Bramco

Does your UFH buffer tank have immersions in it? (If not, why not?) If so, connect these up to heat the buffer tank - if you are on a cheap night rate, get timer(s) to do the buffer tank heating at night and set your thermostats to call for heat during those hours. Before out ASHP was installed we ran the whole house this way. And there's plenty of people using in line water heaters to do the same thing. Simon

The EDDI knows when each of the elements has taken enough energy without the need for thermostats. Basically it monitors the energy that the element is taking and when it's taking no energy it stops. There is an internal CT that is measuring what is being consumed by the elements in the tank. No need for additional sensors. So under normal circumstances, the EDDI just manages everything - no need for any additional sensors. However, we have installed a relay board with a sensor which is at about half way up the tank. The reason we did this is that, there are occasions when there's a lot of family around and the PV and overnight scheduled boost don't give us enough hot water. So the relay board is set to kick in when the temperature in the middle of the tank gets below 50 and stops when it is 60 (this is done with an external device). It's an expensive boost but saves the grief from the family if there's not enough hot water. Simon

We have both immersions connected to the EDDI. 300l tank. When we have solar, it is diverted to the tank and the EDDI controls whether it is heating the top element, or the bottom element, depending on how hot the top of the tank is. It's better to let the EDDI manage which element it uses because if you only connect it to the bottom element, you can end up with a tank full of luke warm water rather than a tank with hot water at the top. We're on Octopus Go, so get 4 hours at night at 9p/kWh. So we also have the EDDI scheduled to heat the tank on this cheap rate every night. So basically if there's not been enough solar PV during the day to heat the tank, then it gets topped up at night on the cheap rate. Personally, I wouldn't use the EDDI to control your towel rail - why don't you put that on a cheap timer, so if you are on Octopus Go or similar, you can use cheap rates to get some warmth? Simon

If you want a less patterned look, CTD have/had some plain grey ones. We have them inside and out - looks great. The only thing we'd do differently would be to use tile supports to keep them horizontal outside - our builder insisted on putting the regulation slope on the outside tiles which went straight onto a concrete base. It will bug me for the rest of my life .... Should have changed the build spec obviously but didn't 😬 Simon

We have some vaulted ceilings. At the top of the wall we've installed an led trough. They're about 10cm tall and at the top come out enough to take an led trough. This throws light upwards and is great for creating a wash of light up the sloping ceilings. In the large kitchen/dining/living room, each area has a separate dimming controller, so you can have scenes with different light levels. In other rooms we've used downlighters that you can hardly see. They have a whitish translucent disc across the actual light - think you can get these in Screwfix. There are more expensive ones that can be inset in the plasterboard giving a flush very minimalist finish. Simon

What app is that? - the national grid one doesn't look like that.

Agree - but except for really cold weather we only have to run the ASHP for up to 4 hours on the Octopus Go tariff which is a less than a third the price of the normal rate. Simon

We had a soakaway in our plans and it was going to be expensive - £20k or so for getting rid of the soil and for the crates etc. We have a non flowing dyke on the edge of the property. We had to go to the flood authority folks at the county council and to the local drainage board to get their agreement to discharge straight into the dyke - took a while but we got there in the end. I don't remember Building Control having any say in things - having said that, the soakaway was only shown on the civil engineering drawings, culvert, drainage etc. Simon

We also did ours in DC - about 50m to the top of the field. We have 12 panels in all - 6.5kWp. The cable was a 4 core cable, so there are 2 groups of 6 feeding the 2 DC inputs on the inverter. The ground mounts are key clamp system with 16 1m poles whacked in the ground as the support. We also set the panels at about 45degs because at the optimum angle (30deg ish) we'd get massive summer output and low winter output. 45degs gives us lower summer output and higher winter output. We're just about getting the maximum out of them about now. Simon

IKEA - we had the same problem, wanting all black. The IKEA ones are all black except for the control knob. Very pleased with them - they are actually Electrolux, so the parent company of Zanussi. I'm guessing that internally they are all the same and it's only the external appearance which is tailored to the different brands. Simon

So by 5.8, you can self certify. 5.8 Where you are unable to provide MCS or equivalent certification under clause 5.5, you confirm that you are satisfied that the generation asset has been installed by a competent professional and meets all required industry standards and guidelines. Octopus accepts no liability for any loss, damage or injury resulting from the installation.

