joth

Dutch tall is getting shorter https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/17/dutch-are-worlds-tallest-people-but-theyre-shrinking-study-shows

Small thought: we have 900mm deep island split into 600 deep drawers and a 300 cupboard on the back, but the kitchen manufacturer needed a void between the cupboards and took that from the depth of the rear cupboards making them just too shallow for many things we wanted to put there (bread maker, food processor etc). We'd have added a bit more overall depth if we'd realized, or had slightly less depth on the drawers instead (would have complicated the Bora install bit would have been worth it)

I agree. The policy changes needed are not so much purely to "make it viable for every house to have their own battery" but to enable many different innovations and business models to be tried out and the successful ones will flourish. For example, if the grid system and billing allowed it, it would be much more cost efficient for me to "rent" an amount of battery storage from a warehouse of industrial sized batteries on the edge of town than have the hassle of buying, installing, and eventually disposing and replacing, my own much smaller battery. Just like the trend from private / on premises computer servers to centralized data centers and "cloud" service providers. The open internet is great for facilitating that sort of evolution; the closed grid less so. In Europe there's quite a few pilots going on around local energy cooperatives and local "energy islands" that could enable some of this stuff https://www.compile-project.eu/energy-communities/ I feel the highly fragmented UK system of DNOs and suppliers will slow down progress here, in theory the Smart DCC has the charter to enable it, we'll see how that goes. https://www.smartdcc.co.uk/enabling-innovation/

By "can't" you mean "mustn't"? Technology wise, there's no problem with getting them to export. It's just a matter of policy. And that's a moving beast: suppliers are always running trials to enable battery export (e.g. Tesla/octopus and OVO/myenergi), albeit under their direct control.

Yeah with this spread, it starts even making (personal, financial) sense to wear out a car battery selling back to the grid. I'm now feeling like a total dummy for being on Agile import but a fixed rate export. Silver lining for now is I only export from PV so by definition I'm on average only going to sell when Agile would give me the lowest possible price for it. Getting a battery changes everything.

Yes moved in in Feb Soundproofing is almost what we hoped for. Still get a faint rumble from passing goods trains (one or two a night), last week's Grand Designs says the solution to that was to build on top of a rubber mat foundation. That was never going to happen in a retrofit!! The main killer of soundproofing though is having to leave a window open overnight. That means we hear almost constant train noise. The one other weird one is metal guttering really picks up a dripping noise from the tiles and transmits through the joists straight into the bedrooms. I may stuff some sort of fine mesh into the gutter as a drop diffuser.

I posted about this elsewhere, but for me this was the most disappointing aspect of PHPP: it only considers the building as a whole, not room by room requirements. You can do "critical room" heating load, but not cooling. Overall our house is absolutely fine for not overheating, but our bedroom is still a problem. An MVHR cannot keep up with moving the heat of 2 humans, so overheating is (eventually) guaranteed without some additional measures. If you're happy to sleep with the window and/or door open, then there's much less to worry about, but I don't because my sleep is easily disturbed by noise, and a large part of going Passive was I bought into the idea it would drastically improve sound proofing.

As well as poor software development and systems operations, it sounds like they suffer very weak legal oversight too. Are they saying that the IT system is itself a legally accountable entity, and if random solar rays, a software bug, or motivated hacker, got into it and set its internal state to "approved" for every current (and future) case, they would have no choice but to stand by and let those decisions stand "because computer says so" ? Or is it that the junior council worker in question does indeed hold the delegated authority to make these decisions without oversight and review, and thus the decision stands? I SMH either way.

It's a standing charge per meter. So one 3 phase meter, one standing charge. Three x single phase meter, three charges. The latter would be useful e.g. splitting a large house into three flats

Cutout and meter should, but other gubbins (i.e. distribution board) not so much. AIUI in a meter box it'd typically just have a 100A isolator and then connect out to DB and CUs elsewhere. Example: https://www.diynot.com/diy/threads/controlling-storage-heaters-on-domestic-3-phase-supply.360388/

I presume you are a leaseholder of the flat? Who is the freeholder? Check your deeds or ask the freeholder what requirements the have, this maybe insurance but there maybe other requirements and permissions you need to seek too https://www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/property-news/do-i-need-to-let-the-freeholder-know-if-i-make-changes-to-the-leasehold-flat-i-own-a129736.html https://www.enfranchisementsolicitors.co.uk/leasehold-flat-alterations-landlords-consent/

Ouch! I have to say I've been increasingly underwhelmed by Agile, and think I might be better with a fixed rather than dynamic tariff like Go or one of their E7 offerings. Not obvious how I switch though? So I might just jump supplier as that's more obvious! Also, digging through the bills I've now just noticed I've not received any SEG Export payments since May. Looks like my smart meter has stopped sending them readings (yet, conveniently, they still seem to be getting the Import readings just fine). Anyone else on the export tariff seen this??

