billt

Sorry but I don't see what is piss poor about that report. A typical retrofit to a reasonable standard is quite likely to have a sticker price of £10,000+ before grant. Some companies are offering a £500 install after the grant. The reporting seems accurate to me as far as it goes. I've retrofitted an ASHP; it cost me a great deal more than £10,000 in parts alone. It's a journalistic story not an in depth analysis of domestic heat pumps and is accurate as far as it goes. Why whinge about journalist doing what journalists do? Anyone more seriously interested isn't going to rely on a space filling story like that.

And the following paragraph says: "But some energy companies are offering heat pumps as low as £500 with the government grant." So you can't fairly say that that is piss poor reporting. It is entirely reasonable to say that the cost of a retro fit heat pump installation is likely to be £10,000 more than a gas boiler replacement before the £7,500 BUS grant.

Another vote for put it in the middle. What's the advantage of "freeing up the worktop"? You look to have a similar length on the right hand corner and you've got a big island.

The dangers of asbestos have been known for a long time. The first medical paper was published in 1924 in the BMJ and there were suspicions well before then. That paper dealt with fibrosis of the lung and TB. Suspicions of a link to cancer started in the 1930s and were confirmed in 1955 by Richard Doll. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1742940/ My father had H&S responsibilities in an aluminium recycling company and he had to consider the danger of asbestos in the early70s. If we had a no fault compensation system then suing wouldn't be necessary, unfortunately we don't, so that's the course you may have to take in order to get compensation for something caused by others inaction. I agree that the dangers of asbestos to the general public are overblown, like many other issues.

The room remote isn't supplied with the heat pump, but it's not that expensive. https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/samsung-heat-pumps/Remote-Temperature-Sensor-MRW-TA I suspect that the spares you have are intended to control a mixing valve, if they have the right characteristics they'll work but they aren't pretty and I doubt that they are the same as the remote temperature sensor. The remote room temp sensor plugs into a connector marked 'ROOM' on the MIM controller board. You also need to enable it from the remote controller. I think its FSV 2093, but I'm not sure.

Exactly. Measure the leaving water temperature, the return water temperature and the flow rate and you can work out the heat that the heat pump is producing. To raise 1m3 of water by 5C (typical rates for a small heat pump) needs 5.8kWh. I'm not sure that the CoP provided by the internal Vaillant meters is accurate, they seem to sometimes generate very optimistic readings, but 600% with a low flow temperature isn't impossible. My Samsung can get over 5.5 at times, and that isn't as good as the Arotherm plus.

If there is a Mitsubishi integration I would expect that to be easier to set up than Samsung. Apparently there is a SmartThings add on which has been made to work with Samsung heat pumps. As it's Home Assistant I guess it won't be easy. In my (small) experience anything out of the ordinary is a pain to set up.

It's the number of days below 5C that matters and here we get about 50 of those a year, about 25% of the heating season. That's going to significantly affect the SCoP. And of course manufacturers figures for SCoP are about as useful as MPG figures. The number of variables in any particular installation is huge meaning that the variables used in the makers calculations are highly unlikely to be reproduced in any given system. In my case I don't think that the installation can be improved in any meaningful way. It's designed with a flow temperature of 35C at OAT of -3C, it's completely open loop with a large water content, no buffer and uses WC with room temperature add on.

CoP at 35 LWT 2C outside Arotherm plus 7kW 4.3 - Samsung 8kW 2.98 (Samsung 31% worse) at -2C outside Arotherm 3.8 - samsung 2.67 (Samsung 30% worse) At 7C outside Arotherm 4.9 - Samsung 4.71 so not much difference. At 16:00 today the outside temp here dropped below 4C, eventually to 1.5C. The CoP over that period was 2.9. The previous day it was 4.8. That's a significant performance drop off. We've had quite a few days so far this winter with temperatures below 5C and virtually 100% RH, the combination of poor low temp performance and frequent defrosts is pretty dramatic at the times when you need heating most.

