ragg987

LPG cylinder outside would be fine and if used occasionally should last a long time. But airtight house and real fire seem contradictory? Also see no point of Ashp and boiler. Stop sitting on the fence, once the build starts you will need to get your decisions sorted so may as well start early ?

Direct appliance noise is not the problem if you have a separate plant room. Wall mounted MVHR and circulation pumps will transmit the noise to adjacent rooms, so need care when mounting. E.g. heavy boards plus vibration mountings.

After 3 years ours were looking a bit grimy. Our window cleaner now comes round every 3 months and can just reach them with his longest pole - he uses just de-inoised water and a brush, they look much better now.

Cannot give you a definitive answer, my claim listed some items after BC sign-off and before the 3 months and these were paid without query.

Kryton provided the water tight guarantee. They included inspection during the build. Yes we have a mortgage, they did not ask any questions about basement.

We had the same, expect I appealed this and they allowed it to happen. Our mains cable comes in underground via the basement and the main fusebox and other bits sit inside our utility room.

Best of luck and ask away. We built an ICF basement (Integra-Spec ICF and Kryton waterproofing admixture) with MBC timber-frame double story on top, very happy with the result 3 years in. Good point. For warranty we did have some challenges, our install does not have separate tanking or drain channel and this became a discussion point, but we got the cover we wanted. BC did not raise any questions.

Are PV essential, no. Will they contribute energy, yes, but since the Fit tariff stopped the economics are not great. Each panel can only generate between 250Wp and 350ish. So no point with 2 panels, the cost of the inverter means it cannot make any economic sense. Bear in mind that solar generation is at a peak when you do not need space heating, so there is an imbalance here. You need to be able to consume the power in the warmer months. This can be e.g. solar diverter, either to DHW or to a battery (e.g. powerwall or even your electric car), though of course you may be able to consume some of the power by timing washers and other consumers. And yes the ASHP can benefit, but best in mind the winter peak. A 4kWp solar install can cost roughly £5k, some here have managed cheaper by buying cheap and fitting themselves. A solar diverter is about £100 plus fitting. A fixed battery I am not sure, but seen figures mentioned of £8k +.

We have a pulley maid in our utility (plant) room. Full MVHR. Takes overnight to dry - similar to your 16hrs. The room is a bit warmer than the rest of the house as ASHP, DHW, PV inverter all add to it. Moving air and removing the moisture are big factors - so an extract or dehumidifier+fan should work well.

Having lived with a 7kW ASHP that provides all our water and space heating for 330m2 and 6 people, I would say it is not a worry, just size the cylinder appropriately. As above from spring to autumn our solar PV provides a reasonable proportion of DHW requirement. Mrs ragg987 loves her very hot showers, through trial and error I found a setting of 45C to be the point at which she does not complain about it being cold. Easily achievable by an ASHP. If you intend to soak in the bath for a very long time and hence want top up the water temperature occasionally, I suspect you need the water to be delivered at a higher temp, maybe 50C. Not something I have tried with our system. Also consider lagging your bath to reduce heat losses.

Yes, on our (now not so) new build. Works very well. See my profile for basic info. Just beat on mind ASHP will not get DHW as hot as gas boiler, so slow for that in you cylinder sizing to support your hot steamy habit. Our council planners told us that PV was permitted development so we did not have to show in the planning application. We mentioned it as a note with no detail on fit method. And if you should get a battery car or storage later the PV can support those too for lower bills.

A buffer can provide 2 functions, one is to prevent short cycling when demand is below the heat pump's modulation level, as noted above. The other function is to allow differing flow rates on supply side Vs demand side of the buffer. This will happen if you have a separate circulation pump for a long UFH run. In this scenario it will not be possible to match the 2 flow rates and the buffer takes up the difference. Note it is a compromise, as always. The flow temperature out of the buffer to the UFH will be a few degrees lower than the supply temperature from the heat pump due to a mixing effect in the buffer. This is likely to reduce the CoP slightly.

Nah, different county. Us Bucks folk keep clear of them vermin ?.

If all you are sharing is static files would a cloud service not fit the bill? e.g. free google storage up to 15Gb or £16 per year for 100Gb. The advantage is that data is available from any device anywhere in the world, also backed up.

If you mean it takes 3hrs for the floor to feel warm after you switch on from cold, I don't think that is abnormal, UFH does not respond like radiators. It takes a while for the water, then the screed floor, to warm up. The water flowing out of your boiler should heat up almost straight away.

