Bramco

The spoil from our footings went in a long pile/bank along one side of the plot behind the house. This has now been sown with wild flowers and is spectacular when they are all in full bloom. Like @Kelvin ours was effectively a grazing field. The bits that were wrecked around the house we simply weed killed, rotivated a bit, raked out and seeded - looks great now.

Indeed, especially as I watch the neighbour trundling up and down on his ride on.. looking across at us with envy. I wait until he's nearly finished before I offer him a cold beer....

At 400m2 make sure you budget for a robot lawn mower - if you've prepped the ground well and the seed has established itself, then you'll forever have a lovely trimmed lawn. No more looking out the window at the rain and a mop of grass thinking - I should have got round to it yesterday when the weather was good.... And it's great in the summertime on the patio with a GnT watching it trundle round doing it's thing. It's one of our best investments - we have an acre with the house in the middle. The robot mower was half the price of a ride on which would have been the alternative.

Is it possible with the mechanism to set it to slide only? Which I'm guessing is what guests would use most. If that's possible then there shouldn't be any more issues with not understanding how it works. We have some tilt and swing inwards windows (if you see what I mean). In general these mechanisms aren't great and if you don't hold the bottom flappy corner in, it's easy to get them so they won't shut. I often have to sort ours out after the kids (grown ups) have been home. we also had problems with this type of window in a flat we owned and rented out. If you could restrict the functionality, then maybe you wouldn't have to be thinking of replacing them. Or try Express Sliding Doors - based in Leeds - we have triple glazed sliders from them - but they are onto a patio. Great with airtightness etc. and today they were misted up on the outside due to the dew - which is quite odd when you first see it happen.

We had one - and it was useful. The installers hadn't used UV protected insulation on the pipes outside, so they made them come back and retrofit it. I wrote about it at the time but from memory, they wanted to see all the documentation, which for us was in order. And there was a visual inspection, which turned up the insulation and the fact that they hadn't installed a duct for the pipework - but we'd agreed that this wouldn't be possible due to the wall build up, so I had to submit the drawings for the wall build up to them which they then used as evidence for the decision. Inspector was a nice chap, knew what he was on about, so all in all, it was worth having the inspection.

If you look on the IKEA website, the full installation instructions will be there

Hasn't Velux become the generic name for rooflights, in the same way that Hoover has become the generic name for vacuum cleaners

So are we going to get any photos of the finished article?

@Great_scot_selfbuild Timber cladding is larch treated with SiOO:X which stops it greying -> https://www.russwood.co.uk. It actually gets lighter over time.

@Great_scot_selfbuild - thanks, I'll tell the builders next time I see them. Those saris rooflights look exactly the same as the Roofmaker rooflights we used -> https://roof-maker.co.uk/products/hinged-opening-flat-rooflights/. Think they do these in a variety of glass types/u values. Ours are triple glazed as in the link and work very well. On the blinds aspect, ours are in the living space and bathrooms and on a landing, so we're not worried about having blinds. Wonder if @JamesP has blinds? If you're thinking blinds to cut out solar gain, then maybe it would be enough to simply open the roof lights to dissipate the heat. Works for us. The cladding is Greencoat (afaik) specced for longevity. I can check the exact spec if you need that. Here's a link to the architect's web site with more photos -> https://lhc.net/projects/ashcroft-creating-a-low-energy-family-home/

@Great_scot_selfbuild We didn't use Velux - hate the stand up edges. We did use the Roofmaker skylights that it looks like you have used on your garage. Ours are flush with the corrugated roof. Essentially you have to leave a large gap at the bottom of the roof light, create a slight slope and then mold a water resistant membrane across that and onto the top edge of the roof below the roof-light. Ill have to check with the builder and architect what we eventually used - was 3 years ago. EDIT: checked and we used -> https://www.deks.co.uk/fast-flash See photo - I have the architects drawings for this if you DM me. PS What's the reason for using Velux rather than the Roofmaker roof-lights?

Not sure why a brick or block skin would be seen to be giving more surety - it's only a skin and the fabric is timber frame. Just goes to show how thick industries like insurance etc. can be at times... I wonder how everyone in Scotland copes? What with timber frame being much more prevalent there - afaik. Have you tried Scottish mortgage companies? Also, isn't there a timber frame manufacturers association? It may be worth contacting them. Or just going round to a local building site - there's a lot of timber frame going up at the moment - how are they advising their clients on mortgages? Or take out a buy-to-let mortgage on the property - and get a postbox address for correspondence.... 😉 🙂

Yes it's essential in a house which is nearly airtight - and if you are self building and don't intend to make things nearly airtight, then you've got to be daft because all of your heat will disappear into the environment through the draughts. But you need either a good builder, or a lot of patience to get the airtightness. And a lot of attention to details - window frames should not have vents etc. Air quality internally should be much better as well as the air entering the house has been filtered.

