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Ideally UVC should be optimally placed for short pipe runs to the bathrooms/kitchen. Wherever that is (up or downstairs doesn't matter). I'm sure others will disagree with me but UFH manifold should be central and if that's not where the plant room is so be it. Can be built into a cupboard/bump-out/etc. Does need to be accessible but can be remote from other plant (unless you want to do lots of zoning or other complexity which this forum advocates against).
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Yeh it's not perfect but my thought was not to steal space from the room, just reorient the space. I'm not doing this with a ruler so very handwavy. There is likely room to optimise space use between the two bathrooms if they back onto each other, etc.
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The cupboards are on your plan to the right which might make this area pretty awkward. Personally I would go for larger doors if you want to market the property. Some people would be put off by small seeming ones.
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Along these lines. Putting the stairs on the other side of the corridor might open up some flexibility as well. Edit: Personally, I'm quite keen on clustering bathrooms for ease of service routing, but even if that isn't a concern an arrangement similar to this provides the master with a buffer from noises from the shared bathroom and removes all bathroom noise from the bedroom adjoining the master. Btw, it's not entirely clear which room is which, the measurements didn't make sense to me.
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Some initial thoughts: 1. I don't like the blue area. Was thinking you could move the bathroom over a bit to avoid it but then realised you might have regs problems with the door directly at the top of the stairs. Not actually sure pushing the door back as you've done is good enough for regs. 2. Doors to the bathrooms seem awkward, especially the en-suite. Guess a pocket door makes it work but maybe better layout options available. 3. Feel like there might be some better layout options overall but still thinking.
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Yes, your bills will be higher than in a well insulated house. That's a fact. But as Nick, my mum and many others can prove uninsulated houses can be heated. Right now you don't think your house is capable of being heated and I think it's important to firstly prove this wrong. Then once your house is up to temp you can work out what the bills would be do keep it warm. Once you know what it costs to heat you can work out whether it will cost less money to make improvements to lower bills vs just paying higher bills. You could do this, but it's going to create a huge mess, cost a lot of money and quite possibly not save any money on running costs (make you feel warm). Better to prove the house can be heated first. My guess is that the most cost effective improvements are in the upstairs rooms, but only if you run the house with minimal setback. With 2ft thick walls if you let the house go cold it will take ages and a lot of energy to warm back up again. I think you might be getting things mixed up here. As long as you keep the upstairs at approximately the same temp as downstairs you don't need insulation in the floor. The earlier discussion was about stopping loft air getting behind the plasterboard. I did mention the possibility of putting fluffy insulation in the floor void if it was accessible but it wasn't the main point. Why do you say this? A setback is very standard. But it should only be a few degrees. The bigger the difference between daytime and nighttime the less effective the heating system will be.
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Please pause for a minute and reconsider this. I'm not convinced your system will work well if you set such a low set back. If you want your bedroom to be cold at night thats fine, but the rest of the house needs to be kept warmer. Try to think about your bedroom seperately from the rest of the house. You can turn the radiator off in your bedroom before you go to sleep and turn it back on in the morning. At least to start with. If that works out we can improve things. As to noise, now that you have replaced the previous system you shouldn't really be hearing any noise inside when the system is on. Do you? If the room it's in is cold then it's better than I thought when it sounded like it was inside the cupboard with a cylinder. However, it's still not great. As your house warms up the upstairs will inevitably warm first. Yes you could set the thermostat to say 20 with the aim of getting the downstairs to 18 but I suspect given your thick walls that still won't work well. You've said you don't want the controller in the sitting room. Why not? it sounds like the perfect place for it? If you don't like the screen being on then I suspect theres a way to turn it off when you aren't pressing buttons. If you don't like the way it looks there's likely a way to disguise it (though it needs good airflow around it).
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Ah sorry, that may have lead to some confusing conversation then. Good, There's too many things going on here. To repeat my view, lets keep things as simple as possible until you have the temperature of your place under control. After that we can tune things if needed.
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Would have thought that would depend on both what you put in it and also what type of machine it is. ie, does it vent air to the room or not. AFAIK heatpump dryers don't cycle the air in the drum outside the machine. If the clothes are cotton, I'm not sure where the plastic comes from. If you wash a lot of nylon/polyester then sure.
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And if you try to insulate these pipes the cooling effect in the room would reduce which might be a negative... ... because I'd expect the heat sources to vary over the year. Winter will be the heating system, summer will be the solar electronics working flat out.
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Sounds like a really successful build if this is the main worry after moving in! Not an expert but the little plant room that I have (boiler, cylinder, consumer unit with a few electrical bits) is similar, gets a lot hotter in summer. 27C isn't really going to worry electronics etc. I'd monitor over summer and if you find the room getting about 35C or causing other problems then may be worth doing something but 27C doesn't warrant much concern in my book.
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I thought you had previously told us the flow temperature was set to 46. I'm not suggesting you change it. If it's something else tell us what it is. In reality the best flow temp is one that varies depending on the outside temperature. It's higher when its colder and lower when its warmer outside. But that's all to complicated to worry about right now. I'm trying to get you to focus on just the most important things. Everything else can be looked at in future.
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@zoothorn Don't go changing settings you don't need to. 46 is fine. @marshian and I may debate what is best, but what you have is plenty to get your place warm. 46 is a perfectly normal temperature for someone with radiators. 'Medium' if you like. If it was over 50 it might be an issue. Long term lower may be better but it really doesn't matter right now when you are cold. Just focus on adjusting the timer. Maybe as a learning exercise set yourself the task of changing the evening heat period from 2 hours to 3 hours. Change nothing else. Just extend that time from 2 to 3 hours. Once you've done that we can talk about other changes. I've been busy today so will reply to the other stuff tomorrow.
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Exploring the ratios and losses between building elements
-rick- commented on SteamyTea's blog entry in Energy Ideas
A developer actually drilled through into the Northern City line near me (site is close to Old Street). They were piling foundations. Could have been very nasty. -
I'd very strongly advise not touching it at all right now. Zoot has mentioned that this new system is the first time he has felt as if the system is working and outputting some warmth. Once the other issues we've talked about have been solved and the building is warm then we can talk about lowering this. But I think it's a really bad idea to lower it now before we have got the building warm. Zoot, in my view, you could increase the hot water temp to 55 rather than 46 if you want but don't touch the flow temp for the rads. Focus on figuring out how to adjust the timer and locating the thermostat in the right location.
