HughF

The fan coil units are these, in case anyone is wondering: https://aerfor.com/en/reverso Very nice looking thing.

I think so, yes. Best drop an email to Chris to find out more...

I’ve got a 500ltr buffer that needs to find a home, ex biomass install. Got loads of ports on it and it’s steel so you could easily weld on extra bosses as required. Drop me a Pm if that’s of any use. No coil in it though, obvs.

I don’t have a bad word to say about Cool Energy. They were the only people there with a unit that was actually working, Chris is super technical and helpful and has a background in refrigeration control electronics and associated software, and their cabinets are stainless steel. And they’re very reasonably priced too.

well worth having his book on the shelf - it's good...

Fair point... Still, it's a nice web app.

Advertise it on marketplace If no-one takes it then empty it into 25ltr drums and flog those then chop it up with a chainsaw (assume it's green plastic) and take it to the tip.

I visited Installer '22 at the NEC on Wednesday (told everyone who asked that I was a renewables retrofit specifier in the domestic sector, I'm not...)... My take-aways from the day: 1. Cool Energy had a demonstration trailer setup with their newer R32 based unit driving a very nicely made, Italian sourced, fan coil unit in cooling mode. They have a nice product and they're very technical and open. Units will ship with the newer Carel pGDX display in the future (https://www.carel.com/pgdx) and this is a nice display/interface. My visit and chat has cemented them as my chosen supplier for my domestic renovation project. 2. Unitherm heating (Exeter) had a good display of heat pumps from various suppliers on their booth, but nothing plugged in and working. They were one of the few companies there with LG units to see. 3. Grant, who supply Chofu units (Japanese origin) had a nice booth, but the real take-away from them was their nicely produced brochures and handover guide which do a good job of explaining to the homeowner how setback and weather compensation work. Nice to see them trying to educate the user in how to get the best from their system. 4. Midsummer wholesale have launched heatpunk (heatpunk.co.uk) a web based tool for graphical heat loss calcs. It's similar to the freedom toolkit except it is web based and runs in the browser. You draw your house, specify the building contruction and it does heat loss and rad sizing in a graphical manner. Free to use (for now). I asked about importing DXF plans and that's something they are considering. 5. Sunamp are listening and are working on a making their PCM43 more reliable in long cycles (that's why it isn't available yet), and are also thinking that PCM50 would be a good fit for heat pump applications. 6 (Leaving the best till last). Homely, by Evergreen energy - wow, this is a game changer. A modbus enabled, IoT based, smart thermostat and heat pump controller that takes control of a wide range of modbus controllable heat pumps and will optimise the flow temp and operating times depending on occupancy, weather, solar gain, predicted weather for the coming 24hrs, TOU tarrif data from the tarriff provider, storage battery %SOC, etc etc. It can automatically commision Midea and Samsung units over modbus and provides a full app for the end user to setup their schedules and temperatures. It has an indoor light/temp/humidity sensor that allows the unit to automatically setup the weather comp curves for a property, no installer callbacks, no fiddling by the user. I was very impressed with this and can see it being of real benefit to end users. They are going to enter a line of communication with Cool Energy to add support for their units. All in all, very glad I visited. I'll go again next year for sure.

That seems positively crazy money…. Take their heat loss calcs, specify a suitably sized ashp and pay a local plumber to install it all. It’s not rocket science this stuff.

If your comfortable enough to be ripping out the old and doing your own work then I’d forget about the grant. Ashp- £3k ish, uvc- £1k ish, rads and pipework £1k… Fit it yourself and get bco to sign off the uvc.

Cool energy have been playing around with a regular pcm58 unit and from chatting to them they said that they did manage to get some charge into them at 55deg flow. They did offer it to me for cheap for experimenting but it wasn’t quite cheap enough. They will shortly have their units working with a pcm43 unit, apparently. There we’re a couple of sunamps on Facebook a few months back, £300 each, but I didn’t get to Birmingham in time and they’ve now gone.

We have electric showers, two of them... They are the work of the devil. Terrible things, the sooner I rip them out and fit a UVC the better.

I know it's off-topic, but can you elaborate on this fire prevention rule for the Arotherm Plus? Is that due to the use of r290 (propane) in these units?

I had my eye on those, they look like they’re great value. I was considering using them to add some new solar generation onto the AC side of my off grid setup. It’s just too far to wire back to the batteries.

I'm a real cheapskate and I objected to paying Caleffi prices for anti-freeze valves... A quick search on my favourite internet shopping site turned these up: 1/2 BSPP, just need fitting into a T and they'll work just fine. £18 each. I also bought a 3 port diverter from the same seller which seems pretty nice quality. It doesn't have any microswitches, but for £18 again, I can live with that.

CE have had a website update and are now also offering an R32 based unit that has EVI (Enhanced Vapour Injection) - which, from my understanding, offers improved COP at lower ambient air temperatures. I'm heading to the Installer Show at the NEC next month to look at some equipment in person and will update once I've learnt more.

Our property is heated by a baxi bermuda back boiler with a very tasteful brown and beige gas fire on the front. My wife often uses the gas fire in the summer to warm herself up (she has just done so today in fact) instead of putting the CH on. I'm planning to rip this all out, upgrade all the rads, insulate the floors and then move us over to an ASHP (see my other thread for more details) so I'm wondering what I can replace this gas-you-fire (as I like to call it) with that can provide clean, instant on, radiant heat? I suppose I could keep the CH on 365 days of the year and just leave the stat at 19, and let weather comp take care of everything? She wants to have a wood burner in this place. I'm against this idea as I've lived off grid with wood and associated dust in another property for 38 years (solid fuelled rayburn on wood and coal) and I'd like to think we can do something better than that. I did find a rather nice room sealed, 5kW pellet stove from a Welsh manufacturer, but it's £5k with concentric flue and installation.

I know, I’ve got a load in 47kg cylinders cluttering up the garden 😂

I got a quote, a good job I was sitting down. I’m sure r290 is good but not 2.5 times the price of r410 good…

That's a very valid point and something I hadn't considered.

The whole slab->insulation->screed design seems really backwards to me, and something from the 70's. Concrete finishing isn't hard, just use the 100mm conc slab as the finished floor (ready to accept your surface covering) and stuff the gap underneath with insulation.

200+ PIR, UFH tied to the rebar mesh, 100mm conc

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/hbfile/pdf/HH702230.pdf full installation manual available there. Looks like burying it in the screed is ok.

I think so, yeah. And depending on which regs you read, you might need to put the tracpipe in yellow ducting

mdpe is approved only for use outside the property - you need tracpipe. It's expensive...