Jeremy Harris

Well, that's the last viewer gone for today, and I'm bloody well knackered. Today, we've had another three who I reckon are probably very likely to make an offer, especially the couple that have just left. Two of those three have sold subject to contract, so in a reasonable position, one has sold and moved into temporary rented accommodation. Two of today's viewers are probably not interested, although having said that one from yesterday that I thought was a no-hoper has just booked a second viewing for Friday. Right now I think we're sitting with at least 5 realistic prospects, maybe 6. No viewing tomorrow as I've got to drive down to Cornwall to help sort out my late mother's stuff with my brother, but I'm going to have drive back here again in time for the first of Friday's viewers. Thankfully we've only got 4 booked for Friday (at the moment) all after lunch time, so I should get a bit of recovery time (unless we get more viewings booked tonight and tomorrow). I'm never, ever, going to sell a house again. It's a bloody awful process, as I hate trying to be a bloody salesman.

I dealt with them face-to-face in their Dublin showroom initially, which got our foot in the door, but they were still a complete PITA to place an order with, although they quoted quickly enough.

I'm just taking a break between house viewings, but will try and take a photo of the heat exchanger core as soon as I get time. Off the top of my head I think it's around 225mm x 250mm x 40mm active finned area, and has two rows, one behind the other.

It's a special I bought from Alnor in Poland, and should give me around 1.5 kW of cooling with the ASHP at 9 deg C and the MVHR on speed 3. I can up this to about 1.8 kW with the MVHR on full boost, I think. I'm building the double row heat exchanger into a special housing, as my installation's a bit odd - I'm cooling the fresh air intake before the MVHR, and leaving the MVHR manually set to 100% bypass (which we do in the summer anyway). The main reason for me fitting it this way is that it's a lot easier and I want to add an additional coarse intake filer any way, and it's not much more work to fit the heat exchanger into this additional external filter box.

It was 5 years ago. Munster are a mixed bag. The performance of their windows is very good, and they are keenly priced. They are let down by a bloody awful head office, that unless it's changed, can be a PITA to deal with for self-builders. They are geared up to supply the mass developer market, an area they seem to get a lot of business with, but although self-builders can buy from them they don't make it easy. The other point is that the finish internally is good, but it's not up to Internorm standards. It's on a par with all the other mid-range 3G suppliers, but generally Munster have the upper hand when it comes to performance. Having said that, I'm perhaps a bit overly fussy about the minor issues with the clear pine finish we have on the inside of our aluclad windows, and had we chosen a pre-painted aluclad interior, or used their very good uPVC range, then I doubt I'd have the slightest quibble about quality.

I have a tester that I made up that tests using DC sent down each pair in turn, using a microcontroller to run a step pattern down the cable and a simple group of four LEDs on the end of a plug that checks the distant end. The way it works it to put DC down each pair for a couple of seconds, then switch to the next pair, then the next pair etc, so what you see at the receiving end is a moving light display, that shows if all pairs have continuity, or if they don't, which pair is dodgy. I found that the two or three problems I had were all down to bad punch downs by me. Hooking the duff wire out of the IDC and punching it down again always fixed the problem for me. Curiously, none of the flexible cables I made up had problems, yet it's far more fiddly to feed 8 wires in order into the back of a plug and crimp then down with the tool.

But the difference there is between brands, rather than glazing. For example, our aluclad 3G from Munster (same finish and style inside and out as Internorm), was around £8.5k fitted and with cills. From Internorm it would have cost over £23k fitted with cills. Admittedly the Internorm internal finish is slightly better, but I can't see any difference in terms of the main frame extrusions or the handles and hinges. In terms of performance, the Munster 3G windows are slightly better than the Internorm 3G ones, both had two low e internal panes. Munster used Saint Gobain Planitherm Argon Gold glazing, not sure what Internorm would have used, but it had to be broadly similar. As I said above, the prices differences aren't driven by whether the glazing is 2G or 3G, they are driven by other factors in the main.

Thanks, I'm pretty pleased with it as a first effort, albeit with a lot of help. It's made me all the more determined to assemble all the parts I have for the one I was planning to build - that stalled when we started building the house, but I have all the parts to make the frame, gantry, all the linear rails and bearings, even the stepper motors and lead screws, and a part built brushless motor driven spindle, with an ER15 collet.

