Bramco

The NPPF says that one exception to the Green Belt panning criteria is 'infill in a village'. We were knocked back on our planning application - green Belt infill - but pushed through and went to appeal and won. The appeal outcome basically said the council were flat out wrong in denying us permission in the 1st place. It's all very stressful but there are a lot of folks that have won through in the end - although it takes time. On pre-apps, it depends on your council - ours were pathetic and didn't engage, simply wrote an exam answer about all the things that might be against permission and avoided the elephant in the room 'infill in villages'. We used a planning consultant to rewrite our appeal document in planning-ese. I can put you in touch with him. PM me. Also, if you want to see our planning documents including the appeal etc, PM me and I'll send you the link.

We had a random MCS inspection on our ASHP install - he picked up the fact that the pipes through the wall weren't sleeved - these weren't the flexis. With the constraints we had, we didn't want the bozos doing the install hacking at our lovely corrugated metal cladding, so we'd not let them put in any sleeving. They could just get through, under the bottom edge of the cladding. We had to provide the wall makeup as well as confirmation that we were happy with having no sleeving, so that the MCS guy was happy. So they, or at least he, thought sleeving should have been installed.

Should read. It found Ofgem allowed regional network companies to bolster their profits by not passing these savings onto clients household bills.... There fixed that.

Is it to do with the fact that the temperature of the house air being extracted is 10C - that's pretty cold - my SWMBO would be complaining at that. I wonder if the unit complains because there's no heat in the outgoing air to put back into the incoming air? I'm assuming that the supply air has been a lot lower than 5C for some time as it's showing as 1C from the display.

@peekay only just seen this post, we have the wider IKEA version and are very happy with it. Often only run the fan on setting 1 which works for most things, like doing rice, pasta etc. - on 10 it's like a jet engine but I think they all are. EDIT - and our VAT claim went straight through. It was declared as a separate item to the rest of the kitchen. The only thing on our claim that was pushed back on was the window invoice but the window supplier was very good in re-issuing the invoice and refunding the VAT

We didn't have any additional sensors or switches installed. For us, running on the low speed setting with automatic humidity sensing turned on, on the unit works very well. Standing next to the unit, you can hear it change up a gear when it senses a high level of humidity. If you are concerned you might need additional sensors and boost switches, you could always hide the wiring, so you could add them later. Are you planning on opening widows in your bathrooms? We have a couple with skylights, these clear very quickly. One en-suite has no opening windows, we should probably have had one in there. That one takes about 30 minutes for the steam to clear but we do have a massive Hansgrohe rain shower head in there.

Not sure but on the setting we use it's about 170m3/h - which is fine for us - we have a lot of vaulted ceilings, so while it's 250m2, it's a lot more than normal in terms of volume.

Can't say anything about the Vent-Axia but we have a Zehnder ComfoAir 350 and are very pleased with it. We run it on it's lowest setting with automatic humidity sensing turned on which clears bathrooms quickly. Ours is a similar build but 250m2. Ours was installed by the builders contractor, so no experience with BPC or ADM. I seem to remember a discussion about an issue with one MVHR unit, where the condensate was dripping from the base of the unit and was collecting on a side of the unit away from the drain. Might be worth searching for. Can't remember if it was a Vent Axia EDIT - here it is ->

Agreed but as you say the emonPi2 is a much more accurate device which gives you 6 channels - and, if you care about these things, you'll be buying from a UK manufacturer that really believes in open source software and hardware as well as not forcing you to use a cloud. They also have a very active forum and run the ASHP monitoring site which can be useful to know if yours is running well against other ASHPs in the area.

As @S2D2 said, your best bet would be one of the open energy monitor units - https://openenergymonitor.org/. The emonpi2 is a great bit of kit. Is local, so not cloud based. Easy to install and very accurate. We've been using their kit for years. It can really help to understand how all your systems are working, ASHP, PV, batteries etc. Can also help you track down the elusive base loads that all add up to make bills higher.

+1 for that. Had an IKEA induction downdraft hob now for over 2 years and well pleased with it. All the rest of the appliances are IKEA as well. I seem to remember when buying a new charcoal filter for the downdraft doo-dah, that it was one of the top German makes - will have to check.

Or it could be that one of the committee councillors has a vested interest - owns nearby land or property. This happened with ours, he owned a field over the back of our plot. But that should be declared somewhere - think they have to state that as comment on the application.

We have gray porcelain - the same inside and out. Builder said it would be too slippy but it's a matt finish which is working out OK. SWMBO complains about it wearing out her socks indoors. Easy to pressure wash and keep clean. The only green algae (and it's a v small patch) is on the grouting, so it shows that the porcelain is doing a great job. Having said that, we were very anti anything textured, so porcelain was really the only choice. Also, we'd had natural stone in a rental property and it was a nightmare to keep clean.

