jack

I got a lump in my throat reading that.

Ah, interesting, thanks.

Pleased I got a 5 year warranty deal on the AEG dryer I bought last year then!

It really doesn't take much, does it? We all understand that stuff happens. It's how suppliers (and tradespeople, etc) respond that determines the impact of that stuff.

Agree with all that. Although our house is very modern, it's not particular challenging from a design or construction perspective. I'd have loved to do something challenging on both counts, but there's no way we'd have gotten away with it in our area (and that's before discussing costs and delays).

I never said otherwise. If you want to discuss historical exchange rates and what rates you happened to get several months ago, have at it, but I personally feel that information is of pretty limited use to people looking for bathroom suppliers today. My main focus was avoiding off-topic political discussions from derailing a useful thread.

Sounds good to me, assuming you usually have the same person delivering your post. Maybe a discreet sign somewhere near the front door? I guess you could add that if you find you're having problems with mail deliveries.

It was very useful for us. Our first architect designed something that we subsequently learned would never in a million years have been allowed by our local planning department. The local guy we subsequently engaged was extremely familiar with the local department's foibles. He ended up getting us planning permission first go for a very, very modern house in an extremely conservative (both kinds) suburban neighbourhood. There isn't a house within a mile of us that looks like it's been built less than 60 years ago, so I think this was a pretty good result. I'll add that it wasn't just that he was local: he was also a better architect, in my opinion, and also better at the planning side of things generally. Agreed on Jamie's comment about access, too. While ours wasn't engaged after planning, he only lived a few blocks away, so occasionally dropped in just to say hi and see how things were going.

Please all, let's not take this useful thread any further off topic. The markets and exchange rates are what they are, and there's nothing to be gained from rehashing the hows and whys of Brexit. Thanks

Amen to that. I thought I was going made recently when I tried to buy an extension reel. The one that was in the catalogue just didn't come up in any word-based searches, and I could only get to it by using the part number. Crazy.

According to the guy who runs this youtube channel (which I highly recommend recommend more generally, especially for those not easily offended by swearage), Milwaukee's quality has been falling for several years following its acquisition by Techtronic in Hong Kong. +1 on that. They really don't make it easy to compare, as newer models seem to have almost the same features as the old ones, and there doesn't seem to be much rhyme or reason in the numbering scheme. Their range is too big, imo.

The merchants. They pay a percentage (in the case of Amex, a relatively high percentage, I believe) of the purchase price to the card provider (eg, the bank), which I believe is split between the provider and Amex/Mastercard/Visa etc).

Makita for me, all the way. As to what to go for, I've gone with the cheapest brushless model, usually at ffx tools or similar. I buy bare tools (no battery or case). I've had good results with a 4Ah non-Makita battery from eBay. In the general "drilling" area, I have an impact driver (amazing bit of kit if you've never owned one) and a one of the larger cordless drills. Between the two of them they've handled all of the jobs I've had to do onsite, including light masonry drilling. I've always had cheap tools in the past, but now that I've had quality I could never go back.

Pleased you've kept it to only 3. Many more than that might be considered excessive!

... that you know of!

I had grand plans to bring control of the ASHP into the home automation system, but I suspect that would cost several hundred quid due to the cost of the interfaces that are required for both the ASHP and the home automation system. In the end I just went with the bog standard controller that came with the unit. The instruction manual (which is available online) told me in advance everything I needed to know about connections, programming and info like temperature ranges. Have you narrowed down the likely unit(s) yet? I must say I found Panasonic's tech help line very helpful (we went with an Aquarea)

Nope, I don't have one and have never planned one. The only tank I have is a 250L UVC for DHW.

