MikeSharp01

Looks like a good opportunity, nothing is risk free in this space, provided you can get the plot for a good price how is the land zoned now - agricultural or ? The new planning regime looks like it will help you as infill like this should become grey belt or even brown field - if it was formerly the curtailage of one of the other properties, and there is also the new housing targets for councils so they need to build more houses. The challenge will be to get the locals onside so your plans have no objections and people / planners see your suggestion as the best use of the land and raises all boats in terms of value, character and that it matches the street scene, does not damage the overall feel of the area - essentially it looks, when finished like it has always been there. What did the planners say about the previous planning requests?

Just got sent this link by my other half - https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/sep/12/low-carbon-homes-can-save-1341-in-bills-and-should-be-compulsory-study-shows?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other its an MCS report that will make a load of work for MCS but I guess the Guardian didn't spot the positive feedback loop there. I suppose my view is that the basic ideas should be compulsory but having MCS do it should probably not.

I was just fitting the first of the internal doors, based on a trenched Howdens door frame, and I thought I had better check building regs as it is at the end of a corridor - head on though, found that the clear width is only about 720mm when 750mm is the BR requirement - seems daft that you can by a door kit from the H and it is not compliant anywhere I figure I must be misreading the BR doc?

I looked at the Viessman units as they have a 4kW mono block which has a lot going for it with only one real downer for us - the way the monoblock system works using an indoor unit, connected to the outdoor unit by water - not refrigerant, which is very large. I like the way they give you the depth of modulation and share all the stats around air temp / flow temp / COP.

Yes but how will you programme your findings into your controller if you cannot talk to it and tell it the rules or use some external computing power to tell it what to do?

It's all about optimisation in the end.

Yup, that is correct. Cheaper than shoplifting, quiet as a mouse farting in a church on a Sunday during mass, and solid as a rock. But how do you automate their controls - cannot find any manuals or datasheets and the specifications were all written in 2017 and you cannot be telling me that the world of ASHPs has not moved on a long way or that the 2017 design was 10 years ahead of the pack.

Actually - belay that a little birdie tells me he was lurking on the side last Monday - clearly we must be doing alright otherwise he would have been on to put us straight wouldn't he.

Speaking of @Nickfromwales looks like he has not been on here since July - must be having a good long holiday somewhere let's hope.

Why? I looked at Panasonic and the information on their R32 5kW monoblock was limited or very old - I could find nothing on how to get access to the controller although it talks about a cloud option I don't want that - local RS485 would suit me much better and the sound levels seemed a bit high.

That sounds like a very small modulation range - whats the model, you obviously thought it would do down to around 50%, I guess it would cycle less if it could get down to 3.1kW but maybe there are other trade offs when modulating down that far at such low temperatures & small deltas although I cannot think what they might be.

What is it rated at, ie what does 5.2kW represent as a percentage of max output.

We recently paid £250 for our air test in Kent, - got 0.2 on The Passive house scale and 0.3 on the Building regs scale.

Ah yes that explains a lot - it seems that you were, before you lost it, using a drill for driving screws.

Thanks. Good plan - I will get some when the balancing starts.

With us there is no room for them before the distribution plenums so they will need to go on the other side between the titon and the outside air but I do have room inside the DIY plenums for some foam etc. Not sure what the effect of having the attenuator on the external connections is though.

We are just about to put the MVHR unit in and hook it up to all the ductwork and the outside world. We have a Titon HRV4.25 Q Plus B2 (with the aura controller) and I am not sure what attenuation strategy I should use. I have read loads of stuff on here and elsewhere and also spoke to the technical team at Titon (can't praise them (him) enough) and he suggested using two of their 1m semi flexible attenuators although I know some on here advise against these devices. I had intended to put the attenuation into the distribution boxes, so after the unit in supply and before it on extract, which I will custom make, based on ideas shown elsewhere here, to fit the space and allow maintenance but his suggestion - which will be the other side of the unit on the connections to the outside, has some advantages eg getting fitted in the space /lined up. I do want to to be as quiet as I can get away with. Any thoughts.

We still have our problem in that I cannot actually do a DIY job for the difference I would need to pay a over the grant amount 4K ish based on all the quotrs we have had. I am now looking at the Umbrella schemes to see if I can use that route. It is an official MCS thing but finding a partner local enough to do their bit is proving 'interesting'.

The coffee machine!

Thanks all - I will get back to it at the weekend, draining it down and fitting a new 3 way valve as the current one seems to be letting by, which may explain where the flow is going when it should be going to the furthest rads, the TRV is the right way round its not stuck as I can push it down no problem so it must be an imbalance - has been working fine up until now - still best get it sorted before the winter comes.

At the bottom - they are tall wall rads 1.8m high.

Just doing a check through our heating system at millstone manor, ready for winter, and have come across an odd problem. We have a radiator where the feed pipe is getting hot, there is no bypass pipe, but the radiator is not. I have had the rad off, checked it is not blocked and both valves are open, same problem. Feels like an air lock but the radiator bleeds fine. Any thoughts?

Not sure where they get, probably missed something I have, the SCOP of 1.75 in HW mode from even the highest temperature output in the heatpump specification is 3.47 @ 55 Deg C after which it drops to 0 which implies it won't go there!

No piling, just three cores to check the state of the clay below the slab. We scraped off the surface buried the soil pipes, put in the peripheral drain and then back filled with type 1 - rolling and levelling in layers, then covered in pea shingle before putting down the insulation modules, put in the dpm, made and installed the reinforcing , attached the UFH, poured the concrete.

Passive slabs are more expensive than strip foundations but your soil conditions are the same as ours, although we have no large trees close, so no reason not to. You need to get a proper structural design based around a few cores taken by a soil mechanic as we did. The rest was just hard work - but worth it.