joth

Are you sure? They describe it as a "water softening cartridge" https://www.quooker.co.uk/310-toebehoren/inline-filter-cartridge-31-049-00.html/

Got it. So more "apprentice shed" than fence. This maybe exactly what we do, right down to the bin (and ASHP) hiding.

Interestingly it looks like Sonos recently acquired the leading independent, non-cloud dependent voice assistant tech company Snips. Not content with being about the only manufacturer to have both Alexa and Goog assistant integrated inside their devices, they're now rolling their own? Not all happy in the world of home automation though, be interesting to see which way it goes from here. https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2019/12/03/sonos-shutting-down-local-voice-option-snips/

I feel like I'm asking a really stupid question now, but what are the requirements for weather proofing these meter boxes if any? You mentioned you hung that one on a timber fence, and I can see holes all down the side of the box, so can easily imagine ways that rain could blow right in there. The idea of putting a surface mount version of this on a fence/post until our EWI is installed then lifting it over onto the house wall is quite appealing, but when the DNO chap visited he only mentioned the concrete standing kiosk as the only temporary site solution they offered, and I didn't think to enquire about this as a temp-to-perm alternative.

Do you have your design EPC yet? What is the expected kWh per annum? You say near passive house... When I looked into this it said our unimproved 100m2 house would get £7k rebate given our 14,500kWh/yr EPC. But translating that to a near passive house you would have to have over 900 m2 property to get that sort of heating requirement and level of rhi payment! I'm guessing the MCS consultant is guessing based on similar sized property without really understanding the quality you are building to. But remember the MCS installer does not provide the EPC nor complete the RHI application, so they have no influence on how much payment you actually end up getting. More broadly as to why so many on here hate MCS etc, it took me a while to figure but basically this is a self build forum and has a general disliking for anything that hampers or restricts the ability of a selfbuilder to do things themselves. See also: NICEIC, G3 checks, F-Gas, DNOs, G99, architects, professionals, competent person schemes, LPAs, Barack Obama, etc etc etc. PS welcome! And very best of luck with the build.

Of course they do - they get a steady income from all the replacement filters! ? (And it'd be distinctly odd for them to have a scale reduction product and not recommend it) Our local water softener shop is also a Quooker dealer, and recommended the other approach to us. Also FWIW, on that link I included before, Quooker say "You can install a descaling system in front of the Quooker, such as the Quooker Scale Control,...." which to my interpretation is really only them giving one example of how to solve it, not an attempt to place any kind of restriction on which you use.

They have numerous filters, the one for the boiling water tank is only supposed to be changed every 3-5 years, but isn't intended for dealing with hard water https://www.quooker.co.uk/most-frequent-questions/what-maintenance-does-a-quooker-require https://www.quooker.co.uk/faq/faq/index/tag/change-filter/ The filters for cold/sparkling water and scale control are significantly more frequent (I'm not planning to install either those; just run it from the whole-house water softener instead)

Yeah Sonos must be the best all round option to meet those three requirements. I have avoided it due to the sticker shock and fear of buying into premium priced lock in, but the IKEA collaboration went some way to address both those concerns.

Full disclosure: I only bought into Sonos recently to try out, largely due to this thread, so still a novice and have not integrated voice control. The Sonos Amp I bought is DOA and waiting for an RMA authorization to send back, so I'm hoping for some magic when it is replaced

@Ferdinand depends which Sonos devices you have. The newer integrated speakers, like the Beam, have Alexa built in. Others you need to buy an Alexa echo or whatever they call them to pair with it, which should be relatively PnP (little plug, lots of play) To get started, in the Sonos app go to Settings > Services > Voice - Add a service

In your first question I thought you were asking about monitoring and controlling things during the build, i.e building project management apps? Now I think you mean monitoring and controlling M&E services in the completed property, i.e. home automation and building management apps? E.g. Former could be builderTrend and Trello. Latter, home assistant. Or am I still way off mark?

You might be able to save costs by having one new 3-phase supply fed in from the road, then picking a different phase off that to each house. (Assumes the road has 3 phase in it). My DNO said this is common reason they install new domestic 3ph installs in London, where a big house is being split to flats but they don't want N feeds in from the street. But for detached houses, it seems pretty annoying situation in the long term as Big Jimbo mentions. On top of the cost of building 2 new houses, the cost of one additional electrical connection doesn't seem like it would be a great saving.

No problem. I misread the OP thought they were after something to remotely control the existing Siemens controls.

