulated with a very low U-value and the triple glazing has a low U-value. The weak spot is the window frames, plus any bodges around them when the windows were installed. So I guess the question is are these areas colder than the should be. I would expect them to be a good few degrees cooler than the glass and walls especially when it is as cold as it has been. My windows have aluclad wooden frames, I think most uPVC frames would be worse. When you say they are "draughty" do you mean that you can actually feel a draught. This would suggest that the windows are not tight in their frames. Or is it just that the area feels colder than the surrounding area. I actually tried the experiment of injecting foam into the reveal on one side of a window to compare to the other side. I just took an IR picture of it and it has made no difference. Both sides are basically the same temperature. The RHS has foam, the LHS does not. The worst points seem to be the corners as you can see.

Daylight through the roof is ok as it might well be ventilation. Your insulation is on the ceiling and it is then cold above it. “A cold roof”. In a cold roof design there should be adequate ventilation to stop condensation forming in the roof space. It can be in many places - eaves, ridge and tile edge for example. There should maybe be a vapour barrier at ceiling level to stop moist air getting up into the roof from the house, but if it is adequately ventilated I don’t think this is necessary. So you definitely have something wrong there! Looking at the picture of the house, my guess is that you have eaves ventilation(actually the spec says you do). Do you have grilles you can see in the underside of the eaves? If so the insulation should not go all the way into the edge of the roof as it would block the ventilation. I would also be checking that you don’t have an extractor fan from the bathroom that is not ducted all the way to outside. Quite often builders forget to connect them up.

Surprised they needed planning permission as it looks to me like permitted development. The max you can extend a terraced house is 3m which looks like wet has been done. The planning application may have been to confirm it was permitted development. If you look at the decision it would tell you this. This is probably why all the current extensions are the same depth, it is a bit cheaper and less hassle if you don't need full planning, although it wouldn't add that much to the cost. However, the 3m is from the existing rear walls, so if the utility room was also an extension on the back of an original garage, then to extend it further back will require planning permission. I don't think it would be an issue to get it, but worth mentioning. You need to give people a bit more info so they can help, such as budget, maybe a picture of the rear of the house showing proximity of neighbours or a site plan. A few of us have all made the same point. A massively deep extension will be very dark in the centre of the room and may be an oversized room to be of any use. @Bozzahas shown that ou could possibly reconfigure the kitchen and get much better use of the space for much less money. Do you actually use the "garage" which is presumably just storage. If you sealed it up with a window at the front and a door to the hall it would be a nice little study for example. That would add a lot of value to your house for little expense. You could replace the "garage" with a cheap shed outside. My guesstimate was for option A. I would guess that option B would almost double the cost. If you took down the existing rear wall of the extension I would guess that you would have to rebuild he whole roof for example. The trouble with option A is that you are adding only around 7sq metres of space for considerable cost. The cost will be vastly higher than any value added to your house. As well of the possibility of incorporating the garage into the house, adds 5sq metres for less than 10k, you could also build a snug/study behind the utility room but without taking the side wall down. Then you don't need any steel, don't need to rip up and redo the floor, don't need to move the kitchen. You get around 7sq metres for maybe 15k. You could then look at rejigging the whole interior of the side space. For example, this would maybe cost 25/30k and give you more extra useable space. There is plenty of room to add an island etc to the kitchen already.

As well as what you want to do with the room, planning and neighbouring buildings will also be a consideration. I would guess thatg option A can be achieved with permitted development. Option B would require planning permission. Before getting into the ins and out of this, I think you probably need advice from a structural engineer. Looking at the skylights you have there, I would guess the kitchen was knocked through the back wall of the house already and there is a steel beam holding up the upstairs wall. This beam will either rest on the wall at the RHS of the kitchen, or a post set into that wall. To remove that wall, you would not only have to put in a steel to hold up the side wall, but find a way of supporting the existing beam. This is going to be a very large and expensive job. The alternative that you have would probably be having a post supporting the beam be part of the island. I don't think option B would work well as a very deep room like that would be dark in the centre. The lounge was would be almost 10m away from the windows. I would guess that it is already quite dark there. If I was going for option A, I might want to explore whether the lounge wall can easily be moved. If you could move it past where the kitchen door is at the moment you could add just over 1m to the lounge which might make it a better sized room. It isn't that large at the moment with a lot of the room being in the bay. Moving the utility room seems like the right thing to do. If it is mainly for laundry I would move it to the front and have the door at the bottom of the stairs. If not you might want to move the WC to the front and keep the utility off the kitchen. Assuming no structural issues, moving the kitchen door should not be a problem. They presumably just left it where it was originally. We removed the kitchen in our last house which was only five years old at the time and sold it, so it should be possible to remove and refit the kitchen. Costs are almost impossible to guess at, you'd be as well just getting quotes. So building a small extension might cost 10k. The structural work, however could be 10K+. Removing and refitting the kitchen will cost a few thousand. New flooring would be a very large cost assuming that the whole area needs redone. That's around 5k. Then there is the new utility and WC and new front wall and new island. I am guessing around 40k in total.

Hey, hope you are well. It is pretty small, maybe just perspective on the camera

I agree, it sounds like you have never had to heat this house before and so maybe the heating requirement is coming as a surprise. A 1950s house with no cavity wall insulation is going to cost a lot to heat. I would assume around 2000sq ft and maybe UPVC double glazing? Taking a guess at wall U-Value of 0.4 floor and roof at 0.15 and windows at 1.2 gives roughly 75-100kWh a day of heat input required at 21C depending on the outside temperature. Hot water on top of this will add a further maybe 15kWh a day. Your use is consistent with this. The 5kWh a day you were using before was around 15kWh of hot water at a COP of 3 which sounds about right. I would also think it is likely that the heating flow temperature has been set to a higher temperature considering the fact that you have radiators and a poor level of insulation. This will reduce the CoP of the ASHP and make it somewhat less efficient than it might be. You might get a COP of 3 instead of 3.5 for example. It does look as if it has maybe been installed in quite a tight corner which may not help. A wider picture would help.

