Nickfromwales

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The comp ( his first year there ) are very slow responding to why he came home with bruises up his arm, but when his mobile phone was out in classroom time they were on it like a tramp on a kebab. Punished him, confiscated the phone, detention the full monty. Hes got ADHD and him having a phone at the end of each day is critical. They won't take it off him again after my 2 cents went in. Waiting on a phone call today from the head of year, but if I dont get it today I'm going up in the morning to kick some arses. That'll be the 5 time in a year where I've asked for a witnessed, minutes drawn meeting with the heads ( school and year ) for them to generate an official response. Give them enough rope etc.

I took apart the one in my boys primary school. As much use as a kickstart on a helicopter. Wait for ages for forms, then wonder why there is no response. Then find out she hasn't sent them.......again. Just given the head of the comp a deadline to respond to bullying. I knew they'd done nothing when he started stuttering. Ofsted next stop. ?

My makita collated driver is a great tool, but I've seen better ones, such as Hilti. Very little in the way of moving parts, so less to go wrong. If you ever want to get rid of the BC let me know. . I use the router at the mo, but it's a pita to set up, and it's a heavy bugger too.

Ah, maintenance. Im one of those stubborn ( or maybe just too busy ) people who drive the tool until it decides that's the end of the road. Most if my makita stuff isn't worth the effort or down time. Impact drivers can be bought new ( naked ) for change of £60, 2-speed drills for change of £40, and so on. The only place I draw the line is with things like my Dewalt DWS 780 XPS chopsaw. That's going in next week for tires, oil, filter, and an a full MOT. Nothing worse than wondering if that savage 12" blade is going to come loose and slice you clean in half.

Cheers for the thought, but just another thing to charge, have a lead for etc, when I already own a phone . Saw one on the bay for around £60, and another seller selling the same thing for £120. Gave up at that point and I'll just keep my eyes and ears open until a cheap 'I' flavoured one pops up until then I'll use my current inspection device.

Anyone know of a cheap one for Apple / iPhone / ipad?

Good result.

Ian. I just wrote something heart felt, then the auto save on this forum decided to erase it for me. Ill retype in the morning so please don't order any 'hits' until then, ok?

I'd have knocked his fackin teeth out. What a complete prick.

If it's an outside wall, definitely a good opportunity to add some insulated plasterboards, but you may have a new wall / old wall look then. If your not re-plastering the whole room then prob better to stick with the old school methods, ( for one wall ).

I think I'd be equally concerned about the condition of the battens and felt tbh. You may be better taking the lot off, buying some reclaimed to make up the quantity, and doing the felt and battens first as last. If your rendering to them then it will be almost impossible to do the roof later down the line. It will also be a near impossible task to carry out remedial work to the bottom courses of slates as they're nailed then overlaid 3-fold. Pointless looking at remedial work for the edges and bottom when the whole thing really needs assessing. Re-laying the roof will allow the battens to be set out accordingly for the overhangs, bottom and sides. You can use 'dry verge' and 'dry ridge' if you want, which alleviates cementing anywhere, but isn't as nice looking a job IMO unless you choose a nice colour for all the plastics. Im not sure you'll have many other options here tbh, and the roof is number one on the 'get right' list.

