jack

No matter how many times it comes up, I'm always stunned by how much warmer your house gets in mild (chilly, even) sunny conditions in spring and autumn compared to ours, given we have the same construction type and comparable window U values. During those recent days of warm sunny weather, I doubt our house got much above 21-22°C, without any form of cooling on.

A cynic would say that the building regs standards also reflect building industry pressure to allow them to continue building relatively low-spec boxes, even where that spec (and hence running costs) could be improved without too much extra build cost.

I think I've done 5 or 6 time management courses over the years. I'm still bloody hopeless at it, and what little I have learned in this area certainly hasn't come from any of those courses.

My wife did some feminist studies as part of a politics degree, and yet I was the one on our team who successfully answered a quiz question about this phrase last week. It's a bit of a feminist rallying cry - disappointed you didn't know it Joe! "A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle"

We self-installed Wunda stuff. Good price and gear, and been working flawlessly for over 4 years. I've been particularly impressed with the Wilo pump. I can't comment on the Grundfoss one that they also supply, but the Wilo one is completely silent in use.

I assume you mean the touch switches? I don't have any of those - very expensive for what they do imo. All mine are simple retractive switches - two-way rockers for the blinds and single push for the lights and other controls. The flexibility is all in the programming. For example, clicking the same switch in the living room can be set up to give you a different scene depending on whether it's before or after dusk. I could program a light switch so that holding it down for some (programmable) length of time triggered basically anything - open a garage, turn on MVHR boost - basically anything connected to the system. I've set things up so you don't need to muck about with an app or mess with the system unless you decide to change or add something). I definitely don't want to interact with "smart" switches or, worse, touch screens just to turn a light on or off.

Actually, you'd need to add a DMX extension for a couple hundred quid too, although there might be some sort of third party converter you could use instead.

I'm not really aware of anything like that, sorry. There's no real easy way to learn all this stuff - an unfortunate side-effect of extreme flexibility is complexity, even though no individual element is particularly complex. You could take a look at the Functional Categories section of the LoxWiki. There are at least some lists of interface options. The English language Loxone Google Group contains a huge amount of info, but unfortunately it's not organised. This thread discusses relay alternatives, as an example.

This could be done a lot more cheaply now. Potentially the only expensive/proprietary thing you'd need to buy is the Miniserver (the Go version @£300), then you'd run the rest of it with cheap DMX/IP modules.

I'm not sure what I paid, sorry - it was 5 years ago. I think it was of the order of £2.5-3k, which included the miniserver (the brains of the system), a DMX module, air extension module, two or three extension modules and a couple of nano air units (remote wireless relay/input modules). The miniserver includes a KNX bus, so you can run a limited version of a KNX network off it. If I were doing it again, I'd probably use a lot more off-the-shelf DMX- or IP-controlled relays and input boards. The cost per input/output is an awful lot lower that way. For me, the biggest advantage of Loxone is the object-based programming. It's just incredibly powerful and intuitive if you have a fairly logical mind. The closest thing I've seen to it is Node Red, which can be used with things like OpenHAB. Despite the cost and some initial frustration with cheap dimmers I initially installed, I wouldn't be without it. The ability to double click the light switch beside my bed and have all the lights in the house turn off alone is virtually worth the price! That same double-click could be used to close a gates, turn off some outside lights, and turn on a perimeter alarm. I also have a switch at the bottom of the stairs which turns off all lights upstairs, and a similar switch on the landing that does similar for the downstairs lights.

To me, Loxone is probably still the sweet spot for this kind of integration. It handles things like blinds very well - lots of intelligent options, like auto-closing at dusk or opening at certain times of the morning, by day of the week if you require. Re: integration with ASHP/MVHR, I'd originally planned to do this, but certainly on the MVHR I haven't found the need. I just leave it on one setting unless we have a lot of people over or we're going to cook something smelly, at which point I turn on the boost manually. Loxone isn't selling direct to the public any more. You can still buy from their partners, and a number of them have indicated on the Loxone Google group I'm on that they're happy to sell to the public. I'll say that whatever thoughts I have about Loxone's business choices, the support available from the community is excellent. I like the idea of that, but I'm less pleased about the idea that if I were hit by a truck tomorrow, no-one else would be able to maintain or modify the system. At least with Loxone, it's largely self-documenting by design, so worst case you could get in a Loxone specialist for maintenance etc.

For some reason I read all three as "vented" - ignore me and carry on!

