Temp

I'd apply for house and garage. The planners almost never impose a time limit by which it must all be completed. If they do you can appeal that condition or reapply without the garage etc If there is no time limit for completion its very unlikely you would get in trouble for not building the garage. Normally you are only allowed one VAT reclaim which must be submitted within 3 months of completion. If the garage isn't on your Planning Grant you can't reclaim the VAT on the materials for the garage. If it is on your Planning Grant but not built with the house you might not be able to reclaim the VAT on the garage. Don't delay completion or filing your VAT reclaim for too long. Even if you can't afford the garage consider digging and filling its foundations and running a duct for electricity at the appropriate time in the construction of the house.

Yes and no. Mine doesn't have a heater so it's always injecting 16C fresh air. If you didn't have the mvhr system the incoming cold air through trickle vents would be at outside air temperature (-2c where I live just now). That would cool it even more. Does the fan speed change when the heating element is on vs off? I'm not familiar with that model but I would expect the flow rate to be higher when it's heating and reduce when it's just ventilating. I might be wrong about that. If the house isn't getting warm enough my guess is either the fan speed when heating is too low or 3KW isn't quite enough in this cold weather. If the fan speed is too low when heating the air temp might reach 29C turning off the heater before the room temperature reaches its target temperature. Increasing fan flow rate when heating would drop the temperature of the incoming air but increase the amount of energy by allowing the heater to be on for a higher percentage of time.

I'm a bit late but.. Removing an actuator head normally turns a loop on. This might be a way to test a floor loop even if the stats/elec controlling it aren't reliable. But you do need at least one stat calling for heat correctly or the manifold pump won't run. So if you have one reliable stat try turning that way up to wake the manifold permanant, then physically remove the actuator head from a "suspect" loop. Check the pin is up and you are getting flow and then wait to see if that room warms up. If that room/floor loop warns up then the issue is with the electrics controlling that actuator. If the room doesnt warm up to at least say 21C its some sort of issue with the loop or it's installation.

Just make sure you reconnect the pipe before you pull the plug to check for the screw 🙂

Looks like the JG tails might be metal with a plastic coating. I'll go take a look and if so I'll go for them.

The monoblock tap I'm fitting was supplied with tails intended for use with copper pipe (eg compression and metal olive). I'm using JG Speedfit 15mm plastic pipe and the obvious thing to do is replace the supplied tails with these.. https://www.screwfix.com/p/jg-speedfit-monobloc-tap-connector-15mm-x-m10mm-x-300mm-2-pack/99193 However these are plastic and ive always used metal braided flexible hose. The Hep20 tails are metal braid, can you safely use Hep20 fittings with JG pipe? Failing that could I remove compression nut and olive from the supplied tails and mate the result with one of these.. https://www.screwfix.com/p/jg-speedfit-plastic-push-fit-straight-tap-connectors-15mm-x-1-2-2-pack/29175

So did I. The wiki page I posted above explains that due to the cost of Tritium experimental fusion reactors use Duterium or Hydrogen instead and then extrapolate the results to give an equivalent figure for Tritium. Apparently the JET figure of 1.25 was an extrapolated figure...

"Scientific Breakeven" is a gain (Q) of 1.0. The recent announcement reported a Q of about 1.5. To make it suitable for practical use it needs to reach "Engineering Breakeven"... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_energy_gain_factor The National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore uses inertial confinement so to be practical the need to reach 50 to 100 according to that wiki article.

When I say Thermal mass I mean Heat Capacity 🙂

I'd mix up a small test qty. Try it on some scraps.

I agree with others. The design also has quite a few features like the cantilevered front that add to the cost and complexity.

As I recall real Aerogel is only about twice as good as PIR foam. Real Aerogel is also fragile so i don't think the form used in insulation is the same. Have you got figures for the thermal resistance to compare? As for phase change materials...They are being used in thermal stores. They will add thermal mass to a building but how much? I suppose they might smooth out temperature variations so that daytime and night time temperatures get averaged. I'd be surprised if they added enough heat capacity to act as a practical interseasonal thermal store.

Can you measure the actual floor temperature?

I've no experience with heat pumps but could it be doing this because it's very cold outside? Eg to stop the outside unit freezing up?

If they have to go in the floor (Ours don't) then make sure they are insulated somehow. While it's a combi boiler they will probably be some of the hottest pipes in the system.

I think bnq call it creosote "substitute".

I used light brown Creosote from bnq instead but it's not as good looking.

When I suggested to my builder that he needed a new site van he whispered to me that it wasn't a good idea because trades would just sit in it all day drinking tea.

The amount of energy needed to heat a room depends entirely on the room. How big, how hot, how well insulated, how well ventilated, how long at what temperature etc. If you keep all that constant then it doesn't really matter what type of electric heater you use as they are all 100% efficient. I go for something with a thermostat or timer. Possibly a fan heater if I wanted quick warm up time. Or a convection type with optional fan to reduce noise. Typically people will say that oil filled heaters cost less than fan heaters but that's normally because they have a lower output so they aren't heating the room to the same standard. A lot of companies make claims for fancy/expensive "Ceramic core" heaters. Many are frankly dubious, for example some claim the ceramic core continues to give out heat even when they are switched off. That's true but only because the core absorbed energy when it was switched on. Its not free energy. The only way to do significantly better is to use a heat pump which effectively have an efficiency (COP) of 300%.

Any sign of leaks or overflowing gutters when it's pouring down? Hose may not be enough flow rate.

The mortar looks too good for these to be retrofitted. It looks like they were fitted before the wall was pointed and the pointing filled them. The brickwork looks very uniform. Are you sure it's wet? Normally when wet it's more patchy and you get the white salt efflorescence around the edges where its dry/evaporating.

The insulation is not likely to be an issue for lighting cables. For power cables there might need to be some derating if this hasn't been taken into account. Typically if you know its going in/undervinsulation you can specify a thicker cable or smaller RCD/MCB but again not always necessary. Remember most power circuits are rings so there are two wires in parallel. Discuss with your electrician. https://professional-electrician.com/technical/impact-thermal-insulation-current-carrying-capacity-flat-twin-earth-cables/ In Fig 2, the current-carrying capacity of a 2.5 mm2 flat twin and earth cable is shown in brackets for each of these Installation Methods.

Change you stats/timer. We have Heatmiser programmable stats that allow you to set different temperatures for four time periods a day. So if you want a room "off" at night you could set it to 10C or lower and it wouldn't come on. In practice we set it to 16C at night and it's only on very cold nights does it come on. I'm sure there are lots of other stats that can do more. We love our UFH but we are retired so there is someone home most days, otherwise the warm up time might be annoying.

+1 As far as I know oil boilers don't modulate at all. The burner is either full on or off.

@TerryE Interesting post. It suggests convection isn't enough to extract more than about 0.5kw from the rad. Adding some fans might help.