Wil

Turns out I’d responded to this thread with a pic of my dead turbine on page 1! It really has taken a while to get it going again…

I have a small turbine. 1kW Chinesium special from AliExpress. Bought it as a punt a few years ago. It fell down in a storm and broke. Finally put it back up with a more solid mounting system in Jan… So far this year it has produced the princely total of 17.2kWh of energy. A whole £5.16. The brackets for the guide wires cost more. A good breezy day from the S-SE and I get about a kWh out of it in a day. To be fair, it’s not in an ideal location cos I’m in the middle of the countryside and I didn’t want to go nuts and fall foul of planning. It’s shrouded by trees on one side. As an engineering project it’s fine. Compared to my solar panels (5kWp) they do in a day what it’s done in 3 months… I’ll add more solar next.

Ah, nice. I've been looking at my ASHP piping running straight past the hot tub and wondering about cutting in a PHX for a while. As long as you've thought about the pump and filter and bought an ASHP that can take chlorinated water, it sounds like a good change. The only time I've been in a wood fired one at a holiday let, the water was grim after one use due to lack of circulation and filtration. Bromine in the HT at home seems to do a good job but I understand can be pretty terminal to an unprepared ASHP. As Russel says, any doubt- the cost difference for 10m of 2.5 or 4mm SWA compared to the 1.5 would be negligible in the grand scheme of the running costs of sparks...

Sounds like you'll need a sparky. But it looks like the cable is fine for current- just watch for volt drop but over 10m also shouldn't be an issue. Breaker- C type should be fine, D type definitely. Is there any info on the startup vs full load current? 10xFLC for starting? Then just check your breaker can cope. More interested in how you'll connect the ASHP if it's currently an immersion-type hot tub?

You’re only one leak away from inhibitor and the contents of your heating system sludge too in that case?

For DHW- It’s a lot simpler to divert PV into an immersion and deal with the loss of efficiency than trying to match the ASHP input to it. You’ll also be able to sink a lot more heat into the tank with an immersion compared to an ASHP. Ideally I suppose you’d ASHP to 45degrees then immersion everything else for efficiency. If the sun goes behind a cloud while using the ASHP, then you’re paying for the kWh it consumes whilst the suns hidden (or on a cloudy day). If your PV is at 1kW and your consumption at 250W, then you can put just the 750W extra into the tank. Depends if you care about zero grid consumption or self-utilisation of the PV.

Hmm bad luck. I’d been on E7 for the previous 3 years though and it has the same effect, just not as good rates as the intelligent go. If you can load shift to your 7 hours at least it’s 16p as opposed to 34 or whatever your peak is. We also found in the summer, the tail of the E7 period would cover our morning routine and showers/ shoving the kids out the door by 8. (Ours was a dumb meter and was 12-7in DST and 1-8am in BST).

No external antenna that can be fitted to help it read? That was potentially an issue for us too, but harder getting a 3phase smart meter installed and then a suck-it-and-see if it works… jury still out but they let me switch…

These shoulder seasons are great when the sun shines for the PV. Less so the rest of the time. In November, I moved to Octopus Intelligent Go (pre-requisite compatible EV). Which gives 7.5p from 11.30pm to 5.30am, 29.5p the rest of the time. We absolutely rinse the 23.30 to 02.30 slot- Tesla batteries (20kWh) and car take around 40kWh between them if the car has been out and about. Actually do night time set forward on the ASHPs to run during cheap (20degC target temp). Then set back at 5.30 (19degC). We load the dishwasher through the day and set it off over night. The same with the washing machine. Timed boost of the immersion from 04.30 to 05.30 to make sure the 300ltr tank is at around 56degrees which means we’ll get through to the evening on a normal days use. We usually wake up to about 56kWh overnight usage, then if I can get 10kWh out of the solar I can go the whole day with no peak grid use and the occasional heat pump blip to keep the temp up. The wind turbine appears to save about 10p per annum. It’s not in an ideal spot tbf. Octopus appear to have balls’d up my billing (despite the smart meter) and apparently I only owe them £18 for December and January… considering the standing charge is around £14 a month I fear I’ve got a shock coming… either way, it’s way better than my previous Octopus flex economy 7 which was 16/34p and 45p standing. Oh and the saver sessions are great too- just turn the HPs off and let the battery reserve take the slack for £8ish saving. Thank you.

I have 5kWp of panels connected to a 3.68kWp inverter. All self installed. Means a bit of clipping at max output but it starts generating slighting earlier and hasn’t been any issues so far. Hopefully the panel degredation will never be an issue as it was oversized to begin with. Lack of MCS currently means no payment for export, but that may be able to be changed. Try and size to self-consume. Hybrid batteries inverters charge the batteries direct from DC and allow for G98 install. AC batteries mean g99 regs as both the solar inverter and the battery inverter need to be summed as they could both be outputting at the same time.

