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I'm no expert on any of this and I know you've been back and forth over this in the past with others who know more than so I doubt I'm saying anything new but my thought is that you need to think hollistically. Trying to warm the sitting room up when the other rooms are cold is a losing proposition. Your loft insulation is above the bedrooms not above the sitting room. If the bedrooms are cold the heat from the sitting room will rise and get lost in the cold bedroom. To put it another way think about stopping the loft air from getting behind the bedroom walls, not just at the junction to the sitting room. Understand, but do try and come back to it during the summer. Try to make this the last year you can see your breath inside during the winter. Honestly, this sounds like a blessing in disguise. You were left with a system you didn't know how to control. While the engineer is there get them to show you how to adjust the system (temperature set point and the timer). If there are no fault codes the issue is likely fairly simple. I think the experience of people on here are that heatpumps are just as reliable if not more so than modern gas boilers (both full of electronics nowdays). Everything can get a fault, especially if something was missed around install, but once setup correctly and as long as serviced regularly it should be fine. My main concern is that if the system is running flat out and not getting any heat into the place then thats way outside it's design parameters and could cause excessive wear. So if you want the heat pump to last then this summer is definitely the time to put some effort into attacking the issues in the house.

AFAIK it's a GPON network: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPON So a single strand of fibre is shared between groups of houses with splitters in splice boxes as houses split off. The bandwidth you get is shared between the other people on the same fibre but you are very unlikely to notice any issues because the links are very fast. The laser transcievers can go at least 2km, 10km is easily available so there is no need for any active (powered) electronics between you and the exchange. There may be some very rural places where the exchange is more than 10km away, in which case BT might have chosen to use a powered green box as an aggregation point rather than deploy more specialised transceivers.

Certainly true of the original dishes, but I thought some of the newer ones had other options. I've seen plenty of people use normal ethernet cables (possibly with adapters) online.

Been a bit busy today, just looked at the earlier posts. Sorry I clearly got the build up of the upstairs rooms wrong. If it's plasterboard on dabs on dodgy cavity wall then the plasterboard tent point is even more valid. One of the reasons I suggest dealing with those rooms first is if cold air is getting into the structure from there it's going to make heating the downstairs harder. Loads of houses have cold concrete floors and while they may not be the most comfortable they can generally be heated which makes me think that dealing with the floor should be lower down on the priority list until you have the ability to heat better than now. Whatever you do, if the heating system is running off a thermostat located in a warm room or it continues only operating for a few hours a day your house wont be warm unless you do an awful lot of work (bringing the house to modern standards). But, if basic air sealing is done and plasterboard tent possibilities are eliminated then what you have should be able to warm the space if the actually running (ie, the thermostat and timer are all saying 'provide heat'). Can you confirm where the thermostat is? If it needs moving you should start thinking about that and also put some time into working out how to change the schedule. Wish you the best of luck dealing with this.

Your confidence in stating this makes me want to revisit this again. I previously asked where your ASHP thermostat was. I think you missed that. When you had your old system the radiators should have been on continuously so long as it was cold in the sitting room. If that was not the case then it's likely the thermostat was located somewhere that was getting warm (new extension?) and that was then turning the whole system off before enough heat got into the sitting room, hence the sitting room is always cold. If you have actual air leakage or large 'tent like' areas with outside air nearby then this doesn't apply. But from what you've said I don't think this does apply to downstairs. No, it was with regard to your upstairs rooms I was thinking if you were working in the upstairs room, it wouldn't be super hard to lift a few floor boards and clean out/stuff the space with fluffy stuff (definitely not PIR as it's too rigid and you wont get a good seal). It's likely that you already have some floor boards that were lifted to install radiators, so an easy place to start. If there is no void in the floor (radiator pipes all run along walls, not into the floor) then this doesn't apply. Given the work you've previously done, I think taking off the plasterboard and replacing after installing insulation is within your capabilities. So it would likely be better than drilling a few holes and foaming, but the foaming is certainly easier but might hide issues. One of the reasons to address the upstairs rooms first is that gives you the option to spend evenings up there rather than in the sitting room and it's a much easier and cheaper project however you do it. Edit: I believe I read you have 250mm of loft insulation. So that plus better wall insulation should make those upstairs rooms relatively easy to keep warm.

That may be a temporary situation with lots of people getting them, then changing their minds due to poor experience. Things will bed down and at some point there won't be many second hand ones without a lot of use.

Most commonly used to describe new-builds where they have lots of insulation but also lots of airgaps that effectively outside air bypasses the insulation and sits behind the plasterboard of the room. (Plasterboard sealing off much of the airflow into the room so you don't necessarily feel the drafts but you do feel the cold). So the plasterboard acts as well as a tent does. All the insulation and brick is effectively bypassed and useless from a heating point of view. In your case, used to describe what seems likely that outside air is getting directly behind the plasterboard/PIR upstairs effectively preventing any heat build up in the stone walls. Thick stone walls would normally build heat given enough time - 2ft solid walls if heated right should be a more comfortable/stable environment than victorian brick solid walls. I've lived in a number of houses with brick solid walls and they are cold when the heating is off but warm up fairly easily when the heating is on.

If before the system was supposed to be on all the time and was set to 17C and yet the rads were turning on/off while you could see your own breath then the system wasn't doing what it should. The rads should have been warm continuously. When I was skimming history I saw some talk about the thermometer but not the full context. Where was this located on the old system? On the new? (Thermometer if not separate is likely the controller with the LCD screen for the system). To work properly in your property it really needs to be located in the coldest room. My previous flat had storage heaters, they drove me insane and why I desperately searched for a flat with gas/central heating when I bought this place (unusual in modern flats). People on here claim modern ones work much better so long as you know how to set them up but I suspect most people don't and so suffer the behaviour you describe.

Yes. Sorry if it wasn't clear, I agree with the plasterboard tent description. Just wanted to claify the build up.

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.