jack

This one? https://evonestop.co.uk/products/qubev-ev-charging-unit-type-2-socket-32-amp-7-2-kw-ip65

They use WAY more water and energy.

Also, once you're at the maximum flow temp, the temperature difference between that and the water in the tank will approach each other, so energy transfer is slower.

Exactly. I thought about trying to integrate ASHP usage with PV production, but it's very difficult to do well, and the potential cost advantages are limited given the relatively low electricity bills of the house overall.

Yes, 5 year old 5kW Aquarea. I had a problem with the pump giving out after about 3 years. No explanation for why it happened, but we replaced it and everything's been fine since.

Higher pressure pump = higher flow rate through smaller pipework. Higher friction losses but possibly lower heat loss through smaller surface area of the pipe. Also, smaller pipework means less fluid, which could add up on a very long run.

Yeah, it's crazy down here. A couple of families we know have looked into buying and it's £1500 minimum, for nothing special. Over £2000 if want any sort of basic pedigree. I couldn't believe it.

Exactly that. He said a lot of them were talking about treating themselves after not having a holiday last year and likely this. He mostly works for people with Very Big Houses. The sort for whom a £50-60k outdoor pool they can only use a few months of the year makes financial sense.

A friend of mine builds and renovates pools. Since Covid started, he's gotten so busy that he's had to stop the renovations and focus on new pools. He's also stopped quoting because his pipeline is full to the end of next year, even with new employees on the books. I told him he needs to up his prices.

Do they both have a cooling mode (if that's something you want)? We have a 5kW Aquarea, and I know that at the time I bought them, only some were officially capable of reverse cycle operation. My Aquarea is 5 years old, but came with the basic controller. I seem to recall that the smarter controller was a lot more expensive, but I suspect things like app-based operation and control are more common now. Worth checking.

I think it's worth noting that we talk a lot on here about Passivhaus levels of airtightness and insulation, but there's a lot more to the Passivhaus standard than that. Things such as specific controls on cold bridges, modelling of various types of energy use, and other issues like summer overheating are sometimes considered generally by self-builders, but the PHPP software requires strict, quantitative attention to these and many other factors. Certification also ensures that the as-designed house is what is actually built. I think some believe it's just a desk exercise, but you need to show with ample evidence that what was designed and modelled was what was actually built. This adds a time and supervisory overhead, because someone needs to be involved in documenting everything that's required, which itself requires continuous knowledge of what's going on - and coming up - on-site. Personally, I think PH certification is more than just a rubber stamp. Certainly, given two houses with similar airtightness/insulation values, but one with PH certification and the other without, I'd go for the certified on every time. How much more I'd pay is a harder question to answer.

We had nothing but grief from Freecycle and ended up giving up on it. The last straw was trying to give away a coffee table for free on the express basis that delivery was not available and then still having people asking me to deliver it several miles away for free.

My wife sells cheap stuff on Facebook, because it's free and often very fast due to being local. It's rare she's waiting any more than a day or two to get rid of something from the moment she lists, and there's no need to muck about with postage. The downside is that it'll only sell if priced very keenly, but for a lot of stuff that's fine.

If you can get the suppliers to arrange installation, that's usually the best way to go. That way, if there are any issues, there's no question about who's responsible. That said, many people have had nightmares with supplier-provided installers. If you go this way, I'd push very hard to meet the team who'll be responsible for the installation, and to speak with previous customers who've had that team install their windows.

I looked into this when we were doing our house. Many (most?) dishwashers and washing machines no longer have a hot fill capability, in the sense of having separate hot and cold inlets. From memory, some machines have a relatively low maximum water temperature at their single inlet. You can't cold rinse with a single inlet machine if it's connected to hot water. Also, the relatively low water consumption of modern machines would have meant the need for a hot water loop for each of these devices, because otherwise you'd be filling with cold water until it heated up. Since we weren't planning a hot loop, it all seemed like a lot of extra effort and cost.

I don't doubt age is a factor. There's probably a safety bell curve, with low safety when you're young and inexperienced, and falling safety again later in life as your strength falls and your senses become less acute.

Someone posted a little while ago about that little voice in your head that suddenly realises you're doing something risky, followed by another voice that tells you to just finish up the thing you're doing because it'll probably be fine. You'd probably reduce accidents by half if you could get people to listen to the first voice and ignore the second.

It seems to be a cheap number @AndyMT - maybe replace with something higher quality?

This one maybe? Edited to add: according to this photo, it's installed the right way up. That's implied by the orientation in the previous link, too.

Makes it even more difficult then.

Have you looked into the cost of batteries and the associated hardware, and done the sums based on how much energy you can realistically buffer? I'd be really surprised if there's a net financial benefit to a battery system in a low-energy house over, say, a 10 year period. Even with PV, the problem remains: over winter, you don't generate much energy, so your batteries will be underused. Over summer, there's often so much insolation that you don't have a hope of using it all, so your batteries will be full early in the day and you still end up exporting. Shoulder months can be better, but even then it's hard to model day-to-day activities unless you have a good handle on how energy is used (or will be used) in the new house. I don't know whether these very cheap overnight tariffs from, eg, Octopus change the numbers much, but I personally think there are a lot of numbers to be crunched before making decisions like these.

Yes, you need diamond blades. Ordinary grinding discs aren't suitable (might even be dangerous - I don't know). The ones you've posted look fine. Report back how you find them.

If it's a new build, boundary fencing should be zero rated for VAT if it's supply and install.

If the heating isn't on, it's because the house is currently warm enough. If the house is warm enough, then the floors won't be cold! As a point of comparison, we have a 4 bedroom house just shy of 290m2, with passivhaus levels of insulation and airtightness, and MVHR. We have concrete floors throughout the ground floor, except for the TV room. The floor remains a pleasant continuous temperature no matter what the weather is like outside. As for running out of hot water, put in a big enough tank and you never will. If you run a lot of showers, I'd also suggest getting a waste water heat recovery unit. We only have a 250 litre unvented cylinder heated to 50 deg C by a 5kW ASHP, but we very rarely run out of hot water, even with two teenagers in the house. It happened for the first time in months the other day, when all four of us had showers in quick succession and one of the kids was in there singing away for god knows how long before we realised the water was still running!

We lived with two young kids in less than 90m2 for two years. More space would have been nice (especially the tiny kitchen), sure, but living in a place that's three times as big is not three times as good. If I were building again, I'd at minimum tweak down the sizes of a few rooms. The older I get, the truer this seems.