G and J

So, depressurise your system, if it’s in a static I presume it’s not two storey, then undo that top bolt. I think there will be a rubber ring thingy (technical term) in there.

I don’t think that’s a valve. I think it is a T junction. they’re used to put an electric element in as well as the water flow from the boiler.

Oh, where’s your sense of adventure. And in the plus side, maybe food poisoning increases one’s biome diversity. 😉

That’s an interesting thought. The smell of burning flesh throughout the house will alert everyone to the fact that the food is over-ready. Lovely. 😕

I’ll let you know if and when I get the grant, for my ASHP that cools too! (Perhaps sometime next summer).

Any badly implemented building method can lead to horrendous issues, including masonry inside and out. I believed (as you appear to) that timber frame was the anti-christ when we built our current house. Been round the block more since then and we’re soon to be building timber frame with part masonry skin, having changed my view completely. Most important thing is that you are happy with how you are doing it.

I’ll be wiring to make adding a battery later easy, but I can’t for the life of me build a case for it right now. There appears to be no eco benefit and there won’t be a financial one for us. But prices will come down….

We’ve not had our as designed SAP done yet but we’ve designed out lots of PIR on the basis that it gives a more echoey house and is bad for the planet (and our carbon score). So we are going for loads of soft fluffy stuff in the loft that will take me no time at all to deploy (c.f. many miserable hours trimming PIR to fit between trusses) and a raised walkway so as not to compress the fluff. I’m hoping it will mean the rooms are quieter and feel nicer. Certainly PIR is not the most popular stuff in here with everyone.

I think you may benefit from a bigger slab to benefit from more thermal mass. (To the pedants, I know that there is scientifically no such thing but it is a useful concept in such debates. So there.). Now I appreciate that someone with letters after their name has decreed stuff but you are the client, so actually, what you want tops their sometimes odd preferences. And remember sometimes the guys doing the drawing are driven more by how quickly they can get onto the next job than they are by your long term happiness. I’m looking at slightly lowering our bnb and increasing our screed to 100mm (75mm in drawings) and maybe upping the insulation from the 150mm PIR as drawn. Might use an insulated bnb to help that.

It’s a personal thing I guess but I’ve read on here many times that electric mat UFH in bathrooms gives warm wet toes even when the rest of the house doesn’t need heating. Zoning ASHP based UFH appears to be bad news. My history is boiler and wet rads with zines which works well in my wind tunnel house. So it took me a while to get my head round heated slab, slow reaction time, different control methodology entirely. Talking of which…..

Good for peeps named Noah perhaps….

Welcome JoeM. I personally am very wary of bottom up cost builds. If I’m costing up a small project then I’ve got half a chance of remembering to include most of the elements - hopefully all the big ones. But building a house has a big shopping list. So….. many peeps rely on area based budgetary estimates then factor in extra bad things like piled foundations or party wall agreements or an expensive kitchen habit or whatever. The per m2 figure you use is the next question, and they range from just under £1k/m2 (do everything oneself) to maybe £4K/m2 (appoint an architect and accept the keys when it’s ready). Keep reading, part of the power of this forum is that by sitting watching the posts flow by you learn all kinds of things you didn’t know you didn’t know….

Your LA maybe different, but in our case they would not use their own systems (in this case domestic rates) to verify previous occupation.....it's worth asking sooner rather than later

Thank you. In theory, 15 of these panels could sit on our roof (I’m not terribly sure how close to the edges they can be placed), giving 7.5kW of solar. The only quote we have at present is for 6.5kW. They seem a good price too. Good find on your part, thank you.

If we did that we’d have a nice colourful yellow pipe waggling around in mid air - I suspect they’d take a dim view of that.

The more I read of the experience of other peeps the more I realise we had it sooooo easy on our first build. You sound like you were so calm! Please would you point me at these more productive solar panels?

How did you know that I’m a hobbit?

So I won’t need a sauna membership then…. Excellent, that’ll save running costs. 😉

Sure, but first sit by the fire warming your toes and stare into the glowing embers as you cuddle your mug of cocoa. It’s awfully pleasant slowly poisoning one’s neighbours.

Oooh I do hope so. Anyway the heat pump won’t be running at the coldest times cos I’m a woodburner addict. I know, I know….. but many peeps have a dirty secret….

I wonder if part of the issue is the lack of a feedback loop. I have the impression that on lots of projects, the architect does the getting through planning and maybe building regs submission, then they focus on the next project. Where, in general, do they get their homework marked in the light of building what they’ve designed? And if they aren’t getting that feedback how can they be expected to either improve or even keep up with rapid product and technology developments?

Sadly I’ve stood next to noisy heat pumps, and I’m a climate emergency believer (with currently a 33 year old oil boiler!). But I’ve also stood next to a really, really quiet one - thank you @Nick Laslett, so methinks it simply becomes my responsibility, on fitting a pump, to keep it running quietly.

Hmmmm. Understood and I agree with all but one point: regardless of the actions of others we will continue to consider others, even when their feelings are irrational or in our eyes unreasonable we’ll still do our bestest to be nice. That said balance is needed, and we politely tried to ease their concerns and went ahead planned in the ASHP anyway as we believed it to be the right thing to do. I guess I reacted to the unexpected and unwelcome extra cost in an emotional manner. I try not to do that too often. The plan is to go for v airtight with MVHR and sensible insulation levels for a modest house. Jeremy’s spreadsheet tells me at the lowest temperatures outside that we can reasonably plan on will require just over 2kW to maintain 21C inside. Whilst our design does not have significant amounts of glazing we really value the idea of ASHP cooling and we’re building in a fancoil in our bedroom to boost the effect of cooling the slab downstairs. Probably the weakest part of the plan is my penchant for washing up in very hot water. So rather than destroy the COP for DHW we’re having a Quooker tap thingy to top the bowl ready filled from the tank. The original motivation to go all electric wasn’t financial. I happen to believe that tariffs and subsidies should be set up to reward doing the right thing but life’s not always like that. The thing that really got my goat was the fact that new gas connections were subsidised. That really pissed me off.

I thought I needed an MCS installer to get a grant. The ASHP is on our planning permission. Goodness my head hurts.

Ours is a demolish and replace, so we have a free hand. Gas is available but that feels like we are not doing the right thing by the planet, and that does guide many of our decisions.