Big Neil

althlugh I know the difference is in the name, practically speaking, what is the difference between a vented and an unvented cylinder. I've got the V right haven't i, VENT?

oooooo - a polarising film - or - and let this percolate vis-a-vis covering them to prevent generation whilst fitting, but a fitted bed sheet....

quality thanks. I'll interrogate it later.

Well whilst the numbers seem to be fairly close as far as i've found so i suppose are a non matter to a large degree, i just want to know.

Isn't that a bit crap, at the risk of sounding a little base. I mean, would re-positioning the connectors not make sense. Maybe put them at the top/bottom so the panels can be mounted in one, then connected a row at a time.

besides @ProDave, I became a professional Heating engineer inside about 10 posts earlier today, so this should be simple. Next week - @Big Neil runs workshops for DIY nuclear reactor building

can they not be mounted before being connected up, well partially at the very least?

what did you favor when you were looking? I assume you were going to do it all yourself, so was if based largely on cost per watt?

Wow, they look nice, and cheap as well, certainly in comparison to others. I can't see the % efficiency figures on there anywhere. Probably missed them but do you know the figure by chance? IN either case it would have to be pretty decent i guess. Just looking at the LG cost I found that's 0.7 W per £ more.

So irrespective the actual mounting method, is it broadly speaking; Put mounting kit on roof, Feed a wire from back of panel through the vapor membrane, secure the panel, connect them all up and away you go... (aside obviously from the electrical functioning of it all, i just mean to get the panels on the roof). I shall look at YouTube later of course, but i tend to find it doesn't answer questions in a basic enough fashion most of the time.

So just thought i'd take a peak at various panels just to knob up on specs and sizes and what not. I know there are other makes of course, but i found 3 quite similarly spec'd examples from the three manufcaturers in the thread title so thought i'd use them as a baseline for now. Several questions. Has anyone been in a position of having to choose between these three manufacturers and gone with one? What were your reasons? Given that they all Provide notionally identical warranties on product and power, is the small variance in % efficiency a bother to anyone? Why is it that I can easily find a price (£204 on first pass) for a LG NeON® 2 Black panel of 320WP, (£252.25) for a Panasonic HIT KURO N325K but nothing for the equivalent Sunpower (X21)? Do alternative, much cheaper panels, provide a similar cost per unit generated, when one also considers the efficiency difference, so lets say for example a 250 watt panel with say 18% efficiency? Anyone considered Viridian as an alternative to these?

Booom. That's a win for the day - small maybe but i'm counting it. Needed that. Thanks to everyone. @joe90 i'll be on to you the next time i need a diagram for something. If in return anyone wants to know anything about kebab shops in Salford, the Lotus Elise between 1995 and 2001 or the pitfalls of women from the Stoke region... I'm your Man!

ahhh, so the coil looking thingey going into the DWH tank is a loop of pipe aswell.. good stuff. So You can supplement that with a heating element taking excess PV generation (or simply straight from the mains) if required to be hotter. So now i'm a fully qualified heating engineer who wants me to do their whole installation gratis??

got it (maybe) - sealed loop. Combined a bit of corssover from my other thread about heat batteries. So the ASHP heats a closed loop filled with antifreeze to give the heating. It's not actually water which goes through those loops no?

To be honest Mr 90 i prefer it to the amateur scribble nick grabbed. I like the personal touch. One thing I don't quite get is that if the cold feed from the mains goes into the hot water tank then out to the ASHP plus to the UFH via the diverter valve, how the return from the UFH doesn't get mixed up with the water one might otherwise drink/shower in. Have i read something wrong somewhere Or should i be reading that coil looking think inside the DHW tank as a sealed loop?

A diagram would be very helpful please sir, I just want to get an idea in my head, understand that, then when I take more specific advice I can ammend my understanding much more easily

Riiiiiiggght - Thanks Mr 90. I still need to get to a house mid-build, where I can actually see a setup involving ASHP and wet UFH in action. I'm terrible it seems with plumbing stuff, understanding exactly how everything is routed, when it comes to the hot water generation.