Excellent question, with a simple answer: "I don't"! If you only ever supply, say, 25C water, then the hottest your rooms can possibly get is 25C. Warmer than ideal, but not the end of the world. If that were to happen I could back off the amount of time per day the system is running (or find a mixing valve that allowed for a lower temp, ideally one that's controllable via my home automation system). It goes back to someone's earlier comment about unstable systems - this system can't go out of control because it has a hard limit on its upper temperature that is acceptable (if not ideal). My recent introduction of a weather compensation curve may possibly challenge this, because the water temp starts increasing from 25C when its 8C outside, until it reaches a maximum temperature of 28/29C (can't remember exactly) at 0C. Once the insulation is back in the roof, I'll be turning this down a bit, because we really don't need the slab to be sitting at 23-23.5C as it is at the moment. That said, it's presently -3C outside at 9:30am, and has been even colder the last couple of nights, so it's lovely coming back into the house at the moment! In case it helps, when we turned on our heating a few weeks ago, the slab was at 18C. It took just under 12 hrs to raise that by 0.5C, which was the fastest rate at which the temperature increased. The maximum temperature change is therefore pretty-well bang on 1C per 24hrs, with 25C water (no weather compensation) Once the system is up and running each heating season, and ignoring weather compensation, the temperature differential will generally be lower, so the rate of temperature change should be lower too. What rate of change did your concrete people recommend? If it's okay for "ordinary" UFH systems, surely it should be fine for a well insulated floor which should have far slower temperature fluctuations with lower temperature differentials?

PMSL - genius! "the constraint is the planning system".

Welcome to the forum!

When I first started looking into this, I'm sure I found a supplier that did mixers that went below 25C, but I don't recall who they were, sorry. I thought I'd give it a go with the standard setup first and so far it's been fine.

At the moment, there are no separate "house heating controls". We don't even have an internal thermostat. While I do monitor the slab temp in a couple of places, that temperature isn't presently used to control whether and when the ASHP comes on. The problem with using house heating controls to call for heat is the huge time constant of the insulated slab. It takes days to respond fully to a significant change in water temp. By the time the house is cool enough to demand heat, you're 12-24 hours away from the slab temp rising in a useful way. At the moment, it's just running open loop for a few hours a day, churning out 25-29C water depending on external temp. The temp range was entirely my decision, and it's easy enough to turn the compensation down or off if desired. Seems to work fine at the moment, even if the slab temp is probably a degree or so higher than it strictly needs to be right now. Once we have the insulation in upstairs I'll likely turn down the compensation. I suspect with most heat pumps you can call for heat easily enough using volt-free switching. Setting the temperature is more likely to be handled via a proprietary bus (even if it's based on a comms standard like RS485/Modbus). Last comment about these "all-on-one" packages: the cylinders are generally pretty poorly insulated, and it looks to me like adding insulation will often be difficult. They are also hugely expensive compared to getting one from a more general cylinder manufacturer. I may be misremembering, but I seem to recall that the Panasonic cylinder would be over twice the price of a generic one, and that's with less insulation and without the ability to specify the location of extra taps for, eg, thermal sensors.

As it happens, 25C is the lowest temp that my ASHP will modulate down to. I don't know how common that is. My longer term plan is to measure the return water temperature at the UFH manifold. That should represent a lower-delay version of the slab temp, because you aren't waiting for heat to move through the concrete and hit your temperature sensor(s). Interesting. Do you know the size of the ASHP? We have a 3.2m2 coil designed for ASHPs, and it works very effectively, but our ASHP is only 5kW heating a 250L tank. This is exactly how we run ours at the moment (in the sense that the mixing valve on the manifold is ignored, and temp controlled by the ASHP). It works perfectly. With weather compensation (water temp up to 29 degrees at zero external temp or below) kicking in over the last few days, and quite a lot of sun streaming through around 10m2 of glass on our south-facing sliding doors, our slab temp is a little higher than ideal, having reached 23 degrees this morning. I haven't adjusted it for the moment though, as delays mean our insulation still hasn't been replaced where we had the leaks upstairs, so it's a bit chilly in those rooms at the moment!

Wow, that is a tidy job - love it!

Not strictly a requirement for a single dwelling unless you're in a conservation area (and other designated areas), but you'd be bonkers in most cases not to include one. See paragraph 30 here: http://planningguidance.communities.gov.uk/blog/guidance/making-an-application/validation-requirements/national-information-requirements/