rh2205

You are mere miles from us by the way! We did try finding a st Neots builders as thought they’d be cheaper than Cambridge but ultimately got fobbed off. Honestly it’s an expensive business round here if you can only get an estimate from a builder, be warned! Just to add we didn’t see any new build estimates come in under 300k for 160sqm for block/brick, so we refurbed the existing place which is 220sqm for a lot less, but we made compromises too & still had a VAT exemption for that refurb route.

Hmm builders are pretty expensive right now there’s COVID & inflation but also tonnes of demand they can pick & choose, especially the ones who package up the work leaving less to you in terms of sourcing sub contractors. But if you have found a cheaper one that can ACTUALLY deliver at that price giving you a saving and making it within budget then go for it. There may be no easy answer or just downgrading spec, its a lot luck as to how time consuming the sub contractor route can be right now and thus how long it takes to get the job done.

Ok I’ve checked our electric meter readings in exactly the same duration (5months pretty much exactly since heat pump went in) we have used 1102kwh in electric. This figure is after I have deducted 417kwh for ASHP & immersion. So I don’t think the electric usage figure sounds too weird maybe a little high but possibly explained by the multiple dishwashers microwaves & ovens, bathroom electric underfloor & that we both worked from home entirely over this period & have a toddler!? The heat pump has used 1kwh this evening since I messaged at 3.5C outside. Inside around 19.5C. So maybe the wall and roof insulation has been the big thing as we have no floor insulation & 50sqm of double glazing almost certainly not helping heat loss & about 20 other cold bridges I can think of, and as I mentioned our new radiator pipe system is totally old school. So yes I am rather pro heat pumps now!

@SteamyTea interesting to be fair if I’d of known how to turn off this stupid setting I would of done anyway as I don’t worry about such things nor do i worry about reheating rice 3 times. I do hope though the other meter is correct but I am now going to monitor our overall electric usage too.

We also only heat the 300l water tank once a day to 45C same as radiators and keep the house temp to 19.5C so I don’t think we are exactly generous though this seems comfortable.

So what about the weird immersion reading. This is also since may obviously only comes on once a week or so I was told.

So full disclosure we only have 1 small bath a day for a child & maybe 2/3 showers a week. I use the gym a lot. It’s a 13kw heat pump in middle-south ish England.

I have an EPC… the installer did some calcs on special software never saw theM other than it states design was on sheet for 7.49kwh heat loss.

We only have radiators on a crappy big loop spanning a 16m wide house & no manifolds so I really don’t think this is the epitome of good efficient design either! But in all honesty I would really appreciate whether these meters can actually be wrong because I don’t think we have a magical house. It’s refurbished by a bog standard builder after all and there’s a lot of details I knew where bad haha.

It’s a heat pump yes no gas in the village! Now I’m freaking out about whether these meters are busted!

Hmm no, though you are doubting me because also we have this weird thing on the immersion heater which states we’ve only use 1.14 kwh since may. @Mr Punter would love to know whether I just don’t know how to read a meter or it’s broke!

We are in the same boat, no idea what even is efficient? How much kWh should you expect to use in a day, we thought our system wasn’t too bad but it’s cold today & now it’s drinking the electric ?. 15kwh today so far it’s heated the water once for 1.5hrs & been on for 4hrs so far set to 19.5C. It’s a 220sqm refurbished place. Since install at end of may we’ve used 415kwh.

I’ve requested the council thermal imaging camera & booked onto the free training on how to interpret results, it’s 2hrs long so I’m hoping the content is actually useful, but I don’t recall it being that complicated when I used one on our old house with no training!

Oh actually I think we can borrow thermal imaging cameras from the council! Great idea though I suspect it will take a bit of time to get hold of it..

Depends on resources but it’s planning that often check soakaway sizes to current planning policy, the size is based on the local policy requirements in the local plan & how much flood risk issues there are, bizarrely BC does not take into account the relevant storm periods other than usually a very basic 1in10 year return period and often ignores the impact of climate change. Probably an intentional government loophole so no one really has to protect others properly from flooding. Im talking cumulatively as the Pitt review showed a long time on it’s own a single development is negligible but as we know there are lots of infills & extensions these days.

So we do have a slight condensation issue on all the windows, probably skimped on ventilation with basic extractors in bathrooms & trickle vents everywhere else which we sometimes open.. as the whole house was refurbed & wrapped in EWI plus additional rafter & internal stud wall insulation that we spent weeks taping it’s probably making condensation more likely when it drops near freezing … however this is the only one that goes beyond the window pane in terms of a sign of damp but it’s never obviously run from the glass onto the wood frame before so I think it’s more than just window condensation. We have some weird vertical cedral click concrete cladding that made this detailing worse! I will get a ladder up there to see whether it’s obvious but I remember the builders generally being very bemused by such strange interfaces (installing onto a completely prepared reveal). And I do have some vague recollection of discussions around the lintel drip detail on this particular window (it didn’t come up on any of the others), can’t really remember what was said so I hope it’s just the mastic or compriband!!

Extension is 6 months old. Just noticed this on one of the window reveals, it is the only window not under the eaves we had these annoying velfac windows that have some pretty atrocious interface detailing so I’m guessing it’s got something to do with the reveal, how bad does this look and any ideas? Extension is timber framed.

@SteamyTeahaha I meant we have two dishwashers so don’t really try to get hot water out of the taps & they definitely run off cold we are a bit old fashioned and have a kettle for tea though! Our install from a MCS accredited place was quoted lower so probably why I thought grant were cheaper because all the other quotes were more (including non mcs installers) & didn’t come with a buffer so assumed grant must be cheaper!! Plumbers are expensive round here regardless of their certification ?

