Benjseb

Decided to go for the Vent Axia Pozidry compact Pro PIV downstairs, with the existing dMEV fans in wet rooms upstairs. Going to fit it in our plant room which is central in the house and has the hot water tanks so sits a couple of degrees warmer. Hopefully will take the edge off the incoming cooler air. It’s downstairs where the humidity is higher so hopefully will get the air moving around and can reuse an existing 100m wall vent. Arrives tomorrow so will see how it goes. We may need another somewhere due to size of house but will see...

Lancashire

We’ve been looking at replacing some nice looking but rather cold/draughty doors with fixed windows. The existing doors are only 6mm ish 2G and the timber is very thin in places they are north facing so we were looking at 3G, timber. trouble is the suppliers we’ve found either want a much bigger order, a large import cost, or they will only do 2G (“you don’t need 3G our 2G is very good”). Frustrating when they are just around the corner and have a very good reputation! Any pointers on who to contact? We need two large windows and a stable door.

I’m sure Octopus will follow up with something similar if it’s any good.

we have a cobbled courtyard on one side, which will be a pain to solve but longer term can dig a french drain. The other side is a flower bed which obviously isn’t ideal. So planning on digging say 9” away from wall and filling with gravel once things start to die back. We do have Integra Velux so it’s set to open automatically to regulate humidity but tends to only be 10-15 mins in the winter. Just not sure how much that air gets drawn downstairs (which is where the higher humidity is) as I presume any pressure differences get obliterated once the velux open and it’s probably just air flowing from one velux to another. I’ve blocked up the trickle vents in the wet rooms so that the air gets sucked from other rooms and last weekend took 15mm off most of the internal doors. just concerned about 4 fans doing 6l/s... will that actually make any difference in a 250m2 house? If not then I’m not sure where else I can put a fan due to noise etc.

It generally tracks about 10% higher throughout the year. It will do due to us having no DPC so ventilation is just part of the strategy. Dehumidifier is an option, especially in winter, but I think needs to be coupled with ventilation really as that has its own merits too. Stale dehumidified air is still stale ? lots of people getting decent results with PIV in older houses to lower humidity but without a loft it’s quite hard. But could do this in certain rooms as explained.

I did consider an air leakage test. Will look into it Most of the dMEV units are either 6 or 9 l/s. Above that it gets noisy. There might be other units but I have a feeling they will need 150mm holes in the wall which we don’t have. Could make them bigger but I imagine quite tricky to do so through 60cm of stone.

We’ve got a barn conversion, 250sqm. OK insulation that we’re graduallly improving as we go. No loft space! We’ve recently sealed it up quite a bit by replastering everywhere and replacing and sealing all the kingspan in the “room in roof” upstairs. Insulated floors, etc and are looking at replacing a few older doors to tighten them up. I’m keen to ensure it’s properly ventilated, to keep it healthy and avoid any mould (so far so good) I’m a health coach so value clean fresh air! We don’t have any visible condensation but humidity tends to sit around 65%, sometimes more, and I’d prefer it down around 50-60% to keep dust mites at bay, etc. Current setup: So far we have a trickle extractor in each wet room plus downstairs WC and utility. So 4 rooms in total (@6l/s each) All upstairs rooms have velux so built in trickle vents, and downstairs windows I’ve just made sure have at least a 1700mm2 vent in each window so less than regs but better than they were. Just looking at this year and I’d like to potentially upgrade this a bit (building regs are 0.3 l/s/m2 = 75l/s vs our current 24l/s but admittedly we will have leakage increasing this so won’t be aiming for 75) I’d like to also recover some of the extracted heat loss if possible to keep costs down. Our heating bill is about £1200/yr. So far my thinking is as follows: * In the 2 en-suites keep this as constant trickle extraction to avoid the “cold draught” of single room MVHR) * In the downstairs WC and Utility replace with Vent Axia Tempra heat recovery extractors. Questions: * In the downstairs WC we also have our DHW and buffer tank for heating so that room is probably +3c. Would it be better to install a PIV unit in this room to force that warmer air in through the house? It’s fairly central. With there being a toilet in that room I guess it needs to extract on demand too though which cuts down on our options. Is that over thinking or do we just put a heat recovery extractor in? * Is it best to have a combination of extract and PIV or just rely on extract with window trickle vents? Overall I want to avoid stuffiness/humidity with fresh air but without costing the Earth in heating. I really wanted something a bit more “joined up” but with no loft space not many options. I can’t really get any straightforward advice as most companies just want to flog whatever they sell rather than the right solution!

Very true. 400l sounds huge though unless it’s for a family of 6.

Our tank is 250l and we heat it to 47c. That’s for 2 adults and a 4 year old. We’ve never run out of hot water. Takes about 30 mins to heat from 18c to 48c don’t go too big or youll just be paying for a large tank of water to lose heat

We paid about £11k for a 14kW Ecodan with a 250l cyclinder, fitted. We didn’t need any additional plumbing so hard to compare the labour but the MCS spec and parts look compatible to our quote. The main thing with ASHP is ensuring you’re happy with the heat loss calc, so if it’s a new building it should be fairly easy. Mitsubishi Ecodans are very good units.