How strange. I dread the day my dream machine packs up- we rely on it for so much of our lives. Regular backups are vital as even minor config changes can be a total PITA to undo if it all goes to hell. Don’t know if you could insist on an upgrade, but definitely on having a new one from European stock ahead of RMAing your existing.

Octopus Intelligent Go gives 7.5p from 23.30- 05.30 @Originaltwist are you the author of this website? https://originaltwist.com/2018/11/14/diy-fan-coil-heater/

AIUI the log burner is treated like any other plug in single room heater (as in it’s ignored for RHI) unless it contributes to the central heating. I wrote a long post to say £300 a month is not unheard of in the depths of winter depending on the amount of heating she’s using. It is a bit of a worry in a newly renovated property, so definitely sounds like it could do with some help setting up or user education on running it. For reference my leaky 300m2 5 bed used 1.02MWh(e) for heating and DHW in December (plus the log burner pretty much every night in the living room). At a cost of £302 apparently. Comparing to July when we used 81kWh(e) for DHW for £19.85 apparently (not including for solar DHW). I need to have a better look at my totals for annual, but I’d reckon around the 2k mark for heating and DHW across the year. £1500 a month or even £300 a month across the year is completely unrealistic in your neighbour’s case for a renovated 3bed.

Phil is correct, I’m on the RHI and have both standalone woodburners and solar panels. No relevance of either to the RHI. Mine were there before the HPs, and were mentioned in the heat calcs for the MCS cert.

But what is your winner? Or is it just me that can’t see it?

Could I put one of those units in a fireplace and reject the cool/ heat up the chimney? I have multiple 200mm holes in my roof which are currently blocked at the room I could use… And are they too noisy for a bedroom?

Either you put it on until it trips out on it's in-built overheat stat (this can usually be adjusted). At this point you know your tank is as hot as you can have it. Or you boost for a period of time to suit usage. This will only come from experience but a 3kW immersion in my 300ltr tank is a decent boost if on for an hour.

You may want the immersion as backup or to dump any solar you may have? No need to switch it right off if the legionella cycle has been disables as it just won't get used unless it's wanted.

Are there any recommendations for an inline that will get a shower going but drop off as the hot water reaches it from the forum hive mind?

It uses the same wiring as the existing Solic. There’s a fixed load (3kW immersion) on the end and the same 16A breaker at the beginning of the circuit. Then a solic and a Shelly in parallel. Effectively two switches between the same load and supply. If they’re both on at the same time, it’s no issue as both fed from the same place and protected by the same breaker. If the Shelly is on the whole 3kW boost is active for as long as you programme the Shelly. If the Solic is on then it trickles whatever is left. I left the solic in all the time and just used the Shelly as a timed (or remote manual) boost. If you did have a different feed to each and on to the immersion, you’d have to be more careful about paralleling.

I went even simpler than this and wired the Shelly in parallel to the water heater instead of messing about with the wiring. Same 16A feed to both, same output to immersion. Then set a schedule on the Shelly for 1hr at 5am (or whenever you want to schedule). This way I could switch the immersion on whenever I wanted and leave the Solic standard and free to feed the excess whenever the PV was out. Separate Shelly 1 with add on temp probes to give me tank temp but I never linked the two operations as an hour of 3kW immersion was plenty for my tank. Edit: Since getting batteries, I removed the solic altogether and just switch the immersion on when the batteries hit 95% and the PV is over 500W (to ensure the immersion isn’t on at night when the batteries charge off cheap rate) and turn it off when the batteries go below 88%. Rinse and repeat as the batteries fill back up with solar.

Apologies, I meant replace the unit which failed due to a known defect with another… Way too much to expect them to fix it…

I have a nest which has decided to give up connecting to wifi. Works wonders as a pretty ‘dumb’ thermostat though. Google refuse to fix it as it’s old. Now my nest hub has started playing silly buggers with wifi. It’s almost as if they design in failure after 3 years…

That’s just a shortcut to ‘resilience’ isn’t it? 🫣

Sorry to hijack, but vaguely related: I was having a chat with a friend about to do a major ‘back to brick’ returb of an old Manor House in the Peaks. They mentioned that their/ the builder’s interpretation regs covered zero rating ‘energy saving materials’ so including all their insulation and solar and heat pump and batteries were covered and were able to be zero rated. Has anyone else managed to zero rate all their insulation, batteries etc?