Welcome! I find it interesting that all three recommendations include unvented tanks. I'd have thought they were the exception rather than the rule in modern systems, unless you need a massive tank to handle, eg, the output from a wood-fired boiler. Definitely agree that knowing your energy requirements will be useful to give suggestions. Was there a reason why you went for such a significant refurb rather than a knockdown and rebuild? Even without taking the VAT reclaim into account, the extend-and-refurb approach never looked good for us when planning to replace a ~90m2 bunagalow with a ~290m2 house, especially given the compromises it would have involved.

I love a back story! Looking forward to the next chapter...

I know you've searched, but have you read the posts about Loxone on the site? Quite a few detailed threads about it in the past. I installed it to run my lights, external blinds, heating, and various temperature monitoring jobs about 4 years ago. It's mostly been pretty good, although their business model seems to be moving more and more in the proprietary direction. Lots of people on the Loxone Google group use Loxone as the centralised brain, and a combination of communication protocols like DMX, KNX and IP to control things far more cheaply or more flexibly than using all Loxone modules. If I were doing it again today, I might still use Loxone, but I'd probably buy less of their proprietary stuff. They're definitely continuing to move away from a self-installers market, too. I believe the UK site is now closed to direct purchases, so if you wanted to do it yourself, you'd need to find a Loxone partner willing to retail the gear to you (which I understand several will do). Timing-wise, it's a shame you aren't thinking about this a year or two from now, as there's a very interesting development coming down the pike from many of the biggest players in the space: https://www.connectedhomeip.com/ I know it's a bunch of companies about which we should be wary, but apparently it'll be security focused and open source. We'll see, I guess.

There's undoubtedly an underlying instinctive fear of creep crawlies - it makes perfect evolutionary sense to be nervous about all such things given the chance of being poisoned, hurt, infected (by disease) or even just exposed to the possibility of an infected bite. In my son's case, he was stung by a wasp when he was about two years old, but I don't think that's the cause. We think it's more to do with his mum being stung while she was putting him to bed about three years ago. I think she was lying on his bed waiting for him to return from doing his teeth, and was stung on the side by a wasp that had flown into his room during the day. It happened just as he walked into the room. Even though my wife hardly reacted (other than a loud "ouch") and we killed the wasp, he was extremely nervous that night and has been unhappy with wasps and bees ever since. It probably didn't help that we teased him about it a bit until we realised it was becoming an issue! Edited to add: I hadn't actually given this incident any thought until now, hence my earlier comment about not knowing where the phobia came from. I spent enough time in Australia when I was younger to have developed a healthy dislike of spiders, albeit not really a phobia. However, if you really want me to jump out of my chair, put a big cockroach in front of me (another side effect of having lived in Australia). Horrid, horrid, pointless, disgusting creatures.

Tile paint. We had some in our last rental and it was... okay.

My older boy seems to have developed a phobia of wasps and bees over the last few years, despite the rest of us being very calm and relaxed about them. No idea where it came from, but it's been getting worse.

It depends on what you'll be doing in the gym, but concrete flooring by itself will be cold, hard, noisy and liable to chipping/cracking/wear if you drop things like weights onto it. I've been down this rabbit hole recently for a garage gym area, and decided that plastic floor covering was probably the best option overall. You just need to slab to be flat and reasonably smooth, then seal it and cover it with suitable flooring. From my research, this stuff seems to be decent.

Their service department is good. I had this same problem just out of warranty and they came out and fixed it for free (with the same threats about charges if it was scale).

I don't doubt it's fine, it just feels like there's no way staples would be enough!

I'd probably go with staples if I were doing it again. Screws are slow and labour-intensive. Use loads of staples along with the jointing compound between boards and I doubt you'll see much difference compared to screwing them on. This is for walls - I'm sure staples would be fine for ceilings too if you use enough of them, but mentally I think I prefer the idea of screws holding up something above my head!

I don't think this follows. For simple applications, it's unlikely you need an expert. If you want to do something out of the ordinary, or in special area (AONB or conservation area), or involving a listed house, why is a system broken just because it involves some complexity? Lots of people don't have the time, intelligence, confidence (etc) to get involved in all of this, so they hire specialists to do it for them, as is the case across many other aspects of life. I think @AnonymousBosch's comment about plumbers is spot on: the existence of plumbers doesn't imply that "plumbing", per se, is broken. I've said this before Jeremy: be careful judging the rest of the world against your own capabilities. You may have the time, intelligence and self-confidence to get planning on a difficult site, design your own house, install your own plumbing, and so on, but most people simply aren't in a position to do that.

You're too kind.

Not me guv! We didn't use a self-build mortgage.