gc100

Hi, I'm looking at my architects drawings and it seems to my untrained eye that there is a pretty bad thermal bridge around where the window meets the exterior brickwork. Would there not normally be some form of insulation between the brick and the window frame??

I looked into this a bit and came to the conclusion the wildlife type remote cameras was best for this given long battery life, light conditions, waterproof, etc. Some support streaming over the mobile network as well.

Thanks. We'll have 9 zones in the house and I'm trying to decide whether to spend on 'smart' theromostats. The main advantage I can see from them are really just the fine control over scheduling the heat (ie when 30 mins away from home turn heating on, when everyone leaves house turn off etc, boost heating if temp outside less than 3c etc). I don't want to have to walk around all 9 theomostats and boost them, so smart themostats would be good if I needed to do that. However I'm presuming that would really be controlled centrally from the ASHP, and the zone thermostats essentially just control the manifolds??

So this is probably a daft question, but with new builds with decent airtightness, do you still schedule the heating on and off at various times, or do you just set the constant temp? If so, do you control it at the main ASHP, or do you control it at the individual thermostats in each room/zone? Thanks

Ah ok, so we mustn't have a flue draught stabilizer then but won't we still fall foul of the air permeability given its hopefully going to be reasonably airtight? Though we don't need to do an air tight test for our BC.

Why 5kW?

@joe90 Did you still have to install a non-closable vent? Apparently the building regs and it recommends a non-closable vent even if the stove is full direct air supply. It seems a HETA installer can fit without the vent if they do the smoke tests (and it passes) in BS8303 . Just wondering what you did? I was planning to do the stove myself as there is no one around here with experience with zinc roofs, air tight houses and don't have any modern effecient stoves.

As I understand you cannot control the hot water only the room temps. I don't even know if they are compatible - hence I was wondering if anyone had any experience. Searching online in regards to ASHP doesn't give me much.

Hi, I always envisaged that with my build I would be installing a smart thermostat such as Hive/Nest . We are planning to install an Ecodan Ultraquiet unit in our house but it seems that for example the Hive unit can only control the heating element at best. I"m wondering if anyone has gone down this route and how they got on with their ASHP and smart(er) thermostats? Thanks

England. We've also had all our PM writes removed as part of our condition to approval. I think this is a no-goer just looking more closely at the costs. Its a shame but its the reality it seems.

My definition of eco/green is reducing my carbon footprint per annum and reducing toxic to life chemicals

Thanks all , we have a good location for a turbine (wide open fields, no neighbours, woods, etc, high spot). Both myself and my wife want to be a green as possible and have low monthly bills (even if we are just putting that money up front) , so outs not all about making finical sense. it may just make more sense to go with an energy that’s green like Bulb. Not many people about here to tan talk to outside of commercial setups

Well back of a fag paper calc: 5kw at £8k purchase plus install (myself) Cost would provide around 7500kwh/year, around a 10 year payback

It’s seems wind turbines are not popular full stop on here and with LPAs. However for me they seem to make reasonable sense given when I actually need a large of kWh it’s in the period Nov - March and this is when it’s most windy and PVs don’t generate much. So I’m considering if it’s worth me spending time in this. However straight off the bat I’m think the LPA ain’t going to like it given I’m in open countryside. Does anyone know where I can find info on Planning law around these? thanks

Hi all, I got my head into my SAPs calculations for the first time last night. Though I don't understand all of it I can basically see whats going on. However I had a bad surprise that they are predicting my year estimated heating/water costs will be £2560 a year. This got me looking at the u-values used and area m2 in the calculations. Firstly they used a u-value of 1.5 for the windows. We have a LOT of windows (56m2) mainly in 1 room and we've gone for triple glazed with a u-value or 0.9 so that should make a little difference to the calculations. Due to the fact our build is a conversion we've been a bit limited on how much insulation we can use especially on the floor (100mm). So I have a couple of questions: Firstly my main question is how close to reality are the yearly kwH heating/water calcs once build is completed? I see that have included the garage in the calculates as its part of the main build, but this of course is unheated (though insulated except for door) - is this normal? do they take into account its not a livable area in calcs? Thanks

Brilliant, thank you. (If you do happen to find the PDF please let me know :-)

Hi all, This probably is a daft question for a lot of you but I know nothing about this subject. I want a reasonably airtight house which I tried to relay to the architect. However given my build is a barn conversion we have limits about reusing existing walls and slab of the barn. I don't actually know if he has designed a very airtight design or if I just need to pay attention to sealing with tape around windows!. Basically I'm clueless and I don't want to be, as I want to make sure the house is pretty airtight. Where can I find more information on this subject?? Here are relevant drawings for this section: https://home.glasscubes.com/share/s/rbu9qhjri579oh36rmvh1m7gbe Basically there are no notes in the plans around this I can see.

I'm just reading up on air tightness so my knowledge is minimal - however would it be that hard to seal around them? The void would be as small as I can get away with but I suspect about 2 feet.

Hello all, My architect specified for the MVHR to be in our boot room, however I'm not too keen on this location for a couple of reasons: Space in limited in the boot room and I'd rather not 'waist' the space As the ceilings are vaulted we'd need to loose ceiling hight to run the ducts. Here are my plans (reduced and cropped!) : https://home.glasscubes.com/share/s/76t2kj2tpr0ugkdr8i72lbdp20 I'm thinking about putting the MVHR unit in the garage, or alternatively I'm thinking about putting a flat ceiling in the office and putting the MVHR and perhaps the ASHP components above that (it will be a warm space). I'm aware though the MVHR units themselves can be somewhat noisy. If Iocate in the garage I was thinking high up on the inner wall as possible as to not loose space in the garage, as I do actually put my car in the garage. Will I need to insulate the unit and pipes? The other point I don't really know about is where to locate the external supply / extract pipes. We have a zinc roof , and I want to keep the lines of the building as clean as possible (as we are having hidden gutters etc), I don't want pipes just sticking out. We plan to have a false ceiling running down the center corridor to run all the ducting and other utilities. Any ideas or advice very welcome.

I think ultimately BC have the say. However in this case they said they are happy to do whatever the structural engineer said so as long as they had it in writing before completion. In the end the engineer came out and made several measurements and we ended up with various depths for the foundations. We went from 11 m3 of concrete needed to 37m3 !! All done and laid now. They also had to add clay boards on the inside of the foundations.

So trees have striked again! BCO come out today to have a look at our foundations, and due to close proximity to trees around the property has said we need to go down to 2meters instead of .75 as spec'd from the structural engineer. That to me seems a lot for a single story timber build. I release the risk is the chalk/clay ground to raise and lower in the season changes but 2 meters!!! The such a large amount of concrete to pour and we are trying to avoid concrete in this build for environmental reasons. Even worse he says we might need to cut down a small oak that is nearby which I really don't want to do. And then to add insult to injury the electricity board call me to tell me where they are connecting me, they have discovered asbestos on the ground and I will have to pay for the extra cost dealing with it even though it belongs to someone else.....!!

So BC come out to the site for the first time. Some super bad news about our foundations (I'll make another post). However he said that as far as he was concerned the discharge of the sewage plant was not his remit and it was an EA item. From memory he said you couldn;t discharge into a dry ditch (Which is true). So couple of points: - Will EA ever come out and check? - Do I approach EA , and whats the best way? @joe90 how did you contact them? Thanks

Thanks all, I think I will put an open trench between the field and what will be are garden and then put a large channel drain across the side of the house. I think that would do.

Was that given by building control or EA?

Ok thanks ProDave. So could I put in say something like a 10 meter perforated drainage pipe down and cover over before running into the open part of the ditch?