Just to close this off, by chance I was talking to a neighbour who happened to have a 4ft x 4ft home made CNC router in his workshop. So. rather than take up @MikeSharp01s kind offer, I decided to have a go myself, under the guidance of my neighbour, who clearly had a fair bit of experience of driving the software. I laminated up some of our left-over oak skirting boards, that were 120mm x 20mm, to make a double thickness board, with the joins offset and the grain as best matched as I could make it on the joins. I ran my router down each pair of boards to be edge glued just to make sure I got a tight joint. When epoxied together I ended up with a board about 40mm thick, 500mm long and 240mm high. We started off by playing around with the mayfly design to make it easier to route out - took a couple of ours of fiddling to simplify it and make it looks reasonable. Next, we took a thin skim of both side of the sign (it's double sided) to make sure it was dead flat. The routing out of the text and mayfly was pretty simple after that, we ran a test on a bit of MDF, which looked OK, then went for it with the oak. It came out pretty well, and I stained the oak with a dark oak wood stain, then sanded the flat surfaces to remove most of the stain, leaving the routed out bits much darker. Two coats of clear exterior finish and it looks like this, ready to go up on the gallows post I managed to get concreted in on Monday:

Another two viewings booked today, one for later today, one for Saturday. The advert stats are showing that the ad has now been viewed 6585 times, 6418 of those via RightMove (it's clear they are the market leader, I think) Out of those ad views there have been 1280 in-depth views or downloads of the house details, with 1236 of those coming from RightMove Our performance feedback as sellers is showing 4 (out of a possible 5) in all three categories, Presentation, Suitability and Price. All are dragged down by one review that marked us way down at 2 for everything (clearly didn't like us or the house), as most reviewers are scoring us at mainly 5's across the board. Quiet morning today, as all the viewings are this afternoon and evening. Makes a welcome change, TBH.

No worries about condensation inside the duct work, as the condenser will be the duct cooler, so the air will be at it's coolest as it leaves the duct cooler and will have condensed out most of the water vapour in contains on the duct cooler surfaces (bit like the condensation on a cool can of beer). The air inside the ducts will gradually warm up a bit as it picks up heat, so will have a greater capacity to hold water vapour. The duct sides will always be warmer than the air flowing through the duct so won't attract condensation on the inside. There's a small risk of condensation on the outside of the ducts, but my experience with the Genvex (which chucks out cool air at around 12 deg C) is that I've never seen any condensation on the outside of the ducts. This may be in part because the semi-rigid duct is twin wall, so inherently has a degree of insulation.

Yes, a buried pipe heat dump, capable of losing around 2 kW of so to the ground, should work, It'd need to be sized to give a flow temp to the duct cooler of around 8 to 9 deg C and accept a return temp of around 20 deg C at a guess, so a long enough buried pipe (it's need to be about 1 to 1.5m down) that could lose that much heat to the ground would work. It'd need a circulating pump, expansion vessel, fill loop and PRV (although technically I can't seen reason for needing a PRV, but BC might get sniffy if there isn't one).

Ours is a Genvex Premium 1L, a bit over-sized for our house, but we went for the Premium 1L over the Premium 1 because the ~50% great er capacity gave a similar increase in the cooling capacity from the built in air-to-air heat pump. It's an expensive bit of kit though, and I'm near certain that we could have the same performance from just having a water fed duct cooler run from the MVHR. The idea is that if you have an ASHP, then you can plumb in a duct heater/cooler to the fresh air feed and then use the ASHP to provide additional air cooling/heating. The £150 duct heater/cooler I've just bought should have a cooling capacity of around 1.5 kW, about the same as the Genvex, but without needing an additional heat pump. I'm part way through making the duct cooler, but have been deflected by the rush of people wanting to look at our old house.

Last year quite a few of the uPVC suppliers were offering 3G for the same price as 2G, so I think that, on a like-for-like quality basis there is probable very little difference in price. Most of the cost in windows is in making the frames etc; the glazing unit isn't a massive cost element, so there really shouldn't be much of a price difference.

That's borne out in the spec for the air-to-air heat pump that's built in to our MVHR. The heating capacity is about 1.5 kW, the cooling capacity is just a bit over 1 kW, but the working conditions for the input air temperature and humidity are markedly different, as is the Δt

Thanks very much indeed, Herb, that's brilliant. Just got feedback from the last but one viewers, quote: I'll type up a copy, based on the format you've kindly provided, @HerbJ and have a chat with the Purple Bricks conveyancing people.

Phew... I'm getting house selling fatigue. That's the fifth viewing today just finished, cash buyers, near-certain they're going to make an offer. The give away was when they started telling one of their kids "this is going to be your bedroom". They've sold their house and are renting from one of their in laws, and seemed desperate to escape (think I would be, two small kids, living with in-laws, has to be a bit of a nightmare). Next viewing's not until 19:30, so quick break for some dinner, then get the last one for the day over with (another cash buyer, so needs a proper spiel, so no drinking beforehand...) then I can sit down, have a drink and relax. Until tomorrow, when it all starts again...