You can buy and add on for the Samsung (https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/samsung-heat-pumps/samsung-ehs-wifi-controller-kit-mim-h04en ) which uses a SmartThings app. It interfaces with Alexa and Google Assistant apparently so should be able to talk to HA. It's a pretty simplistic app, but lets you turn it on or off and change the temperature in 1 degree C steps. 8kW sounds a little on the large size for a fairly small well insulated house. I have an 8kW Samsung and it just about copes with about 170 square meters of heated space but mediocre insulation. It's slightly undersized but has been performing OK so far. If I knew then what I know now i wouldn't use an R32 ASHP but an R290 want, specifically the Vaillant Arotherm plus. They perform much better at less than 5C outside temperature than R32 heat pumps. The 5kW Arotherm shoulc be more than enough for your house, but you need to get the heat loss assessed properly.

That is rather dependent on the house design. Here we have 12 heated spaces. Doing that with A2A would not be simple. A2A is arguably less comfortable than radiator provided heat and they definitely make noise which may or may not be irritating. I've installed an A2A unit for one room which has 3 and a bit external walls and no insulation, but it would not be sensible to use A2A in the rest of the house.

Because it's not practicable. Even UFH systems don't operate at much lower temperatures and the radiator sizes become very unrealistic. Using weather compensation it won't give much of a performance increase anyway. Today it's running at a leaving temperature of 30 and a return of 26 so a mean of 28C. The Cop of for the last 30 minutes was 5.35. CoP is a bit like insulation thickness, the law of diminishing returns applies. Going from 2 to 3 is a 50% improvement, 3 to 4 is a 30% improvement and 4 to 5 a 25% improvement. Chasing big numbers is amusing but largely pointless. The radiators are barely perceptibly warm; Graham Hendra has a blog describing how he recommends setting heat pump systems up so the temperature is at least 37C because many customers were complaining that the system wasn't working as the radiators feel cold!

Oh yes you can. I've sold 3 properties without a solicitor. As they seem to have managed to reintroduce their de facto closed shop and the fees aren't outrageous any more I did use a solicitor for the most recent transactions. The solicitors may want lots of things, but they are the employees of the purchaser and can only offer advice. If the purchaser is sensible enough they will consider the advice and make their own decisions. If you're selling it depends on how desirable the property is and the state of the market (and how desperate you are to sell). If the purchaser wants the property enough and the seller faces down their solicitor agreement can be reached. I've done it. (Yes, I know solicitors conveyancers' (the ones who do the job, very rarely actually done by a solicitor) can be insanely awkward, but ultimately you can refuse to sell and wait for another purchaser.)

I remember when my parents had a central heat system fitted (to replace the coal fired back bolier and Ascot water heater). I'm pretty sure that the plumber must have worked out the room heat losses and sized the radiators appropriately. In those days TRVs didn't exist, so you had to get the emitter sizes about right or the room temperatures would be wrong. It was so advanced that they had a room thermostat and a programmer! When I fitted my first CH system about 1985 there were books available giving design methods for CH systems. I think most CH installers in those days would have made some attempt to design the system. The advent of combis with a grossly oversized boiler and TRVs removed the need for any design input to make a system that worked well enough.

I used a spreadsheet that I made to calculate the heat loss for each room (and used a few variations of insulation levels for comparison purposes). It's a spreadsheet that I made many years ago for our old house. The Heat Punk website (https://heatpunk.co.uk/) gave pretty much the same answers when populated correctly. I also used the Heat Geek guesstimator https://www.heatgeek.com/how-to-size-my-heat-pump-or-boiler-heat-loss-cheat-sheet/ for overall sizing, the Michael de Podesta rules of thumb and some others that I can't recall. Flow temperature was designed to be 35C.

I designed and installed my own ASHP. It works exactly as designed. It keeps the living room at 20C and the rest of the house at 18C. The SCOP since install is 3.96, CoP 5.2 over the last 24 hours. I hope to get it above 4 with a bit more adjusting. It cost me a fortune as I ended up replacing almost all of the existing system, but that was to some extent due to the existing pipe work layout being rubbish, some of the radiators that I chose were eye wateringly pricey, and I added an oem heat pump monitoring system. I could have installed a usable system for about £4000 using the heat pump that I bought but it would have been a bit less efficient and would have needed at lot of tweaking to get the flow rates right.