10mm Pipe For Hot Water Taps? (Content copied from EB) Started by Eagerbeaver , 24 Jan 2016 07:56 AM 10 replies to this topic Eagerbeaver Posted 24 January 2016 - 07:56 AM All the water pipe installs I've seen use 15mm pipe but the flow capacity of 15mm is far more than is needed for most hand basins and sinks. The down side of using 15mm for hot water is that you end up with a lot more cold water to shift in the pipe before it runs hot. Is there any problem with using 10mm for hand basins and sinks for the hot water? tonyshouse Posted 24 January 2016 - 09:13 AM For very long runs pressure drop could result in too slow flow, avoiding using elbows will help Would be fine with combi or pressurised system or three storey situation. Nickfromwales Posted 24 January 2016 - 10:21 AM What lengths are the runs? Also, are we talking about a radial plumbing setup ( critical if considering using 10mm runs ). 10mm is perfect for wash hand basins, but kitchen and utility would probably be better with 15mm for short, higher volume draw offs where 10mm may struggle. If there's not a good / very good cold mains pressure / flow rate at the incoming supply then excessively long runs may suffer, Regards, Nick ProDave Posted 24 January 2016 - 10:38 AM I'm considering this. In my new house, the kitchen will have the longest run, about 6 metres. I'm planning to try a 10mm pipe for the kitchen hot water tap to minimise the volume of cold that has to be drawn off before the hot arrives. We have good water pressure and food flow at the source so I think it's worth a try. jsharris Posted 24 January 2016 - 10:38 AM It's commonplace on the continent to see narrow pipe runs to basin taps, not sure if it's usually 10mm or 12mm but it looks a lot smaller than our normal pipe of 15mm. With a decent head 10mm pipe will flow a fair bit of water, more than is usually needed for wash basins or even sink taps, dishwashers etc. For guidance, a 10m long length of 10mm OD copper pipe causes a pressure drop of about 1.7 bar at a flow rate of 10 litres/minute. Sink taps rarely flow at more than 6 litres/minute, 10 litres /minute is about an average mains pressure shower flow rate. What this means is that if you have a head at the start of the pipe of at least 1.7 bar then you can get a flow rate of 10 litres/minute from the open end of a 10 metre length of 10mm OD copper pipe. We have an available head of around 4.5 bar, so I could have used 10mm pipe pretty much everywhere and still had good enough flow rates. The downsides with using small bore pipe is that you pretty much have to use a radial plumbing arrangement, with the pipe from each outlet fed back to a common manifold, you can't really run two or more outlets from a single pipe, as they will interfere with each other to a greater extent than with larger bore pipe with a lower flow resistance. Another downside is that if you try and flow 10 litres/minute through a 10mm OD pipe then it will make a noise, especially if you have a fairly high head of pressure at the manifold. The noise is acceptable at up to around 6 litres/minute, but any more and you need to increase the pipe diameter to quieten it down. For comparison, the pressure drop across 10m of 15mm OD copper pipe is a great deal lower, at around 0.2 bar for 10 litres/minute flow rate. Plastic pipe flow rates are lower, or the pressure drop higher for a given flow rate, because they usually have a smaller bore for the same OD as copper pipes. cjard Posted 24 January 2016 - 10:46 AM I looked a using a range of different pipe sizes but in the end just used 15 mm throughout for the following reasons I'm using plastic, and the bore is a little smaller than copper 15ml so there's a little less volume of wasted water A metre of 15mm plastic holds about 70ml more water than a metre of 10mm, given my longest pipe run from manifold to sink is 5 metres, that's less than a teacup. The longest shower run is 10m but, for the duration a shower runs, the excess is a drop in the ocean Plastic doesn't suck the heat out of the water the same The manifolds are 15mm, and I'd have to adapt down to 10. Plastic fittings at pretty bulky and ugly at the best of