IanR

I've got no problem with you "cracking on", but this is a public forum and the correct info may be useful to others. This is a recent change that is not well known, and the maximum penalties are extremely harsh.

No, this covers existing Septic Tanks. There was talk about it being unlawful to sell a property that didn't conform, but that got reduced to a contracted agreement that the new owner would fulfil the obligations as soon as reasonably possible. Edited to add: This is how it is specified in England. Existing systems are those installed prior to 2015, they get relaxed rules, but the drainage field requirement is still required. Existing discharges: what this means You have an existing discharge to ground if all of these points apply to you: the discharge was already happening before 1 January 2015 you have not changed the discharge from surface water to ground you have not moved the location of the discharge or, if you have, it is still within 10 metres of the previous location you have not changed the volume of the discharge or, if you have, it’s not more than 2 cubic metres (2,000 litres) to ground If so, check if you can meet the general binding rules for existing discharges. You will not need an environmental permit if you can Rule 5 of the General Binding Rules for existing discharges: Use the correct treatment system (rule 5) You must use a septic tank or a small sewage treatment plant to treat the sewage and then discharge the waste water to ground through a drainage field. A septic tank is an underground tank where the solids sink to the bottom, forming a sludge, and the waste water flows out to a drainage field. A small sewage treatment plant, also known as a package treatment plant, works in a similar way to a septic tank but uses mechanical parts to treat the waste water to a higher standard before it goes to a drainage field. A drainage field, also known as an infiltration system, is a series of pipes with holes placed in trenches and arranged so that the waste water can trickle through the ground for further treatment. The system you use must meet the relevant British Standard. Discharges through drainage mounds can meet the general binding rules as long they are not in floodplains and they are located, designed and constructed in line with the recommendations in British Standard BS 6297:2007. This is a link to the English General Binding Rules https://www.gov.uk/guidance/general-binding-rules-small-sewage-discharge-to-the-ground#existing-and-new

England and Wales are the similar I believe - both now require a permit if you don't have a drainage field, Scotland may have different rules. Not sure where you are. The rule change is to encourage replacement of Septic Tanks with package sewage treatment plants. It's worth doing a bit of reading so you know your obligations and the penalties for not fulfilling them.

Are you aware of the rule changes in 2020, regarding Septic Tanks? If you release to ground without a suitably sized drainage field, or direct to a water course you now need a permit from the Environmental Agency. If you don't have a permit there are a bunch of rules you need to keep to called the General Binding Rules, otherwise you can be prosecuted.

If your ASHP was Installed by an Improved Installer then there may be an extended warranty available, which then requires a yearly Service to maintain the extended warranty. Nibe for instance offer a 7 year warranty if installed and maintained by an Approved Installer. Otherwise I believe it is 2 years. As above, a UVC needs a yearly inspection anyway. I pay £240 a year to get the whole lot done.

I meant to say "The 15 year period..." Saw it too late to Edit. Doh!

For the Planning Officer to have high-lighted this Appeal judgement, they must feel it carries some weight, which as a High Court judgement you assume it must. It makes the definition of "isolated" black and white in planning terms. A site is either within a settlement/village, or it is isolated. The actual Approved (at Appeal) application, that was then being further Appealed at the High Court was for a site the LPA felt was "isolated" and therefore required special circumstances for Approval, but the developer felt (and was agreed with by the Planning Inspector) was within a settlement as it was between two other houses and therefore required no special circumstances. If the Planning Officer is using this argument against your Para 80 application to say it is not "isolated" due to it being between two existing houses, then by this High Court judgement they are saying it is within a settlement, and so does not require special circumstances, ie. it can be treated as an infill. The Planning Officer will probably try to argue that it is not within a settlement, but the High Court judgement makes it clear, it is either one or the other. Out of the two options, having it considered within a settlement is likely the better option, as you have no need to prove special circumstances.

Anecdotally, that seems to be starting to happen now, at least buyers are reported to be seeking out EPC A & B homes, although probably not effecting price yet, just time to sale. EPC D and over homes being devalued will happen when Banks start to lower the loan to value on them, which could happen quite quickly once the legislation is on the statute books. The 15 year period from the introduction of legislation to ban fossil fuel boilers to the target date for achieving net zero "heat in buildings" seems right for the working life of a gas boilers, which would mean 1.5 million gas boilers decommissioned per year across the whole of the UK. If that was replaced solely by heat pumps, then that's a total of 1.75 million hp installs a year, incl. new builds. I guess a number will convert to a district heating setup, so that will bring the total number down a little.

Maybe it would take that long if it was heating the tank from cold, but it will only ever be "topping up" (unless you have underestimated your hot water usage). So 30 mins should see it raised from 40°C to 50°C.

