JohnMo

They have, haven't they? But do you really need a thermostat? Good observations by @marshian on another recent thread about energy usage and steady house temperatures. Would it better to design your heating system to do away with a thermostat all together - low temperature weather compensation. But the naysayers are determined that heating has to be zoned.

You need something like these, others are available, but this was the first I found, they are humidity controlled and silenced. So they will open and close based on humidity and not transfer noise from outside. https://www.bpdstore.co.uk/glidevale-fresh-99hdb-humidity-sensitive-acoustic-wall-ventilator/p/232

Not really American style, been done in the UK since the 70s, almost all homes in Scotland are done that way - dry lined, or Ames taping is what it's called. Just make sure you use taper edge plasterboard. Discussion here on plasterboard https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/question/gypsum-board-vapor-permeable-or-what

eBay has some bargains for fan coils. Our summer house has one, switched cooling yesterday and running at no lower than 13.5 degs flow temperature the summer house was 8 degs cooler at 5pm the previous day and when solar gain finished dropped to 21 very quickly. You can use UFH for cooling, but not as effective.

How hard is your water, we have quite hard well water, and use a BWT combi care cartridge upstream of the hot water cylinder and it's almost stopped all scale on taps and showers. We still have to descale kettle. It's pretty tiny and just gets replaced annually.

For me, where you are located with cold winter and assume pretty hot summers - I would look at fan coils and not at UFH Add 50mm of floor insulation to take away the cold feeling of the floor. Set heat pump to 35 degs in winter and about 14 in summer. Or 6 with condensation drainage under fan coil.

Not really, just before our build I was set on smart everything, about a month before I started buying things, there were a couple of similar removals of support and web interfaces (can't remember the brands) so I made a positive move away from so called smart systems. I do have home assistant but it's only used for nice to have things, so excess PV being diverted to heat pump or immersion and general monitoring. Did try home assistant battery charge management, but too hit or miss so gave up on that. Don't trust any big company really, they are there, to keep share holders and share holders only happy.

Would be surprised if you couldn't get control from home assistant, if not now very soon.

That definitely works very well. We have that and the nice chilled water it produces.

Or just stop using and paying stupid prices, for so called smart devices. Have a system that is local first and foremost and if really required the ability to get external access. Then who cares if they support or otherwise.

That's the issue, they aren't, and they come and go quickly. At least you can still change settings locally. But you pay an expensive price, for a so called smart device that is as functional as £10 dump one, a few years later.

Just seen this also about nest app. https://www.androidauthority.com/nest-thermostat-scheduling-google-home-3548323/

Yes

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2025/04/google-ending-support-for-older-nest-thermostats-will-stop-selling-nests-in-europe/

But his design is already way better than a cut and paste job he would get from them. So why would you bother?

Isn't that already in place. Certainly been in place for over a decade offshore, so see no reason why it wouldn't be in place onshore.

Yes, will make balancing way easier.

I am coming to the conclusion that you go one of two routes 1. Fully insulated floor, so 150 to 200mm of PIR or equivalent. 2. Just don't bother with insulation. Clip pipes direct to slab and screed over. Option 2 will only work with a ground bearing slab. Suspended floor will be a money pit. So option 2, you engage the soil below the house to buffer heat. You run WC mode 24/7 with no zones. The heat stored in the ground should help get through the cold snaps. With the above in mind, you need to run the lowest flow temp you can, so close spacing will be better than wide spacing. Use 16mm pert-al-pert pipe, suitable manifold and no pump or mixer and no buffer or volumiser. First sensible person seen, so far with a plan

We have a treatment plant. We use muck munchers once per month. Zero smells, still haven't emptied it, nearly 3.5 years in the house.

Or that PU glue (Gorilla) needs water to activate the expanding and curing process, and then it's water proof.

24 hours later, we are now in cooling mode. Cooling switched on this morning. That will be left to get on with it until end of September now. Running pretty much a fixed temp. So far today running 15 mins on/25 mins off cycle this morning getting a negative CoP of just over 8. Yes 8 - you have to love a heat pump.

I just didn't bother. For the first year we never went above 30 Deg flow temp anyway, operating on WC. Now we batch charge the temps are a little higher, but not much. The whole cycling thing is really for properties that require 45 plus degs all the time.

We heat intermittently, but house stays pretty stable temperature wise. So today our average temp over the day is about 8 degs, so we are still in heating mode, but are getting plenty of solar. So heating is generally powered by PV (since start of March) and a floating battery state of charge to get reasonable run times. So the heating is free - can't do that with gas or oil or with direct electric heating (without a solar farm). So turns a modest PV excess of 7.6kWh in 32kWh. Any additional went into hot water via immersion

Not necessarily. A 4 port all flow and all returned water flows through the buffer. A 2 port, only when the flow on primary side is higher than secondary (a zone is closed for example) does any water go through buffer. The control of a 2 port are also different. A 2 port control is: Heat source is there to only satisfy a thermostat on the buffer. The heat source stops and starts only against that thermostat. The secondary side is run from the house thermostat(s). After playing with most versions of buffer and a volumiser, my heating runs far better without a buffer or volumiser, and definitely better without zones.

A 2 port buffer looks like this - the grey box being the heat pump