The pump will be more efficient when not at full power. I run mine 24x7 and it usually just ticks over at 30% capacity, though when external temperature gets to freezing it will boost to 50 or 60%. We have a passiv standard build. I also have solar PV and time DHW heating during daytime to maximize the advantage. I did the calcs and E7 was not cost effective for our usage.

We can't hear it from inside the house, it is approx 2m away from the north wall. We don't open windows on this side. Our neighbors oil burner is much noisier than our ASHP when we are in the garden. When modulated down, you only hear it when close to the unit. Noisier at full power.

You couldn't make that up. Brought a smile to my face. (Doubt if your mother saw it the same way, my apologies.)

Warm to touch is due to low thermal conductivity. The warmth from your foot is not conducted away so fast. When researching 4 or 5 years ago, I came across a paper on how different materials impact the perception of warmth. I no longer have the link, but my takeaway was that a less conductive floor surface felt more comfortable, to the extent that you could drop the temperature of this surface by a few degrees and it would still feel as comfortable as a warmer but high conductivity floor. You can easily replicate this by placing some materials on a floor and treading with bare feet. A metal plate will feel much colder than tile which in turn will feel colder than vinyl. If you are worried about natural materials, then you could consider linoleum or rubber. I could not get on with the colour options for either.

Much more "serene". Less echoey, quieter background. You could compare it to the difference between a toilet cubicle to a furnished room, though not as exaggerated. Just reminded me, a few years ago I flew a lot to Dubai on business. They have a really swish executive lounge at Dubai airport. All hard floors, glass, steel. I hated how noisy it was, really non-relaxing environment. They had a small section at the back with less glass, carpeting, timber paneling and comfy seats, that was my sanctuary.

Regarding real life experiences, we lived in Singapore for a few years. Hot climes so hard floor tiling is the norm. Stone, marble, porcelain etc. We lived in an apartment with marble floor. Moved to UK and purchased a place with engineered wood floor. We moved all our furniture from Singapore to UK, the acoustics are completely different despite the same furnishings, though granted room is not same size shape or construction. Another experience, we changed our previous kitchen from porcelain to amtico. Night and day difference in acoustics as well as improved comfort when walking barefoot. Amtico is slightly resilient so feel more comfortable, plus it imparts a feeling of warmth compared to the tiles. I expect the floor temperature remained the same, but it felt warmer.

All other aspects being equal, tiling will create more reflections and will be noisier as well as harder to hear in. Plus footsteps and other knocks on the floor will be louder. Engineered wood is better in both respects, Amtico is better still. Of course tiling will be more resilient to knocks and spills. I personally dislike the cold and noisy feel that floor-tiling imparts. We used Amtico in bathrooms and engineered oak in all other areas. In hindsight I should have used Amtico in the kitchen section of our open-plan. You can mitigate the noise by using soft furnishings - curtains, sofas, rugs, cushions etc.

The ASHP controller has the proportional control as standard and I use it to good effect. It monitors external, set and actual temperature to adjust flow temperature and circulator speed. There is an option to use the built-in electric heater to raise the temperature above what the unit is capable of, though I do not use it. I believe you can set it to come on at off-peak periods - again not tried so do check. Our unit is from Hitachi. I looked at the usual suspects, Panasonic, Daikin, Samsung and some others. Two things drove me to this - first was the Hitachi controller was capable to running 2 separate heat zones natively (annexe for elderly parents needs to be warmer), and second was the support I received from Hitachi was head and shoulders above the others, at enquiry, design, installation and commissioning. The down-side is local tradesmen are not familiar with this brand - Daikin yes, Hitachi no, so servicing might become an issue.

This is the way our's works by default, the built-in controller has a parameter to control rate of heat. When set to efficient, it modulates to lowest level initially (which gives a deltaT of about 3 degC) and then increases progressively to reach about 50C. At setting standard it heats harder and faster. Ours is a small 7kW unit (nominal), so recommended temperature is 50C max - I would guess this is to prevent it struggling to heat the last few degrees given the low (relatively) heat input at the top. Larger units from the same range are able to heat to 55C.

There's no way I would be buying one of those. I mean even if I had a full tank of hot water, but below the magic 50C, they would not work. Barking. I'm surprised the EU has allowed this, it makes ASHP not usable. Our thermostatic Hansgrohe is fine with lower temperature water.