joth

UK regs still do for commercial premises, I believe. Between toilets and food preparation or consumption areas. A handy side effect is as well as helping keep the smells away it can help avoid unpleasant sight lines.

Spec is for a Carrier 42NH 235 or equivalent, but still waiting on quotes so supplier and price TBD. Single fan coil in the loft driven from the same ASHP as downstairs ufh, air ducted into each room and recirculating back via the hallway. Went for this largely on the suggestions on here, and as we didn't want radiators in each room, which would have had to be huge or fan assisted to work with the ASHP and I reckon won't be used very often anyway.

If you're used to a gas fire, they can look very realistic. The most recent one I saw was installed in an authentic looking Victorian cast fire place and I had no idea it was bioethanol until I was told. (The conversation started on how the chimney was sealed up, and I was shocked to see that the fire was still in use!) Others I've seen are more like an LED light-show sitting over hot pebbles in a glass box, very modern but nothing like what I associate with a "fire place". But neither looked like a "real" wood burning fire. I think the style the room and setting would make a huge difference to affect it achieves

Just looking into NUCs again as I need to get one to run BlueIris. For this purpose Quick Sync support is more important than clock speed. Both the ones you mention have it, in Kaby Lake micro architecture, so a good start (AIUI Kaby Lake is the minimum version needed for possible future H.265 hw acceleration) Looking at their aliexpress site, I like the bare-faced honesty in their marketing (copied below, their emphasis), although it does make me worry about the legitimacy of the rest of the components. "Free Operating System: Default installed our activated OEM cracked version(not genuine, works good, but best not to update online) Win7/10 English for free"

And the same as my A/V amp - Sony STR-DN1080. Only bought it last year, so should be covered by the EU network standby regs, yet still merrily consumes a constant 55W when in standby mode (and belches out heat), pretty much exact same power as when in active use. Disgusting really. It seems they interpreted the network standby energy consumption regs to only apply to WiFi use (?!) and in European versions it just turns off wifi completely in standby mode (so completely defeating the main differentiating feature I selected it for: the built in chrome-cast receiver). But if connected via wired ethernet is seems to disable the lower power mode completely, so remote activation (for casting) works fine but is a complete power hog the entire rest of the time. Of course, reviews never point out this kind of thing.

Not any more. I had conversations with 3 installers, and all had setup systems to cool ufh. Thing is vast majority of installers are MCS registered, and most of them still believe RHI outlaws active cooling, hence their aversion. Happily the first one I spoke to clarified this point, but the other two said they'd only do it in non-RHI installs until I pointed out this has changed. (Not that RHI is a crucial deciding point for me, but the 7.7k bung is hard to ignore) Edit to add: active cooling does violate the "permitted development rights" for installing an ASHP; technically if you set it up for cooling you need planning permission for it. This might also put off some installers? (Also the permitted dev rights only apply to the first heat pump installed on a property)

I think urban front do too, if Hormann isn't expensive enough https://www.urbanfront.com/garage-doors/

So the expectation is an all-gas house would see no change, but all-electric would see a rating improvement? Interesting: another reverse incentive nail in the RHI coffin for new installs? if converting from gas to electric, you can have the claim based on the EPC with gas system you're switching away from, but for an all electric install the EPC will necessarily be based on the better performing electric system installed from outset. I think if they'd introduced RHI as a "dirty old boiler scrappage scheme" it would be much easier to follow.

Very interesting (and quietly reassuring) to hear. My current design keeps MVHR and a/c ducting completely separate. MVHR will be installed and balanced out as normal. The bedrooms each get a second, linear, air inlet grille ducted from the recirculating fan coil which can do hot or cold air to those rooms only. (Downstairs has ufh). While the doubling up of ducting into each room feels inelegant, it's the simplest way I can see to ensure the rarely used a/c cannot comprise performance of the constantly used MVHR. The fan coil will work in an all-or-nothing mode initially, but if we find some rooms badly overheat while others are still calling for heat, it looks fairly easy to retrofit electronic dampers at the manifold. AliExpress has some bargains for this. Even then it just becomes all of nothing binary control on a per room basis, no attempt to dynamically balance the airflows as it's completely independent of the MVHR. As a well insulated house so I don't expect to need this per room control, but the one scenario I can see it being useful if aging guests want their bedroom much warmer than we do, it'd be useful to let them set a higher temp than the rest of the house. This might force the rest of the house heating to deactivate completely, but as the fan coil is coming from the ASHP so I'd not loose much effeceiency even if that does happen. (But knowing I can retrofit dampers is reassuring, basically the equivalent of retrofitting TRVs to radiators)

Thinking of the two scenarios: - energy scavenging in winter. Just cool the equipment into the house general airspace and let the exhaust air heat pump do it's thing elsewhere. Same as the fridge/freezer or whatever. Unless the air is damp or smelly, no need to duct it straight out. - cooling the gear while minimising house overheating in summer. This is where the ducting makes sense for me: stopping the hotter air mingling with the house saves on the expense of active cooling elsewhere. So I'm thinking to get the equipment cupboard vented directly to MVHR for this purpose in our house (but I don't have the exhaust air heat pump). Can you "reverse" the exhaust heatpump in summer? (I.e. to use it to actively cool the house?). If so, maybe it's a wash and the same non-ducted argument works just as well in both scenarios. For equipment cooling it is interesting to follow how large scale data centers evolved. Originally they were all about active refrigeration cooling dumping cold air on top of equipment racks. These days they focus on letting as much ambient temperature air freely into the building as possible, but then very carefully capture all the hot air from every machine via a "hot aisle" and exhaust it out the other side of the building without letting it mingle with the incoming air at all. In cool temperate regions this can mean completely heat pump/refrigeration free passive cooling.