Should add our scop is 4.49 at 45C would of been 4.11 at 50C we managed to get some big rads in. Maybe we are weird but we have our water thermostat to 45C, at times I’ve thought about turning it down as it seems plenty warm (though if someone knows a reason we shouldn’t?) we do have two dishwashers though ?

We have a grant aerona3 13kw in in a big refurbished house with larger rads, they have quite good SCOP and are cheaper. I’m sure there is some reason on here someone will know about why our ASHP is rubbish but it came with 7yrs installer warranty so I can’t complain really, we have a pretty basic install 300l tank (+50l buffer) & no solar.

Had an ASHP installed in the summer, our renovated house was far too hot then to really sort the heating out so it was difficult to get radiators to come on, hot waters been operating fine since. We turned on heating a week ago & it seems downstairs radiators are warm upstairs radiators don’t seem to get as warm or mostly seem cold. I am a bit lost as to what we do or need to make sure our installers do to ensure that the heating system operates efficiently. We had oversized radiators installed throughout to operate at around 45C (not sure they actually set it to this as they talked about 55C when they were here). We had all the MCS paperwork in the summer so it was commissioned then. Anyway the heating company are coming round in a week and I want to ensure I understand how I know whether they are setting it up efficiently. We currently keep the thermostat on at 19C 3 times a day but I think that’s probably a little on the cool side currently so will turn it up to something higher for when they arrive & hopefully sort it out but didnt want to be burning electricity unnecessarily. Would it be useful if I understand how radiators are balanced? Should they be checking the radiator temperature as part of this process? I just feel a bit clueless as how I ensure they have sorted it out correctly.

Mr punter is a very wise man life is short. Consider how you feel about lost time on any route, this weighed heavily on our minds during decision making. To give you an idea of time ours was 2years including plan making, planning permission, building control and a 9month refurb time which stayed exactly the duration the builder quoted for, he was a good kind builder that trades would come back and work for and not let him down. We actually had this builder on site within 3 weeks of our tender deadline, that sort of timeframe for someone competent is unheard of but it was just right time right place for a small builder who wanted an empty property during covid. You may get lucky with trades you may not, our friends have just moved into their refurbished property after 2 years of trades on site all subcontracted which is not the route we took but there main carpenter was someone they went to school with and had a lot of advice from too so I don’t think they were getting messed around. This is just the reality of the subcontracted route or just a bad builder who has taken on too many jobs!

Our guesstimated costs were touch and go in relation to keep vs rebuild we felt like we were on the fence however we accidentally bought a empty property too so we paid 5% VAT (our plot had outline planning for 2 houses but a crappy covenant for one house so you get why it was still a massive consideration at the time). It is not everything a new build can be so @Ferdinand is right but then that also means you might choose to make more compromises on the existing structure which often are a saving too, however it does still feel like we live in a new property even if it’s not perfect we are still over the moon and our route definitely worked out in duration, end result and costs for us. If you can compromise on things that are expensive or do loads yourselves then a refurb might still be the way. And just to warn you at tender we had a price variation of 150k, that’s a 75% price variation from the 6 responses so there is always a finger in the air guess from the other side too!! No wonder we really didn’t know what it might cost, nobody else was really sure either ?.

Yes I should add we didn’t live in ours until floor coverings were down, I mean it would of been hell/impossible because of the new roof thing too & we have a little boy. I am glad we didn’t live in it. Guess it depends on how strapped for cash you are, we rented a 1 bed flat which even with a child was by far the best idea & so it was the compromise of somewhere normal & vaguely affordable to live just a bit on the small side but just down the road away from the mess and noise. Infact thinking of anyone we know who has done a massive renovation that involve extensive works & new floors none of them have stayed in the house whatever their financial circumstances, everyone finds a way to leave except some crazy people on here & on the tv ?.

We renovated a 1960s bungalow (well almost destroyed it by adding a new storey on top), we didn’t have anyone to manage it just got a reputable (& well priced) small builder to do it. I’ll be honest we had to go around trying to patch up any of the “that’s how we’ve always done it” approach, but in fairness our architect did rubbish building control drawings and really a lot more detail was needed to avoid us having to go in at midnight and tape things like insulation because it wasn’t allowed for. We didn’t dig up the floor, well we dug up the screed ourselves & then realised it was only 2.5cm thick ?. Had the same height ceilings as you, in the end we compromised stuck in oversized radiators with the pipe work in the walls & externally insulated the outer wall plus had the cavity filled and installed an ASHP rather than a relocated new oil boiler as no gas. We haven’t put the heating on yet and it’s by far the warmest house we’ve ever lived in (husband keeps talking about aircon) but there is a temp difference between new upstairs and the downstairs probably because of floor but we also have convection log burner in a very large portion of the open plan downstairs so Im not worried. I think the bodge would of been to of put 70mm of insulation down & accepted the lost height & less efficient heating, but I was advised with a large slab like ours we’d be lucky to get 20k back from replacing the concrete floor and I was worried about the ASHP not heating it at all if we went with underfloor heating insulation bodge. Our costs came in at £1200sqm we only kept one section of internal wall and pretty much other than slab, foundations and external walls nothing else was salvaged. Surprisingly out of that we got 50sqm of aluclad windows. I do think we were lucky and our builder underestimated things but we also cut corners on some areas for instance our floor finish downstairs is laminate and we have a howdens kitchen (with quartz worktops).