jack

If the government didn't want people to consume locally, they could just as easily have insisted on proper metering. It wouldn't have cost them anything - the consumer pays for the installation, and the power companies pay for the cost of administering payments. I therefore take the view that the government put the deemed consumption measure in specifcally to encourage local consumption. Maybe they foresaw the rise of the electric car, and wanted to get a head start on installing local capacity to avoid the need to expand the grid to cope with increasing home charging. Hahahhaahhhha, had you going for a minute there. Of course, what really happened is that the government stuffed up, in which case I'm performing my civic duty to punish them whenever they drop the ball. If there're no consequences for their incompetence, how will they learn?

Result! We should be encouraging this sort of approach to customer service. Want to name the parent company that gave such a good response?

We don't really know the full story, but from what you've told us, I'm a little concerned about how much you're reading into at least some their actions (and I'm aware of this possibility because I know I personally over-analyse and worry about things). Regarding your previous comments about them aggressively calling for their cats off your land, cats are utterly unbiddable, so the cats are there by their own choice. I can't see how else you get a cat back into a house other than by calling it, so I'd be careful about reading too much into someone shouting a cat's name towards the general area where they know the cat is likely to be. Same with the poo in the planting area - cats love a planting area where someone's gone to the trouble of loosening up the soil for them to take a crap in. That's by far the more likely answer than someone coming and burying cat poo just below the surface. Re: the hedge, what do you mean by "eyeing up"? Unless they've said something, how can you conclude that they're planning criminal damage to it? The best piece of advice I've ever heard is that you can't control other people but you can control yourself. You may be angry or upset, and that's a perfectly rational first response when people behave like arses, but fundamentally the thing that's making you unhappy is your response to the situation. Your reaction to other people's actions is something you can learn to control. Work on how you respond, and your stress levels will reduce, for sure. All that said, I'm not sure how I'd cope being in your situation. I don't cope well with bad behaviour in others, and I don't understand why some people insist on being tits.

We've only disabled the inbuilt immersion in the ASHP. We have two immersions on the unvented cylinder, and they are used with a PV diverter. The entire tank reaches 75+ deg C on many days during the sunnier half of the year. As for winter, after a lot of research, I concluded that our situation involves a low risk of Legionella: domestic situation with smallish-tank for the size of the house (= complete turnover of tank water every couple of days) no iron or steel components (= no sludge or rust for Legionella to live in) softened water (= reduced build-up of calcium deposits in which Legionella might live) a sealed system (gravity fed systems with open header tanks are a potential vector) occupants who are not at high risk (no elderly and infirm occupants, or regular visitors who might use showers). I therefore don't run a Legionella cycle. We do have one relatively long dead leg, which is the run to the guest room ensuite. The shower in that room is never used, and in theory that could be a problem, but a Legionella cycle at the hot water tank wouldn't really reduce that risk much. Within the next year or two I can see this bathroom being commandeered by one of the kids, which will remove this potential issue. Some units just have a code you input via the service menu. It's done that way because the Renewable Heat Incentive doesn't pay out for units with a cooling mode. The lockout is a way of getting around this. Personally I haven't bothered with cooling mode on mine. The main place we have issues with heat is upstairs, and there's no UFH there. A foot of snow sits on top of the unit and on the ground around it? Makes no operational difference as far as I can tell.

Our 289m2 house on the Hampshire/Surrey border doesn't have the solar gain that Jeremy's does, and has some large windows to the north, so despite the similar construction, we need a little more heat input than him. As an example, when our ASHP went on the blink at the start of last winter, we used a single electric column heater to heat the entire house. Bathrooms were a little too cool (no heating in the bathrooms - that's another story), but for most of winter, the house was perfectly comfortable running the column heater on medium (which I assume is somewhere between 1000-1300W). During really cold spells, we would run the heater on full (2000W) overnight. I wouldn't describe the house as being "toasty" during this period, but it was perfectly comfortable. It would have been better if our entire downstairs wasn't polished concrete, which tends to make the house seem cooler, on average, than the air temperature would suggest. Edited to add: our ASHP is a 5kW Panasonic unit, and it's more than up to the task of keeping the house warm while also providing hot water.

No, it's disabled in the software.