We're about to have the driveway done and will be installing 30cm high bollard lights at intervals along one side. These are mains voltage, not low voltage. The lights we've bought can be screwed onto something, or we could buy stakes to go underneath. The guys doing the driveway, could set up pads for the lights while they are doing the haunching for the edgings. Obviously we'd need a bit of ducting through that for the cable. Is this the best way to mount this type of light? What are the pro's and con's of stakes vs a solid foundation? Any thoughts/experience much appreciated. Simon

Black taps and showers throughout - all Geberit. One tap has a tiny chip which I think the plumbers did - I'm not owning up to it! It's hardly visible. We're in a hardish water area and no signs of limescale, except on the Quooker which is only on the filtery bit at the end of the tap and is easily sorted by dropping it in a glass of vinegar once every 3 or 4 months. You can't see the limescale on the outside of the tap. If you buy Geberit or Grohe etc. check around for one of the parallel importers. Don't pay the stupid markups local bathroom centres add to their prcing. Or buy them abroad and have a short break - you'd pay for the short break on a reasonable order. There's plenty of merchants online in France, Belgium, Holland or Germany where you can order and arrange to collect. As per a previous pot, I think there's a £600 limit for goods that you bring back into the UK - and that doesn't include the booze afaik. Simon

Black basalt gravel for us - personally I think the imprinted concrete looks false - bit like real imitation leather aka plastic. A few of our previous neighbours had imprinted concrete and some wouldn't venture out in icy weather as it was so slippy - the posties hate it too. Noooooooooo - that'll make it like a doctors surgery or even worse a funeral parlour... Simon

Don't tell them. If you want to use your cheap rate for heating, have the DHW immersion on in parallel. It's up to you how you use the system once installed. Afaik, all HPs have priority for DHW over heating, so if you are running yours on E7, then if the DHW needs topping up, this will happen first and it could mean you get to the end of the E7 period with the HP not having serviced the heating demand (or not enough of the heating demand). And if you run the DHW outside the E7 window, even with the COP, it will cost more than using E7. In our case on Octopus Go, the cheap rate is 9.5p and the normal rate of just under 30p. So the HP needs to be at at least a COP of 3 which on a cold winter's night will be hard to acheive. Simon

We could show that the cylinders were man enough through the Newark specs, plenty of spare square meterage. As I said, it did take me a while and quite a lot of emails before they came to the same conclusion as us - the reason that the HP hit it's internal maximum working temperature and threw the error was because the sensor was telling it the tank wasn't up to temperature, so it just carried on pumping heat in, raising the temperature until the tank was at the HP internal maximum temperature. Fortunately I had some sensors monitoring things, so could use that as evidence as well. Simon

Yes, that's exactly it. Righto, off in search of a bypass valve..... 😄 Thanks for a great tip. I think you're right, and reading some information on the web, it can happen in smooth coils as well - something to do with non laminar flow kicking it off. Even though we're using PV and the cheap rate Octopus Go for the DHW boost, it would be good to make sure this is fettled for the future, just in case. Simon

That sounds like fun!! What was maddening about our situation was that I had to set out the logic of what it was doing before they'd row back from the sucking teeth and 'you need a new cylinder'! A lot of people that hadn't informed themselves would have simply gone along with the replacement cylinder at another 3 or 4 grand. Simon

