Nickfromwales

Simple low rate bank loan, and just buy it without all the attached faff?

Does it not already have a TRV on it? @zoothorn, do all the rads have TRVs on them?

Can't you ask a friend or family member to be in attendance to help you understand and decipher what is being said / how to use the controller? Loom on YouTube as I have said, and see if that helps. May be good homework for you before the chap arrives Monday as you will then begin to learn by watching this repeatedly until some of it begins to make sense. Pause the video, take screenshots, write notes.

This is the problem with hit and run installers, just fitting the stat where they can easily get a wire to it. They've also done a shit handover, and it's programmed to run completely ineffectively, as such a short heating window (unless @zoothorn told them it must be only on for a couple of hours to save money??).

Ok. Simple to explain, as follows. You are using less than £70 per calendar month on electricity / heating and hot water etc. The bills are estimated at the moment, and they must have a way of knowing where you're at in terms of consumption because they are slowly racking up a credit (hence they are saying that you are currently £300 in credit; this means your over-paying at £70, and giving Octopus more money PCM than you are using. Do you not have someone in the family who can speak to Octopus on your behalf to get some clarity? You should be submitting a meter reading to Octopus, at least once a year, so they can adjust your charge rate and credit. Do you have a smart meter? £700 PCM for energy consumption during winter is nothing to do with a castle-sized property. A "castle" would probably need £7000 PCM so please stop thinking that say £350 PCM in winter for a poorly insulated and draughty house is expensive, it is not. I'm doing probably close to £15 a day in winter, stone walls, 2G doors and windows, and draughty as feck. Gas boiler with rads, and they do not turn off day or night (we sleep just fine because we don't over-heat the house, we just heat it so it's not cold or 'chilly') so for me atm close to £450-500 PCM depending on how much we use the tumble drier. Summary: You cannot possibly think you will be able to feel even marginally warm in your exact house if you do not run the heating for longer. You are being told (asked by frustrated, helpful people on here) to set the thermostat to a temp that is simply acceptable to you, and to leave the heating system on constantly (24/7 means 24 hours a day, 7 days a week) and allow the house to heat itself throughout and arrive at an ambient. You are cold because you are not putting enough heat into the house, simple as, nothing to do with the heating system being effective you are just not using it for long enough each day. My thermostat is set to a comfort temp during the day, but that's probably only 1.0 - 0.5 degrees C higher than the night time temp, so I am saying that I do not turn my heating off all winter. If I turned the heating on and off (night to morning) and then on and off again Evening to night) every 24hrs like a timer as you're set up like at the moment then my house would be horribly cold and probably twice as expensive to heat. If you don't want to freeze at night just set a low temp for the nights, and a slightly warmer temp for the days, then the heating system won't cook you, it'll regulate and just give you a minimum temp that you don't want to be colder than. Running the heating constantly doesn't mean it's constantly heating, it just means you wont get cold. You need to look on YouTube for the controller for your heat pump and watch, listen and learn how to use it from there, as that will show you the short cuts to get your heating on as you need it. Currently the short heating programs are useless and that's why you are cold. It's also why your heating bills are so small, because you're not using any heating. Once you learn how to control this thing, which will become easier the more you try, and learn by making mistakes, the problem will go away. You can then time the hot water to be hot when you want it to be hot.

So no mechanical fans in kitchen / utility / bathrooms etc?

If the air can get in, yes.

The flow and return are both 32mm pipes in the centre of a 160mm duct, fully filled with EPS insulation. The two smaller ducts are for the 230v mains and low voltage signal cables.

During winter, don’t forget you need to pressure test with air and NOT water And make sure the automatic air vent cap is closed tightly or air will pass through that and it’ll look like a leak. Some water and fairy liquid can be brushed over fittings to see if any air is leaking; it bubbles up and you can see it straight away.

A previous client put it on gumtree as free to collect, and someone took the lot.

The grey insulation was left on as it was minus 2°C, and we couldn’t feel our fingers. Finesse had left the building! I insulated the flows to various areas in line with the clients wishes to mitigate against possible localised overheating (but doubt this is actually an issue). This was all simply cut back to top of concrete and dressed in afterwards. FYI the black pipe coming up to the right was the pre insulated underground pipe to the ASHP.

