Nickfromwales

Welcome aboard. 😎👍

No need for thanks, and glad you see this feedback as constructive In a nutshell, your natural infiltration from having a modern building regs build (apologies, but 🤢🤮) will almost definitely be bean-counted by design, work executed at the minimum deliverable standard (you hope), and holes / gaps etc all left to blow a hoolie through. When the natural infiltration rate hugely exceeds the MVHR flow rate (which is tiny in normal operation in an airtight dwelling) you’re stuffed. You’ll be sucking in ice cold air from outside all winter (which will be Baltic during the arse of winter btw) and pumping it into the bedrooms and living spaces. It’s a fact that this will significantly increase your heating demand, as there will be (I fear) the square root of feck all heat recovery with such an install. I talk more people out of these types of retrofits than into them, after, of course, explaining to them WHY. Most salespeople fail to state the cons, naturally, as they need to pay the mortgage etc. 🫤

At least you took it like a man lol.

How quickly can you walk through an empty train, vs a packed one? A bit like, "What is the sound of one hand clapping" to the untrained ear I'm afraid.

Ah, Christ on 2 bikes. I just read your intro....... MVHR into a house which isn't airtight? I don't have much more to say that won't make you look like you've just peeled a very big bag of onions, sorry.

Noise? There shouldn't be any 'noise' if the unit is fitted according to the application. I oversize if there is any risk of the client requiring "graveyard quiet" and not had a complaint yet (quite the opposite in fact). Acoustic dampening is achieved via attenuators, and vibration / transmission of, is dealt with by never (having to be) running the unit at near full speed. I use strap band and (sorry @Conor) hate the clip bases and monster zip-tie approach, and I've banded to the upper P5 deck (Egger board), to the posi-joists, and everything in-between, and I have not had an issue in the last 8+ years of installing, or being associated with the design & installation of, an MVHR arrangement. MVHR does not, nor should it, make 'noise'. If it does, something has gone very wrong with your design process.

"Hey Siri, dial gate", and the magic happens. You old fart lol.

It's very simple. In the winter when you turn the heating on, for the 3-4 months of the year that you will be heavily reliant on space heating (in the majority of homes) you'll be at <25% or less PV production, so if you have a 4kWp array you'll not be getting even a reliable 1kW of PV production (when it's one of the sunnier days in the heating season ). That <1kW will be sucked up by the house, so there's "goodbye" to any dreams of diverting excess ANYWHERE as you won't have any. If, for eg, you have space & budget for an 11-12kWp array (maxed out on 3ph, for eg) and it's all South facing, then maybe you'd still get DHW from excess. But even with that size array, during the heating season, you'll be very lucky to get a reliable 2-3kW return from the array. Costs of PV then go beyond the costs of just feeding cheap, grid electricity into the ASHP in the 1st place, for dumping steady low grade heat into a big thick insulated raft slab as a 'storage heater'. Get the calculator out, remove the rose-tinted goggles, and the evidence will support itself.

Yup. Sad, but true, as they’re just not told by any governing body that there’s a different way. Pretty terrible in 2024 tbf.

Double glazing is basic level stuff, and not really any kind of standard to look up to. They’re not often well detailed, airtight, plus longevity of mechanisms and seals is a big concern. Fitters can be good or bad, and when I had my front door and windows renewed, by my good friend, he looked blankly as I fully filled the sides / cavities with airtight closed-cell foam. He told me it was pointless, I said just keep fitting the windows and uncle Nick will make it all good. 😊. Discussing thermal bridging with these types of folk will often fail to get you more than a blank stare.

This is interesting, as I sit by a 1kW fan heater when at my desk in my office (big uninsulated shed with a desk one end where I hide from wife & kids) and there is no such smell of ‘burning’, just it’s horribly targeted crude heating when it’s pointed at my feet / legs and left to ‘rise’. Strangely, in ductwork it does seem to be an issue, but maybe that’s because the airflow rate is tiny with MVHR where my little fan blower is going at a decent rate of knots. 🤷‍♂️. FWIW, I wouldn’t dream of electrically heating airflow into a domestic residence, just horrible, plus the MVHR outlets are typically up high (and heat rises) so is counter to ‘the laws of physics’.