Essentially you set the conditions for an acceptable bid (in our case confirmed exchange of contracts date and offer price) set a closing date for bids, stipulate that you reserve the right not to accept the highest bid (gives you the wiggle room to pick a more reliable bid at a lower price), then people just put their bids in an envelope and hand them in by the closing date. There's not normally an automatic right to give other interested parties to bid, as there's a risk it might be seen as an auction, but you can decide to approach the next favourite bidder if the winning bidder drops out. As an example, we've just had a couple around to view who very definitely want to buy, but they haven't sold their current house, so right now they aren't in a position to give a realistic completion date. However, if the winning bid fell through, and by that time they had sold their house, then they may well be the next best, simply because things have changed in the meantime. Frankly I doubt that will happen, as I think we've already got pretty firm-sounding feedback from one buyer.

We now three viewings down, three to go today, and we've just had two more viewings booked for Friday. If I was to try and guess I'd say we've got one couple seriously thinking about it, one couple who I'm near convinced will make an offer pretty quickly and one lady who's a no-hoper. I'm now set on sealed bids, and am making this clear to everyone from the start. The most serious couple actually thought going to sealed bids was a good idea, but that may be because they have no house to sell, are cash buyers (no mortgage needed) and are living in rented accommodation. Their eyes literally lit up when I said that the most important criteria for us was getting a bid with a confirmed date for exchange of contracts. Interestingly two couples have given us impromptu feedback that the reason we are getting lots of interest is because we are selling a bungalow at a reasonable price. Apparently there is a high demand for bungalows in this area (goodness knows why - I hate the bloody things!). Makes me glad I took the advice to market at "offers in excess of £260k", rather than market at a higher starting price.

I do have a portable aircon, but it makes a heck of a noise when it's running, and only really cools down a single room. It's also very awkward to use, as you have to feed the hot air exhaust hose out of a window, which both limits where you can put it and means that warm air can flow in from the open window. At the moment we tend to use it to pre-cool the bedroom, setting it up in there in the early evening, closing the bedroom door and letting it cool the room down. We have to turn it off before going to bed, but at least we start off with a reasonably cool bedroom. (taking a break from viewers - three down, three more to go today)

All heating ASHPs reverse, they have a four port reversing valve that switches the relative positions of the condenser and the evaporator. The reason they have to have this is to defrost the evaporator. By switching the four port reversing valve the heat pump can draw heat from the water side and use it to warm up what was the evaporator (but is now the condenser) on the air side. This melts any ice build up, at the cost of sucking some heat energy out of the house whilst it's doing it. This is why a badly set up ASHP can have a really bad COP if it ends up defrosting fairly regularly, as defrosting not only means it's not heating for the duration of the defrost cycle but it's also extracting heat from the house, which then needs to be put back the next time the unit switches to heating mode.

Thankfully we rarely ever got involved in selling, as the vast majority of our house moves were via a relocation scheme, where we were just given the value of the house and the relocation company dealt with selling it in slow time, after we'd moved out (never knew what any of them ever sold for, even). I'm 100% with you on the sealed bid idea, and intend telling every viewer that this is what we will probably be doing, asking for sealed bids that include the price and a date by which exchange of contracts can be concluded.

By far the worst for us are the East and West facing windows, as above, because of the low angle of the sun that allows greater room penetration. For us East is worse than West, but that's because we're next to a stream and lakes, so in the afternoon the air is often a bit hazy, from water vapour in the bottom of the valley. This seems to decrease the solar gain from the West a fair bit.

Good point, last time we were looking to buy Google Earth didn't exist! Just had the first viewer around, seems keen to buy, but they have a house to sell. They told me they didn't have a mortgage and had been offered bridging finance, which makes me believe they might be serious, but they are low on my list of possibles. The viewer that's just been around says there's a high demand for bungalows, when I explained that we had a surprisingly large number of viewings booked, so we may well go to sealed bids. Quick glass of orange juice now and a sit down before the next one arrives, whose sold subject to contract, so a better prospect, perhaps. Just checked the advert stats: Advert page views = 4046 Total advert details views or downloads = 1040 (of which 1007 were via RightMove!)

I think that, in our case, it's because we only have two windows upstairs, one in each bedroom, and they point East and West, with the East facing one having heat reflective film on, which pretty much kills any solar gain upstairs from early morning through to mid-afternoon.