This is what Smart Thermostats - nest, hive, tado, honeywell etc -- are all about. Almost all will want to replace your siemens controls with their own controller, then you can poke at that via the app on your phone.

If you like the challenge of working a room at a time, there's a free version too: https://www.dial.de/en/dialux-desktop/download/ I lack the top spec machine to run it on, but I have a slight hunch that @puntloos would love the challenge.

No worries! It's fairly light on detail, and as I said already sounds stale. My hope is they plan their testing over the Winter (when both DHW and ASHP work their hardest) in order to report back early in the new year. Being based in The North they should have access to some good quality Winter to test in. Overall I think I'm in very similar situation to @Dan Feist - mentally committed to UVC but have a small window of opportunity (until March, maybe) to change that decision if something magic appears

Thanks - I just found this too. I'll blame trying to read datasheets on a small screen too early in the morning. Interesting Sunamp aren't testing (or have already tested and failed?) the LG, given it appears to be the most widely available R32 monobloc at this point. I was looking at Panasonic before, but there aren't a whole lot of suppliers/installers for them about (my area, at least) PCM49 might work, but PCM43 seems to low to be useful on its own for DHW. Not sure I would worry too much about the ASHP failing to charge the SA it in the very depths of winter, so long as it has a good 3kW immersion backup. It's being reliable the majority of the time. The LG says it can achieve 65°C water temp down to -2°C OAT,. however below 7°C OAT it will risk non-continuous operation (defrost cycle) if outputting anything over 55°C which indeed is where the real hit on COP begins. See the tweet I linked above (from the founder of sunamp AIUI) -- that's about '43 only though.

@Dan Feist thanks again! I saw the thread you were on too, but the statement here was only R32 LT with PCM43, didn't confirm monobloc or with PCM58. Is there more news since this? I can't find evidence Daikin R32 monobloc yet? And Samsung's is still in trials. Are there any R32 LT monoblocs that support cooling too? The LG doesn't seem to. Early adopter squared!

MCS certification does allow.cooling, the only requirement in RHI is that the metering does not include any energy used for cooling. So I think some manufacturers just disable cooling rather than add to or alter their metering. (it would seem fraudulent for anyone on RHI "metering for payment" to enable it though) Out of interest, which manufacturer/model? Thanks

Because I don't want to have to buy another ASHP when I eventually decide I do want to turn on the cooling. (having made a successful planning application, obviously)

I can rationalize this a bit. The primary reason for windows is light and aesthetic pleasure, and they're reasonably low embodied carbon, so any heating from them really is "free" as you'd be getting the cost of them anyway. PV panels on the other hand are more damaging to manufacture (citation needed) and have no other purpose so need to justify themselves purely on the useful energy generated. Installing them and then use their full capacity on simultaneous heating and cooling due to poor design elsewhere, justified because the energy is "free", would kind of defeat the goal (Jevons paradox)

How close is it to your next neighbour? If it's a couple meters I'd not think there's a whole lot they could reject it on so I'd add cooling too, as you're amending to add it anyway, then you're covered. For my part we're doing it under PD (planning was already approved before we decided to go electric, but it's a renovation). The M&E spec says cooling must be supported by the unit, but not commissioned.

To clarify, this is for my latitude (~51.8°) and orientation of my solar array (SW). If you've not seen it, the PV estimator tool as an "optimize slope" option: https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html#PVP If you click to choose this option, PVGIS will calculate the slope of the PV modules that gives the highest energy output for the whole year. This assumes that the slope angle stays fixed for the entire year.

+1 I'm 2.9 Wm⁻² For unit-whacking I do like to use the Google onebox calculator: (25 (kwh / m2)) / (1 year) = 2.85198882 watts / m2 I know where you're coming from, but I don't like it so much as it is very dynamic number based on usage and seems even easier to "game". (A developer can "design" a house for say 6 people, knowing full well the owner will only put 3-4 ppl in it, or whatever, whereas self-builder would feel more obligation to use the number they know they're actually going to put in the house. PHPP is bad enough for this already with e.g. "personal electronics" being a weird heuristic. I originally tried to model all the computer, network, CCTV, etc gear I might choose to install but then realized I was needlessly penalising myself vs a developer making an empty house to sell on, so just stripped it back to use the built in heuristic basics. OTOH their circulation pump electricity consumption heuristics are just plain broken, so I took the choice to override that with more sane numbers. Not perfect, but it's what I've got.)

@Jeremy Harris thanks! Perhaps worth updating the "how to create a blog" info on https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/guidelines/ in the meantime?