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Honestly not sure. @zoothorn has attempted to seal off the outside so we should be talking just internal air bypassing the insulation and touching the cold wall but I struggle to see why the space just isn't taking heat if it's well sealed. One of the reasons I think these two upper rooms should be approached first is that any hidden issues behind these walls (and maybe at the floor/wall junction) can be addressed.

Don't believe there are any dabs involved here. Solid wall all over (relevant area). Upstairs has a inner framed wall with 25mm pir + airgap before the solid wall.

I'm sorry I missed that. In which case changes needed. Do you notice much difference in comfort with the new setup? I think if I was in your position I'd want to attack this before attacking the floor. It's much less work and you've said you don't use the rooms much so tearing into them should be less disruptive than the floor. It should be cheaper too and you might be able to use the opportunity to stuff insulation under the floor of the bedrooms. Result might be that those two rooms become much easier to heat. You could move your living room area up there and be warm while then considering what to do downstairs and stopping the cold from coming down the walls will likely help downstairs also. Edit to add, I think I saw you said you think the void behind the plasterboard/PIR is 4". If so, filling that with mineral wool (replacing the PIR) brings you up to pretty modern insulation standards. It's also something you can do one or two sheets of plasterboard at a time limiting mess and that feeling of risk in tearing the place up to make a change.

This is a bit of a long one, please bear with me. My point is that even with zero insulation a 9kw heat pump should be capable of making the space warm enough that you can't see your breath as long as you don't have huge drafts*. It might not be economical and it might not be cosy warm, but it should be possible. Doing what you are doing now is likely not economical either which is why I suggest you take a fresh look. I went back and had a quick look at your posting history here to try and understand a little more about your situation. There is quite a lot so I'm afraid I only sampled it and I'm probably still missing a lot it However, I didn't come across a time when you tried just leaving the heatpump (or the stove) on continuously for a long stretch (more than a week maybe a lot more) to see if the building can actually get warm. This is what I suggest trying. Doing it at this time of year will likely take an age and a lot of electricity which is why I suggested maybe make a plan for the end of summer to give it a proper trial. My thought is to set a target internal temp of say 17/18C. Colder than most people are comfortable in, but much better than what you have now (must be below 10C to see your breath). Set your ASHP to target that, make sure the ashp thermometer is in the coldest room and leave the ASHP on. Importantly, set this up before the internal temperature drops that low, that way you aren't paying to warm the space up from cold, you've let the summer heat do that. If you don't have a smart meter, get one, that way you can monitor the energy usage. (I saw one post from you saying you don't like apps, etc, thats fine, just look at the little screen you get with a smart meter every day and write the usage down). At least initially in autumn the heatpump should have no trouble keeping up and you should be able to track how much it's costing and compare to what you are spending now to be cold. How much is that btw? Because the heatpump will be trying to keep the coldest room warm, other rooms will likely be hotter, so adjust the TRVs on the rads to prevent overheating, but importantly make sure the TRVs are set so that every room in the house is targeting at least the set point of the ASHP. One cold room might spoil the experiment. Some context for what I'm suggesting: This winter I've been running a bit of an experiment myself. I got a new heating system controller and have been trying different ways of doing my heating. I live in a fairly modern (2006) flat so nothing like your situation but the walls only have 60mm of polystyrene insulation (maybe equivalent to 45mm PIR), some fairly terrible leaky aluminium windows and woefully inadequate radiators in some areas. Because of this in the past I've focused my efforts keeping the room I spend most of my time in warm with the other rooms getting whatever heat they can from the radiators but not actively trying to keep them warm. Since I got the new controller, I've been experimenting trying to keep the whole flat warm. I started with various variations of heating system on while I'm awake, off when I'm asleep. Overall this didn't work too well. Overnight the rooms cooled down and the next day the boiler had to work continuously for hours to bring the temperature back up again (insufficient radiators limiting boiler output) and even then this only worked in the water temp was set high. I've now switched to leaving the heating on 24/7, with a setback temp overnight. Initially, I didn't want to do this due to the noise from the boiler disturbing my sleep and wanting to monitor when the boiler is on to keep track of things. Despite others on here reporting how well this worked for them, it has still surprised me how well it's worked here. My boiler has gone from being on at high water temperatures continuously for hours just to bring the temp back up to barely coming on at all during the day and when it does the water temperature is generally much lower. I don't want to speak too soon about bills as I don't have a smart meter and I've not been tracking the meter as closely as I should (next bill due in a week) but my impression of how things are going since I switched to this system is that the amount of gas I'm burning has siginificantly reduced from what it was heating the whole flat (not sure about compared to just heating one room) and comfort level has massively increased. So in summary I think it's well worth you running a similar experiment. * I know you feel drafts from the ceiling area near the external walls. If this is indeed external air then it is likely the main issue that needs fixing and without fixing it you will be cold. But it's not clear to me that this is external air or whether its internal air moving to the walls, cooling and cycling back. If it's internal air then maintaining the internal temp should allivate the draft as the masonary walls come up to temp. (It does mean the limited insulation in those walls isn't doing much but that shouldn't stop you building warmth inside, just influences how much it costs).