Installed in May so FCU only used for cooling. It's never cold upstairs so I doubt we'll ever use it for heating, but the very quick test I did on install it seemed fine. Yeah in the warm loft, 125mm duct direct into a circular ceiling vent. The return is via loft air. There's a risk this picks up more dust, no issue seen so far. And Nick says it may unbalance the mvhr but we don't run it enough that really worries me. (the q350 stats don't seem to show any change in overall flow when it's on)

I think you could build solid wardrobe that sufficiently sound proofs it. E.g. double up the thickness of the back wall. The difficulty will be providing sufficient access (for filter changes, and to remove the whole device if larger maintenance needed), without compromising the sound insulation. Remember to remove the unit a lot of access space is needed, to get at and unhook ducts and drains etc. The main noise risk is vibration rather than airborne noise so be sure the unit is mounted on vibration proof suspension mounts, and no part of it or the ducts and manifolds touch anything in contact with the wardrobes. Fwiw In my experience keeping ducts short wasn't a huge benefit as it meant those rooms had more vent noise (all supply side), and the solution was to lengthen those ducts. Extract rooms may not suffer vent noise so much, at least ours don't.

Presumably the ergonomics impact could be mitigated by oversizing the worktop a bit? So it overhangs the skirting and your toes. Just beware that the top drawers still operate ok. (handless style doesn't work so well)

Do you want Smart meter? If so you need a supplier that has SMETS2 polyphase meter which are very hard to come by. I think some had success with Octopus recently? You'll need to call around and find out Smart meter is useful if you will have solar PV with 3 phase inverter, or EV charger and ever want to use a dynamic tariff. No you shouldn't. It will just take more time... (both calling around to get one, and likely for them to get around to installing it) Yes this should be possible. Happens all the time e.g. when large houses are split into flats. Caveat: not sure how this interplays with the MPAN (is that issued specifically for the 3 phases as a whole?)

As you are looking to dry the room through evaporation. The evaporation process requires energy (converting sensible to latent heat and all that) and airflow, so i think the main question is where you anticipate the energy to come from. Do you have UFH in that room? Another heating source? Will it run all year, or just in winter? UFH is most effective as the water tends to pool on the floor so the UFH directly heats it to help evaporate. A towel radiator, for example, less useful for the puddles on the floor (but obviously very useful for drying the towels, again another source of damp and energy demand for evaporation) Does the room have windows? Will direct sun light be coming in during the times you expect to be showering? This is probably the best scenario. Doubling up extraction will pull more air in from the rest of the house, in effect using the warmth of the rest of the house as the heat source, lowering the effective efficiency of the MVHR system overall.

The Bluetooth standard was published in 1998, and the SIG had 1000 backers by the year 2000 *. Yet it didn't really get significant market take up until 2010-15 (with the most significant inflection point being Apple dropping the 3.5mm stereo jack in 2016). Matter have delayed publication of their full SDK until sometime in 2022, so the odds of getting a thriving market of interoperable devices this side of 2025 seems slim. * - (I was at the first "Bluetooth World congress" in Monte Carlo in 2000, when they announced this milestone, just before the dot com bubble burst. It was absolutely nuts).

One ASHP but 2x UFH manifold? While the UF loop itself has a limit in length, you can always put a longer length of (very well insulated) secondary circulation pipe to get from the main plant room to a remote manifold. You'll need to run the ASHP a wee bit hotter to allow for losses along the supply pipe, but shouldn't be crazy. In essence, the same schematic as you'd use for UFH installed across multiple floors

Good luck! SMS were a total sh1t show every time we had them out. I'd hate to have them work on a niche product like 3ph meter (or near the airtight boundary).

Maybe the scale has room for improvement when new not-yet-invented energy sources come onto the market? To avoid the A++++ situation we had with the old EU appliance energy labels But yeah, more likely it still punishes electricity assuming a dirty grid. They assume a whole house temperature set point of what? If you have a lower set point or don't heat all rooms to that level all the time, consumption will be lower than their building model even if the model is perfect (which it almost certainly isn't!) You are close! What is the surface area of the finished floors? How does 6295 kWh / floor_area look ? It would need to be 15kWh/m2 for PH, 25 for PH retrofit, or 40 for AECB silver.

If you request temporary disconnection it can be anywhere accessible on your premises, but if you want to make a permanent disconnection they'll insist it's on public land so they don't have any potentially live/leaks under the no longer serviced private plot

Disclaimer: I'm just an amateur messing about with one fan coil. My experience is the smaller of the supply and return flow will define performance. My main point is if a single FCU feeds two rooms, you need to balance them. Otherwise it's very likely one will get more cooling . A FCU per room makes things simpler.

From the info posted their voucher was issued in April and would have expired last month if unused, so I fear this warning is coming a bit late. It's a good question though. A 7kW unit to replace a oil boiler, with no emitter upgrade, seems unlikely to end well. In theory, as it's an MCS install there should have been room by room heat loss calcs to size the system, and the industry install guarantee to back it up, but it'd be interesting to hear details and how well it works out this winter.

Will the bathroom have a shower or bath? This is the greatest impact on DHW design, everything else could be met with modest instantaneous direct electric heater. Aside from that, +1 to air to air heat pump (i.e. your option #4)