Big Jimbo

So taking on board what people have said in relation to my previous posts about water, incoming, use, heating etc. This morning i had a chat with my local water company. If i lay a new plastic 25mm pipe, the water company will re-new my existing connection (lead) from the mains for FREE. If i want a larger connection to the mains, i have to pay. The lovely lady had a look and estimated about 6 grand. (gulp) The plan at present is to fit an unventilated cylinder to supply my showers .I wanted the ability to run all 4 showers potentially at the same time, but understand that this may not be possible. After all the cylinder can only put out at the same rate that water is being put in. Therefore, if i had 3 x 8 liter per min, and 1 x 12 liter per min shower, that would be a total requirement of 36 l per min, and that's without the cold water draw to each of those shower outlets. If i was to say, use a 300l hot tank, heated to say 55degrees, i think that would give me enough water for all showers at say 8mins. (288l of water if all drawn at 55, which obviously it wouldn't be. Regardless, of how it is all plumbed, i doubt that a new 25mm mdlp pipe which is quoted as 1.6l/s......31.2l/min would be able to keep up, given the distance it needs to travel from the boundary. Has any body ever had any luck in getting the actual boys doing the connection in the road to increase the size of the connection to say 32mm for Tea, biscuits, and a wedge of cash ? I don't have a water meter, so it would just be a slightly bigger stop tap. The rates quoted for 32mm mdlp seem much better than 25mm. I know that regardless, i may need accumulators to be fitted, or a large storage tank and pump.

"Bit like a car radiator" You can make that on the 40mm exit pipe. Use a straight solweld pipe connector. Cut a 3mm ring, and glue it on the end.

Looks fantastic. Well done. have you tried Big Dug

`Lucky blighter. Save a fortune

@jayc89 prob a bit silly, but my current crappy bungalow has a 9kw electric shower, lead main 80 years old. Wife always complained that she could not get the shampoo out of her hair. I swapped the shower head for One that we had around, (i assume a shed purchase) It's like a totally different shower. Now my small brain tells me that it is only delivering the same amount of water, but at a higher pressure and is so much better. I assume that the shower head must have much smaller outlet holes?

Least of my problems @JohnMo Trying to find a blinking engineer / competent person is hard enough work. Shame we don't have a resident bod on here. I don't mind paying.

So with 4 showers, i am going to be looking for a peak demand of 40L per min. Oh, for a decent water engineer. Going to reach out to another One today.

I think i get what @Nickfromwales is saying. If say i want to run 4 showers at the same time (3 x 8 and 1 x 12 litres) that is a total of 36L. That is a lot of water being delivered at the same time, and so will need 36L of being delivered into the system behind it, in order to push it through. Sounds like a problem.

I do intend getting a larger mains connected. @Nickfromwales Currently looking for somebody to "design" my water system, but despite reaching out to several engineers, i'm struggling to find someone.

Thanks for messing up my head this early in the morning @Nickfromwales What part of badly educated did you not read ? Like i understand anything you just said.

Personally, i wouldn't use that. I can even believe that is an approved fitting. Problem, waiting to happen.

@saveasteading I've got that book somewhere.

@iMCaan bloody little rascals. I'd send them home with broken fingers if i caught them.

@Apprentice I think these days very few books get written. You tube seems to hold all the answers, but you have to plough through the bulls41te one's to try and find the decent information.

Don't get me started again @SteamyTea Like that poor fella who was asked to spend a load of cash because he had a flawed Air test. He had some of his uncontrolled air losses taped off for his air test. It might well have been what was required for the test, but it didn't make his result scientifically correct. Luckily, the BCO understood that the test, although carried out correctly, was flawed. Science, i think i went once, and sometimes, logic beats science.

@SteamyTea within 200 watts.

@SteamyTea How blinking close were you at my heat loss calcs. Gold star fella.

Somebody recently wrote on one of the hillbilly off grid sites that he was planning on using the electric battery system from a fork lift truck to store his energy created from his vast array of solar panels. said the capacity of the fork lift truck battery was 50kva (prob got my k's and v's mixed up.) (i will wait for @SteamyTea to tell me off) Said that during the winter he would charge the battery from night time cheap rate electricty. He said the battery would be less than £4k. Food for thought ?

Just to let all the kind people who have contributed to my plight. At an outside temp of -2, inside target temps of 18 degrees bedrooms, 22 degrees bathrooms, and 21 degrees all other areas, i will need 6509.52 watts of energy to heat my house on a bloody cold day. (OK, not a scottish cold day, but those lads and lasses are proper hard) So 6.5kW. So should i now be looking for an ASHP of that size ? My next task will be to try and calculate how much water, and at what temp i will require to store it at, in order to provide enough to run 4 showers at the same time. My thoughts are that, (and i'm not saying i'm right) I don't see the point of storing hot water at much higher temp than i actually need it at the outlets, just to blend it down by then adding cold water. Again with my badly educated mind my thoughts are that the lower temp i store the water at, then the larger the tank will need to be ?

So, happy with my fabric losses as calculated. Re-doing my ACH using .5 Would i be right in thinking that my calculation would be......Volume (LxWXH) X ACH (using0.5) X 0.33 X mytemp for that area added to my outside temp at -3 ? (so for 21 it would be 24 ?

@JohnMo The idea of having simple controls for heating really appeals to me. I've been in houses with thermostats in every room. My idea is to have One zone downstairs underfloor heating. One zone upstairs with thermo valves on the rads.

@SteamyTea I was using 3 ach. I am now redoing it at .5 I will report back. Thanks everybody inc @JohnMo

Most of the losses seemed to come from the air changes, but my concern is how realistic is 1 ? All very well calculating it at that, but if you then score 2 ?

I did try Jeremy's, @ProDave but noticed when i finished that he had the air changes set at .5 I know people on here try and get as low as they can, but .5 seems very low, and if you did a decent job and got 1.5 my worry is that you would not have enough energy being provided to heat the house in cold weather.

I'm building a new house of 2500 square ft. Basically an oblong, internally, 10.2m x 12m with a 2.5m wide glazed porch on the front. The "u" values as designed are, floor .09, walls .16 roof .11 windows and doors .96 Windows and doors are just under 25% of floor area. So, a bit better than building regs, but not a huge improvement. I have done some detailed heat loss calcs on a room by room basis, using the following. Design temp for bedrooms 18 Degrees. bathrooms 22 degrees. all other areas 21 degrees. I used an outside air temp of -3 degrees, and i used an air change rate of 3 per hour. (I will aim for less air changes, but wanted to be safe for my calculations) I got a total house heat loss of 12125 watts. Would anybody have any idea if that sounds reasonable for a 2023 new build of 2500 Square ft ? Thanks in advance as always.