NSS

Agree with all that, but there are exceptions. Mrs NSS for example spent chunks of her childhood in oxygen tents and bandaged from head to toe due to chronic asthma and eczema. Her allergies have always been bad but she has become allergic to an increasing range of 'things' and her reactions more severe despite being a child of the sixties (so exposed to all the same things you mention).

I don't think anyone is knocking them for trying to do the best for their family, just questioning how they've gone about it. As someone whose build was all about creating the right environment for my wife and her chronic lung and allergy conditions (not to mention multiple other serious health conditions), and as I said over on the other thread, obsessing about low voc materials is irrelevant if you then create so many dust traps.

Not sure what to make of all that. Obsessing about low voc materials seems irrelevant when there are dust traps everywhere you looked.

Never watched it but it sounds like I've not missed much!

I'll be watching tonight's episode with interest. It's billed as "Britain's first 'healthy' house" and that's quite a claim.

Looked pretty good from the opposite side of the valley.

Our towel rads are on loops from the UFH circuits but also have electric elements. We leave both valves open all year round and seem to suffer very little 'leakage' of heat into the UFH when using the electric elements.

I was approached with a view to having our build covered on 'The House that £100k Built' (think that was it's name). I just laughed and asked whether they'd actually looked at the plans.

Yep, I ordered enough for the next 2 years from them last week ?

Can't really comment ref the noise and whether changing the filters will address that, but I guess it's possible if the filters are particularly clogged and the fan is struggling as a consequence. As for cost, you don't mention which MVHR you have but you might want to look at www.topswtwfilters.nl/en I've not used them myself but believe others on here have. As for health implications, if the house was designed to have MVHR then it's not only poor air quality that could result if it's not running as designed. How much that could affect your kids is hard to say but, for example, if they suffer with asthma or the like then it could be detrimental.

Hi @lizzie, I've not done any measurements here but totally agree re changing exhaust filter to G4 and, as @JSHarris says, it takes a while for a new home to 'settle'. We've been in ours for 10 months now and the benefit to Mrs NSS has been remarkable. For 18 months before we moved in she nebulised twice daily. In the last 8 months she's used it twice, in total!

Not as far as I'm concerned. The firm that took over the job were excellent, and it's not their fault that the original (cowboys) miscalculated the RHI payments, nor that we achieved a better EPC than initially anticipated. The firm that finished the job were already installing the PV for us, and had I come across them before I contracted the original supplier I'd have given them the ASHP/UFH job anyway. The bummer was that the original supplier took me for about £1700 of work that they didn't complete. Fortunately I bought the heat pump and cylinder myself or it could have been a lot worse!

The new installer took over the job when the other went bust. There was no new quote as such.

Original estimation was made by a company who subsequently went bust and let's just say I think they were a little 'creatively' with their estimate, but also reduced as we got a better EPC than originally predicted so heat requirement was lower.

Be aware that what is projected and what they may actually receive are not always the same. We were originally given an RHI estimate of well over £700 per annum, but the actual figure is under £450. Over 7 years that's over £2k less than we'd been told to expect.

+1 ?

Should perhaps have mentioned that we'd spent a pile on the old place improving the insulation, glazing and installing a high efficiency boiler and LED lighting. And it's not all about cost. Comfort has to come into it too.

Projected total imported electricity cost for first 12 months (we have no gas) - £790 Projected FiT payments - £280 RHI payments - £444 Net energy cost - £66 165m2 = 40p/m2a Exclude the RHI and that rises to £3.09/m2a It's a rather different calculation from that I originally proposed, but provides a very stark comparison to our previous home where the same calculation would have given a figure of £9.79/m2a

Council Tax and water have no relevance to the energy consumption. Including them (and childcare) would only dilute the impact of the figure.

I just hope it's LED lightly ?

And there goes another thread on a completely unrelated tack.

But that requires the political will, and politicians know that anything that raises costs significantly will lose them votes, so it ain't going to happen. It has to be driven by the market (as in the consumer) demanding more energy efficient homes.

Okay, so Jeremy's suggestion of highlighting the last two year's worth of utility bills would perhaps be worthwhile for existing houses, but we all seem to agree that the problem is with new builds from the major house builders. There has to be a way of using estimated energy costs to encourage better standards, and that has to be driven by buyers being better informed about those costs and choosing accordingly. I accept that not everyone will be persuaded, but you have to start somewhere.

Except to say that you can, presumably, be fairly confident that a house rated as an A is likely going to be comparatively more energy efficient than one with a C, D or worse rating.

Is it apathy or ignorance? Perhaps, at least in the short term, the EPC could be used to draw attention, much like appliances have to have their energy rating clearly indicated. Putting a big colour coded box with the EPC band and a bold 'excellent,' 'very good', 'good', 'poor', 'very poor' or 'dreadful energy efficiency' alongside the house price would at least be a start.