HughF

Huh, so they are. £1800 or best offer for the 8kW unit. That’s tempting. I’ll see if they have any installation manual and/or controller details available.

Heat loss calcs done for the building in it’s current state (planning IWI in a few north facing walls), using the dream heat pump calculator spreadsheet, and I come out at 7kW. Which seem reasonable as I currently heat the place with a 11kW non condensing boiler which seems to consume about 7.5kW of gas when it’s running (based on my smart meter display)… Any recommendations for a 7-8kW unit that’s up to modern specs, r32, inverter, decent weather comp controller?

Mitsi ecodan 5kW with pre plumbed cylinder. If you’ve got a van and can travel, there’s a new unit on Facebook marketplace in Bristol for £2k, complete package including ftc6 and 150ltr uvc I haven’t finished my sizing calcs or I’d have snapped it up already, my gut says it’s a bit small.

I'd very much appreciate taking you up on that offer at some point, I'm over the water in Purbeck. I'll drop you a PM

Adam, thanks for your input, appreciate it. May I ask whereabouts in Dorset you are? I've been communicating with a few suppliers in China and they nearly all have an MOQ that makes it slightly less of an incentive to import just for my own install. And the pricing isn't far off the retail for the Cool Energy units by the time you've added Vat on the import and handling by my air-freight courier. £3k for the 9kW inverter machine looks like a fair deal now. Is this the unit you have?

Wind wash, that's the term... I'll have a look at that superfoil breathable product. Just out of curiosity, which part of Dorset are you in? I'm over in Purbeck (but I'm not working on that house at present)

Cheers, thanks for posting the link. Ah well, vat it is then.

I'd be interested to find out, yes, thanks. Are they in social rented or the private rental sector?

My in-laws live in social housing, have done since forever, and are, unfortunately going to be adversely affected by the energy price cap. We will obviously help wherever we can (we are kid/mortgage free and I make decent coin), but a discussion with my wife last night has got me thinking. What policies are in place to encourage social housing providers to improve the housing stock under their ownership? They live in a terraced stone cottage in the middle of Frome, and don't have double glazing. They have a gas combi boiler but I don't know if it is setup for weather comp. The property is obviously inhabited 24/7 and they are often up well into the night due to sleep issues. With some improvements to building fabric and some adjustments to the heating system (increasing emitter sizes and reducing flow temp) I think we could get the bills down a bit. I'm thinking of sending an email to Aster to enquire about their policy for improvement of housing stock, but I would welcome peoples thoughts on this little predicament.

Of course it will..... where's that facepalm emoji....

Agreed... But 0% vat on panels/inverters/ashps isn't to be sniffed at (if it actually comes through)

Is there any merit in putting a breathable membrane over the top of the insulation, to prevent air movement within the insulation?

Umm, are we expecting an imminent 0% VAT rating on ashps ? I heard that the chancellor has this planned, just wondering if/when we’ll see it in the shops. Looking to drop some coin on one this quarter, and loosing the vat would be handy.

You should know what I’m like by now, we’ve been members of ‘that other forum’ for long enough…. I thought I recognised your username. 😏

I’m completely off grid at one property, and have been for 50yrs…. Trust me, generating electricity yourself with reciprocating engines isn’t fun, or cheap… if you really want to do it, you want a Honda ex5500 and modify the cooling system so you can plate load it into a TS and get most of the energy out of that gas.

Depending on whether I have the space in a cupboard, or not, I was going to manifold the rads and balance them there. Originally the plan was to put wired actuator heads there (when I was considering a high temp system). We tend to have all the doors permanently open between rooms in this house, which would make TRVs pretty redundant, would it not? if I end up having to do everything under the floorboards then I’ll just do the usual plumbing setup with a bucket of Ts

I was googling what sort of control strategy I'd need if I shifted to an ASHP, my googling has led me to think that full weather comp, heating on 24/7 (which is fine, as the house is occupied almost 24/7 anyway), and the odd TRV to limit room temperature if required. Talking of TRVs - google brought up the ttached interesting article from back in 2011 by the EST. A little out of date (it mentions that most heat pumps are fixed speed, not inverter driven, which is now not the case). Sharing here in case it's of interest. 3531-effect-radiator-valves-heat-pump-perf.pdf

I was joking…. I report a few a month. As an eBay seller myself, it gets my back up when businesses start flogging stuff on there to then say ‘final price is plus vat’….. it’s usually second hand plant.

It was toolden who had the eBay listing…

It’s eBay, so all prices must include vat, eBay being setup as a b2c sales platform. I vigorously report listings that breach these rules as I really have nothing better to waste my evenings on 😂

Don't appear to have a web shop - I'm not ordering over the phone, they'll get my address wrong... eBay it is...

They just seem so flimsy and overpriced... given that we want to be walking all over this boarded area

Could you advise a good on-line supplier of this FM330? I need to get on with the foam-a-thon in this place, and doing the window reveals is on my list of things to do ASAP. EDIT: £104 for a case of 12, delivered, eBay... That seems reasonable

One of the first jobs my now-wife got me to do around the place when I showed up 12 years ago was board out half of the loft. Being younger and stupid(er) I boarded over half the insulation. As I start to look at improving the insulation around this place, to try and reduce the amount of heat we leak away, I want to lift and re-lay all this insulation and boarding, topping up where necessary. Obviously, being a super-competent DIY mastermind and genius metal fabricator, I'm not going to entertain buying loft legs from B&Q and am looking at making something up. I'm considering using metal C stud (given current timber prices, I've worked with it before) to make up some trusses, then running these at 90 deg to the current joists, then putting new boards over the top. Has anyone done anything similar, or have any better ideas on how I can tackle this?

Very interesting, thanks for the information. Those unit prices though, what things were like back in times of old