sharpener

I don't think they can. To date even my self-install has had a projected ten year payback. E7 only gives you one go at charging the battery (though I did actually have a gap but it was only an hour so too short to use). Cosy which as you say is as much a battery tariff as an HP one gives you 3 goes, quite widely spaced apart. It is early days and not really cold enough to tell but I think it will give me a better ROI than E7 did. Octopus notified me today that my Outgoing Fixed tariff is now operational so it now makes sense to import at 12.11 p/unit and export as much as possible at 15p. Victron s/w is optimised for battery charging from PV, which doesn't suit this strategy but they also have a Dynamic ESS upgrade. It has a Green mode which prioritises battery charging and self-consumption of the PV generation, and Trade mode which I am trying out - this is more aggressive and seeks to optimise the return by whatever means. Reviews of it are mixed so if it doesn't work for me I will have to write my own flows to do it in NodeRed. And I thought the physical installation of the HP was the major milestone...

Have just checked in connection with another forum, Homely do not yet list Nibe, Vaillant or Mitsubishi as compatible. Curiously enough they all use energy intergral as a control strategy, maybe Homely wouldn't make much improvement on that? I am assuming Octopus Cosy's 3 rates and 7 time periods are a reasonable proxy for saving the planet. It's complicated enough optimising the schedules to suit that but at least it's deterministic and also integrates with the battery setup.

I think they require access to your HP's API so in principle they could do that or indeed almost anything else. The Ovo tariff works by getting the metered consumption data from the HP and then retrospectively crediting your bill with the difference in rate.

Yes but IIRC one of the options is to have it work to its own separate weekly schedule so you can then program it how you like, you do not have to use it in connection with DHW at all. It doesn't seem to be in the sensocomfort simulator on the web so I will check this in the flesh on Thursday. You do not need a whole new sensocomfort to measure living room temp, there are wired or wireless thermostats ?VR92+/-F, you just need to assign that to the heating zone instead of the sensocomfort.

Funnily enough there was a recent thread about relays on the FB Heating Design page. Bought several from Maplin. Very handy source of all kinds of generic parts. RIP. Someone has bought the name now, they operate two near-identical web sites, one theirs, one Maplin. Recently bought a relay and some 230V LED panel indicators from them in various colours, all the orange ones blew up with a big flash, same for replacements. Whole batch had wrong dropper resistors inside. 0/10 for Quality Control. Avoid. Eventually they sent different yellow neons which I re-built in the LED cases to match the appearance. Nightmare. But I can finally see at a glance which valves on my HP system are open and why.

Good for the environment! When I was doing consultancy work for Baxi they said the pcb was the first thing that got changed irrespective of symptoms. Also there was a perverse incentive to change them bc the service operation were rewarded for value of spares fitted. Nearly all of them were No Fault Found when tested back at the works but there was no mechanism to return them to service(!)

Completed. Would have been good if there had been an option for BuildHub or similar fora.

I wonder if the motherboard failure was caused by leaking water and the plumber did not spot the failing valve at the time. (We will never know.) Insurance cover is useful to give peace of mind for an AP, otherwise self-insure. Put the £500/year into a sinking fund. When the annual outgoings look like they will exceed the £500 it is time to get a new boiler. These things are warning messages, ignore at your peril. (When my previous car had a rear spring fail and I didn't get it back for a week I knew its days were numbered. The one before that also needed a rear suspension repair, the actual cost was only a few £100s but in both cases the hassle was considerable and I was mucked about by the (different) repairers. One of them also put 80 miles on the clock at my expense supposedly as a "test drive".)