Now you have the place to temp, what is you heating demand now?

If the heatpump is working as expected then I'm glad. Last thing you want is to be worrying about that on top of other things. It does sound like the cold home is really getting to you. I fully understand how annoying the cold feet feeling is. Now the heatpump noise has been solved maybe it's time to have another run at making things more comfortable? Maybe not for this year but to have a plan for next year (rather than spending a lot of energy now to dry the place out, next year plan to not let it cool down in the first place). If you have done enough sealing to avoid major drafts internally then it should be possible to keep the place warmer than it is. Maybe you can't get it to cosy, but I suspect you can do better than seeing your own breath inside and if the the main space can be got to a higher temp then then bedroom should be cosy. Failing that, maybe working out how to divide the spaces a bit better so the bedroom can be kept cosy without spending a load of money on heating areas with no impact as it does sound like the worst of all worlds ATM with the heating on a lot but not a lot of impact.

I'm a bit surprised an installer would install a system if it wasn't able to heat your home. What are the specs of the new system? You've put effort in here but you say that you can still feel cold air. Do you think this is because cold air is still coming through gaps you can't seal or because air is cooling down on the cold wall and causing air movement within the room? If you think it's air coming from outside the room then there is still work to do there, what issues are there that prevent more sealing? An uninsulated but relatively sealed room should still be able to be warmed. Others experience on here with similar walls is that once you get them up to temperature they can be relatively good at keeping the heat in. It just takes a lot of energy to get them up to temp. If you are running your system in an on-off manner you will never get enough energy into the walls and they will always be cold and suck the heat out of the room. So, assuming you are currently running in an on off fashion, a good experiment to run is to leave the heating on 24/7 for maybe 2 weeks and see if it slowly brings the rooms up to temp. (obviously requires relatively good air sealing).

As I said in my first reply, pretty much ALL heatpumps are now inverter driven. So if you want to avoid an inverter you are likely going to have a bit of work to do to find a heatpump and if you succeed it will be much less effficient than an inverter driven one. Non-inverter heatpumps can't modulate, only on/off cycle. Whatever you do (single or 3 phase) get an heatpump that can modulate to a very low output. You likely won't need anywhere near tha max calculated demand for much of the year.

Bad timing. Gonna need to attract VC funding or find a mortgage for your project

Good job! As a master procrastinator myself, little and often seems to work quite well for jobs you'd really rather not do.

Just lay some flipping tiles! 😜

I would not worry about Loxone for this. Find what is conventionally used and wire it direct. Can also wire it into a loxone input to determine its state so you can monitor it's use. If you want to get more fancy (for example recognising specific cars) then look at getting one of the new AI CCTV cameras (Reolink?). Get one that does all processing locally and you can get them to send signals to home automation systems when specified events occur.

I was thinking more along the lines of add more insulation, reduce air leakage, etc. Assumed this question was in relation to the building you are in the process of converting from a cow shed. In which case there should be lots you can do to improve things if your loss is that high. (Though I'm not sure how you'd be meeting building regs on a new construction with a high heat loss). If it's an older building, then likely lots of easy things you can do to bring the loss down. And as usual on this forum, it's worth checking where you have got the heat loss calcs from? The heatpump installers have a terrible record of vastly overestimating it which can then lead to wrongly sized systems and poor operation. Though as a regular I assume you know all this already?

Doesn't really matter too much on modern heatpumps as they are all inverter driven. ie, they convert the incoming power to DC and then generate custom 3 phase (both voltage and frequency) to drive the motor. A traditional heat pump that didn't have the inverter would gain a little efficiency (and reliability from less components) from 3 phase supply but irrelevant today. Generally, 3 phase heat pumps don't start until about 15kw. Is your heat loss really that high? Anything you can do to lower it?

And have to deal with audio cables to each location and potential hums. I like the idea of multi room audio but I've only ever got proof of concepts running and then got bored and never made a finished system. These days it's so easy to just get some smart speakers and cast to them that doing more just seems like a slog.