Diversion of excess solar? So, if you need heating, it’ll not be a sunny day, ergo most if not all of anything you produce from an average sized array will be sucked up by the house base loads and possibly a bit of DHW Solar > space heating = no dice.

Yup. 👍.

As PM, you’ve of course told the chap exactly how tall and wide the cylinder is, haven’t you……

Yup, and yup, but I blame the project manager anyway @Mr Blobby 😜. When the cat’s away, eh? For completeness, I am currently mid install on a build in Gravenhill, and I’m putting the manifolds up and over the cylinder there, to maximise the residual ‘airing cupboard’ space. Extending your right arm over the cylinder isn’t exactly difficult, albeit you may need a small hop-up if you’re a short-arse, but as this plant room (the OP’s) is sizeable I doubt there’s the same concern. If the ceiling height is 2400mm or thereabouts, then there should be plenty of room up / over / around the top of the cylinder. Putting the UFH manifold behind an UVC and making a cupboard around it is not really what anyone expects here, and that job clearly wasn’t ‘managed’ at all. I’m still finding massive f*ck-ups on another client build in Leicester, gifts left from a quintessential cowboy builder long since dishonourably discharged, and his utter lack of care or consequence is staggering. Anyone considering a build in Leicester is herby invited to PM me to ask which skill-free, clueless donut it is that you need avoid. He’s still ‘at large’ and his website is (was) very attractive, just nothing on it that he’d actually built ffs. Not even 1st year apprentice bad, but malicious, damaging actions which they knowingly covered over to deceive and defraud. Shocking.

Just make sure you can text / dial the gate and it will be wide open before you arrive.

Agreed, but they've not yet been asked what the plan is?

IIRC this is just a plant room and not for storage / otherwise to be preserved 'space-wise' (that side of the room)? If so, then they should be as per the plan. In honesty, if the manifolds can be reached, eg they're installed above the UVC in the dead space, then the plumber may have been attempting to do the right thing and use up otherwise dead space. Reality-check time. How many times per decade do you expect to need to access these things, turn on / off supplies, or otherwise "fettle"? The plumbers will get in to fire up spaces as the become plumbed in and live, and after that.....?

Yes, in a nutshell. It was a bit of an over-generalisation tbh and the assumption would better be; at x temp the cylinder has the equivalent heat capacity of stored water @65oC (so at lower temps (~50oC) you need more volume).

Nope, bang on the money, if points 1,2 & 3 are addressed. I only go to individual zones on a single floor when it's a large dwelling and the effects of solar gain are notable. One certified PH I did was 20oC in the East side of the open plan living space in the morning, whilst the master bed on the West was at 14oC, ergo it needed zones to balance this out (with just a smidge of targeted auxiliary heating).

Let's have a sense-check, eh? This type of 'luxury toy' is for sporadic use, a bit like my 5.5L V8 AMG. I don't get into that thinking...."ooh, if I take my time I'll get 23mpg", so the same applies to your luxury, pamper-station. Just accept that it costs X amount to 'enjoy' and so be it. Think of how much you will save vs spa membership etc, plus travel to & from, and then just make it comfortable and enjoyable and switch off. This is not a rehearsal, we're here once and then it's 'adios' (which is why I didn't focus on MPG), so unless you use this every day for hours and hours on end (which I don't think you can healthily do with such a toy) then just suck it up? I am typing this from my un-insulated man-shed / office, with 4kW of fan heaters wafting warm air around. They heated this space almost instantly, do the job wonderfully for next to feck all, and when I'm done I just switch them off until I need them next. Simple, effective, convenient, "job done".

4 panels @ 400w? You'd be seeing less than a kW net on the best of days. Categorically forget a battery!!! This 1kW would chew a fair bit out of your vampire & base loads, over the year, but for diversion to DHW?................"Behave!" Please remember that for AC coupled equipment you have the inverter fed into the CU (fuse-board) so you don't get to decide where it (excess generation, should you ever have any with such a small array) goes. Time to get the thinking cap back on, sorry.

Is the first pic "Girls aloud"? 😆

Our 1st 18+ post lol. Utter filth. Which one is Barbara, and who crucified her?

...don't have a sauna and steam room?