Not so very different in S Devon. That price and breakeven CoP are about average but I am hoping for better on a ToU tariff, am amazed that more ppl are not on them. Almost borderline for us, I was told the flue for my 25 y/o boiler was not up to modern standards so would need to be changed as well. Through-the-wall flue might have been an option but significant building work with 60mm stone walls. After BUS we paid £7k5, so not a lot extra for the HP over a new oil boiler, some new rads were needed anyway. Admittedly we have not had the old flue removed and the roof re-instated. I think this is indeed the biggie. As well as costing north of 20k this would not be acceptable in many places, ranging from a Victorian terraced street to our stone barn conversion (in an AONB, with most deemed planning consents annulled, I can't see it getting PP). Perhaps stone facings could be used but roof overhang and detailing round openings would still be problematic - planners insisted (arguably rightly) that original openings be retained and they all incorporate big quoin stones interspersed among the smaller stuff). IME having had 4 different solid wall Victorian houses there are a lot of pickings to be had from WC and good zoning. They were certainly not wrong to incorporate these into the Building Regs, though whether the installers know what they are doing or the householders know how to drive them is another thing.

There were some extra line breaks, it makes more sense with them removed as above. Yes making sure you are on WC would be the first priority, keep reducing the curve by 0.1 each day until you are too cold and then back one step. No one has mentioned ToU tariffs. If you change to something like Octopus Cosy then yr 23.2 kWh batteries can be charged fully at cheap rate 3x in every 24 hours and will most likely have the endurance to bridge the HP across the peak rate window 1600 to 1900h (or maybe you can program it to be set back or off at those times). u If you have a big enough HW tank also set this to heat up only during off-peak rate. Grant are often installed as S-plan so make sure the heating is off while the HW is on, or your htg flow temp will be unnecessarily high. If you are not on Octopus already there is a discount code which you can spilt with half going to support this forum, I forget the details but one of the mods will be along to tell you shortly(!).

I have a 20kW Vokera Mynute boiler with a horizontal 60/100 mm concentric flue going through an external brick wall. The original flanged gasket which provides a neat finish to the hole and weather protection round the terminal has fallen apart comprehensively. Vokera do not sell this separately, only as part of their complete terminal kits. Repair with flashing tape would be difficult as the job has to be done leaning over the edge of the bathroom roof. Anyone suggest where I can get a suitable replacement?

Hideous. But some good technical ideas e.g. internal expansion vessel (which in my (Vaillant) install is bright red and a rather conspicuous feature in the utility room). No obvious provision for condensate drainage. I wonder what the neighbours think? I presume it is within the "curtliage of the dwelling" but AIUI to be sited there it would need PP (even if under 0.6 cu m) bc it is within 1 m of the boundary. Also it looks a reasonable neighbourhood but there are many parts of the country where all that copper would not last 5 mins on the outside of the boundary wall even when concealed neatly in trunking!

If you have an external pump (connected to MA2) then other scenarios are of course possible depending on the Installer Settings. Configured as an HW secondary circulation pump you can make it work to an arbitrary timetable of its own.

I meant the control board inside the circulating pump. If the HP only provides a standard LNE connection to the circulating pump then I don't think it can do anything clever. Pumps with inbuilt electronic control will modulate according to demand so esp if only a few rads are open (a) will reduce their power consumption compared with a fixed speed pump and (b) may be less noisy either in themselves or for flow noise in the pipework. So I have one of these Wilo pumps for my thermal store, but largely bc it was left over from a previous installation (and luckily wasn't damaged when the garage got flooded), advantage is it does not mind if there is zero flow. Personally I would try and fix the existing pump myself and if unsuccessful replace it like-for-like. But you could elect to try a cheapo own-brand replacement from yr local builders merchant and might well get away with it.

Sounds like a failed capacitor, it's typical that you might get a motor to run without it but not reliably so (had this problem with the heat exchanger motor in our MVHR plant). If you can find one of the right capacitance and voltage rating you could solder in a new one for a few quid. If OTOH the control board has failed you might not be so lucky. Sorry but no idea how essential a fancy pwm pump might be in yr circs.