Would be interesting to see the last charts by Battery kW, then cost per SAP point. In terms of our thinking, 5kW of battery wasn't going to achieve a lot but then deciding whether to go 10 or 15 was. Same goes, I guess, for PV. The costs of installing 2kWp would be crazy and that shows I think in the earlier sheets.

Sizing the inverter depends on few things - what is the maximum PV output, what is the maximum draw from the house etc. Given you'll almost never get the maximum PV output and the estimated output is 6kW, you'd be OK with a 6kW inverter. On the house side, the biggest draw from appliances is about 3kW, so you could draw 6kW from the batteries without pulling anything from the grid. But if you want a fast EV charger, they would pull more but then it would depend on what the batteries can deliver. Don't know what Sigenergy can do but it will be on the spec. If you plan to do EV charging from off peak, at night, then this might not matter. Personally I'd put more battery capacity in rather than a larger inverter. If you are on O Go Int, then you can dump almost everything in the batteries in the evening at 15p before the cheap rate starts and then refill them at 7p. It's a bit of a no brainer. So the larger your batteries, the more you gain. Having said that, we are single phase, so I don't know how this would work with 3 phase.

The way we use the thermostats is really only for the scheduling and as temp limiters. The thermostat schedules (3) are set to come on just after the start of the cheap rate and are set in one hour chunks. First hour is at 24C then we drop gradually hour by hour down and the last hours are at 22C. This ensures that the thermostats don't do their stop start business, so the ASHP is on constantly until the target temperature is reached. Seems to work for us. If we dropped the thermostats and went over to WC with a setpoint, then we'd have to find some other way of scheduling the night time batch charging of the slab. So we'll stick with the thermostats.

So the hot side of the house can't take any heat but the cold side can - so any flow through the hot side comes back still hot whereas the flow through the cool side comes back cooler. Trying to get my head round how this would work for those of us with insulated slabs with UFH that batch charge the slab at night on cheap rate lekky. I guess the same would happen - loops in cooler parts of the slab would suck up more heat than those in warmer parts. So the only setting is the setpoint set on the ASHP. What is yours set to against the temperature you are trying to achieve in the house?

You obviously live alone... Where thermostats have a display, isn't that what the display is?

You're making the assumption that someone in the house (you know who I'm talking about) can guess the temperature without looking at the app - ain't gonna happen..... 😄

Could do but... In our setup, we only need to run the ASHP at night to batch charge the insulated slab. When it is cold, all the rooms need the full 6 hours or so. When it is less cold, the thermostats will cut off the flow when the set temperature is reached. So for the downstairs bedroom it cuts the flow off earlier than the other two living area zones - the set point is lower. I do set the thermostats in 1 hour intervals starting a couple of degrees higher than needed and decreasing the setpoint every hour. This makes sure that the thermostats don't dick around with the ASHP by tuning it on and off at short intervals. Again this seems to work fine.

Thanks for the suggestions guys - I'd put solving this on the back burner as we had a workable if slightly more expensive solution - think I probably need to give this a bit higher priority on the to-do list.... The UFH buffer tank is a smaller Newark tank (140l) - earlier when I contacted them, they said they put either one or two coils to get the 3m2 surface arear depending on the size of the cylinder. So I guess they always put two in on one that is 140l. Our 300l DHW tank has only one.

@Wil thanks and I know how to do the change manually - there's a few owners on another thread trying to work out how to do it automatically. I wonder if we maybe haven't the same unit - mine is wired using pairs on a cat5 cable, not through an rj45 connector. Do you have the pinout for your connector.

Thanks

I know I do.... 🙂 Long discussion here -> https://community.openenergymonitor.org/t/water-hammer-noises-and-heat-pump/26263 And you've been short changed - mine has a couple of those. 😄 and they haven't worked on the air trapped in the corrugations in the DHW tank.

It's been stated many times...... 😄 Sadly we have a DHW tank with an ASHP coil (3m2) BUT it's corrugated which leads to a lot of noise from air trapped in the corrugations. Manufacturer says - your problem mate. The fix is to replumb with a deareator etc to try to get rid of the air. So given we lose a bit on using the diverter rather than the ASHP, we have some way to go before it cancels out the cost of the replumbing - I'd also add a heat meter and the kit to be able to monitor the CoP, so it's not a cheap solution fix - and it may not work!