times and it adds cost and points of failure Flow capacity isn't the be all and end all. If you rush water through a pipe you can create areas of low pressure where it will boil temporarily and make a horrendous noise. A bigger pipe flows more slowly isn't as prone to this cavitation cjard Posted 24 January 2016 - 10:53 AM ProDave, on 24 January 2016 - 10:38 AM, said: I'm considering this. In my new house, the kitchen will have the longest run, about 6 metres. I'm planning to try a 10mm pipe for the kitchen hot water tap to minimise the volume of cold that has to be drawn off before the hot arrives. We have good water pressure and food flow at the source so I think it's worth a try. Consider an instantaneous heater that will use a little electricity to heat the initial water and then dial back on its output as he hotter water starts arriving. Saves water, maybe saves the planet if you have renewable electricity. Such instant heaters can be good for occasional use households as it beats having a large standing volume of hot water losing heat constantly jsharr Posted 24 January 2016 - 10:57 AM cjard, on 24 January 2016 - 10:46 AM, said: I looked a using a range of different pipe sizes but in the end just used 15 mm throughout for the following reasons I'm using plastic, and the bore is a little smaller than copper 15ml so there's a little less volume of wasted water A metre of 15mm plastic holds about 70ml more water than a metre of 10mm, given my longest pipe run from manifold to sink is 5 metres, that's less than a teacup. The longest shower run is 10m but, for the duration a shower runs, the excess is a drop in the ocean Plastic doesn't suck the heat out of the water the same The manifolds are 15mm, and I'd have to adapt down to 10. Plastic fittings at pretty bulky and ugly at the best of times and it adds cost and points of failure Flow capacity isn't the be all and end all. If you rush water through a pipe you can create areas of low pressure where it will boil temporarily and make a horrendous noise. A bigger pipe flows more slowly isn't as prone to this cavitation I did the same, used 15mm plastic everywhere, for much the same reasons. I did initially try running 10mm copper, but it was far too difficult for me to pull through posijoists on my own and I scrapped two lengths and then gave up and switched to 15mm plastic. Plastic is a hell of a lot cheaper and one roll did the whole house. I'd definitely NOT use 10mm plastic, as the bore is a lot smaller than 10mm copper, and restricted further by the inserts. Nickfromwales Posted 24 January 2016 - 01:10 PM I've ( on a previous job ) used 10mm Hepworth with the slimline stainless steel inserts and the flow rates were more than adequate. Longest run was prob about 13-14m. I used 10mm to each WC purposely to reduce water velocity and stop the WC from over monopolising on the available water pressure ( quite a significant short turn effect on showering when not reinforced with an accumulator ) which gave the desired results, and also reduced the noise of the cisterns filling too. The basin hot and colds were all in 10mm and performed well. Manifold 15mm outlet with a 15x10mm reducer. Hepworth 10mm direct to outlet with zero joints. 10mm exposed behind basin ( out of sight ) terminating into fitting reducers ( female each side ) and then a piece of 15mm copper made off to a male 15mm x 1/2" fitting which the tap connector fits into. Everything else in 15mm, for simplicity ( one size fits all ) more than anything Regards, Nick. ProDave Posted 24 January 2016 - 05:49 PM Sounds like in my case 10mm to the kitchen sink will be okay. It's the only pipe run in this direction and the longest run from the hw tank. All the rest (bathrooms and utility) are the opposite direction and will be more conventional. the bulk of the run will run parallel to one of the posi joists so I will try and run it in a coil of 10mm copper. VIPMan Posted 24 January 2016 - 06:20 PM I've used a 15mm manifold system with 10mm copper to basins. 15mm plastic to bath and shower. Maximum runs around 17metre. Still a work in progress but flows seem reasonable with around 4.5 bar mains pressure.

