JohnMo

Many a similar conversation during and after our build. One said that I would green mould on the walls within a week of moving in. No joined up thinking or understanding you could actually have a ventilation strategy, had never heard of MVHR, dMEV, would only ever install intermittent fans - why anything else?

Smart and simple

Measured heat output or calculated for flow/return temp and actual flow rate. All electrical energy use - timer, controllers, all pump, immersions etc. Divide heat out by electric in.

They can if you give them an air test certificate. They don't unless you provide a certificate and insist.

Visibility splay are a roads or highways thing. So they are the people... Remove it, if on you land, just tell them they 24 hrs or you will chop it down. Go to B&Q buy a cheap saw, if you don't have one.

There are advantages for you if the supplier uses a lower design temp of -5 or lower. First if they set the flow temp at 45 for -5, in reality you have a system that will most likely work well at 40(ish) at -3, so get a better CoP. When the heat pump is running at -3 you will be in defrost mode so loosing approx 10% of output, so don't fret too much. All depends where you live for design temp - MCS are wanting the system designed for 99.6% likely lowest temp. For us that would be -9.

Think my boiler is 32kW it's a combi, it modulates to about 6kW, yours will modulate down to about a third of that. You have UFH so a huge buffer to work with, your will happily accept huge kW input. If you have a 19kW heat loss (very much doubt you have, unless you have a wall missing) or half that, your boiler is in a happy enough place. Car analogy, just because you have 200hp does mean you use it, most the time you are using a 10th of that. More importantly, is your boiler stop/starting 100s of times a day? If it only stops/starts a few times a day, happy days.

A few issues 12kW is huge has he actually done heat loss calcs. Ideally with a heat pump you would have everything on or everything off as a huge heat pump needs huge flows. 12kW will need between 28 and 40L/min. Why only a 170L cylinder as heat pump temps that is small there are two of us and we get though a 210L most days. You ideally would need to control through the heat pump controller. You would also dump S or Y plan and install a 3 port diverter. Call for heat is normally controlled by heat pump.

Just had that with my front door, tried to use rechargeable and only getting a couple of weeks out of them. Just bought some lithium AA batteries supposed to last about twice as long as Duracell's

That will hit your CoP big time. Switch that function off completely. Time to heat once or twice per day only. The run time will be longer but the CoP way better. My 6kW and 210L takes about 40 to 50min on a single heat. With a single circulation pump you have to balance between heating and DHW. So you will have to play about to find the right settings.

Min amount is just what is required to support normal defrost cycles. It doesn't address cycle times during normal running. Normal running cycle times are governed by min ASHP turndown, and min house heating load. If your min turn down is 3 kW and house min heating load is 1kW the heat pump will cycle on off to cope. The more water volume you have the longer the cycles.

I have a Greenwood CV2 dMEV fan in a summer house, I had to pull the cover off to see if it was running they make so little noise. Would pull about a 100th of you humidifier electric.

Why not just a Shelly H&T (or similar) in each room, integrate into a min max helper and use a generic thermostat, do it in home assistant. Then bounce the signal about via wifi?

Be careful with the number of zone and their size. Small zone means boiler short cycling. Which in turn results in bigger than expected energy bills. Humidity issues indicate an issue with ventilation, use ventilation to resolve dampness. You only need thermostats with humidity sensing, for cooling, not for heating. I like Computherm thermostats they are not smart but are good and transmit through think concrete walls, and into a foil lined shed without issue. UFH is best left to tick away on a low flow temp.

That fixes humidity, but not the CO2 issue you will have. You NEED ventilation. Your living environment will be bad for your health. Sorry I am going to very blunt - Airtight without ventilation is not a good or smart move. Add a couple of dMEV fans one in kitchen and one in bathroom(s). You then need to allow air in somewhere.

Only do that if you have fixed every draft and been air tested to 3 or better, otherwise that defeats most benefits. If you are reasonably draft free you are better doing dMEV or MEV. Something like Greenwood CV2 or CV3 fans for dMEV and then add self modulating trickle vents. Cost pennies to run, can be bought from eBay super cheap and are just about silent - they only boost when needed and they do that automatically based on humidity. MEV same deal, but you have to run ducts to central unit.

Not enough insulation for UFH to be effective - stick with rads

I just leave every as open as possible and the the heat pump controller sort out what it wants to flow at. Most the time my 6kW will flow around 18 to 20 L/min. Bigger the flow the smaller the dT, so more output for a given flow temp.

No that isn't how they work. They exactly the same as a normal trap, but with a membrane, that only allows one direction flow. First item that came up https://www.toolstation.com/viva-magna-self-sealing-waste-valve/p16545?store=LJ&utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=googleshoppingfeed&gad_source=1&gclid=CjwKCAiApY-7BhBjEiwAQMrrEV8HMBkKJNR2kKR371ncf4vxKMtfeMcDxK9vPqoY9c1Wyv_FiS0yzxoCbYEQAvD_BwE

How does water drain if it has to go upwards? Sorry that is not a fix, and will not work. Head scratching time - plan your route that only falls away from unit - only you are there, so only you can do that bit

You need a proper dry trap, like Hep2O ones, close to the unit. The pipe needs to fall away to a drain point, you can take it up and over. A hose on the floor, is a bodge, water will collect become stagnant and you are potentially breathing stuff in you shouldn't.

So thinking about this logically. Buffer is a nul point in a system - giving hydraulic separation to either side - HP and heating circuit. As such a pump is required to move water either side of the nul point. HP only running, hot water enters top of buffer and water at the bottom goes back to heat pump. Pump continues to run the only path is now for water to flows direct from top port to bottom port. Buffer ends up a uniform temperature. If secondary only run, same mechanism occurs, but buffer ends same uniform temp as heating circuit. So pumps run at same flow rate. Water enters top from HP, goes out of top port, goes around heating circuit back to bottom port and out to HP. No distortion occurs in buffer. Top stays hot, bottom stays cold. A layer called a thermocline forms, where it is hot above and cold below. Same as a DHW cylinder. So now run HP pump faster than heating pump. Water enters top port from HP, some water is taken by heating circuit, the rest travels to bottom port and back to heat pump. This moves the thermocline downwards. So a buffer smaller than several hundred litres, the thermocline will be at the bottom port quite quickly. Time taken is a mix of buffer volume and difference in flow rates and cycle time of heat pump. So now have warmer than ideal water returning to HP, killing CoP and rising flow temperature. Similar is true when heating circuit pump is running faster. This time the heating circuit starts running cooler than the heat pump flow temp, as return water from the heating circuit is pushed up to the top port, so to compensate you have to increase HP flow temp. Again a hit on CoP. Volumiser Two places to install flow or return. It doesn't want to be in the flow pipe that is always engaged (upstream of diverter valve), as you don't want the buffer engaged when doing DHW. Ideal is just in the heating part of the circuit, so downstream of the diverter valve and upstream of the tee where where return water from DHW tees back in. If that isn't practical put it on the return piping.

I think without actual doing calculations - another 50L would be good. It will make the on and off times longer. Less cycling equals longer equipment life.

Do you get cycling at low flow temperature? I found when running the boiler at say 36 or below flow temp I would get a 6 to 7 min on 6 mins off cycle. This was quite big gas usage case. Increased the flow temp to 40 and would run without cycling for as long as I wanted. It also dropped gas consumption by a big margin.

Yes - Normal concrete: Has a thermal conductivity of around 2.25 W m−1 K−1. The thermal conductivity of air is around 0.025 to 0.03 water is around 0.6 W/mK at 20°C Good point Red is flow temp, green is return temp, yellow is power