Dan F

We're now mid-way through our the build and have applied 2 x soundbloc and a fair amount of resilient bars quite liberally throughout the house to get a decent level of sound insulation between rooms. We also, with some advice from @Moonshine, followed a robust detail for intermediate floors which has been very effective. Sound insulation is great, but we now have a lot of echo chambers throughout the house and given we don't plan to use any carpet anywhere, I am thinking that we may need to mitigate this somewhat. I'm less concerned about bedrooms because once you have a bed, mattress and some curtains I don't think these will be a major issue, but on the ground floor where we have larger open plan areas without curtains I'm more concerned. What brought this to my attention was when I started looking at speakers for some of the rooms downstairs and realised that it's pointless spending any decent money on speakers if the acoustics of the room are terrible. In the room where we plan to have a surround sound system I'm sure we'll probably want to put some kind of specialiast acoustic treatment, but in the other entertaining spaces is there anything that anyone would recommend? We plan to use "Akupanel" in a couple of places, although I've realised that for this to be effective you really need to put it on battons/insulation, rather than surface-mounted on top of plasterboard. We can't use this everywhere though, so wondering if there is a simple alternative to standard PB/skim that we could use for ceilings that don't break the bank? Come across these products, but no idea how avaialable they are or what they cost: - https://www.quietstone.co.uk/product/quietspray/ - https://www.stil-acoustics.co.uk/Seamless-Acoustic/Acoplaster.html - https://fadeceilings.com/product/plus/

We plan to use these panels. I think the best way to think about these is that they are for sound absorption (for better acoustics in the room) rather than for sound insulation. No doubt that by absorbing some sound they will help, but I don't think I'd use them in place of sound insulation..

HA can open motorised lock easily, but how are you telling HA to open door? NFC or fingerprint or something? I was thinking about using doorbird and a Loxone "NFC code touch" together with a custom front panel of some sort in order to do access/doorbell/video in a single unit. But keen to look at alternatives, which is why reason I came across the UniFi Access Reader Pro.

This is PoE and incorporates access-control via NFC: https://eu.store.ui.com/collections/unifi-door-access/products/unifi-access-reader-pro Thing with Ubiquiti is that you'll likely need one of there other products to: - Use this to open a door. - To integrate the camera in any kind of NVR. Also, looks like the intercom functionaltiy isn't available just yet. Ubiquiti has an apple-like appeal to it, but still debtabing if to actually use it for swtich/AP's/cameras in our build or not. If we do go Ubiquiti though, this PoE access read could be interesting, so keen to know if anyone else has, or is planning to, use it as a doorbell camera.

I want to avoid interfacing with ASHP directly via ebus, but instead idea is to interface with Vaillant controller via modbus or something called eebus. Loxone will have all room/slab temperatures, weather data, as well as data on state of charge of Mixergy so should be able to coordinate everything, rather than relying on Vaillant ecosysten or more basic call for heat. So wondered what others are doing.. are you using Vaillant thermostat(s) or third party call for heat to Vaillant controller?

What did you do regarding integration in the end? Vaillant talk about support for EEBus and Modbus using their newer controllers, but I can't find documentation anywhere. Also, our installer has told me that the controller supports 3rd-party "call for heat" but doesn't support 3rd-party "call for cool". Plans is to use Loxone for all heating control, and there want Loxone to send "call for heat" and "call for cool" to the ASHP controller (either via API, EEBus, Modbus or digital output).

@J1mbo How are you controlling you Arotherm Plus? - Vailant controller + thermostats. - Vailaint controller + external call for heat - EEBus/ Modbus integration

@Ian When we modelled the 140mm option alongside the 300mm twin-wall, we were advised to use 0.17W/m2K Few reasons: - MBC calculation assumes external 100mm concrete. - MBC calculation assumes external 50mm unventilated external cavity. - Value of foil breather membranes is questionable.

Does this assume battery or no battery? I assume the "long time to pay off" means your numbrs are without battery and just shifting usage as much as possible?

