jack

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.

They definitely need space between them and the wall. Depends on the model - ours is a small one and needed 400mm, from memory

Those photos are bringing back all sorts of nasty memories. You have my sympathy!

That was exactly what we had problems with. PM me if you want to discuss.

Exactly this. Took us nearly a year from start to finish. Two rooms were affected. In our case, it was due to poor sealing between the roofing membrane and the outlets through the parapet wall. Another one had started failing when inspected, so we insisted on all five being replaced. The roofer agreed to rectify, and fixed the membrane fairly promptly. Unfortunately, they then insisted on putting the rest through their insurer (even though the total costs were less than £2k from memory), which turned into a nightmare. Their attitude was so poor that if I hadn't had several million things on my plate I'd have sued them for every incidental cost possible, but in the end I decided the stress wasn't worth it and settled for the actual paid out costs. @Weebles, feel free to PM me if you want to talk about what happened and how we handled.

Yup. My Hyundai Ioniq Electric on a business lease arrives first week of April. 0% BIK for the first year, then 1% and 2% for the following two years.

I think I have ours set to cool with 16 deg C flow temperature. Works astoundingly well downstairs. We have concrete floors and it's like walking into a cool stone church on a hot summer's day.

Read all of @Bitpipe's posts in the basement forum. This is a good start:

Hard to hear @Visti, sounds like there's a reason they went out of business previously. Thanks for sharing your experience.

Just to follow up on this, it looks like Spectrum is now out of business.

For use as an ordinary for bell, you can get them with a chime that works in real time. That said, I never have any delay to my phone, at least while I'm on the same WiFi network.