If moisture was routinely buffered any further into the fabric of a domestic residence, that’s just too far and has not been addressed or controlled properly. Seasonally, perhaps this is an acceptable swing, but day to day it should be the immediate room interior surfaces at most. I dislike this approach, and am not afraid to say it! Grab the heat and moisture, use it to better facilitate heat recovery, and get the MVHR in and running. Tin hat time.

Amen!🙏

She’s a keeper. You’ll be so much happier you went with MVHR once you live with it. The cost of running the fan is near to nothing btw, as you’re on trickle most of the time so are using (if thought through properly) less than 50% fan power on average.

Small print is the stuff very few read It’s about changes in what was ok, but isn’t any more etc. Measure twice, cut once.

Indeed. I’d rather take the hit on value than lose GIA. When there’s a distinct lack of wiggle room for going to thicker (or much thicker) superstructures, then airtight + MVHR is the way forward every single time. Airtightness trumps adding slightly thicker insulation, and should be the #1 consideration afaic. Getting the best amount of heat recovery possible is second. When these are in hand, the amount of heat required to keep a happy (comfortable) ambient temp is quite minimal. Then using UFH and a heat pump is a no brainer, in most situations.

Ask OR and they’ll provide the correct stuff for you. No charge in every instance I know of, you just install it from house > boundary and they take it from there. Check the small print regarding where and how you terminate it at the house, as one client has just been told that the Fibre hockey stick and terminal box must be on the outside of the building to prevent issues; eg if a natural gas line leaks and pushes that down the duct and into your home. On one I did in Gravenhill Bicester, serviced by GTC, they were happy to come into the house but they wanted their rigid plastic duct used, all joints photographed and solvent welded (glued like bathroom waste pipe) and then they used a rigid rubber cap to seal the end of the duct to prevent anything getting out of it. Unless the water and electricity companies asked the same, I doubt there’s much value in OR insisting that their duct lives outdoors, just that it is installed correctly using the rigid stuff, and is capped / terminated to create a hermetic seal. They can install that when they’re on site, a-la GTC, so a bit of nonsense imho. Do check though so you don’t get caught out, but if it’s defo got to be an external terminal box, then I’d not want that in sight, so a suitable location needs to be thought through, and then you’d need a duct or a conduit from that point to the router.

Sounds odd on paper, but that looks very nice in real life

Assuming you’re installing the manifold at the same time? If so, then can it be mounted in its final resting place? If not, then I always shutter out a section where the pipes come out of the slab. There was a bit of foam added to the rear of that block of PIR and then the concrete was poured. This allowed some wiggle room when the wall was finally built and the manifold could be attached in its forever position. With those bend ‘formers’ in your link this is more difficult afaic, as the pipes then can’t be manipulated into position before finally back-filling with cementitious SLC. I do the same if the screed / concrete is going down before the manifold goes on. You can cover / sleeve the pipes as above, but not really necessary imho. Doesn’t really add much. The Pert Al pipe can hold up the weight of the manifold more or less by itself, but as per pic1 I installed re-bar and made a cradle just so the concrete guys couldn’t push it over or move it etc during the pour. FWIW, I’ve never had one of these pipes fail, ever, they’re pretty damn tough.

Not all systems are ‘allowed’ to hibernate like that. I know Solarwatt was developed for use in countries with extended periods of near zero solar input, Nordics etc, so were able to do this but also warranties stayed in place. The caveat is, that the system was able to remain in standby and monitor / manage its heath and status, even ‘re-awakening’ sporadically if there were pockets of solar which could be used to top up. Beware just switching a battery system ‘off’ as this may damage the cells, however a lot has changed in the last few years in this market so may / may not still be relevant (modern offerings may now state that they can cope) but the rule of thumb for batteries is largely the same over time; especially with multiples of cells requiring balanced charge (and discharge).

Glad you're in agreement, of its prestigious nature The bastards are climbing in under the cover of darkness, using the webbing under the Severn Bridge as their cradle to the next level. I'm driving over it in the opposite direction hoping to get a better wage. Que sera!

Let your fingers do the walking?

Depends on who's wearing the Principal Designer hat? How could you think there was £8k of meat to shave of this role???

Perhaps the OP could approach the SE to ask what would mitigate against their objections, and weigh up the effort vs rewards.

Cover the expensive membrane with cheap visqueen and dispose of it later. Zero UV getting through that.