Yes. We have a very specific use case which is heating the bedroom rads at 0700, so before we get up but after the end of the cheap rate, the 270 litres was calculated with just that in mind. The plan was to do the same before we go to bed, but now that Cosy has an extra cheap window 2200 - 2400 we don't need it so it can be re-purposed for living room rads over the 1600 - 1900 peak. I think part of the OP's plan was to use the TS as somewhere to amalgamate all the various sources of heat, it is still valid for that. And also to prevent the oil boiler short cycling though I would question whether that is really necessary, ours used to fire 3 or 4 times an hour for 5-10 mins, I don't think they mind that unlike a HP. But unless a proper condensing type they object to low flow temps as any condensate will then rot the flue.

Have wondered about this in the past. I think our UV lamp is more or less instant start but even so the complication of avoiding any let-by was too difficult. Admittedly ours is a second home but I certainly don't change the lamp every year. In fact have done it once in 17 years as a precaution, old lamp was not discoloured and no obvious reduction in light level so kept as a spare. Managed to break the thin quartz sleeve £££ when I did it so am not in a hurry to do it again. Rubbish Pentair design as there is no proper clip so relies on connector supporting the weight of the lamp.

We have a 270 litre custom TS from Newark Cylinders to time-shift so we can run the rads from night rate electricity. Working well so far. I assume you will be having one with a coil for the HW like the new Heat Geek cylinders? You will need a lot of solar PV to make much of a dent in a 400 litre tank! 1 kWh is only 860 litre-degrees.

We have a 10in BB 5um wound string filter, a 20 in BB 1 um activated charcoal filter and a UV steriliser in that order. You want all this downstream of the pH tank. GAPS Water or Wrekin Water for all the above. Don't often disagree with @JohnMo but we find this useful. pH 6.8 is not badly acidic, limit for human consumption is 6.5, our rainwater is 5.5 and it hasn't eaten our cars yet! Brilliant! If I could get it done for that in S Devon I would go for it. Unfortunately I have not found a reliable competent firm in 17 years despite various recommendations. Anyone got any suggestions?

What on earth were they proposing? It's all eminently DIY-able. Yes, they and Wrekin Water have been my go-to for my rainwater system. A bit worrying this. Is there any possible source of contamination from animal waste? That would suggest a risk from cryptosporidium and giardella as well, which require very fine filters as IIRC UV treatment is not sufficient. Have you tested for those?

FWIW the IET On-site Guide says wiring must be separated by 25mm for gas pipes up to 35mm dia, and CUs by 150mm unless non-combustible insulation is interposed, but nothing at al about water installations.

Am in a minority here but I like the Polyplumb pipe and fittings. We inherited a rainwater system which had PP fittings inside the plant cubicle but JG outside. Useless, I was never confident they were done up properly and one actually sprang off under pressure. OTOH the PP always inspired confidence. The grab ring is inside the seal ring so it doesn't scratch the seal area on the pipe. Can be push-assembled, and unscrewed again with bare hands. Have installed much pipe above ceilings with PP, only problem was where I didn't mark the correct insertion depth on the pipe end, you need to do that.

Will try it. But I think the HW algorithm maximises flow temp as it tries to minimise the HW heatup time to avoid disrupting the heating schedule too much. So it might not help, and may actually make it worse (power = flow rate x dT and all that).

See the Energy Integral thread.

Was referring to the external call for heat from the 3rd party controls like the Evohome the OP and I have got. Without that I think the Arotherm Plus internal pump will run all the time it is on a timed heating or HW schedule. So if you want it to shut off for more of the time you need to tighten the schedules. For instance assuming the heating circuit was set to OFF in the summer it sounds as if you might have the HW heatup enabled for an unnecessarily long time, many ppl find a defined 2 hr window during the night-time cheap rate is enough for their HW needs, the pump shouldn't run outside that. Not sure what you would connect to the EVU terminals, have you got any third party controls at all? A room thermostat or timer could be used but the effect would be pretty much the same as judicious setting of the time schedules on the SensoComfort and using its internal thermostat in Room Temp Mod = Expanded mode, this shuts off the whole system when the index room is up to temp.