jack

Not always, in my experience. There were times when we went for what we thought was a higher quality outfit based on the price and professionalism of our interactions with them, but I don't think they did any better on average than the cheaper ones.

I can't tell you how many times I've had this conversation in the last few years. We just don't respect tradespeople enough in this country. It's (wrongly imo) seen as something that kids who weren't any good at school end up doing because they aren't good for anything else. Absolute bollocks.

No.

Thanks. I did look into the modbus module when buying the ASHP, but it was several hundred quid + the prospect of me having the figure out how it all interfaced with Loxone. Seemed like too much effort at the time - I may revisit at some stage, but I already have too many projects on the go! Unfortunately (well, unfortunately for this approach), the time constant on our slab is too long for this to work. At the current flow temp settings in mild winter weather, it I turn the heating on, it takes just under three hours to show any change in temperature (+0.1 degrees). The temperature will continue to slowly rise for another three or more hours after the heating is turned off. I think the solution is just to bump of the flow temp across the weather compensation curve and experiment with how the house reacts. Thanks. If I understand you correctly, that's what I was proposing above when I said: There'll be some experimentation involved, but it's an interesting project, plus I can start working on it now even before I'm back on the cheap overnight rate.

My wife was far more important to our build than I was. She ran the entire site. Most of the guys we had onsite were pretty good, but a few struggled with taking instructions from a woman.

I run our downstairs underfloor cooling at 15 degrees flow temp, only during the day when the sun is out and the pv is generating power. This keeps the floor at about 19 degrees, which makes for a very comfortable room temperature, even in a run of high 20s days as we occasionally experience. Admittedly we have concrete floors, which do tend to be good at sucking the heat out of the room (and your feet - heavenly when it's really hot outside). I have no idea how well it would work in the sorts of temperatures you're talking about. I suspect air conditioning would be more effective, especially upstairs where it tends to get a lot warmer.

Man, that's horrendous. Not quite as bad, but we had rockwool for sound insulation just thrown up between the joists prior to plasterboarding the ceilings, rather than pushed into place to close all the gaps.

Correct. Loxone calls for heat, and there's some (programmed) flexibility about how that happens, but flow temperature (including weather compensation) is set by the ASHP controller. Ideally I'd have Loxone control the flow temperature too, based on various current and predicted temperatures and the availabilty of cheap power (overnight) or free power (occasional excess PV during winter), but that isn't possible with my current setup. Depending on the rate at which my slab can absorb energy, the solution may be to just increase the flow temperature across the weather compensation curve. That might be enough to get me over the line. The problem I have is modelling all of this. I may just need to try it out when it gets colder. I've thought about using this in the past, mainly for when there's excess PV but the house is already up to temperature. The main issue is the very long time constant of my slab. I'm sure there's a way to program in some guardrails to make it work though.

I'm not against this approach. For a while I did have things set up to use the immersion to boost DHW for the last hour when we were on Go. Unfortunately, my Octopus Go contract ended a few months ago and I'm not able to sign up to the other cheap overnight tariff until I get a compatible car or charger (I didn't want to tie myself into the latest Go tariff, as the numbers are nowhere near as good as the other cheap overnight tariff). I'm due to replace my car soon and will be installing a charger at the same time, so I'll be able to get onto the new tariff. I'll need to do the sums to see what works out best once that happens. I was hoping that four hours at a decent temperature would cover most if not all of our heating needs, but if it doesn't, adding in the immersion to help the DHW heating may be the way forward.

I wish it were so, but here're all the inputs and outputs for my unit: There is an offset function that moves the weather compensation curve up or down by up to 5 degrees, but that's something you set manually via the controller.

Yeah, there are plenty of other cock-ups for me to look at instead! 😁

Sounds like our painters. One of the young guys stood on a pile of cardboard boxes so he could reach something (we didn't expect them to be in that room on that day or we'd have cleared it out). One of the boxes included the blind box and motor to go on our rooflight. He snapped off the solar panel and cracked the housing. Of course, by the time I realised what had happened a few days later it was too late to do anything about it.

The "perfectionist" subbed our cladding to his usual team and they were doing a great job. Then there was a break and the three guys who'd been doing it were replaced with two new guys. They weren't terrible, but an indicator of their attitude was the fact that they started a huge cladding job with a completely blunt blade in their saw. When they cut through at 45 degrees for the corners, it left noticeable splinters sticking out all the way along the sharp edge, which looked ridiculous. I can still see the point in the cladding where the team changed.

I have a home automation system and I haven't bothered using it to do anything other than act as a thermostat for our ASHP. It works fine in our highly insulated house with a single downstairs UFH zone. The only thing I currently wish I could do (without having to hack into the ASHP's external temperature sensor to make it think the weather is colder) is to bump up the UFH supply temperature when energy is cheap. With an Octopus EV tariff, I can get 6 hours of cheap energy overnight. I use two hours of that for DHW heating. It'd be nice to bump up the UFH temperature during the other four hours so I can pump as much energy into the slab as possible. I understand that's possible with more advanced controls, but for my Panasonic Aquarea unit, they were hundreds of quid more than the standard controller.