Its the same tank in either case is it, not one for hot water and another for the UFH. Have i read it correctly that the UFH has a hot and cold feed to mix down to the correct temp?

I will look at @Stones blog during the day if I get a moment. Thanks

riiiiiiiigghttttt - so in the case where one has a 'monoblock ASHP' mated to a cylinder with supplementary Coil to utilise excess PV generation, where that cylinder also feeds the rest of the hot water system, one of the feeds coming FROM the cylinder should be into a buffer tank for the UFH? Or does it all just go back into the cylinder anyway as it's all drinkable?

If the same as the last time i managed the compliance team at Carillion, temps are a pass at above 50 degrees for the hot and below 20 degrees for the cold. Could be a bit out of date though.

having a bit of a blonde moment - I'm sure it'll seem obvious when someone clarifies for me but; When the hot water goes into the UFH manifold to be distributed to the various circuits so as to flow around them, once circulated and back to the manifold, where does it then go? Does it just feed into the drains?

I bloody love this forum - Thank you all for the help. MR Harris, in that last example you mentioned To cement my understanding, it's water in from the mains, through my hypothetical cold water manifold, one of the feeds through the Monoblock ASHP, which will heat the water. ASHP then feeds the tank/cylinder (in which i can have a coil taking excess PV ) where the hot water is stored and then fed back out to my hypothetical Hot water manifold, where it is then fed out to various sources such as taps or the UFH manifolds. That correct?

Please help clear up some confusion. One of my main aims at understanding these things was to understand where they fit in the scheme of the overall water setup in a dwelling, particularly in the context of wanting to understand POSSIBLE energy efficiencies and the various facilities in a house designed to be energy efficient. All the info above is certainly useful in understanding how they work, but i'm still lost a little on the other point. I guess the closest parallel i can draw is that if you want to have a electrical appliances working in your house you either need an on site means of generating power or a connection to the grid, but can have both to compliment each other. You can then have a battery backup to sit along side them to allow efficient use of that energy, however much might come from the grid or your on site generation. Ultimately though you could just get away with being connected to the grid. I realise of course that there are other considerations such as load, cost, longevity etc etc, but broadly that doesn't matter in this example. So all questions of energy requirement calculations aside What do i need to provide my hot water, to allow me to run it hot from taps, run it hot through a shower head, run it hot into any appliance i might want to (where they weren't just cold feed) and where i want to provide hot water for the UFH system. CAN i just have an ASHP/several of them, CAN I just have a sunamp unit/several of them, CAN i just have panel collectors such as the ones Think Renewables supply, CAN I just have a massive insulated cylinder with whatever metal coils to keep the water hot (well hot/warm)? (like we used to in our house when i was a kid). Obviously cost is a factor in a real but lets call it a non-issue at the moment. what do i actually need to i don't freeze and can clean myself if there are a nominally standard 4 adults in the house?

I've read every word of this thread, and started another to get an understanding of what heat batteries are, so thanks everyone for the information. I'm probably never going to understand the technical in's and outs, i'm not a software engineer or a heating engineer or owt like that. However, I realise that the real core of the issue currently being discussed here is the charge acceptance level. It appears like this is something they are aware of but won't have a definitive fix for some time yet. Also it seems from the phrases being used throughout the last 9 pages indicate some quite intricate if to some quite simple fixes for the issue. They would all obviously cost chunks of money. However with one eye on the key objective of saving money in the long term, would it not be best to just wait for the relevant software updates (if that is all that is required to effectively resolve the issue), and for those with these units, just turn the tap on until the charge level hits 49%. I know there's an element of waste to this, but for those of us who have the time, maybe just take another bath. BY the way, none of that was meant to be patronising, i'm just struggling with why a temporary solution can't be this simple? Obviously I don't think everyone has the luxury of lolling around in baths all day...