It's physics Nick, not numbers. If your panels are at 20deg then they will get less irradiance than panels at 45deg. And apologies if you thought I was dissing the whole installation - I wasn't, I know nothing about it. I was simply giving an alternative view on the angle of dangle, which I thought might be useful to others.... Maybe 'sod all' was pejorative but it is true that you can get a better seasonal spread of output by setting things out at 45 degrees. And FYI, currently we're getting well over 5kW from the 6.5kW ground mounted array in full sun at midday - which is great, means the batteries are topped up and we can do a dump out to the grid (15p) before the cheap rate starts again (7p). A lower angle wouldn't give us that option. Anyway, this is all off topic for the OP.

@Nickfromwales they will do but at that angle they'll do sod all in the winter and not much in the spring and autumn when it would be great to have more. We found via PVGIS that an angle of 45deg gave about the same overall annual output but reduced summer gain and increased winter gain. Ours is a 6.5kWp (12 panels) system. We're in the Green Belt, not as onerous as ANOB but our planning request was accepted without a problem. No request for a biodiversity gain report. Even if there were, most of these ground mount arrays go on a grassy patch. In our case, we don't mow underneath the array, so you could argue that there has been a biodiversity gain, simply by not mowing and allowing that area to 'rewild'. @K44 I'd do some searching on planning applications in ANOBs for biodiversity reports and net gains. There must be some out there. Or if you intend to put up something like the commercial PV systems, simply put in a short statement that there will be no 'loss' as the area under the panels will still be there and that by rewilding that area, there will be a net gain.

Take a look at the ITS Technologies website -> https://www.itstechnologies.shop/. They also do kits. Last time I looked the Frogstar batteries were pretty expensive as against Sunsynk for example. I'm assuming from your handle you're a sparkey - so putting one of these kits on a wall and connecting things up shouldn't bea problem. There are plenty of members that have self installed inverters and batteries.

Try DuckDuckGo. One came up on calculator.net - it's in $s but the principles are the same. Any calculator is going to ask you what your insurance costs are, professional services costs and maintenance costs - when you've got those, you might as well put them in Excel. You can get quotes for insurance, tenant find or management fees and make estimates of maintenance costs. Maybe you need to talk to a few local letting agents.

There must be some around - you're favourite search engine should find them. It's quite easy to set up a quick Excel sheet to do it though. Buildings insurance - we pay about £15/month for 3 bed semis. Tenant find is roughly a month's rent - maybe less since rents have jumped a lot recently. As others have said, using an agent will be about 10% to 15% of the monthly rental. Don't forget empty periods where you'll be paying the utilities bills and council tax. Each month of downtime eats into the annual profit (and don't forget to add a month for another tenant find). If you aren't local, or can't do DIY, then there's finding tradespeople to fix things. And over time, you'll get at least one tenant who wrecks the place. You can take maintenance costs off the rental income and costs for professionals, so tenant find or agency fees - but then you have to add the profit to your income and pay tax at your marginal rate, 20% or 40%. Oh and there's all the other things folks have mentioned - HMO, council landlord fees, etc. etc. etc. And then when you eventually decide you've had enough, there's CGT. You pay more and unlike farmers who have 10 years to pay, you have 2 months to complete the return and pay. George Osborne started the 'government hates landlords' drive - it's not what it used to be. But then again with rents skyrocketing you may be daft not to.

Take off the overflow pipe - the crinkly one top left. We've found that these attract muck, however you orient them. When you pull the plug, a gush of water goes down the main pipe but some flows back into the overflow pipe. Over time the bits of food gather and go rotten. It's a crap job - literally - I've been doing the 'that's odd, I can't smell it' for a few months now......

Plan ahead - get mates rates - have children, interest as many as possible in becoming an architect - pay their study fees and support them through their course and bingo! But also don't expect to be top of the queue when it comes to your build, so if you thought it could be designed quickly, then forget it. Patience is a virtue as they say.

I've just looked and it's 15p/kWh cheap rate and nearly 26p/kWh normal, which isn't as good as the best Octopus rates. Have things gone up?

If you are using MBC, why aren't you using their insulated slab? They know what they are doing. Ours has the UFH pipes installed as part of the slab before the concrete pour. Never heard anything from an SE about having to cut expansion slots or whatever. Not sure what our ground floor is but it's got to be 175m2. Our flow temperature is probably just above 25C. Given you are using the MBC PH build, you must be aiming for PH-ish energy requirements. Why would you run flow at 35C Anyway, the great thing about these slabs are that they are like having a thousand of the old storage heaters which you can batch charge on cheap electricity - probably your plan - but it makes for a v comfortable house. I'd sack off your SE and get MBC to do the slab.

I'd expected you to pick me up on the 'butt doesn't overflow if the pipe is level' comment above - tbh.

Ugly though innit

Indeed... The butt doesn't overflow if the pipe is level - in that case the water overflows internally in the diverter and goes down the drainpipe.