Our electrician did a great job. Plumbing was okay - not brilliant. The polished concrete floors are good and the painters were pretty good (at painting, at least - they were bulls in a China shop and repeatedly broke stuff by standing on it rather than asking us to move it). Everyone else was passable at best, and absolute dog5hit at worst. I initially thought that maybe we weren't paying enough, or weren't being clear enough about what we wanted, but eventually I concluded that the people we were engaging weren't actually capable of doing excellent work. Even people who'd been described by friends of ours (who'd used them) as "perfectionists" turned out to be pretty poor. The problem is compounded by an order of magnitude if you ask them to do anything different to what they usually do for clients who don't know or care. This is the major reason it took us so long to complete. We had so many bad experiences with trades that I eventually refused to hire anyone else and just did it myself. I certainly didn't always do a great job myself, but I'm certain it was better than a lot of the people I'd have hired to do it.

Good luck @haddock, fingers crossed it works.

Ah yes, sorry. I said I'd take a look and get back to you but I didn't! The fix was to lay a strip of flexible plastic over the top of the polystyrene "hump" that guides the heat exchanger in - something like this: You slide the heat exchanger back on over this, and the channel under the heat exchanger holds it in place (this pic is from your previous post about the problem): The fix from Brink was similar, although they used very thin aluminium tape that tore badly the first time I took the heat exchanger out to clean it. I used some spare DPM I had lying around and it worked really well. The idea is to have it extend far enough out from the sides that any condensation is directed away from the hump to the drain. Also make it a couple of inches longer than the heat exchanger and bend the ends up so that everything is directed away from the ends. I think doing this avoids water passing over joints in the internal mouldings that wick it away to where it shouldn't. I haven't had any problems since I did this. It's also worth checking your drains are clear and that the unit is level. Also, spray around some dilute bleach after you've cleaned it out.

If you swap the supply and exhaust temps it looks about right: Extract 21.6 Exhaust 16.0 Outdoor 14.7 Supply 20.3 Is it possible the temperature sensor leads have been plugged into the wrong sockets on the control board, or have otherwise been swapped?

Did you contact one of the mods or admin about this? I didn't see anything about it but I've been away for a few days. Either way, you've been around long enough and contributed enough that there's a bit of leeway with this sort of thing. For other members reading this (note: speaking generally, and nothing at all to do with @FM2015), please remember to do your due diligence when interacting with any BuildHub member on commercial matters.

This looks great! Not spending the extra time/money to terminate all incoming CAT6 cables, either as you've done it or with a 110 block, is one of my biggest regrets with our Loxone installation.

1. I understand I can submit till receipts from Wickes, B&Q etc. How do I distinguish between items on a particular receipt which I am claiming for, and those I am not? - I put a line through items I wasn't claiming for and wrote in the new totals with those items excluded. 2. If I accidentally claim for something I should not, will it foul the whole claim? If so, what happens then? - Probably not. It's impossible to tell with HMRC, but generally they will just disallow things that they don't believe should have been claimed for. 3. I know have three months from BRegs sign off to make my claim, but getting BR sign-off and actually finishing the house are not the same thing (or will not be in my case). If I get BRegs signoff on 1st November, then buy further SB materials on the 2nd Nov, can I still claim the VAT back on those materials on the 3rd Nov? Or am I limited to items purchased before the BRegs sign-off date? - The three months from BR signoff is a guideline at best. For a long time, HMRC ignored their own guidelines and were using any evidence they could find that people had moved in, and started the three month clock from then. The easiest point for them to show is the property's entry onto the valuation register for council tax. I get the feeling that things might have eased off a bit since the peak of their bad behaviour maybe three years ago, but I'd still be wary of relying on the sign-off date as triggering the three months if I were in a position to file within three months of entry onto the valuation register. - I believe you can include materials up until the time you submit the claim (including after sign-off). If anything, late purchases may support an argument that the house was not yet finished. 4. Has anyone had any serious problems with their reclaims? If so, what caused them? - Mine went through fine, no issues. I'm sure others can comment on their experiences.

Ignoring scale, is it something like this?

If they're in a garage and regularly charging and discharging, it's possible that the temperature inside the case may rarely if ever fall below 12°C. In our garage, the air temperature rarely falls below around 5 or 6 degrees, even during a long period of very cold weather. Also, is your garage attached to the house? If so, there'll be some heating from the house through the common wall. And finally, I'd try and find written confirmation of what you were told. At the moment you just have someone's say-so.

Wow, nice work. It just shows how ridiculous builders merchant pricing is for people walking in off the street. Even with an account and my missus being pretty good at negotiating, they were still almost never the cheapest way of buying things. We mainly used them when we had no choice (time or availability).

Hi Vas (and welcome to BuildhHub). The link becomes available after you have a certain number of posts (10, I think?) and it isn't possible to access it before then. There's short queue of people for the tester in front of you, so it'll probably be a few weeks from now before it's available. If you work on getting the required number of posts in the meantime, I'll add your name to the queue now so you keep your place.