Yes - the issues were to do with one of their guys who decided after talking to our sparky that we only wanted UFH connecting, so didn't bring a 3 way valve. They also didn't bring the correct parts to connect to the UFH tank, even though they'd done a site visit, so on the day I had to get out to a plumbers merchant to fetch the parts. I wasn't happy that day. He'd also somehow not got the connections to the temperature sensors right - end result, the ASHP thought things were cooler than they were and kept running. But because the tanks was actually hot enough and getting hotter and hotter, the ASHP finally cut out when the HP internal temperature limit was reached which spits out an alarm and shuts down. Several emails later where they were blaming the tanks and telling me I needed to replace the tanks, they finally accepted my analysis and came and rewired the sensors and things are now working fine. We'd installed Newark ASHP tanks. We do though get some dynamic resonance which is mainly on the DHW tank - a result I think of the fact that Newark use corrugated coils. I need to get to the bottom of this sometime.... Simon

And this has been discussed ad nauseum - is this necessary if the DHW is completely enclosed, i.e. unvented? As an aside, we actually only use the HP for the UFH. I worked out it was still cheaper to use the immersions on Octopus Go as we wanted to run the HP for UFH for as much of the 4 hour cheap Go window as possible, which would mean the HP for DHW working at the expensive rate. Like most HPs DHW seems to have priority over UFH. Simon

We had a full M+E report which has the heat loss analysis. See reply above. It wasn't a part-complete project. (as above). It was an installation prepped for an ASHP. Simon

Sorry should have been clearer. Ours was a self build BUS application, so no rip out of a gas boiler. The DHW and UFH cylinders were already installed as part of the build contract by the builders plumber. So as I said in the first post, the contract was simply to connect up to the existing cylinders. We hadn't intended to install an ASHP until we'd had things up and running for a while, so we were using the immersions (2 in each) in the cylinders and Octopus Go low overnight rate for heating and hot water. The house is almost Passiv Haus. But when we realised self build was also covered by the BUS, we decided to see if we could get a decent price. And at £250 it was a kerching moment!! Simon

Probably but it seems a bit odd. Simon

Unit plus install... 😄 We did spend a lot of time looking around and came across the Cool Energy units via this forum. And don't forget it was only supply and install except for the MCS paperwork. Simon

Interestingly, we received an email from MCS checking the information on our install. I'll copy the email below but first for context, our install was done by Nationwide who seem to be the in house installers for a Cool Energy 9kW ASHP. The hot water cylinder and UFH buffer tank were already installed, so it was simply installing the ASHP and connecting things up to the existing tanks etc. Total cost £5250, so with the grant it cost us £250. Also, we already had all the heat loss calcs, so this wasn't needed in our case. It really was just a plumbing and electrics job - oh! and the MCS paperwork. Took a day to do the install. We did have some issues...... but that's another story. We also had a hard time getting the MCS documentation - in fact it took a threat to report them following the MCS guide with a formal letter. Funnily enough the documentation turned up by return of post. Anyway, here's a copy of the email we received from MCS (I'm disinclined to reply as surely they have all this information and if their records aren't correct - who cares?). ___________________________________________________________________________________________________ We’re contacting you regarding your recent MCS certified renewable installation as part of the boiler upgrade scheme. MCS is a standards organisation. We create and maintain standards that allows for the certification of products, installers, and their installations. MCS is a mark of quality. We’d like to confirm with you that the information your installers have provided for your MCS certificate in your handover pack is correct. Can you please respond to the questions below so we can update our records. 1. Was the installation completed using the Boiler Upgrade Scheme? 2. Date installed/commissioned? 3. Your full address: 4. Air Source, Biomass or Ground Source installed? 5. Installers company name: 6. Heat pump location? E.g., Rear of property, side of property etc. 7. Water tank/cylinder location? E.g., Utility room, airing cupboard etc. 8. Handover pack received? 9. Are you happy with your installation? 10. The £5000.00 grant, was this discounted from your bill, or paid in full and refunded later? ________________________________________________________________________________________________ Strange?