We have a loft which is about 40sqm, and pitched on one side (I’m sure there’s a more technical word for... Right angled triangle!) Issue is, it’s only about 3ft tall at the tallest point so on average about 1.5ft tall. Not enough to crawl into theres a dusting of insulation in there but it’s very patchy and needs topping up the only suggestion I’ve had so far is to tear the ceiling down and replace it, adding fibreglass insulation as it’s constructed. or lower the ceiling and add 50/100mm kingspan. There’s a slight curve on the ceiling towards the wall so the latter option would be tricky. I’m thinking there must be something we can blow in (cellulose) perhaps by making some holes along the room in the ceiling? Any tips? It’s rather cold in the winter! cheers

Thank you i think the sub ground was prepared properly as we saw them put in gravel, compact it down then add a very sandy mix of sand/cement. There didn’t seem to be much movement etc i think the main issue is where there were existing cobbles and they haven’t dug out the dirt that was between them properly and just put a thin layer of mortar in i spoke to them yesterday and their solution is to use a grinder with a diamond tipped “buffing” pad. One mention said it was on a pressure washer but not sure if I’ve misunderstood that. So apparently that will just remove the excess concrete. I’m concerned this will damage the cobbles and/or not fix the underlying issue of there being concrete which will just get pushEd out by weeds/frost? They are supposed to be returning on Monday to tidy it up then want paying but I’m worrried we’ll be left having to repair it once winter arrives.

Hi all We’ve just had some landscapers in to sort our courtyard. About 1/3 of the cobbles had been lifted for some new drains so they had to be relaid and then it all repointed. We’d asked for this to be done in resin but the contractors decided it wasn’t feasible once on the job, due to the size of the gaps so did it in a concrete mix. They have now “finished” after working since May, but the quality of the finish is awful. Mortar on the face of the cobbles, raised edges, some has already lifted as it wasn’t dug out enough. So I need a bit of advice on how it can get fixed. Is there a way of solving this without digging it all out and starting again? The contractors have tried power washing but it’s made little difference. They’re now suggesting grinding it but this worries me the cobbles will be damaged. We’ve only paid them for part of the job. What should our next steps be? Some pics attached.

We put down UFH using retrofit 25mm XPS boards. heats up nice and quick and is actually calling for heat a lot less than our lounge with rads. Hard to know about heat loss to the floor but we love it, much better with no ugly rads and warm feet.

We’ve used cooling at work on some Panasonic ASHP. Works well with the fancoil rads we have, lovely cool breeze. You just have to be careful about condensation on the pipes Ours sweat a bit if we go below 15c water temp Obviously it’s not RHI compliant either! our main issue was with the Room thermostats. We ended up using some remote RF units where you can change the “Normally open” to “Normally closed” with a button click. Then we just set the stats at the max temp we want and if it gets warmer than that the system kicks in. We now have an Ecodan at home so may try it if it gets very warm but prob won’t need it as the house is stone built to tends to stay cool all summer.

Yes in Theory it works but good luck finding an elec company that will supply the correct meter. They seem pretty clueless!

Well we’ve just hit 1MWh about 3-4 weeks into the solar being turned on Not bad going, been a cracking few weeks! Now we just need a meter that bills us suitably and we’ll be all set.

Just to add... We have 3ph power with 3 ph solar We are billed for import currently even when we’re exporting on 2 phases i emailed our supplier Bulb who finally, after 2 months, confirmed our meter was t set up correctly to bill for net import This is the sticky point, they know it’s not right but think the only way to fix it is with a smart meter. And there’s not many 3ph smart meters being installed. Ofgem have advised that you can get a normal 3 phase meter that’s suitable we may need to move to a big 6 supplier to get it! so looks like we’ll have to go back to the dark side to get a meter fitted then switch back

Agree with your points Jeremy. I think the difference between a phone and a smart meter is you can decide when and where to use a phone. For example I put mine in airplane mode overnight as there’s zero need for me to use it so why risk sleeping very close to it while in a house that has very poor signal. So it would be a full power all night With a phone I decide my exposure. With a smart meter you have no control and while it may only be a few seconds every minute currently if that was changed you’d have no notice. There have been studies which show although the data is transmitted say half hourly the actual network transmissions are much more frequent especially if they operate in mesh mode with your neighbours.

As an example

There’s also health concerns. Although much of these are OTT there are genuine concerns that haven’t been addressed I say this from my background as a functional medicine coach. There’s very little data about how often they transmit (often many times more than they upload data to supplier), the power of transmission etc. I would not want my child sleeping in the room above one unless I had complete information about this. Latest research has shown RF, especially low dose, high regularity, increases calcium uptake in cells by many orders of magnitude. When most of the population have too much calcium in their cells anyway due to magnesium deficiency, this can exaggerate the issue. I’m not talking brain tumours as the media will report. I’m talking low grade chronic inflammation over years. Eg worsening of blood glucose levels, blood pressure, aches and pains. All very specific to individuals. As the posts above have said, even if you’re a sceptic, are the benefits worth the risk?

Ah, may see if that’s an easy tweak on ours. If not I’ve seen a replacement star on eBay for £15. Seems you can swap without emptying tank.

Only issue we have at the moment is our immersion stat keeps clicking off at about 50c. It’s turned up full and only installed last October. Not sure if there’s a pocket of hot water due to the big coil which is causing it to turn off, or the stat is bust.

I was hoping it was going to be like this every year ? It seems we have a decent location without any shade. We will see what happens once the trees get leaves but I’m impressed we’re getting power generated between about 630 and 830 I’m going to try and wire up our Eddi to the ASHP smartGrid import, so we’ll be able to fire up the heat pump automatically when we get say 3kW+ export. Saying that, although it will be a more efficient use of the power, once the DHW tank is full it’s full I guess. With it being a bit chilly in the evenings still I’ve set the heat pump to come I’m on about 4pm to top up the room temps a degree or two while there’s still generation