IanR

And you offered "philosophers of ancient Greece for theorizing about the existence of the atom" as an equivalent to disputing Climate Change, which of course it is not, since the ancient Greek philosophers were not disputing overwhelming evidence against the atom's existence.

But there wasn't overwhelming evidence the atom did not exist.

That's pretty vague, what is that NASA released that had been tampered with? Again, pretty vague. "tampering" and "manipulated" is to say a deliberate action to change the data in a way that it provides a fake outcome. There are of course many genuine reasons why data is filtered, which wouldn't fit the definition of tampering or manipulated.

When was the first case of data tampering?

If internal temp is still at 20°C, then dew point is up to 13.7°C with 67% RH. So, yes, inner pane is above dew point. https://www.calculator.net/dew-point-calculator.html

RH inside will tend to drop when it's cold outside. Mine is in the 40% - 50% range at the moment. I'd normally be at around 60% in the summer.

I've got the 310's with the foam under the cladding, which is what I thought you meant by "thermal breaks" Looks like most of their Aluclad options now have something similar. It wasn't on all their ranges when I purchased.

How odd, I have the same windows, with the extra foam between cladding and timber frame.

Is it an Aluminium frame? Obviously thermally broken, but the thermal breaks can be quite thin, I wonder if there's a small cold bridge.

If those are the conditions when condensation appears, it would need the inside pane to have dropped to 12.7°C to condensate. I can't find the reference now, but I'm sure I have something that shows the inner pane of 3G only dropping a couple of degrees when 0° outside. Hence the improved "comfort" over 2G. Is the condensation at the edges, where a cold bridge through the frame may be having an effect?

I've not experienced condensation on the inside in 4.5 years. What temp do you run your house at? and do you know the relative humidity in the rooms showing condensation?

A 4G mobile router should be more than sufficient for "normal" use, if you are reasonably close to a mast. I tend to get at least 50Mb/s Down and 40 Mb/s Up, but can often see 80Mb/s - 90Mb/s Down. But, a little less robust than FTTC/FTTP, ie. need to reboot the router around once per week as speeds can drop, and sometimes have to play with what Bands the router is using to get LTE+ working. I'm with Three and get unlimited for £20 / month. I have the same view as above regards hard wiring back to a patch panel. If you mean streaming 8K, yes CAT 6 can easily handle multiple 8K streams. For avoiding over-heating, fixed shading, ie. brise soleil or overhang, is a better option, if correctly designed. If not then definitely automated. I believe PHPP assumes only 40% effective if not automated, since, quite rightly, if it's not automated it won't be used at the times you need it, since you are not always in and thinking about the house temp. I have Hunter Douglas external venetians. HD offer Automation with their blinds. I use Loxone for their automation in order to integrate with the other heating/cooling/comfort systems in the house. Other things to be thinking about are heating/cooling system control, MVHR control, roof vents, videocom, cctv, wireless access points, powering tech via PoE, phones (VoIP?). Have a look at whole house systems like Loxone, don't be pushed back by your initial view on price. I found the price of UFH controller, MVHR controller, roof vent controller, external blind controller, house alarm etc., mostly covered the initial cost of the Loxone starter setup. However, once you've got that in your plans you can get a bit carried away and the prices starts to build up.

It's just for replacing fossil fuel boilers, unfortunately not for new builds. The Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS) https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/environmental-and-social-schemes/boiler-upgrade-scheme-bus

What product are you thinking of? I used a closed-cell, foam insulation, sprayed on to some internal steel columns, to exclude them from the thermal envelope and stop any risk of moisture getting to the cold, steel columns. It was very expensive in compared to the blown cellulose fibre I used elsewhere. Very difficult to control thickness - I over-sprayed and then trimmed back to the thickness I wanted. Difficult to contain, ie. if you spray in, to full-fill an enclosed timber structure, even with well-screwed ply on C24 studs, the expansion will "pop" open the timber structure.

I do have automated, external, Ventian blinds from Hunter Douglas. I'm well insulated, so my issues are over-heating rather than cold. Hunter Douglas can supply all the kit for them to be automated, ie. wind and rain sensors and controller, although I haven't used their automation as that would have made them stand alone and I wanted them integrated into the rest of the house automation, so for me Loxone looks after them. These aren't going to help with security though, nor for keeping the heat in.

I would look at it that the install needs to meet both the 10 year old HM Government guide AND the manufacturer's installation requirements. If one is stating a minimum 300mm separation, and another stating a minimum 1.5m separation, then the install must have 1.5m Min separation to meet all requirements.

To heat 300l of water from 24°C to 48°C requires 8.4kWh of energy. If you're saying you are using 3kWh of electricity, then that sounds about right as with a COP of 2.8, your ASHP will generate that 8.4kWh of energy. So that doesn't sound like the ASHP is relying on an "additional heat", direct electric element to support the water heating. So heating of the water sounds to be working correctly. Like @ProDave says, it's the heat loss that appears to be the anomaly. Unless you have a very high flow rate on your shower, and you need the ASHP to come on sooner to start heating the water earlier when the temp drops. To stop the short cycling on space heating you need enough UFH loop to be permanently open so that the ASHP has around a 100l volume of water to push around. A Buffer would be better.

