Gone West

Ha-ha, I had to laugh. Our house is kept at 23C day and night. I did hope to be able to drop it to 22C, in our second year in the house, but 23C it is. Wendy's reaction to anything less you wouldn't want to hear. Wendy would like it at 25C but I find 23C ok now and in fact I would probably think it too cool at much below that. It's surprising how the body adjusts.

Our longest span is 5.9m and for that area we have 254mm deep metal web joists with chord width of 122mm at 400mm centres. This is covered with 22mm Caberdek and there is no noticeable deflection.

Another name for Rowan is Mountain Ash, if that could be incorporated into the name. Copse Corner is simple but at least people would be able to spell it.

We had a low voltage cable, for which we had a wayleave agreement, oversailing our garden. We wanted to build a replacement house and the cable would have hit the roof of the new build. We told the DNO our plans, removed the wayleave agreement in writing and asked them to route it underground. They refused on cost grounds, but agreed to reroute it above ground free of charge. Good compromise. It did all take about a year in all though.

We used Rockwool RW6 batts for it's good thermal and acoustic qualities, as well being fireproof. https://www.rockwool.co.uk/product-overview/slab-products/rw6-en-gb/?selectedCat=downloads PS Just remembered you're building with concrete so maybe your idea of graphite EPS would be better.

It's just classed as timber frame, whether it's 140mm timber studs or 300mm I-beams. I think having timber cladding on timber frame might affect re-sale more than the frame material itself.

I quite like them as well. My whole house is built out of them.

I guess letting the timber frame settle before boarding or fitting windows etc would solve the problem. Wouldn't work for those wanting a quick build though. You could use engineered timber like I-beams which would move a lot less.

We hang our wet washing on clothes hangers on a drying rack in the wetroom. The wetroom is usually around 24C and has a MVHR extract vent. If we hang washing in there first thing in the morning it's dry by the evening.

We don't have one, although Wendy would like one to fluff up the towels, like we did in our last house. We hang up our washing in the wetroom and it dries very quickly.

If your house ground floor is built as the drawing then it looks like you have 100mm Styrofoam Floormate 200X. This has a thermal conductivity of 0.0278W/mK, which is good although it would be better if it was thicker. It doesn't appear to be manufactured any longer. The 200 in the name relates to the compressive strength and the X to the blowing gas which was a type of HFC which is no longer used. With UFH you will be losing some heat to the ground and if the rest of the insulation in the house isn't very high you will have to run the UFH at a higher temperature to offset the losses.

I hate wall tiles. Just saying.

Looking at their website they don't seem to mention ground floor U values, just wall values for different stud sizes. U Value Options (Brick & Block Cladding) Stud Size V-U-T Std Kit 140mm 0.15 0.25 184mm 0.13 0.21 235mm 0.11 0.18

Do you know what type and thickness of insulation you have under the UFH pipework.

Hi, welcome to the forum. You could try having the heating on in the wet rooms all the time which would also create a more comfortable environment in those rooms. We heat the whole of our house to 23C with just the towel rails in the bathrooms.

Looking at your picture it looks like it's a cavity wall from the brick bonding. Our last house was late Victorian cavity wall with vents.

Lots of interesting stuff on the OpenEnergyMonitor site. https://community.openenergymonitor.org/t/integrate-a-openevse-charging-station-with-a-9kwp-solar-system/11018

Our wetroom has only an electric towel rail and MVHR and dries very quickly. We also dry our washing in there when we can't hang it outside.

That's really crap. I lost faith with Gumtree last year after some scamming buyers tried to rip me off. I don't use it any longer.

That sounds like a good setup for a well insulated floor. I like hearing about more simple systems. AIUI normally with a gas boiler there is a buffer tank to prevent short cycling and blending valves etc. How did your plumber get around those problems?

Of course when the floor is well insulated then the losses will be less. As the level of insulation decreases the losses increase and then the floor temperature will have to be higher to counter the losses. As long as people are aware that UFH should only be acceptable with a well insulated floor and isn't always the most suitable form of heating. Then of course there are the costs to be considered. Not everyone is willing or able to install their own ASHP and UFH components and it can be an expensive exercise to provide the small amount of heat required in a well insulated house.

We have 300mm insulation under the concrete slab and warm air heating which keeps the house at 23C. The slab is always going to be very close to 23C unless of course the sun is shining on it when it can be warmer. With bare feet it will feel cooler because we have porcelain tiles all over the ground floor but if you had for instance cork tiles it would feel warm. I disagree. UFH is an inefficient way to heat a house. However much insulation there is under a slab a certain proportion of the heat is lost to the ground. I agree it has advantages over radiators in freeing up wall space, but there are alternatives.

Hi Rod, welcome to the forum. Sounds like you're getting well stuck in. Good luck with the rest of the project. Plenty of blogs on here to give you some ideas.

Yup.

As some will know we use a Genvex Combi 185LS compact unit to provide DHW, ventilation and warm air heating. This unit is ok in our small house but there is now an Austrian company producing a larger version with two EASHPs and a larger DHW tank. It will warm or cool air with one ASHP and heat water with the other. Don't know the cost, but probably high. Pichler PKOM4 Combi Unit.pdf