I'm not aware the UK Government have yet given date by which homes will be (net) zero carbon, it's been framed more as the steps that need to be taken with the housing stock to meet the 2050 net zero obligation. Hopefully the UK Government's Heat in Buildings strategy statement starts to lay down the when and the how, so that industry has the confidence to prepare. To meet the 2050 net zero obligations then yes, electricity generation de-carbonisation is front and centre. (at least it was in the white paper). Won't this be a natural consequence of shifting heating off of Gas. I would have thought there will be, relatively quickly, a drop of gas usage to lower than the required critical mass that makes the maintenance of the existing infrastructure economical, such that the infrastructure charge becomes a larger portion of the unit price that it has to be passed on to consumers. As usage drops further I can imagine the network owners wanting to start shutting sections of it down. Somewhere on that journey households will be swapping out their gas ovens and hobs for electric versions. I can't imagine too many thinking that swapping to LPG bottles is a better option. From your excellent graph, it looks a bit harder than that. In the 8 years from 2010 to 2018, 20 percentage points of EPC D & E homes were improved to EPC C. (I'm making some assumptions there.) Say that another 10 percentage points have been done in the four years from 2018 to 2022. There are still 40 percentage points to go, in the remaining 8 years of this decade, which from your figures is the 1m homes mentioned. It still looks achievable, but requires carrot or stick to double the current rate of improvement. Targeting Oil and LPG I assume. Is Biomass an alternative? It's still incentivised as a low carbon heating source, but it's not low emissions. The £17K improvement cost was suggested as the average cost to each home that requires improving. The question asked was "if the cost is £17K and there is a max £15K interest free loan available, where does the home owner find the other £2K from?".

The Scottish Government managed to beat the UK Government to getting their Heat in Buildings Strategy Statement announced in Parliament The key points I took from it were: Net Zero target for heating buildings is 2045 2030 target to have 68% lower emissions (from heating buildings) than 2020 level, requiring over 1,000,000 homes to be made zero carbon this decade. Vague statement that "most" homes must be EPC C or better by 2030 More definite statement that all homes (where feasible and cost-effective) must be EPC C or better by 2033 Legislation to be introduced in 2025 requiring any home changing ownership or tenancy to be EPC C or better at point of sale Earlier date set at 2028 for all private rental homes to be EPC C or better Ban on installing fossil fuel boilers from 2025 for off-gas properties Ban on installing fossil fuel boilers from 2030 for all properties The only zero carbon heating technology I heard mentioned was Heat Pumps. Interesting costing stated within the 1st question after the Statement that the average investment for each home to improve to EPC C is £17,000. The UK's statement is due this month, after being delayed from Spring this year.

The HP runs at two different temps, depending on whether it is heating the hot water supply or for the space heating. Typically the DHW would be heated to around 50°C and the space heating to a lower temp, ideally 35°C or less.

I believe you can use RHI a second time, you certainly used to be able to. Quickest way of finding out is contacting an MCS Installer. Surely they'd jump at it, replacing an existing ASHP has to be one of their easiest jobs.

I have the Airflow Flexi DV1100. On paper it would be over-sized for your needs (as it is for mine), but that allows it to run at a gentle pace and well within its PH Certified range, and, with scope for a good boost above the required rate. Airflow will do your design free of charge and provide a bill of materials with a target price to take around to their distributors. I found you can do a lot better than their target price, and also that some distributors had much better terms with Airflow than others. For me TP was the best price, although they had no idea what they were supplying, just a bunch of part numbers to them. Airflow keep the unit in stock (in normal times), so delivery is reasonably quick.

Loxone for me also. I think it's an excellent system, very robust, very flexible and good value compared to other centralised, whole building automation systems. Similar to others, it looks after heating, cooling, hot water, mvhr, blinds, roof vents, internal & external lighting, alarm, fire, videocom, and entrance gate. I think HA is at its best when you don't have to interface with it (too much).

It boils down to the extra cost of a GSHP installation not providing enough of an efficiency improvement over ASHP.

Careful how they're selling this. They're not mentioning the CO2 released in the reforming process from Natural Gas to Hydrogen. Commercially, for every 1Kg of hydrogen produced by this process, 9kg - 12kg of CO2 are released. The process is also around 65% efficient, ie. you get 65% of hydrogen kWh out from the reforming process from the natural gas kWh that went in. This does make sense, if you specifically want the electricity generated, in cost terms when comparing domestic prices for gas and electricity, although PV would be cheaper to install. They appear to only be counting the emissions once the hydrogen is produced and being consumed in the fuel cell. Japan is heavily subsidising hydrogen production, and accepting its large carbon footprint, in the hope of it being a stepping stone to a cost competitive, electrolysis produced, hydrogen from renewables. There's no route to that goal yet though.

But what I read, it did not make it clear what they were comparing the efficiency to. It seemed to be to a commercial natural gas reformer process, producing hydrogen, that doesn't capture the heat produced, hence this claimed efficiency that's moving the heat energy to a tank of water. This doesn't appear to be a total heating solution, "just" an electricity generator that gives you some hot/warm water, and releases a lot of CO2 in the process.

