jack

Actually, although they didn't come preinstalled to the window like yours, they were priced and supplied together, so I don't have separate prices. Also, while they're excellent for keeping the heat out, don't rely on them for completely blocking light. Ours let through a surpassing amount of light through their sides and the holes for the tapes.

Same with us. Lovely blinds on the downstairs east-facing windows to the kitchen. Nothing on the east-facing upstairs windows to our bedroom and the landing. The landing window is in a double height space, so you can hardly just bung up a curtain!

I see lots of same-old modern houses in the UK, that basically look like busy versions of what the modernists started not that far off a century ago. I have very little emotional reaction to most "modern" houses built in this country. I say that as someone who's built a fairly low-key but very modern house. For comparison, Japanese architects (and their clients) seem much more willing to push the boundaries to deliver truly interesting buildings. That said, I do suspect that this is driven as much by planning laws as taste.

And decent gloves at that. I tried this with brambles at ours and found out the hard way that the cheap pair of leather gloves I had lying around wasn't up to the job

Our house has a similar materials palette, but reads as three simple cubes. Hopefully that will stand the test of time better than something as fussy (in my amateur opinion) as the house above.

Hey, our insulation and airtightness are alright! Well, some of my windows are due a bit of a adjustment after a couple of years... It's mostly a combination of low solar gain overall (mostly due to trees) and large windows in places where they're net losers due to orientation. As a guide, we went away for three weeks from mid December, and turned *everything* in the house off. I estimated that the house was 13oC when we got back, which I didn't think was bad given nearly zero heat input for three weeks other than limited solar gain. Anyone care to estimate what temperature a house built to building regs standard (or worse) would have been at in similar circumstances?

Absolutely. My wife will use a duvet all the way through summer. I'm too hot under one even in the middle of winter. It's the same for most couples I know. There's also an element of me being cheap (plus wanting to use less energy in principle), so I'm happy to put on warm clothing if it's cold, rather than just turning the heating up.

Wow, I would literally - LITERALLY! - melt living in your house. 20-21 degrees in winter is more than pleasant for me. When the air temp gets above 23 degrees in the house, I start suffering. Apparently spending a lot of time in Australia in the past did nothing for my heat-tolerance! Like Jeremy, you clearly have a lot more solar gain than us.

Welcome to Buildhub. We have Passivhaus-level insulation and airtightness, with UFH in the downstairs slab. Our ASHP broke down at the start of winter. We found that a simple 2kW electric column heater with a fan on it was able to keep the house comfortable (if not exactly toasty) throughout the whole of winter. We usually ran it on low, bumping it up to the full 2kW during cold snaps. We have polished concrete floors throughout the downstairs area. It wasn't comfortable to walk on barefoot when the UFH wasn't working this winter. A decent pair of socks was okay for me, but it was certainly a lot more comfortable when the UFH was working the previous winter! Bear in mind the UFH in a PH dwelling will run - and indeed, will have to run - at a much lower temperature than in a standard building regs house. We have our ASHP output water on the absolute lowest heat setting, which is 25C. That works fine. Also, don't let anyone tell you that you don't need heating in your bathrooms in a house with Passivhaus levels of insulation. We were convinced not to include it and it's one of the larger regrets I have about our build. We're now retrofitting IR panel heaters, but I'd have preferred UFH. You should also think ahead early to how you've going to control solar gain, especially in the shoulder months where the sun is lower in the sky (so can get deeper into the building) and it may still be warm. One other consideration: you may not be thinking of it now, but one day you may need to sell. I think you'll put a lot of potential buyers off if you don't have UFH or at least beefy-looking central heating. You know you don't need the latter, but a lot of buyers won't know, and won't be convinced just by your say-so.

Did they tell you that today? I was convinced that they'd moved to an inner airtightness barrier a year or two ago, but perhaps I'm misremembering something else.

Welcome Richard. Happy wife, happy life. I wish you all the best in your endeavours. Do consider sharing some photos at some point - we love checking out what other people are doing and judging helping as best we can.

Ah, but that's punctuation, not over-punctuation. I once went for a job interview where they asked me whether I had any comment about a sign saying "Dogs must be carried on the Underground". I asked whether they were interested in the potential ambiguity or wanted a discussion about whether the intended meaning is clear enough from the context. Apparently it was the former, and they were continually surprised how many people didn't see the issue even with prodding. This was for a job where accurate expression was utterly paramount. Oh, and I didn't get the job.

If you want see lots of semi-colons, read any book dealing with grammar; authors of such things seem to love semi-colons. I gave up reading "Eats shoots and leaves"; for me, the writer over-punctuated to the point of distraction. Mostly it's US style guides that say that - from grammarly: "In British English, the first letter after a colon is capitalized only if it's a proper noun or an acronym". Snap.

Colon required, surely: Woman: without her, man is lost.

Or not: Again from memory, this is roughly the temperature difference I recall noting while my ASHP heated its first half tank of water. I hadn't really thought about it and expected a much higher supply temperature.

What goes on tour...

You forgot 18% maths.

Everything can be explained at a fundamental level by physics (although there's perhaps a metaphysical "what is physics" question that's worth addressing before committing one way or the other).

Is it just me or is that beam crooked?

So much irony. Thanks for the laugh.

I suspect it's language choice, but this isn't quite right. The amount of energy required to move 1kg by 1m in 1 second could be anything. It could be zero in space (object moving at 1m/s), or around 10 joules against the earth's gravity. From memory it takes 1 joule to accelerate 1kg by 1m/s2 (not against gravity).

Maybe, but that isn't what I've seen. I set mine for 55 degrees, and according to the tank stats, it gets there pretty quickly. From memory, the ASHP doesn't output the target temperature while heating the tank. It outputs water that's a few degrees higher than the current return temperature. As such, you don't ever have a huge temperature difference driving energy into the tank. Happy to be proved wrong about that.

Yes. Given that these things are designed to handle outputs up to 3 times what your ASHP is putting out, I suspect a standard one might be fine. However, if it's not, you're stuck with it for a long time. For comparison, I have a 5kW Panasonic Aquarea with a 3.2m2 coil and have had no problems with the tank heating up quickly.

Thanks Jeremy, I found that link last year. Unfortunately, it mentions nothing about insurance, but it isn't clear whether that's because consumers don't need to go through the supplier's insurance, or the CAB just hasn't dealt with this issue in the link. I'll try calling them later this afternoon (just tried now and it sounds like there's a long wait).

Great minds - I was just looking up the details of the person I spoke to there when this all kicked off last year.