Russdl

I would. We have two AAV’s in the loft and before they were properly sealed in place it was pretty obvious that they weren’t. Since being properly sealed, no issues. If one fails I don’t think it will be too long before we notice that it’s failed, replaced it and carry on.

Couldn’t agree more with ToughButterCup. I’m not sure how many of us on here have Sunamps, quite a few I think but Sunamp grumbles seem to be way lower than ASHP grumbles. Maybe it’s a percentage thing?

@Sally you can create your own 3D model with Sketchup, for free.

Yep, the majority of our ground floor is porcelain tiles. Yep, infrequently with wet UFH Overnight between 00:30 and 04:30. Occasionally. Over the winter the house has never felt cold (passive standard) equally the tiles have never felt cold. The house has generally felt ‘just right’ and in bare feet the tiles have felt a bit cooler than ‘just right’ but never felt cold. Socks would probably help but not necessary. Completely unconnected with your questions but the main benefit of having porcelain tiles downstairs is that they are pretty much indestructible so there is no requirement to remove outside shoes/boots etc when you wander in (useful down the end of the muddy lane where we live) and they are very easy to clean.

I wonder if you’d care to elaborate on what you mean by that Nick.

@PeterW off the top off my head, no idea of the power draw but it’s low. As for the “why” the house air quality became pretty unpleasant during the last prolonged outage requiring windows to be opened making the ‘passive house’ just a ‘house’ which started getting cold and we have very limited options to halt that cooling.

My main aim is to keep the MVHR running in the next outage.

@Thorfun I’m with you on this one. For exactly the same reason, with the same requirements and the same lack of interest in any ‘pay back’ time. Reading with interest.

“that each rain drop falling form the sky has a small charge” I guess that might explain why we sometimes get a static shock from our zinc cladding?

Actually, it probably wasn’t, at least not functioning as it should. It had been on non stop for about four days at that point and as @ProDave kindly pointed out on this thread: The flow was very low, but it had been on for days. The house is passive standard. There were numerous individuals in the house. The above combination is enough to overheat the house in winter. In answer to your question, who knows? Maybe they are dispatched from the manufacture like that. Maybe the plumber fitted it and then closed the isolator (almost completely) but that seems pretty unlikely doesn’t it? So I’ll have to go with theory ‘A’ Stilled pissed myself laughing when I found out what the problem was.

@Tadpolewe have a similar set up to you. We went with electric UFH for both bathrooms with their own controllers and used independently timed ‘towel trees’ as space was limited. Bath sheets dry quickly.

@lakelandfolk I would say “yes” you can DIY install. Exceptionally, I bought mine direct from Sunamp and asked that question (I was experiencing major problems with the individual contracted to do my M&E and thought it would come to a DIY install). Sunamp told me that provided it was installed in accordance with the instructions then the warranty would be good if I were to install it myself. The contracted individual did eventually do the plumbing for the Sunamp but refused to connect it to the mains so we got another electrician in to wire it up. Which took a few minutes. A few months later we had need to call on the warranty as our thermistor string failed. That was replaced rapidly by Sunamp, no questions asked. Despite that failure, where our only source of hot water was from the remaining energy stored in the PCM and a Quooker tap, if I were to start all over again I would definitely go for a Sunamp charged by solar PV and off peak electric. No gas/oil boiler, no heat pump just a silent (heavy) white box that produces lots of hot water.

@SteamyTea yep, the numbers sort of add up, the missing bits are the unmonitored towel rails and electric UFH in the bathrooms. I would have thought the same person/computer programmed both Shelly’s.

I’m confused by the data that my Shelly 1PM’s are giving me. Today we have used around 36kWh of electricity, the vast majority on the Octopus 5p rate between 00:30 and 04:30 as you can see from the images below. The bulk of that consumption was the Sunamp: and the Willis heater: According to the Shelly app the Sunamp consumed 13.32kWh but the Willis heater consumed 14Wh. I’m assuming the 14Wh should be 14kWh. Does anyone know why this isn’t showing correctly or is something else afoot?

Good point. I used one of these Hep2o equal ‘T’s a and a short bit of copper pipe.