Hi, and welcome. You say you are limiting the time the HW cycle is running because it is costing too much. Can you give more detail? How much? how are you identifying that the cost is hot water production? What temp is the HW set to? HW is better left on all day, rather than limiting it to 2 x 1 hour slots. Do you know what temp your HW tank drops to and what the ASHP can lift it back up to in an hour? For your space heating, do you have a buffer tank, or does the ASHP run directly to UFH or Radiators? If the latter, is there a permanently open loop so the ASHP has a min 100l of water to push around? 55°C is high for space heating, is that the temp you have it set to? and where is that measured, flow or return? In a very well insulated timber frame with UFH you'd expect a flow temp of around 35°C

I believe you' need more than Solar Control glass, and relying on manual shutters won't work when you are away from the house or insolation levels are changeable, unless you just leave them shut, which detracts from having all that glazing. Or, are you powering the shutters and automating their use? Have you considered automated, external Venetians? My experience comes from a similar setup to yours, where I have 33m² of glazing on a South-West facade into an open plan area of a similar size to you, that is also double volume with vaulted ceilings. If I don't deploy the external blinds, then with as little as 3 hours of sunshine in Spring or Autumn the internal temp will be above 25°C and normally heading towards 28°C. In the Summer this would be over 30°C. Due to my window sizing and the wish for single span blinds, I've "only" covered 22m² of the glazed area, so I have 5m x 2.2m area uncovered by external blinds. This is OK in Spring and Autumn, it warms the area without over-heating, but in Summer I have to deploy active cooling through the ASHP. I'm considering adding a film to this window to reduce the cooling need.

In the long term these types of development are going to need a district heating solution. Any amenity land that's been included in the development will have to get repurposed with commercial heat pumps.

Correct, there's no additional noise from a standing seam metal roof on a deck, than for other standard roofing materials. Profiled metal roofs, directly on to purlins, without a deck, can be noisy, but that's not a typical residential build up.

Zinc pricing for me came in around £110 - £120 /m² I paid around £55/m² for aluminium installed (not including OSB deck). My roof is Falzonal from Novellis Which ever metal roof you have, don't walk on it in work boots with stones in the soles. I always put trainers on when I go up on the roof.

The renderings looks great. Standing seam really compliments the buildings in my view. I can't help with the choice between two different, steel, pre-formed panel brands, I've not used steel, but I have looked at loads as well as aluminium, zinc and copper while deciding what to use on my own roof. Pre-formed steel appears to give a more clinical, consistent seaming, and from what I looked at tends to show less deformation in the panels. ie. the final result will not always look like the renderings and the brochures, but steel tends to show less distortions and warps. Maybe it's more forgiving to a less well-prepared deck and poor handling. The downsides of using a less ductile steel though is that to my eyes it doesn't look quite the same as a traditional seamed roof, partly because it has less of the idiosyncrasies of a zinc/copper/aluminium roof, but also, due to its less ductile nature, other materials need to be introduced for areas such as flashing to roof lights. There are sometimes flashing kits available that match roof lights to certain brands of steel roof, but that may narrow your choice. The worst case is that you'll need some flexi rubber flashing to integrate the roof lights, vent pipes etc.. My personal choice was to have everything made and formed on site, out of a one material, straight from the coil, to give the look of a traditional seamed roof. I went with Aluminium as it was similarly priced to steel. Forming on site gets you away from issues over panel length, although my roofers wouldn't go over 13m due to difficulties with handling. It also allows for bespoke trims, verges and flashings etc. The idiosyncrasies match well to my agricultural setting, but I do have minimal warping and deformation compared to some I have seen. Darker colours with a matt finish tend to disguise any imperfections.

As is often reported on this forum, SAP, and indeed the calcs MCS installers do, tend to over-estimate energy losses of homes that are built to, or close to, PH standards. The inbuilt defaults for cold bridging are an obvious anomaly, but I'm sure there are others. With the RHI grant based upon the SAP energy use, it's likely the figures used will be higher than what PHPP would calculate. I've heard of people gaming the system by not air testing prior to ASHP commissioning, so that a default 10m³/m².h is used in the calcs. I wondered if this was the reason for a push towards RHI payments being linked to metered energy usage, rather than Design Calcs, although that has never become mandatory. That's not my experience of Eco East Anglia. I felt their (MCS) install at mine was reasonable value. I can't see that a chunk was added, just because the MCS allows an RHI grant to be obtained. Yes, I could have got it a bit cheaper, by selecting cheaper products, but I wasn't going to install it myself, so needed someone to install and don't feel I paid that much of a premium for an MCS install.

MCS provides the entrance to RHI. My pricing is for Nibe, which are certainly not the cheapest, and I don't believe it would be possible to purchase a Nibe 12kW ASHP, Nibe 500l UVC, Nibe 200l Buffer, Nibe SMO 40 controller + all required brass and copper for £5.5K. My Install was around 5 man days, plus the back office work to fulfil MCS with detail heat loss calcs etc. Mine was around £11K all in, so I can see where the money was spent. I did have several other quotes though that ranged from £15K to £19K, so some companies do try it on.