jack

Look at the retrofit+ and various "drain" options here: http://www.recoupenergysolutions.co.uk/products

We have one of these installed, connected to the drains of our two most frequently used showers. I was slightly concerned that our thermostatic valves (Mike Pro by Crosswater) might have trouble coping with warm water being fed to the cold side, especially as the feed temperature changes over the first couple of minutes, but it's been perfectly fine. There are two main types: one with three or four parallel copper pipes spiralling down the outside of a central copper pipe, and another with two concentric pipes such that the incoming cold water passes through the space between them. You also need to look into connection types. You can send the pre-heated water to just the shower(s), or tee off after the unit and send the pre-heated water to both the shower(s) and the cold feed to your DHW system. There are apparently some efficiency gains to be had with the latter system. These devices are in SAP and I understand some developers throw them in where they need easy SAP points (well, that's what the suppliers suggest!) There are question marks over payback, but with four very active people in our house, we seem to take a lot of showers, often in quick succession (the best scenario for heat recovery). We only have a 250L tank, so my thinking is that we probably get a bit more effective hot water than we would without the recovery unit. We probably don't save that much money, each year, but I see no reason why the unit shouldn't have a long life, so it'll keep contributing a little bit for many years to come.

I was told that part of the reason toughened glass is expensive is that the process for making it isn't perfect, and some pieces of glass don't survive it!

This is an interesting comparison to my situation Jeremy. Same construction method by the same builder. Our house doesn't have the southerly gain that yours has, and the land rises steeply to the east so there's some shelter from the very early morning potential solar gain. I run the floor pump constantly during the daylight hours to keep the slab temp evened out. By late morning today it was just starting to get a little too warm in the kitchen, which is at the south east end of the house so had been receiving a lot of direct sun. By the time the sun went past noon, the temperature had stabilised and has since stayed perfectly comfortable all day now. At this rate I suspect it'll take at least a couple more warm sunny days for the slab to heat up enough that the house becomes uncomfortable. The ASHP hasn't yet been set up to cool, but I'll need to take a look at that in the near future. (As an aside, the ASHP hasn't actually come on at all for at least a couple of weeks - the PV means the tank remains too hot overnight for the ASHP to come on during its usual DHW runtime between 4 and 6 am, and I turned off the slab heating once it was clear it wouldn't be needed any more.) We have the opposite issue to you - we appear to need a lot more active heating during the winter, and over a longer season. This just goes to show how critical position, orientation and size of windows is to how these houses perform.

They like the dog more than the cats. Personally I'd be happy to see the back of the dog too, but it seems that's a bridge too far.

Amazing how one trade suddenly closing off an avenue focuses the mind! It'll break your heart (and wallet) breaking up those tiles if it turns out to be uncomfortably chilly down there. If you can afford it, I'd say do it.

I've been meaning to write about this for a while, but my experience with an MBC house isn't quite the same as Jeremy's. I know Jeremy's house is in a bit of a micro-climate that encourages overheating. I think a lot of it is to do with our general lack of solar gain, but we've never, ever had an overheating problem (and I haven't yet commissioned the cooling option on our ASHP). The ASHP is also on pretty regularly at a low level when it's very cold. Based on that, I'd just be cautious about assuming that overheating is a given, and that heating inputs will rarely be required. It's similar to the question about bathroom heating - despite a lot of people getting away without it, I was surprised how cool our bathrooms felt, and now wish we'd installed some form of low temp UFH in them. We'll definitely be retrofitting some form of heating (possibly IR-based) to the bathrooms before next winter.

I have a dog that fulfills that role.

Aha, but we made a big show of making sure the cats went to a home where they'd be loved. They met the new owners. I hope for similar kindness from my kids when they ship me off. When it came down to it, there were 10 seconds of tears from the younger child, 5 seconds of melancholy from the older one, and the cats have hardly been mentioned (let alone missed) by anyone since. Getting rid of the cats was literally one of the best things I've done in years. Saved me hundreds a year in food and vets, reduced the levels of shed hair by an order of magnitude, and I don't get woken up at all hours of the night by the little blighters. Plus I didn't need a new mortgage to get an airtight catflap!

We gave our cats away several weeks ago. Don't miss the little spongers (or their 5am wake-up calls that no-one else in the house except me was woken up by) one tiny bit. Catflap problem? What catflap problem?

Is this the choice between Wilo and Grundfos by any chance? If so, I went for the Wilo after a fair bit of research. Only been six months so far but it's still working perfectly and almost completely silent. The pump itself seems a very well made piece of kit.

The "Envoy" is the hub that the microinverters communicate with. It basically receives information from each panel, piggybacked on the power lines. I'm very surprised that someone is supplying microinverters without the hub, and even more surprised that they're asking whether your electrician has one (unless he or she is a PV specialist and would be expected to know about these things). We have an enphase microinverter setup. The units came with a 20 (or maybe 25) year warranty, which seemed pretty impressive. A good PV supplier should be able to do an accurate survey of your site and model the output and FiTs to determine whether micro or regular inverters are the best option for you financially. The guy who did ours was on our roof for over an hour doing the survey.

Yep, and I remember various fathers doing it when I was growing up and wondering what their problem was!

I like you. You should stick around!

My wife's a wonderful woman, brilliant mother, etc, but I just can't her interested in this. I've tried pointing out that there's a reason we got the 8.5kW array, but it just isn't on her radar. I have about as much chance of getting anyone but me to turn off lights in the house. It's a standing joke (me being the only one who doesn't think it's funny) that when I get home from work in winter, sometimes literally every single light in the house is on! I was talked out of occupancy sensors but am now committed to retrofitting them throughout the house in due course.

Some people really are wankpuffins.

Welcome back!

Welcome back!

Has anyone let the Sunamp guys know about the new forum?

That's my recollection too!

Ours is the same (layout that is) as yours Jeremy - left hand side and 2/3s or 3/4s of the rear. I'm just really surprised that the same manufacturer has such different suggested spacings, especially given that ours is only 5kW and seems to be the same size and layout as all single-fan monoblocs in the Aquarea range.

Are you sure it's 100mm at the rear? We have the smallest ASHP that Panasonic makes (5kW) and I'm pretty sure the minimum recommended clearance was 300mm.

Welcome aboard!

Great to see you here!

Yep! Great info - thanks for sharing.