puntloos

I also hear good things on Nibe's control system.. but.. it uses R410A rather than R32 so the carbon footprint is pretty large. For now I suppose it might be my frontrunner but the ecodan is a close second. But then I found the Daikin - seems to be the best of most worlds. R32. Quietest. Just... 10m max pipe.. (to be fair this is the only brand even mentioning pipe length) Given that I (plan to) have 3 phase I figured it would have benefits to use it for the ASHP.. but as far as I can tell the COP of the single-phase is actually better. Why would you ever want the 3phase one? @pocster - from your evil eye image, it looks like you have this one. Do you know if it's easy to reverse cooling? Any downsides I should be aware of? How quiet are the indoor/outdoor parts day to day? Hot water is limited to 35C?

Just checking in and noting that the Mitshubishi marketing board is perhaps a bit more enthusiastic than Nibe's Nibe F2020: Ultraquietecodan:

Have we collectively figured out what the quietest ASHP is (both external AND internal?) - @zoothorn had a bit of a nightmare but the topic to me sounded more like the cylinder and connected pumps were at fault, not the ASHP itself? My preference is indeed 'within regulations' (but if I place my ASHP in the place indicated it's going to be 7m away from the nearest window so even oldcrap jet engine ASHPs might fall below 43dB(regs) at 7m..) Clearly it has to be inverter-based, and ideally new-ish so it can be switched from heating to cooling through the control system not with 'manual dip switches' (which I think is EcoDan's case.. not the end of the world but eh.. still somewhat annoying)

The plan is in the far corner of my plot (red, new house in blue) which is an area of a bunch of sheds. Perhaps straight behind the two big sheds might be mildly better but then I Imagine installing the stuff will basically kill most of the laurel hedge (the huge green one) which would be a pity, not to mention I imagine (?) an ASHP will have some trouble 'breathing' in a hedge, and the hedge might even react poorly to the different 'climate' either. Ah makes sense thx.

No idea how I stumbled on this post without @ mention but hi mine was done with Chief Architect software - there's a bunch of feature comparisons on the site. Probably worth at least downloading a trial of a few of the versions.

2 questions if I may: 1/ If you go into/under the foundation of a house with such heat pipes coming from a monobloc, what happens if the pipe breaks/freezes while under the house? Knock the house down and start over? 2/ How are ASHPs put in a garden, do you give them a concrete foundation? Or just stick a pole in the ground somehow? And how deep would you bury the lines at 1m? 1.5? 30cm?

Pictured is the 14kw cooling unit (effectively a fan coil unit - the two copper pipes take the coolant (water I assume) - but with high speed air to service a house). As you can guess the output duct is 300-odd mm.

My house has designed a pretty major service shaft (600x350mm) which should theoretically fit at least one of these insanely insulated (300mm?) cold air hoses that comes from a house central chiller coil w/ high speed fan such as https://www.invisible.ac/#product My question: When the cold air comes down from the loft, where, and how does one split these pipes? Do you put 'one hole' in every room? or smallish (100mm?) pipes through the void?

Ha, that all brings back my highschool weight physics math. Ouch, all forgotten, but I mildly recall the gist, thanks. I think if I do this I would probably do well to do a beam-trolley, possibly house the motor somewhere as in my graph, and a snatch block on that trolley... would that make sense?

No reason, amateur design on my part. Are you saying regulations are not ok with this?

So.. @pocster mentioned he has a winch. I'm tickled by the idea. I have 4 challenges: 1/ In general, getting heavy stuff up/down stairs 2/ Chandelier in hallway, ideally central to the stairwell 3/ Getting stuff into the basement (as @Ferdinand noted, perhaps a removable slab in the hallway floor?) 4/ Getting stuff into the loft My full height hallway (ground floor all the way up to skylight) has 2 options I can imagine: 1/ one spot where I could theoretically attach a winch directly to my ceiling ("opt1") that can go straight down without hitting walls or stairs. - It's not central to the hall though, so that is probably useless for the chandelier 2/ Cut across the skylight (in black, obv). A bit uglier, but perhaps not the end of the world. - Can be central to the hallway - Motor could even be hidden in 'Bed 4' My questions: 1/ What would you do in general. Is this a good idea? Which one (opt1, or opt2?) 2/ How far can stuff be pulled off-center from the winch? If something is dangling from the winch, can I pull it 1m to the side? 2? 4? When does this become unbalanced? 3/ The loft walls are indicated (open1, open2). Both about 1.8m away from the winch point. would it be doable to pull stuff into the loft 'hole' from there?

The tricky part there is that our hallway (that goes alll the way up) is above. I suppose..... that doesn't *necessarily* have to be a problem to have the winch be 8 metres ... hm. Are there stairs that can have a piece "easily" removed? Or would you recommend 'middle of the hall'?

Where exactly? Above the top of the stairs? (like so, the coathook indicating position) Can we even pull out the stairs to make way for things going up or down?

Good point. The one I had in mind - https://www.thehottubwarehouse.co.uk/product/the-bliss/?sfw=pass1627298380 - is 150kg dry weight, 5000 quid. Will 4 burly guys/gals be able to do this? Will my stairs actually hold 4 burly guys and a 150kg bath? Absolutely true. Yep, full sumppump system planned anyway , not in the least because also the chiller coil, washing machines need it.