Not exactly. I've got a Pi 2 still chugging along, though admittedly it doesn't do that much just run some audio passthrough stuff (keep meaning to make it do more but I'm just not that interested in fiddling around with computers ATM). The key is to run an O/S that is optimised to minimise writes to the SD card and get SD cards designed for application hosting (A1 spec or better IIRC, think there are even fancier specs these days). Some of the Pi O/Ss just churn huge log files onto the SD cards and the SD cards are not designed for that. If you want to run something which generates huge amount of writes get the right SD card, or install it on a USB SSD (or PCIe SSD on the Pi 5). If you want to avoid the issue all together I think you can netboot Pis now so you can eliminate the SD cards altogether (with the offset that they depend on a server working which depending on how you do it might be more hassle). Nothing wrong with the Pis if used properly.

I think @Pocster wants to do it for the 'fun' of it. Maybe mistress is away?

It's not just smarthomes. The trend for EVERYTHING to need an app is so annoying. I like the idea of various smart features (never lived in an automated place) but key for me is that it should add things on top, not make things harder. If you can't invite your families oldies and technophobes to stay at your house without them asking how to make something work you are doing something wrong. The basic stuff should work even if the smart stuff is broken and it should all work without the internet.

I agree, I suspect that it might not come across in some of my posts but my thoughts are to try and keep things simple and avoid complexity. - Do do the calculations about how much piping you need to emit enough heat - Build a layout that allows you to output that heat at very low temperature - Within reason try to avoid different length loops and transit areas where pipes group densely (hallways can be heated by the heat from loops traversing the hall way to other areas, doesn't need it's own loops), etc - Minimise crossing movement joints (make sure you follow best practice where crossing happens to allow the pipes to move in the slab) You don't need to design everything to the nth degree, the low temperature nature builds flexibilty so everything doesn't have to be perfect. @Gus Potter I think would suggest to have more shorter loops with some overprovision on the assumption that loops will fail. This is my main disagreement. I think it adds complexity that is detrimental to the chances of a successful install. If you are paying someone to install pipes, rather than paying them to install more than you need and the complexity that comes with that, pay for an independent witness to test the system after it is layed, before slab pouring and after the slab has solidified but not fully hardened. That way you can detect faults and get them fixed at the right time rather than living with a damaged system long term. Edit: Overall, if you are paying people to install the heating system, they should be involved in the UFH design and also be able to be the witness during installation (if they aren't installing the pipes)

I took 50 years as that's what the pipe manufacturers are claiming is the lifetime of their pipes. If you are putting pipes into an insulated raft that is also the foundation you are unlikely to rip that up for the lifetime of the building. Definitely not proposing to spend significant time or effort on it. From my POV, not worrying about precisely where kitchen units go, etc, at UFH design stage just means less dependencies on progress. You can get on with UFH install while still deciding between a couple of kitchen options, etc.

I think that also describes some of my issues with what Gus has said. To me, if you are building in redundancy, you are adding more pipe than needed. If you are adding more pipe than needed you are: 1. Adding more work, materials, cost. 2. Making the installation more complex 3. Reducing the pipe spacing and therefore making bend radii tighter (more chance of kinks, etc) 4. Increasing the number of pipes that have to feed into manifold(s) which increases problems of local heating in the area, and produces installation risk with potential overlapping pipes, pipes closer to the surface than intended, etc. In a low temp system you retain an awful lot of flexibility to increase output just by adjusting the water temp by a degree or two and adjusting flow rates. Adding extra pipes just adds complexity and risk. Though it should be said, in a low temp system with thick slab, flexibility is more limited anyway no matter how many pipes you have due to the response time of the system. In return you get a more efficient system that you can just turn on and leave on and not have to think about.

My reasoning for putting pipes everywhere is that in 50 years rooms get rearranged. Kitchens get moved to entirely different areas. Partitions go up, come down. Assuming you are designing a very low temperature system with a thick slab (one with floor temps targeting 1-2 degress above room temp) then the impact of some units on top of some pipes should be minimal. You can leave small air gaps at the top of the kickstand that won't be visible. I completely understand why you don't want to put pipes under units if you are designing a higher temp/fast response system.

Watching the Restoration Couple on Youtube. I think their ~400m2 floor came to about £37m2 inc dry shake, powerfloated, not polished though. Said the dry shake bags added up to £2k. That is the concern. Keeping it sealed.

It's funny in a way. You see that picture as a warning to avoid and as someone interested in a concrete floor as a finished surface see that as exactly what I'd expect (except if done in a domestic project I'd expect the movement joints to be filled more neatly and would personally have gone for a coloured concrete shake).

@IanR did a poured resin floor that might be an alternative: Microcement exists but isn't cheap. The only other suggestion that comes to mind is exploring commercial concrete contractors rather than 'polished concrete' specialists. I've no real-world experience, just researching for a future build but if you haven't already looked, have a look at https://concria.com/dry-shake-floor/ and their polishing system. Would only work on a large floor area without obstructions, but if thats what you have then might be a lot cheaper than conventional polished concrete.