If the tariff is no longer available, you'd just switch back Octopus Agile wouldn't you. What would the issue be? I guess it comes down to how much you'd import/export over the year, also how much you want to fiddle around (or automate) use/charging based on an agile tariff. For us (without a electic car) this tarrif would mean a payment of approx £600 a year. With the agile tarriff, I'm not even sure how I'd start to calculate what the annual cost would be, because it all depends on dynamic pricing, ability to schedule usage/charging as well as the maximum charge/discharge rate of battery. Have you managed to estimate costs of agile tariff in any way? Agree 11p/kWh charging is expensive. But, if you export more than you import over the year, then the other way to think about it is simply that your summer excess is covering your winter usage?

I was planning to do roughly the same, but given we have a lot of PV and expect to export at least twice of what we import over the year, the 11p export, 11p import Telsa Tariff just seems like a much simpler approach. Maybe we could save more via manually controlling everything, but it's very hard to know if this would be the case, I doubt it though as 11p export is unavailable via any other tariff that I know of. Also not seen anything for 11p for peak usage either. Caveat is that to get this tariff you need a powerwall, and the lead time on these isn't great.

There is an API (they gave me documentation), it does depend on their cloud service though (as does app). Alternativley, there is a Modbus controller available with no internet dependency. I also have Modbus documentation, but I beleive a different hardware controller is required for this, I am in the process of confirming,. Via Modbus you can set heat source, target charge percentage, target temperature and well as read temperatures.

Can you expand? Mixergy has API and is also available with Modbus interface.

Octopus installed one for us in October last year. Not convinved about ToU tarrif, think flat import/export is just so much easier if you have a fair amount of PV.

11kW is pretty much garaunteed for 3-phase, where as single phase only 3.68kW can be assumed. But, it depends on DNO and local network, you can get more on a single phase. Our DNO (SSEN) were happy to allow 10KW + battery all a single phase. That said in the end we decided to go 3-phase, and have a 12.5kW inverter.

The amount of cooling you need may be less than you'd imagine, although this depends on shading/overhangs/glazing etc. A decrement delay also helps here. These are the numbers for out build (300m2. A number of large south-facing windows, but all will overhangs) - Heating load: 3.3kW - Cooling load: 335W (1.3kW without blinds) Given this, we're using UFH cooling on ground floor, and MVHR cooling on the first floor. MVHR cooling output is very low, but we're confident it will be enough to ensure first floor is cool enough, especially given we have external blinds. Hopefully we'll be in this summer and can give real world feedback on this setup, but only just plastering still.. - Cooling power of UFH: 3.6kW - Cooling power of ComfoPost (first floor only): 1.1kW

Not yet, but plan to. Aside from floor plan, I like the idea of using it with our plant room schematic. Wondering if makes to add some inline flow sensors.. not looked at this yet though.

Meaning Alno/Nolte are better? Regardless of exact ranking, these are all brands that are likely to be better than magent, but cheaper than Siematic I assume?

Other mid-range German kitches are: - Hacker - Alno - Bauformat - Schüller Nobiliia/Nolte are lower end I beleive.

I wish our electician had used this or our LED strips instead of 0.5mm2!! They did use for it DALI though, as they'd had a bad experience with voltage drop with DALI before where some fitting weren't getting signal from the bus This is an interesting idea... might consider doing this..

0.5mm2. But, as I said I'm concerned this isn't enough. Loxone recommend a maximum of 1V voltage drop, so you need to calculate what cable you need based on the total wattage of your LED strip. Yes, but you still need to look at total load and distance and calculate volatage drop. Tree cable is 1.5mm2

This is a good read. Deals with everything in a pragmatic priority order. https://elrondburrell.com/blog/passivhaus-overheating-design/

Yeah. Problem is when plumber puts 32mm in, ignores the length and then proceed to add lots of bends... ?

Your diagram doesn't show pipe diameters. Based on diameters/lengths of you branches for basins, these might need a secondary vent or anit-siphon trap potentially.. There is a table in building regs that talks about maximum branch lengths..

Looks like you have decided on DMX then? I guess this is primarily because these are lower cost than than loxone relays/dimmers If you have a central LED driver/controller and are then running 5-core to an LED stip, be careful to calculate the the cable cross-section carefully. We have some runs of up to 12m and our electrician has put used 0.5mm cable. If this is an issue will depend on wattage of the LED strip, but it is cutting it quite fine. The safest approach is to keep driver fairly close to fitting, but this isn't always ideal if you want to use a mult-channel din-mounted device.