Is there some way to work out which type of stairs can fit which types of furniture? I've never seen some easy way to predict if a "standard couch" can go up a spiral staircase, for example. My current conundrum is that I am tempted to put a hot tub in some spare basement space, where the stairs are 1m wide. (in the current design!) Of course I can put the tub in before sealing up the basement somewhat but what if it springs a leak or gets embarassingly grotty? How can I be 'reasonably sure' that I can get it out? (note, this is an 'under stairs' stair, so the right wall is just a flimsy wall that can be taken out.. my *hunch* is it should be doable.. or?

Ha I had the exact same question, and an M&E + AV trade told me that the length of the runs, the location and space for smart home components (doubling up on brains etc) will incur somewhere between 5 and 10% extra cost for the total M&E package. TBH that sounds somewhat high but I think 5% is not unrealistic

This site: https://houseprices.anna.ps/ - is quite interesting - listing the average house price per sqm. My question: how do you determine a reasonable maximum to "total house value" based on this? Surely (ignoring creating a flat).. how many basements and loft layers can you add to a house before nobody wants to pay the theoretical extra price... A 10x10, 3-floor house = 300sqm, on a 300sqm plot seems reasonableish, but my gut feel is going over that size will stop adding to the potential sale price.

Yeah, I'm probably indeed going to pass. (my alternative was to literally order 3 ) I must say that one is *surprisingly* similar to those FLG ones. I guess there's only so much you can do with a tap (but I wouldn't be surprised if 'Sauber' really is just a rebrand?) But yeah, my main reason for the wall mounting is ease of cleaning (99.9% of taps I've observed in kitchens have a nice ring around the mounting spot) but .. it's kinda 1st world problem to have TMVs are effectively an unsolved problem as far as I can tell. Not because a brand new one won't work, but limescale (even if descaled) will affect the function soon..

Slightly offtopic but how do 'we' feel about alibaba style orders anyway? I was debating a wall-mounted kitchen tap but well, just as with fan coils, I'm fairly worried that if they fail, getting replacements is a nightmare, or you'd have to go with a completely different brand, possibly local which might mean the fittings will be useless etc. Is aliexpress/alibaba a good idea? ?

Good shout. I hope/assume my SE/Arch will handle it properly but never hurts to doublecheck

Yes the 600x600 was intended for those huge insulated air pipes. Was somewhat (re)debating a dumbwaiter as well (for the laundry) but I'm not sure where I can fit it. Current (v. provisional) basement design: (with the yellow thing being the 600x600 shaft. (dodgily drawn but you get the idea) St Albans area

But in my particular situation I actually am designing a 600x600 whole house (vertical) service shaft anyway so by itself it's not a problem to accommodate. Not sure I'm wrapping my head around this yet. Of course(?) MVHR can .. HR - so indeed pulling hot air from the loft doesn't seem too crazy if it's available (I do have a central hall with skylights all the way up, could even consider trying to pull away heat there. But for "harvesting cold" into a cold buffer I think we can certainly see the same principles apply, when immediate cooling is needed, have a bucket of cold water at the ready - possibly collected at night - rather than doing this when the heat is greatest not to mention elec. prices are highest (but I guess also solar is highest) But when it comes to cold buffer, I am certainly planning either a central coil beast Perhaps AND / OR - augmented with per-room fancoils and possibly cold water UFH (not a fan, condensation.. but might be controllable)

Not if I can avoid it! So fair question. But if I put it on ground floor, it tends to be noisy, and takes meaningful space to really have a 'laundry handling station' (at least a sink, cupboard or 2) I have provisioned space and plumbing for washing machines on every floor though, should I change my mind.. Very good question! I will need to look into that. Thank you. Do you by any chance have a more detailed specification you can show me? I'd love to know size of your plant, maybe brands, pipes etc? Yeah honestly the spa, well, it actually would be quite nice for us I think but I really just put it in there as a reflection that - as far as I can tell - we have some left to create a small-ish room. I doubt we'll actually install everything on day 1..... which is an interesting point, not sure if we can get a spa tub down into the basement after everything is sealed up and in place... Any DNO? Or yours specifically? But can this be from anywhere? Or is it 'front door'? I *might* be able to squeeze into that 3m limit if I am somewhat lucky by designing indeed that penetration into my basement. Very useful info, but sounds like a bit of a gamble how can I ask my DNO without waking sleeping dogs? Thanks, good info! Some people say that my plot (15x30) is being overdeveloped by having the amount of space I'm fitting in there. (12x12ish footprint, on which I'm stacking about 280m2 ground/1st, 50ish loft (2.3m high ceiling), and now 25ish basement.. That's another one but I'm being told I should be able to keep the 'extra price' for the basement (vs just a foundation) under 1500/sqm.. fair? unrealistic?

Embarassingly(?) recently I wouldn't have known for sure. But no I am 98% certain that the actual DHW cylinder is not in the picture.

Plz report back immediately