ebuild.co.uk → Building Trades → Heating Systems → Heating Systems: Other ebuild is sad to announce its closure - it has become too time and resource intensive to develop, manage and maintain. However, ebuild will remain on-line in archive mode (ie no posting facilties) for several weeks so that users can use it as an information resource. 1Follow this topic Hot Water System Idea Started by vijay , 28 Jan 2016 05:56 PM PREV Page 2 of 2 1 2 Register (at top of page) to post reply 28 replies to this topic #21stones Advanced Member Member Blogger 1,012 posts LocationOrkney Posted 29 January 2016 - 01:13 PM I've decided to wire and plumb for an inline heater so it can be easily retrofitted, as a just in case. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #22gravelld Regular Member Members 655 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 01:46 PM AliG, on 29 January 2016 - 12:31 PM, said: My in-laws have in line electric water heaters and they work fantastically well, but depending on your hot water usage the cost to heat it would probably be 3x higher using electricity after taking into account the lower amount of pipe losses. If you are putting in a boiler anyway I don't really see the benefit. You might consider a circulating hot water loop depending on the length of your hot water pipe runs. You need to consider the standing loss too, which is by far the bigger loss (assuming water is being stored, which I think it is in this case). So to heat the hot water tank for our 2 yo's evening bath takes 30mins at the moment. This is done immediately prior to the bath so minimises standing loss. So this is best case: 30mins * 3kW immersion = 1.5kWh But it takes two or three minutes to fill the bath (actually I haven't timed it, so that might be inaccurate. It's only to above knee level, sitting down): 3mins * 9kW = 0.45kWh Back of a fag packet... You'd also hope that 9kW would modulate down with PV input into the stored water. And in less ideal situations than on-demand immersion boosting, you'll have a lot more standing loss. Edited by gravelld, 29 January 2016 - 01:48 PM. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #23jsharris Please ignore all posts by me, some are erroneous Member Blogger 11,461 posts LocationWiltshire/Dorset border Posted 29 January 2016 - 03:24 PM Yes, standing heat losses, particularly with a recirculating hot water system, can often be nearly as great as the actual hot water usage. Although instant heaters use full price electricity, there is a substantial saving in energy because they are almost loss free. As above, if combined with low temperature pre-heat from an ASHP or similar, and, perhaps, a phase change heat store if you have PV, then you can reduce the energy used by the instant heaters a great deal. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #24gravelld Regular Member Members 655 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 04:18 PM Why PCM only if you have PV? Could be used with other inputs, right? Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #25jsharris Please ignore all posts by me, some are erroneous Member Blogger 11,461 posts LocationWiltshire/Dorset border Posted 29 January 2016 - 04:34 PM Yes, sorry, any electrical input could be used at the moment, and I would guess that the ability to use a hot water input may well be around before too long. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #26gravelld Regular Member Members 655 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 04:38 PM I noticed Sunamp aren't the only game in town. Home Building and Renovation had a hot water feature two episodes back (only just catching up). Frustratingly, other than including a picture of a PCM store from a manufacturer I forget the name of, PCM isn't mentioned in the article. Instead, the article comes to the surprisingly deterministic conclusion that "you should buy a thermal store"! Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #27jsharris Please ignore all posts by me, some are erroneous Member Blogger 11,461 posts LocationWiltshire/Dorset border Posted 29 January 2016 - 04:51 PM It doesn't surprise me that others are around. I remember discussing PCM heat storage several years ago on the other place, and I think someone there mentioned a paraffin wax thermal store that was either in development or perhaps just a prototype. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #28Alphonsox Advanced Member Members 1,495 posts LocationCounty Down, NI and Forest of Dean, England Posted 29 January 2016 - 05:03 PM gravelld, on 29 January 2016 - 04:38 PM, said: I noticed Sunamp aren't the only game in town. Home Building and Renovation had a hot water feature two episodes back (only just catching up). Frustratingly, other than including a picture of a PCM store from a manufacturer I forget the name Begetube - based on hydrate salt (sodium acetate trihydrate) apparently. I think this is the same stuff they use in hand-warmer pads Edited by Alphonsox, 29 January 2016 - 05:16 PM. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #29jsharris Please ignore all posts by me, some are erroneous Member Blogger 11,461 posts LocationWiltshire/Dorset border Posted 29 January 2016 - 05:27 PM Alphonsox, on 29 January 2016 - 05:03 PM, said: Begetube - based on hydrate salt (sodium acetate trihydrate) apparently. I think this is the same stuff they use in hand-warmer pads Basically the same stuff that's in the Sunamp modules, too. I remember looking at how to use Sodium Acetate practically when we were discussing PCMs on the other place, and thinking that the key was how to trigger nucleation and how to "untrigger" it. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) PREV Page 2 of 2 1 2 Back to Heating Systems: Other

