Gone West

I accept what you have done but a wood burning stove on for a few hours in the evenings isn't the same as having heat pumped into every room in the house 24 hours a day. I suspect it's what steamytea told me when I mentioned about my house in another thread which was that drying out the fabric of the building takes more than twice the energy of heating the fabric of the building. I do hope you manage to sort something out so you are comfortable this winter.

@MarcoP87 What is on the other side of the wall in question? Is it a cavity wall? Is there any correlation between the noise and wind speed? I have heard a similar noise in the past which was a piece of roofing membrane vibrating under the gutter.

We moved into our latest house which is an old stone walled bungalow, with later additions, in mid May. The bungalow had been empty for a year without much heat and we found it took a couple of months for the fabric of the building to warm up so the air felt comfortable. We have had the oil fired central heating all the time since we moved in. It is controlled by a room thermostat and TRVs and the building is now a very comfortable 23C all the time. It does take a very long time for an old building to stabilise the temperature but once that's done the boiler doesn't come on that much.

Yes I've seen R290 ASHPs advertised as straight swaps for oil and gas boilers but R290 monoblocs aren't common yet.

AIUI R290 is a refined type of propane and allows the water temperature to go up to 75C so ordinary radiators can be used. I wouldn't huff it myself .

That's good news. Do you happen to know if the new monobloc will be the latest model with R290 refrigerant gas.

We have a Miele 600mm fully integrated dishwasher. I screwed the fixing brackets to the back of the door cover which then hook onto the dishwasher door and a screw at each side holds it tight and adjusts the height. The door opens towards the end of the drying cycle and then turns itself off.

We used 'skirtingsrus' for our skirting and architrave, but it was around six years ago. No problems but we only used a narrow bullnose type. Basic but adequate packaging.

I bought a Vitrex bridge saw and cut all the floor tiles, roof tiles and paving slabs with it. I was pleased with it and it worked well. https://www.vitrex.co.uk/products/versatile-power-pro-900-bridge-saw/

I looked into those for my last house. https://owen-brothers.co.uk/singlephase/ob112-50a-sp-meter-mid-b-d.html

Since moving in the internal RH has roughly gone down from 65% to 55%. The internal wall surfaces are, as far as I can tell, gypsum plaster on sandstone or concrete block. From the brick example it seems as though there is potentially a lot of water stored in the material which I think would probably be less in hard plaster and sandstone, but I get the gist of what you are saying. I guess the temperature gradient within the solid stone wall would go in the opposite direction to the moisture gradient, as the house warms up.

So if there is around 100m2 of walling, 500mm thick, internal surface at 13C and the internal air is heated by 10C to 23C how much of the energy going into the house is evaporating moisture and how much energy is needed to bring the internal wall surface temperature to 20C.

I would wait until you have a replacement gas boiler fitted and check that all the radiators are working correctly before deciding your house is especially cold. We moved into a bungalow in May that had been empty for a year. It was cold, as it hadn't been heated and the construction is a mix of 650mm thick stone walls, concrete block walls and insulated concrete block walls. We filled the oil tank and turned the central heating on and after a couple of weeks the structure was warming up (thermal mass?) and now it's a nice 23C throughout the house.

When I did my 'O' levels in the sixties not only was calculus included in the maths, but statistics had it's own paper and the sciences were all separate papers. Now it seems they're all lumped together.

Well glory be. There's obviously no problem for heating in the future, with HVO heating oil and hydrogen gas we won't have to change much at all and the world's problems will be sorted without the need for ASHPs. Thank goodness we've got Boris. Got out of bed the wrong side this morning.

Well done, great looking house. Do you mind me asking what the grey flooring is in the picture.

You won't regret it, we have two in our kitchen, no noise and extra light.

That's very interesting. It would be good to have updates as the colder weather comes. I have often thought about A2A HPs as a good option, thanks for posting.

Disappointing? In my view it was the worst, most misleading programme about making houses more energy efficient that I've seen.

I started to watch this program, on ITV, last night. I stopped watching it soon after starting when they stated that UFH was more efficient than radiators and was a way of turning your home into an 'eco home'. The program was so full of misinformation, it was certainly the worst program I have watched on the subject and made me really annoyed. Needless to say I won't be watching again. Glad that's off my chest.

That's what we did with the MVHR extract 1.5m away from the recirculaing cooker hood.

No it wouldn't triple it but I was surprised when I ran PHPP for my last house how much difference it makes, everything else being equal. 9kWh/m2a @ 18C 13kWh/m2a @ 20C 21kWh/m2a @ 23C

But doesn't there have to be a standard for the indoor temperature otherwise the comparisons are meaningless. Running a house at 18C downstairs and 16C upstairs is always going to look better than 23C throughout the house.

@zoothorn If it were me I would just have it fitted and then use Nick's guarantee if needed.

All this meter fitting thing is weird. I'm being hounded all the time by SSE to have my existing meter changed to a SMART meter. Emails, phone calls telling me an engineer will be coming round on Monday unless I cancel it. So I cancel it online and then get asked when do I want it fitted. I told them that under no circumstances would I have my meter changed. Then it all starts again.