Bramco

Same here - we left a duct over a culvert but didn't bother digging the trenches - eventually dumped the cable and manholes on a neighbour who is just starting building. 4G modems are less than £150 we use a GL-X750 Spitz (excellent) - look it up on Amazon. EE seem to have better download speeds than 3. Why not try this to see if it is enough before starting your trenches. If you want to test the signal from 3 and ee, then buy a £10 payg data sim and check the signal with an app - try Mastdata or Cellmapper. And you need to walk round the site to see where the best spots are. Simon

Is 0.18 still a requirement? We're at 0.22 from the electrical certificate from the build. So quite a bit above 0.18. Simon

Be interested - assume you'll report back. I've got 1 string of ours functional, so under the 4kW limit but will hopefully have the 2nd string working in a week or so - the last panle on the pallet was smashed, so trying to get a replacement.... Simon

Not exposed at all - and there's a couple of big ash trees not too far away to the north. But if we'd balanced the array on a 16m pole, then it would be a little more exposed - but I'd be questioning what to do about stability in a gale... 😄 Simon

Lightning protection. Simon

It's a diy install, hence the question. From the panel spec sheets, the frames need to be earthed. So it's really this aspect and they are connected very firmly to the frame which is mounted on the poles in the ground. They're only a metre long, so no ladders needed but I did slip one of the builders a few quid for him to wield his massive sledgehammer. Think as a pensioner, I'd have managed a couple a day.... He had it done in 15 minutes - he did look knackered towards the end! Simon

Yes. And thanks for the quick response. Simon

Hi, Just about to mount the PV panels on a ground mount which consists of 16 metre long galvanised poles hammered into the ground with the structure attached above. A very similar arrangement to the one @billt showed in @ProDave's post from 2018 The question is, given the amount of steel in the ground, do I need an earth rod? Simon

Our UFH is ground floor only, so we put electric UFH and electric towel rails in the upstairs bathrooms. The electric UFH is set to 19 and has only occasionally come on at night during the really cold spells. The towel rails haven't been on at all - so probably and expensive option - but they do look nice.... Simon

Hi Mike, For this type of application, I reckon if you just used them without calibrating, then you wouldn't know the difference. If you were using them to measure something that needed an exact temperature, then it would be necessary. For a central heating/cooling application, you're deciding on a setpoint according to how the house/room feels. if c above is 0.2 or 0.3 out, then your heating/cooling would kick in a bit higher or lower temperature and you'd adjust the setpoint accordingly. Accuracy is great but maybe a bit of overkill for this application? Simon

I'm no expert, but I think a lot of them are simply a switch, so the switch is closed to indicate a call for heat, i.e. NO. Also, there's normally only 2 wires going from the thermostat to the heating wiring centre, so you wouldn't be able to get both the NO and NC signal to the centre. Wireless thermostats might be a way of doing what you suggest.

18 B20s? if so they don't need calibration but you do need a microcontroller based system to read the them. I was planning to put in some tubes but didn't get round to it - so we'll see if actually need to run the UFH in cooling mode - although I can't see how you can do this with standard thermostats - they want to heat, not cool - so you'd have to have a separate system that could switch off the thermostat control and introduce a cooling control - you won't get your standard ASHP engineer or plumber specc'ing that for you. Simon

Welcome to the club!!! It's worth asking the architect if all of it is really necessary - can it be pared down to the absolute minimum. There's tendency with this stuff as we found out, to massively over-specify it. It's timber frame must go everywhere surely!!!! We got ours down to a reasonably sensible minimum - but the first ideas were crazy. Simon

Surely, they can simply set the ASHP to Heating only? Although, I guess they have trained their teams to do an 'install' which would always include the plumbing to the DHW tank coil. Simon

IKEA do 800, as well as 400 and I think there are units with pull out internals narrower than that. Check out the on-line configuration tool. If you want 600 tall units at either end, with a sink in counter height units with wall units above, then you will need cover panels as you switch from full height to the middle section. From memory, these are 18mm and would need to be accommodated. Simon