Do you really need the original patio (?) doors? now you have new French doors in the extension? How about, change these to a normal window and fit the ASHP below, then run the pipes around the outside to the existing boiler location. Fix them to the wall and insulate very well. ASHP could be "end on" if that helps, as long as your neighbour does not have a window opening on the flank of their property. If you want to keep the original patio (?) doors, then fit the ASHP under the next window along, as previously suggested by others, and still route the pipes around the outside (under the steps up to the patio doors), just insulate even better due to longer route, or go for a split ASHP with thinner bore pipes that are easier to insulate to a higher degree. ASHP under PD must meet MSC requirements. Minimum distance of any part of the ASHP must be at least 1m from your boundary. With the need for 300mm air gap from a wall to the back of an ASHP, you'll never fit one in a the 1.4m gap. ASHPs are not going to get any thinner, it's a mature technology, just relatively new to the UK.

I've only chipped in on other's posts if I feel something I've done is relevant. The actual call for heat is handled by the SMO40 Nibe controller, from the buffer return temp, rather than by Loxone. Loxone just enables/disables heating and cooling on the SMO40. This also helped have a clear line of responsibility for the ASHP installers. ie. their job was complete when the buffer and UVC were correctly heating or cooling without any argument as to whether Loxone is issuing the call for heat. The pumps and UFH isolation valve are automated by Loxone, with a manual override that allows the delay to wait for some forecast solar gain, hopefully avoiding any call for heat.

Thanks for that, I hadn't considered a non-Loxone option for the forecasting. My (house's) unusual proportions exaggerate the benefit of circulating the UFH. All habitable space is on the ground floor and due to the depth of the building (previously a cow-shed) we have a few rooms that have no direct light, so with those as well as the North-East and North-West elevation getting no solar gain we have less than a third of the area "benefiting" from solar gain. On the South-West and South-East elevations we have lots of full height glazing. This side of the building therefore over-heats quickly, and the rest is unaffected, so circulating the UFH triples the size of energy store available to the solar gain and helps equalise the building temps.

Nope, the MVHR wet heat exchanger is run from the same buffer as the UFH, so at best it trims temps. The difference in energy delivery that 7°C chilled water to the MVHR would make compared to 14°C hasn't encouraged me to add additional insulation to UFH manifolds and a few pipe runs (that use the same buffer) in order to avoid condensation. Loxone does a bit more for me as it gets ASHP, UFH, MVHR, vents and blinds all working together, by deciding whether to do nothing, take passive measures, or to heat/cool, and then get each system to do its part, as well as running MVHR boost, and DHW circulation loop based on presence sensing within the bathrooms. I hope to do a little more with it as currently I manually make a choice on whether it starts heating the house first thing in the morning, based upon forecast cloud level. If there is forecast clear or partially cloudy sky, I delay the buffer warming up until mid morning, to gives a chance for solar gain to do its job. But this means the temp dropping slightly below the target temp. If I don't do this I can often get a warm 200l buffer that then isn't used, since a couple of hours of winter sun pushes the temp up above target. I hope to automate this with a weather subscription. That also reminds me of another subtle difference Loxone makes, which is to, during the heating season (Dec-Feb) to allow the house temp to go a couple of degrees over target, if that additional heat is via solar gain (ie without ASHP space heating). It seems no one in the family minds if the house is a little over-temp in the Winter, and if it is a couple of degrees high in the afternoon/evening, then even on an over-cast following day there won't be another call for heat probably until the following afternoon.

Borrowed from Jeremy. Makes more use of the Solar Gain, moving the energy to areas of the slab that do not receive the solar gain directly. My initial setup did manage the cooling temp of the buffer, calculating the dew point from the current indoor air temp and humidity, and setting the cooling return temp to this. In practice I don't need to get the slab anywhere close the dew point to provide effective cooling, so I no longer change the buffer (cooling) return temp from 14°C. The heating temp of the buffer I've always left set by the ASHP controller. But, rather than changing flow/return temps to the buffer, which I now leave as set by the ASHP controller, I get Loxone to enable/disable cooling and heating on the ASHP controller, so that it will only have one enabled at any one time. I have a Nibe F2040-12 with SMO40 Controller and MODBUS comms unit.

Mine's piped separately via distribution boxes that are lined with a bit of sound deadening foam. I was concerned this wouldn't be sufficient, but it is effective - I have no discernible noise transfer between rooms. The PH principle is to avoid the need for traditional boilers/HPs and heat emitters, so that the space heating energy requirements can be supplied via the MVHR, with a direct electric duct heater, avoiding the capital investment for boilers/HPs and emitters. But, I personally didn't feel a house would be saleable in the UK without "central heating" and you still need to heat your DHW, plus I knew I would have some cooling requirements.

Yes it can...but, MVHR does not move sufficient air to deliver very much energy in to the house. Depending on MVHR size, perhaps 0.5kW - 2.5kW. Add to this, the lower temp you can run your HP the more efficient it is, so for space heating if you are running your buffer at 35°C say, that's not going to add much energy to the MVHR supply, so you'll be in the lower range of the scale. An Electric Heater on the supply duct, which could be at 80°C, could be more effective, but you are not getting the benefit of the HP efficiency. If you plan to be at Passivhais levels of energy loss, then it may be possible to heat 100% via MVHR, but using a direct electric in-duct heater. Heat Pumps are best matched with UFH, and if not large or fan convector radiators.