Copied over from EB. Formatting to be done ASAP, just grabbing content for now Hot Water System Idea Started by vijay , 28 Jan 2016 05:56 PM Page 1 of 2 1 2 NEXT Register (at top of page) to post reply 28 replies to this topic #1vijay Regular Member Members 413 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 05:56 PM I have an idea for my heating system for both domestic hot water and also for the UFH and just wanted it to run it by you guys for thoughts. I’ll be looking for a well-insulated air tight build in ICF and the build will be around 700m2 over 3 floors and also a large attached garage with a room above. I plan to use UFH throughout (although I will have to decide if I actually need it on the first and second floor as there is a galleried landing and there is a pretty good flow through the house). I have gas so will have a combi boiler fitted but my idea is to use PV and also a WBS with back boiler to heat the water. The WBS won’t be located in the house but will be in the garage so to not overheat the house. I plan to use offcuts of logs and sawdust that I can get for nothing and are discarded. I’m thinking I would use a large thermal store which can be located under the stairs and will be pretty central. I also wondered if there is any advantage to a second hot water tank in the loft where excess hot water can flow up to and also give me gravity pressure to the taps? Could that work? Cheers Vijay Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #2Nickfromwales Short cuts take three times longer.....Fact Moderators 8,182 posts LocationSouth Wales Posted 28 January 2016 - 06:07 PM Open tank for Gravity hot water is a no go. Too many losses and poor pressure unless you fit noisy pumps. I'd fit the TS in the garage and run pipes in a trench to the house, as I've done in the past, and incorporate a hot rerun circuit to give instant hot water to each outlet. The Pv will offset the losses and the extra space and zero latent heat influx by not having a cylinder in the house will be big positives imho. The gas would be to a system boiler, rather than a Combi would it not as your dhw would be provided by the TS Regards, Nick. Edited by Nickfromwales, 28 January 2016 - 06:08 PM. Hide Report post to moderator (eg spam) #3gravelld Regular Member Members 655 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 06:08 PM Do you have any target heat loss figures and also DHW requirement (which might imply the TS sizing and therefore heat contribution)? "Well insulated" means anything from a modern volume house builder noddy box to... an _actually_ well insulated house. In the latter case, many complain that heat loss from the TS is significant. There are the new PCM heat stores to consider. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #4alexphd1 Regular Member Members 133 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 06:12 PM How simple things would be to have mains gas on site. Small system boiler and large s/s unveiled cylinder. Have you calculated out the heat requirements? Is the thermal store in the thermal envelope of the building? Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #5alexphd1 Regular Member Members 133 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 06:28 PM I am building a very similar house (large icf to a passive standard) and went through the idea of a log gasification boiler in the garage. I came to the conclusion the extra cost, efficiency loss in the system to accommodate large accumulator and work involved in lighting/cleaning the boiler it wasn't worth it. I even figured out how to import a cheap boiler and get it on to the RHI. In the end I have concentrated on getting heat demand down and picked up a 14kw ashp for £1k on fleeBay. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #6vijay Regular Member Members 413 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 07:06 PM Nick, I was thinking of a vented tank in the loft as the second tank rather than open (or did you mean vented?) I'd prefer not to have the thermal store in the garage if possible. Could the latent heat not be vented trough the MVHR during the summer? The reason I thought more of a combi is it's more of a back up than used every day, as my way of heating would be the WBS and PV - although I admit to not considering summer when I wouldn't have the WBS on but would obiously still need DHW. Gravelld, No I haven't got any figures yet. Are they given by the SAP accessor? An issue I have is I will be living on my own there but need to future proof it, so any systems I put it will be overkill for me but suitable for a family. The house will be an actual well insulated in ICF U value of 0.15 and tripple glazing. Alexphd1, Yes I as thinkin the thermal store would be in the thermal envelope under the stairs Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #7alexphd1 Regular Member Members 133 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 08:02 PM the sunamp heat battery could be good solution for your thermal store but its not exactly cheap! Other guys on here have 1st hand experience and I myself will be keeping an eye on their report. I wouldn't rely on a MVHR to cool down a area with a thermal store. Again you have mains gas, I wish I had. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #8vijay Regular Member Members 413 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 09:17 PM I would rather run off grid as much as I possibly can though, hence the WBS/back boiler and PV/immersion heaters Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #9jsharris Please ignore all posts by me, some are erroneous Member Blogger 11,461 posts LocationWiltshire/Dorset border Posted 28 January 2016 - 10:34 PM I can positively confirm that MVHR won't get rid of the waste heat from a thermal store in summer. I got rid of our thermal store, in a new build, because try as I might I couldn't find a way to cope with the excess heating effect in summer. The waste heat actually cracked the oak door to the service room and over heated the adjacent bedroom. I tried adding loads of extra insulation to the thermal store, but it still leaked a lot of heat. I've replaced it with a Sunamp PV, which seems to have a very low heat loss, certainly massively less than the thermal store we sold on ebay. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #10vijay Regular Member Members 413 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 10:55 PM and IIRC from your post, it was from the store and not any pipework wasn't it? How hot did the service room get with the door closed???? Just had another thought, would this be another reason for a second hot tank/thermal store which is much smaller, so it could be used in summer and the main large store closed off? Or just use a combi for summer DHW on demand or have the combi just top up a smaller hot water store which is heated by PV in the summer? (or would that PV heated water feed into the combi, so the combi just tops the already heated water up if need be) Edited by vijay, 28 January 2016 - 11:00 PM. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #11Triassic Advanced Member Members 1,239 posts LocationCumbria Posted 28 January 2016 - 11:01 PM Hi Vijay, I think you need to slow down a bit. Before you do any sort of design you need to know the size of your heating requirement and your SAP assessment should give you this. The other alternative is the look for a copy of Jdharris's heat loss spreadsheet, it's on here somewhere! Fill that in and come back with the results. I have a feeling that if you get the building air tight and well insulated, a lot if the kit you are suggesting will be obsolete. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #12vijay Regular Member Members 413 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 11:14 PM Hi Triassic, These are just ideas that I've had and I promise my first priority is getting the envelope done right first. I'll be in the house well before I fit any heating so will get a fair idea of how warm/cold it feels. I guess the difficulty for me is not getting my head around a well insulated airtight house as I've only lived in old draughty ones - I hope I'm in for a big shock!!! lol Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #13jsharris Please ignore all posts by me, some are erroneous Member Blogger 11,461 posts LocationWiltshire/Dorset border Posted 28 January 2016 - 11:18 PM vijay, on 28 January 2016 - 10:55 PM, said: and IIRC from your post, it was from the store and not any pipework wasn't it? How hot did the service room get with the door closed???? Just had another thought, would this be another reason for a second hot tank/thermal store which is much smaller, so it could be used in summer and the main large store closed off? Or just use a combi for summer DHW on demand or have the combi just top up a smaller hot water store which is heated by PV in the summer? (or would that PV heated water feed into the combi, so the combi just tops the already heated water up if need be) The service room got to over 40 deg C in summer and almost all the heat loss was from the thermal store, rather than the pipework, I took thermal images of it to check. A combi and Sunamp PV with PV panels on the roof and an excess power diverter would be a good option. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #14alexphd1 Regular Member Members 133 posts Posted 28 January 2016 - 11:28 PM I can second the difficulty in getting your head around such a small heating demand for such a large house. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #15vijay Regular Member Members 413 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 10:45 AM It's almost a dream to think of a warm house!! Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #16sketch3d Regular Member Members 376 posts LocationMilton Keynes Posted 29 January 2016 - 11:10 AM Just another thought, IF mains pressure is good, what about inline point of use electric hot water heaters. I know some landlords who swear by them, but have no experience of what they are like in practical use. Advantages I can see are that - There would be be no need for a storage tank. - Only cold water need be routed through the house. - Less water wastage waiting for hot water to come out of the taps. - Cheaper to replace than boilers particularly in hard water areas where heat boiler exchangers furr up. ScrwFix around £140 per unit for a Redring brand. - The house underfloor heating this then charged with a gas combi-boiler doing less work. Disadvantages that come to mind would be where to site the unit in each room requiring hot water. They aren't pretty. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #17gravelld Regular Member Members 655 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 11:51 AM Jeremy wrote the book on them (see his blog), but you can get modulating ones which would also work alongside other heat sources which would provide the pre-heat. I'd like to see how to design such a system, given DHW requirement, storage technology, other inputs, flow rates and also electrical limitations (single/3 phase). Edited by gravelld, 29 January 2016 - 11:52 AM. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #18AliG Regular Member Members 271 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 12:31 PM Hi Vijay, What you are building sounds very similar to my place in terms of size and U-Values. Jeremy's heat loss calculator predicted that I only need around 5kw of heat input when it is 0C outside. This is probably negligible relative to what you are used to. If you ran everything off gas you would be talking about maybe £800 a year of which half would be for hot water. I expected to use a similar system you with a TS and solar thermal. Eventually, however, I changed to a UVC and system boiler with solar PV which can provide extra DHW when the heating isn't being used. UVC's seem to be cheaper than TS, and a straightforward system boiler is cheap and also importantly an easily serviceable and replaceable item. When I did the calculations I was only looking at heating costs in the few hundreds per year using gas so the cost of expensive equipment was just wasted. I note that you do say you have a supply of free wood, so you could make it work, but I doubt you would save much after the extra capital costs and I am not sure how much hassle filling it up would be. You could use an ASHP for such a modest heat requirement but again they cost somewhat more than a system boiler and with the premium of electricity to gas don't save any money on running costs. They also get less efficient if you want to use them to heat water and in the winter when it is coldest. Half your heating requirement will likely be hot water. I had the same issue as you with would I actually need UFH in the whole house. My suspicion is that the ground floor would be enough, but for the risk of upsetting my wife and the fact that I couldn't rectify it easily if it was a problem I went for ground and first floor with nothing in the top floor which is under the roof. People may also find it odd if you ever want to sell the house. As I understand it a well insulated house is likely to get very hot under the roof as the heat rises. I think some people have gone for the option of putting in the pipework but not connecting it up. UVC produce pressurised hot water so can be anywhere in the house, I kept it on the ground floor as they are large and heavy and it will make it a lot easier if it ever needs to be replaced. I would size it up depending on how many showers you could have being used simultaneously. I went for 500l as it doesn't really add much cost to have a larger one and it makes life a lot easier when people come to stay. The ability to heat DHW quickly is more likely to drive the size of your boiler than the amount of heating your house needs. If you are planning on having a fireplace, I have found that the large wall inset balanced flue fires that I had assumed I would install produce way too much heat for the house and you have to take this into consideration. My in-laws have in line electric water heaters and they work fantastically well, but depending on your hot water usage the cost to heat it would probably be 3x higher using electricity after taking into account the lower amount of pipe losses. If you are putting in a boiler anyway I don't really see the benefit. You might consider a circulating hot water loop depending on the length of your hot water pipe runs. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #19alexphd1 Regular Member Members 133 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 12:45 PM I don't know if they would work with pre heated water but a gas water heater could be a option instead of electric. I.e Worcester greenstar hotsprings cwi47. Over 20L @ 35'c rise. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam) #20joe90 Regular Member Members 847 posts Posted 29 January 2016 - 01:09 PM Electric inline heaters work with warmed/ heated water if they modulate. I plan using one as back up. Like This Report post to moderator (eg spam)