Our ASHP is on the far side of our attached garage. The pipework runs through the centre layer of the insulation under our slab. The total distance from ASHP to cylinder is around 8-9 metres. It works perfectly fine, although I'm sure that's at least partly because it's so well insulated. Our ASHP is rated to 55 deg C, and the tank reaches that temperature every morning without fail even in the middle of winter. Ours is a monobloc (single exterior unit outputs hot water). A split system (or bi-bloc) has the fan and refrigerant unit outside, and outputs hot refrigerant to an internal unit that heats water. Split systems tend to be more expensive and require installation by a refrigeration engineer due to the use of refrigerant connections.

I could watch skilled trades working all day. Beats actually doing anything myself! You can see why plasterers either have amazing shoulders or serious shoulder problems. My shoulders are aching just watching him do three minutes on the ceiling.

They somehow did worse than that. The shower in this bathroom takes 3 seconds to start warming up. The basin takes over 40 seconds. The downstairs plant room with UVC is just to the right of right hand wall: I assume the shower pipework goes straight up inside the wall, whereas the basin suffers from a much longer route. It's possible the longer route was required to get around, eg, drainage and MVHR runs. I'm just not sure. We should definitely have had HRC to our kitchen (~12m run from UVC) and downstairs toilet (~8m run).

Ours is on the far side of our (attached) garage and I've literally never heard it. When it's ticking away at low speed providing UFH heating during winter, you can feel the cold breeze from the fan as you walk by, but that's about it. Admittedly, it only does water heating between 4 and 6 am, so I suppose it could be making a huge racket at that time. We certainly can't hear anything in our bedroom, and its the closest room to the ASHP. We have 8.5kW of PV, but during winter, there are many days when it hardly generates any energy at all. It's much better in the shoulder months - spring can provide some useable energy at a time when the ASHP might sometimes be on.

Yes, they do work better in summer, but they're still useful for hot water during that time (assuming you aren't using PV and diverter - our ASHP basically turns off for several months a year during summer). And while it's true they work better at a time when you need them less, that it a misleading way of putting it. The question is, do they still work, in a cost-effective way, when you need them most. Assuming a well-insulated house and a properly designed and scaled ASHP heating system, the answer is an emphatic "yes". As others have said, the much higher capital and maintenance costs for GSHPs make them generally uncompetitive against ASHPs, assuming you're not prevented from using an ASHP due to, eg, planning restrictions.

That should be all you need, really.

Ah, sorry, it's a joke based on the long planning history of this house. Joe's local council were insisting on 1.5 storey based on a mythical "local vernacular" requirement. He took it to appeal and won.

This would have been better as a 1.5 storey cottage. Much more in keeping with the local vernacular.

First he'll need to plant the hazel seeds, manufacture the necessary tools , dig up some limestone, build a crusher, build a kiln, etc. We may be some time.

You could make one, surely?

This thread is so fun.

Bear in mind that those of us with 200mm centres have our pipes buried under at least 40mm of concrete. That will tend to provide more even heat than the same spacing under ~20mm, which is all you'll have above yours with 16mm pipe at the bottom of 35mm screed.

I may be misremembering, but aren't there DNO limitations on how far the supply is allowed to be from the house without further protection (3m rings a bell)? Putting the temporary supply on the boundary doesn't sound like it'll achieve that (depending, of course, on how far the house is from the boundary). I have no idea what cost/complexity implications are associated with this.

Ours used to jump several feet from a standing start, with very little scrabbling. The mesh might discourage them, but I personally wouldn't rely on it.

Most dogs won't jump fences unless they're very low. Most cats, unless old or fat, will easily get over 6+ foot fences.

Correct use of past tense. Actually, my wife hates hanging about once she's awake, even on weekends, so she bounds out of bed in the morning. I tend to take a more leisurely approach...

Is your temporary supply going to become your permanent one when the house is finished? If so, you should spec for that.

Our kitchen is at the back of the house, because our building area was long and narrow. Study and lounge are to the right (south) as you move into the hall, and snug, toilet, utility and plant room are to the left (north). We have friends who built a house with the kitchen at the front of the house, and that works really well (at least partly because their house is shallow and wide, so the kitchen is still close to the back garden. We did consider an upside down house due to the steep rise to the back of our plot, and schlepping up to the kitchen was one reason we didn't do that in the end. You have to work with the constraints you have, for sure.

My mate knows people who were affected by their holiday homes being vandalised and even set on fire by Welsh nationalists. It was a big thing in the 80s and mid 90s apparently: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meibion_Glyndŵr