@ProDave I found a Hep ‘T’ on Screwfix in the end and went for that. Couldn’t find one on my first search (hopeless). All sorted now, thanks for the assistance. ?

@Onoff @ProDave thanks both. I think that @Onoff’s suggestion is closer to the mark as I need to ‘T’ off the existing Hep2o pipe.

Why can’t I find what I need to plumb the washing machine into this existing hep pipe? There must be something at Screwies but I can’t find it! Could some kind soul point me in the right direction. TIA.

Be sure to report back ?

Ours live in the bottom of the freezer and we didn’t move them to the top like wot we shoulda done.

We have those as well. Instructions are to place them at the top of the freezer in a power cut. We opted to not open the freezer door. No idea how long they would maintain the temperature or what is in them.

They’re pretty useful, they sit downstairs plugged into the mains and recharging during the day and come upstairs at nighttime. They monitor CO2, RH and Temperature. I’ll take your word for that, there was definitely a lot of pressure. According to the monitors the highest we got to was 1247PPM, it was the red light and the sad face on the display that alerted us. Our ‘normal’ level is around 6-700PPM (green light, smiley face on the display) Yep we could. Slight cash flow issue at the moment but when the CCJ is paid (I’m sure he will, why wouldn’t he do what a Court tells him to do?) then we’ll get the batteries.

Wasn't sure where to post this but here's our observations after storm Eunice passed through. Initially we watched the storm gather, we could see that that the wind was strong but from inside there was no indication, no sound, no draughts. As the wind picked up something we were not expecting happened, we could hear and feel a draught. We have two fairly large sliders and at the peak of the storm, the wind was pushing against the slider so much that there was airflow between the slider and the fixed pane. Not much and not continuous but it was definitely happening. Our air test was done to passive standards (positive and negative pressure) so we're fairly certain there is no problem with the sliders because if there was then the negative pressure test would have exposed that. Anyone have a contradictory view? A short time later we had a power cut , that doesn't matter. The house is warm, the Sunamp is fully charged (minus two showers), what could go wrong? Well, we're fully electric so there was no cup of tea to sup whilst watching the storm play out. Information gleaned is that the power will be out for over 48hrs And of course there's no heating. But what does that matter because the house is toasty warm at about 21.5° and we've not had any heating on for days. And the house is almost airtight, apart from the few blasts that squeezed through the sliders. Thanks to @Adrian Walker's advice we have a CO2 monitor, well we bought a couple. It was quite amazing how quickly the CO2 PPM started to increase after the power cut. Obviously the MVHR was having a bit of "quiet time", so now we had a toasty warm passive house that was not working as planned. As night drew in it got worse because lots of candles were lit. The only solution was to open some windows and get some airflow. Out of interest, it was only the monitors that informed us of the poor air quality, it wasn't something we sensed. So, we have a toasty warm passive house but with no airflow so a couple of the 'tilt and turn' windows on opposite sides of the house were tilted. That fixed things, air quality wise, very quickly but it also meant the passive house was now going to cool down more rapidly than planned. There are no heating options, apart from the bio-ethanol fire) so we were getting ready to break out the cold weather gear. Fortunately power was restored about 12 hours after the cut. We have a fair amount of PV, and it was quite a sunny storm but of course the PV trips off in a power cut. We were meant to have a battery system but the that didn't happen. The M&E individual who specced that (and didn't provide) had wired in an emergency power supply from which we could run the fridge and freezer in the event of a power outage, which was a pretty smart idea, shame it never happened, but actually my advise to anyone building to passive standards, if they have a battery system then make sure that the MVHR will run off the batteries. That's the main thing we've learned. If you have built to passive standard and have a battery system, make sure your MVHR can run from the batteries in the event of a power cut, I suspect most battery systems will power an MVHR unit for ages. Without that, you're not in a passive house anymore. Oh, and we had the first BBQ of the season this evening. Bit nippy!

@Joanna Susskind, If I recall correctly, on the form where it asks for the completion certificate there is a a yes/no option and then a text box underneath to explain why you said 'no' if you didn't have a completion certificate. I don't recall any request for evidence of 'completion'?

@SteamyTea, thanks. (I hope no one is setting homework, it’s pub night tonight ?)