You had previously posted this plan which shows the position of the steels better. There is a little cold bridge there. The plan does not show a PIR edge around the upper floor screed. This would make a big difference to the cold bridge there and indeed all around the upper floor as the screed touches the blockwork as shown. They are not shown on the ground floor either, I would assume the builder has added them in if he knows his stuff. I guess the interior upper floor blocks could also have a Marmox block between them and the steel which would also reduce the cold bridge. Finally you could maybe put PIR between the beam and the steel if there is space. The vertical posts should not be a concern as they are not in a heated area. If there is a concern it would be heat getting not the horizontal beam and via that into the posts.

Thanks, they are over the moon and chomping at the bit to move in. Honestly I have never in my life dealt with a less helpful organisation than Scottish Water. Annoyingly we could have had the drive laid next week, but have had to delay that. A few more pics.

Just to add a bit of interest. We didn't want a breakfast bar as there is already a table

It is a Leicht kitchen. It is just a laminate of theirs - Highland Oak

Lol, I know, my mum said she didn't realise they had so much until they packed up

Thanks Worktop - Silestone - Calcatta Gold. I am a big believer that nice bathroom fittings, lights etc can really make a house whilst adding surprisingly little to the cost. Not the kitchen unfortunately, that was expensive. I will post more pictures once my parents can move in properly. The architect has not yet issued the completion certificate due to the water issue and so we are in limbo.

I have been very remiss in keeping this up to date. The inside of the house is basically finished apart from a couple of doors and ovens not yet delivered. However, my parents cannot move in due to yet another issue with our good friends - Scottish Water. This is also delaying the laying of the drive which we could have had done next week.

Looks great. A couple of minor points, which are probably just details that haven't been finalised yet. 1. I would have the shower in the en suite the same as the large one in the main bathroom. those little corner showers are only for circumstances where nothing else better fits. 2. The front door shown on the elevations looks totally wrong for the style of house. I suspect this is just a standard one stuck on the drawing. 3. The hall cupboard is probably still too small. Maybe it could go under the stairs depending on the stair design.

Basically yes. As designed at the moment, the bed 3 wall support would need to join to another pieces of steel across the door. Much easier if it hits the corner and rests on a steel post there. Looking at it again though there may be an issue in that you will require a steel beam across the back of the house for the windows resting on the same post. I suspect that it is fine for them to meet at the same point, but I am not a structural engineer. You may also require steel for the east wall of bedroom 3 to sit on. All of this suggests to me that the wall between the study and sitting area should be a supporting wall of some description, as thick as the outside wall above it. You will require an 8m long beam to support the rear of bedroom 1 etc above the kitchen. This creates two issues. The wall between the study and kitchen will need to be robust to hold this. Either a solid wall or a steel post will be required and the post will be large considering the size of the beam. You will also have an issue in that you will need to lose a large steel beam in the ceiling of the kitchen (otherwise it will stick down into the room). As well as the issue of putting the beam in the ceiling, it creates issues with routing services. The kink in the wall currently for the window on the landing would only further complicate things, it might be that the small area of window is small enough it does not require steel support, I'd be more worried about the return in the outside wall to the window.but again I am not a SE. Architects persistently design houses like this and just leave the steel as an issue for the SE and builder to sort out later. Much better to design it as simple as possible to begin with. As to other comments I agree that the pantry causes a lot of issues, jutting out in the middle of the house. All the food in our house fits in the fridge, freezer and two kitchen cupboards.

A two storey house is a lot easier from a fire perspective. However, you don't pay the VAT and it will be cheaper to do all of the work at once. I would guess that you will be in band G or H anyway.

I too would be looking to combine the boot and utility rooms as you have to walk through the utility room to get to the boot room anyway.

I like it in general, there are just some details points and some things may be personal taste. Construction issues 1. The rear first floor wall will be quite awkward to build and require considerable steel. I would look to one up the top right corner of bed 3 with the kitchen wall, otherwise you are trying to bear the support for that wall above the door between the kitchen and study. Similarly the landing and bed 1 wall is not a straight line which would be easier to rest on a steel beam and will need support in the wall between the study and sitting area. 2 2. The skylights hard against the rear wall would maybe be difficult to weather proof and would be better further out into the roof. I'd probably lose the one in the sitting area, maybe personal preference here, but seems unnecessary. Further skylights under a north facing wall will receive little light and may be a waste of time. 3. That large window in the sitting dining area will be expensive and I personally don't like how it is off centre relative to the room. Layout 1. Windows as mentioned. I would replace the roof lights with an east facing window in the dining area. 2. The WC is too small relative to the house and do you want your guests having to go through the utility room to get there? Also is the plan to not have a door to the utility room? I would probably move the WC to the back of the enormous pantry (personal issue here, but I doubt you'll ever need such a large pantry) 3. The plant room is possibly too small depending what you want in there. If you have an ASHP outside that will help. 4. The boot room is at the side of the house implying that this is where you plan to come into the house, but the garage and parking seem to be in front of the house. Maybe you plan to actually park at the side, but this could be annoying. Also depending on if you come in at the front or the side there could be an issue with lack of storage in the main hall. Could the garage be at the side and attached to the house? 5. It could be a bit dark in the middle of the kitchen without another window at the side. The sink is too far away from the table for clearing up dishes and getting glasses of water. 6. First floor seems good. I would consider making the dressing room smaller and putting a laundry room in part of the space. Then it might be easier to arrange the boot room space downstairs. 7. I'd put another velux on the second floor landing.