Pretty much yes. The survivors will be reasonable good or have some other feature interesting enough for people to spend money or effort to preserve them. I'm old enough to remember the redevelopment fever in the 60s and 70s when it was the done thing to demolish Victorian and Edwardian housing classified as slums. Another sweeping generalisation; many of the houses that were demolished were quite sound, if not well insulated and the replacements were often worse than the houses that were destroyed. It was also the era of system building (factory made panels assembled on site). That didn't go well either, many of those buildings have been knocked down in their turn. System building sounds good in theory, the trouble is that practice isn't ideal. Factory made buildings will have higher material costs than standard construction methods, relying on low site labour costs to make them economic. The trouble is that you need skilled and conscientious site workers to ensure that the kit parts are assembled correctly, something that seems to be in short supply in the UK. Its an appealling idea at first glance, but, like most things, it's not a panacea..

What a lot of sweeping generalisations you seem to make. I rather think that the Victorians did what every generation does build a mix of housing, good mediocre and terrible. If you were wealthy you could afford to get a good house designed and built for you. If you were poor you had to put up with whatever jerry built tat was available - just like today. (Jerry built - earliest usage believed to be 1832.) (Qv survivorship bias.)

There are 2 issues here. Does the work affect the safety of the building? Your survey should answer that question. The other issue is can a statutory body take action to enforce non compliance with building regulations? The practical answer to that question is no. LAs will only take enforcement action if they become aware of the non compliance and they are extremely unlikely to take action unless there is a serious issue affecting safety. They have more calls on their resources than chasing trivial compliance issues. If the LA wish to take action they should issue an enforcement notice within 12 months of the work having been carried out. They can pursue non compliance after that but they need to apply to a court for an injunction to stop the use of the property. If the work was done more than 20 years ago the chance of enforcement action being taken is as close to zero as makes no difference. There are also time limits on enforcement of planning law which are long expired.

I installed the 12,000 btu version recently and have found it to be acceptably quiet. It depends on the fan speed, but on low fan it is very quiet and even on full it's not objectionable. The outdoor unit is pretty quiet as well, only wide band fan noise, compressor isn't audible. The only problem was that it cost a fortune in extras to make a tidy installation and tools to flush and vacuum properly.

It may be something as simple as the wiring between the indoor control box and the outdoor unit; there doesn't look to be any securing for the cables so it might have come adrift. (It's only 2 wires.) The flow sensor for the pump control is the black thing on the vertical pipe to the left of the magnetic filter, but I suspect that there could be a flow switch in the outdoor unit as well.

I can't see the remote in the wide pictures of the airing cupboard so one would hope that the remote has been installed somewhere sensible. Even if it isn't you can get a remote temperature sensor which can be installed in a suitable location. https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/samsung-heat-pumps/Remote-Temperature-Sensor-MRW-TA I installed my remote in a location which didn't perform very well so I installed a remote sensor in a more suitable location. I think that the Samsung remote is pretty good, as long as the system has been designed correctly. You can programme several heating or hot water schedules; I don't see what an external control would give you more than that. Have to say that it isn't at all intuitive to use initially, but once you've set it up the home page has easy access to control either the heating or the hot water, both on/off and temperature. IOW it's pretty similar to most programmers, not intuitive and fiddly to set. In the end scheduling doesn't work very well with our slightly undersized system so it's been setup to 20C in the living room constantly. That works better than timed control both for comfort and economy, but the system does have to be carefully adjusted to work properly.

AFAIK there is no requirement to submit anything. MCS is a self certifying system. They're right there. You actually operate it from the remote control which is used a s programmer as well as for setting up various system parameters. The smart app just gives you very limited control over the internet. You can switch heating or hot water on or off and adjust temperature in steps of 1C. If you have schedules set in the remote that will override the app. An eternal thermostat won't add anything and could make the performance worse. Error E911 is "Flow switch open error" and E101 is "Outdoor unit wire connection error". You need to get them back to fix those issues, which are probably simple but catastrophic in their effect.

I don't think it's normal to label pipe work, especially on a cheap installation. The Samsung manuals are available online, although finding the right ones can be tricky. The midsummer website is a good start. https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/samsung-heat-pumps If you want to use the app (which is extremely basic) you need the interface, which isn't usually part of a standard installation.

To be fair to estate agents, they have no say in getting an EPC unless there isn't a current one. You are completely free to get a new EPC if you want one, but there's usually not much point in spending money for no return.