I'm guessing you asked a company with the term 'renewables' on their web site. Today's double glazing salesmen. Our coolenergy was £5.2k installed - the UFH buffer tank and DHW tank were installed by our main contractors plumber. With the BUS £5k grant it cost us £200. We had to make sure that the electrical connections were in place - these were done by our main contractors electrician. Simon

Two! 60cm -> https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/foerdelaktig-induction-hob-integrated-extractor-ikea-500-black-50534854/ 80cm -> https://www.ikea.com/gb/en/p/foerdelaktig-induction-hob-integrated-extractor-ikea-700-black-90534852/ But prices have gone up since we bought ours last year - now a 1/3 of the Elica....

Everyone to their own - it's a weird world where 4x the price means status. I'll bet you're a B&O status person as well....

Same with the IKEA one - you could have 4 IKEA ones in your kitchen for the price of the Elica! Bramco

Thanks - will look into this to see if I can force longer runs on the odd occasion that the thermostats take over control! Simon

Another option Adam that I've considered is to add a delay timer into the thermostat circuits. These are the kind of things that keep a bathroom fan running when you've turned off the light. Although we've mostly overcome the cycling caused by the thermostats turning on and off too much/quickly with the way we're scheduling them if we had a delay time in the circuit, then it would prevent the call for heat being switched off by the thermostat after a few minutes. For your situation, you could maybe lower the target temperature and make sure with the delay that the ASHP runs for at least say 30 minutes. So ensuring the HP runs more efficiently. Simon

We run ours differently as well. And our system is slightly different - a larger buffer tank and no auto-balancing actuators (there's a recent thread on whether these are actually useful for ASHPs with UFH). The other main difference is that our UFH loops are incorporated in the insulated slab - so probably our system is slower to heat up and cool down than UFH in screed. We have 12 loops and 3 zones with Tado thermostats - and just like you @Adam2 the thermostats tend to cycle on and off which means the ASHP cycles too much. We've solved this more by chance than good management. We're on Octopus Go, so we scheduled the thermostats to 22 degs from 00:30 to 04:30 on the 7p tariff. This was fine in the autumn and I could see from some monitoring of the various temperatures that the ASHP runs continuously for 4 hours and the slab is loaded with heat. As things got colder, I added another scheduled period from 15:00 to 19:00 again at 22 deg. This didn't cause cycling most of the time - the exceptions were on sunny days where we get a lot of heat into the house from the large south facing windows. Obviously also, when it's really cold the HP goes through it's defrost cycles, so doesn't run continuously. When the thermostats aren't scheduled for 22 degs, they're in frost protection, so no chance that there will be a call for heat. I should add that we use solar PV and the 7p tariff for DHW, so the ASHP is on Heating only. So basically, we've almost got round the fact that the thermostats are less than ideal with a HP through scheduling things. I would really like though to have a much wider window between the call for heat and the thermostats saying they are up to heat. One idea from another forum would be to use the wiring to the thermostats as the wiring for DS18B20 temperature sensors hooked up to a suitable microcontroller and have that switch the call for heat to the wiring centre. It could even be done with wireless temperature sensors like the Sonoff ones (there are plenty of other makes) which are pretty cheap. Obviously this isn't an off the shelf solution but should be quite easy to implement. Simon

That looks like the manual that can be downloaded from their web page. Also, what's the installer password - that's something I've not been able to get out of them... Simon

There already is one - with all the theory -> https://docs.openenergymonitor.org/pv-diversion/introduction/choosing-an-energy-diverter.html I've had the software for the MartinR version running for several years. You do need to make the SSR board but it's not rocket science. Simon

But do they? Our flow temperature at the moment is 29deg and the return temperature is 26deg - what would an auto balancing actuator do? Turn off? If so, then we'd stop trickling heat into our insulated slab which wouldn't be great. Which was why the original question - are they intended for applications where the emitters lose heat rapidly, i.e. radiators or UFH in screed. Maybe being thick but I can't see how they would work with an insulated slab where heat is lost very slowly to the house and basically you want to keep it at or around the same temperature most of the time. Simon