There's a little flag in the corner of every post, it's called the "create lots of work for admins" button. People start pressing it more in politics (or religion) heavy threads. I started using online forums (back then, email lists) in 1995 and this has always been the way, nothing special about brexit in this. I think this specific discussion is both useful and relatively uncontentious if people concentrate on the immediate impact of no deal brexit to building supplies and trades (even if it is speculative discussion). As soon as it meanders onto the long term impact it invariably gets entangled in the wider politics of decisions and outcomes, and then the admins will get more work and the usefulness of the discussion decreases (in the context of a selfbuild forum) (Sorry cross posted with newhome, but I think we're saying the same thing ?

Sonos works fine with wired speakers, it's where the started with ZP100 / Connect:Amp -- now replaced by the Sonos "Amp". But at £600 per room (plus speakers) you're paying well over the odds if only used with a centrally wired setup.

Sure, I can understand a duct sensor working OK to control boost mode, but not to turn the MVHR off and on completely which I thought was being discussed in the prior posts.

Just a note that controlling MVHR via sensors of any type in the ducts seems fraught, as once you've reached setpoint and turn the MVHR off, there's basically no air flow so it'd be extremely slow to respond to subsequent drop in quality in any of the rooms.

Perhaps the best feature about Sonos is it works exceeding well without wiring your house for sound. It has wireless connection between each their units and synchronizes playback across rooms without wires everywhere. As you have gone for the wired option (as I am too!) then it's a great question to reconsider if sonos really makes sense (I keep going around this loop). One angle to consider is, are there any rooms/areas you haven't or couldn't wired back to the central electrical cupboard, that you suspect you might occasionally / in future like to have music? For me, this might be garden, garage, workshop I haven't built yet, etc. If so, Sonos might still be the best choice as it works very well on the wired install now and future wireless additions. Another aspect to think about is, if you do have music in multiple rooms, how would you prefer to control it? e.g. select what music is playing, and especially what room it is playing in? Options are voice assistant, app on smartphone, controls on the wall (e.g. by lightswitch), IR remote control, central tablet / wall panel, something else I haven't thought of. If voice assistant or phone, which ecosystems do you already use, if any? (Alexa, Siri, Google Home / Spotify, iTunes, ...). Anything you get would need to be compatible with that. The controls etc might sound like small details, but having cobbled together systems (mostly based on Chromecast) in other houses, I know if it's not convenient it'll never get used which pretty much defeats the purpose of installing. Sorry, long post and not very helpful conclusions. I'm in very similar situation and still undecided, but just sharing some of my thought process :-) Left field: my brother has "Denon HEOS" devices all around his house and loves it. Sonos-like but from a more traditional Hi-fi / media maker

"so what do you do for a living?"

You mean just the controllers for these, right? (Or the ducts and air moving fans and manifolds and heat exchangers too?) 1.5m deep seems a lot, you could get an MVHR in there, but planning all the ducting runs is what will then take the space. A/c units also have refrigeration pipes and condensation drains which needs spacing away from the electrical gear. Our plans have a first floor node 0 / electrical closet that's 1150 x 410mm footprint, so not as generous as you have but it was the space available and I think will work as it's electrical/network/media gear only. The 19" rack kit maybe tight, especially as the Unifi switches are so damn big. (And noisy)

To clarify I was meaning take whatever other window of theirs you do like the price of, and ask them if it can be custom made without the trickle vent.

Fakro FTT U8 certainly has no trickle vent They'll also make a custom window too, for example they gave me a price for the U8 with z-wave opening (for example). Their website "chat" worked well to get this, and we exchanged emails too. The custom spec didn't terribly increase the price (that's over the already pricy U8 price, mind)

This is the attitude to have, and one I'm trying to bring myself to. When we bought last year we thought we'd be half way renovated by now, in before Christmas! LOL. We've not started anything yet, now starting to think about temporary remedial renovation work to get us through another winter before we pull it all down.

Aside from exchange rates, delays at ports and with logistics firms will impact supply. Lack of supply also impacts prices. (But conversely delays on exports could give a glut of other things hence stock clearance price reductions). Also, delays can result in indirect costs: e.g. for me, that means longer in rented accommodation, etc etc. Tldr: the only reliable prediction is things will be hard to predict.

While the mean price and lead time is very likely to increase, even more certain is the variability in price and lead time. There could be bargains (if stock piling proved excessive) on some things, there could be many month delays and profiteering on others. In the immediate term it's Project management, already not the easiest thing, that will be hit hardest. Anyone on a very tight timeline and budget will be hit the worst with all the increased uncertainty and stress.

I think you mean Uw=1.2 ? https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/product/ptp-p205-white-upvc-centre-pivot-laminated-window-78cm-x-98cm.html "This is a white uPVC double glazed window with laminated glazing and has a uValue of 1.2." And If you need more options there's roofmaker too

Exactly: Vegas vs Skegness. I should add this is a massive generalisation, a good bifold could (initially) outperform a bad slide and fold etc, but it's what I understood to be the preference order for best-in-class performance Thanks, yes - this must be what I was recalling when I mentioned "they also struggle to get such a good seal due to their shape"

Just to clarify here, as this sort of thing always mixes me up: is Amtico and other LVTs considered a laminate or vinyl tile in this comparison? Do you have examples (links or make+model) of the good and bad tiles you used? Thanks!