Welcome aboard David For big posts, a few here use a separate machine / text medium ( like word ), and paste it in. This forum has draft auto save but you need to be connected to t'internet in order for it to back up your post ( prior to posting it ). Weve tried it and it works ok, and the text should be there when you go back to type in the editor box. Check your connection prior to 'pausing' midway through a long post. .

Office and General. ?

A big telly in 78 would have been 14"

I can't believe it was only £50. You called them out, so you knew it was coming, deep down, didn't you ?

I doubt if I'd have got on well up your neck of the woods, Dave. I'd have been locked up after being asked for 4 chuffing non return valves on the water supply The BCO's I've met have been really helpful, enthusiastic and 'sensible' tbh. The second they realise I 'know my onions' they backed off and the jobs went much better for it IMHO. I think if BCO's (i) treat you like an idiot, or (ii) get proven to be an idiot by you, then you soon develop a sense of disregard for them and on a self build you'd not suffer as it's your own job so you'll go belt and braces anyway, but if that happens to a builder on a private job, they're just going to try and cut corners to get one over the BCO. A stupid game of cat and mouse IMO.

Fill ya boots

I haven't actually ever had the displeasure of having to do a leak test on the soils and wastes. Last few BCO's were generally impressed enough by the overall standard I displayed, and in most instances I'd gone above their remit, without provocation, so I think I got let off the hook. Last extension was a nice one, and I got the final sign off purely from emailing the BCO photographs of the required items / locations etc. He genuinely didn't come back to site after seeing the build through to to the insulation and roof etc, and only wanted the electricians certificate for conformation of locations of the smoke detectors. B I N G O

Chicken Now you've gone and said it................

Those trays are a wonderfully simple and practical solution. Looking damn good so far