Lesgrandepotato

I've had a word with the hydro designer - he's not sure on the detail as he's never designed one before. But he has a relevant degree and a sense of adventure. So frankly I don't know how I'm going to spec it up yet :-) but I have a beck, a culvert and a poorly thought through plan! it appears the peak load of the heating is 14.8kw, so that would suggest an approx 30% duty cycle for the boiler at full tilt hearing. Presumably though for the majority it's going to be significantly below that so perhaps a 5kw background load? Does anyone have a figure on the normal duty cycle of UFH in a regularly insulated building? That would suggest it's running around 30% capacity all the time. So this does suggest that will a bit of work then the hydro should be able to manage the heat load in the shoulder months and summer and we could top up with the two log burners (5kw) each to heat from stone cold? Who can point out the flaws in my logic? Assuming it all holds then if we assume a say 90% efficency on the store then we can work out the amount of energy we need to store and the potential duty cycles...

Right spoke to Telford and a recommended reseller. They have said the following Presssured Mains Coil, 2 Immersions Direct Output (no buffer) Mains DHW coil in the top They have suggest going for 300L + Unvented but they have no view of the size that we could be requiring. Does anyone have any science about sizing these? Or should I just see how big the space is and buy big? We think 3/5kw should be possible from the Pico hydro setup

That's the badger. Painted the garage walls tonight so the racks will go in shortly and the fun can begin. Hoping to use it create some basic scene based lighting for the large open plan spaces and to do some basic common sense stuff around checking for closed doors, tripping on outside lights, turning off the heating when the house knows the doors have been left open or it's expected to be very sunny - massive glazed elevation for thermal gain!

Why are there only 164 litre of water in it? There is a 240l total capacity, with two tanks. Assuming for now that the tank is hot that's 240l of water at 80C, we take out say 10l @ 60c, that will need to be replenished into the store. That would be the same for tank in tank as opposed to coiled heat exchanger? I guess the advantage is simplicity of build and no change of scaling up the heat exchanger? in my mind 240l of tank in tank is the same stored heat as 240l of single tank with heat exchanger? It's still 240 l of water @ 80c? Confused of Cumbria!

Yep. Plan is to take a circa 3kw feed from a pelton wheel from the millstream and run as 'dirty' electric into the immersion element. Boiler is rated at 37kw, I'm hoping/expecting that by buffering in a TS we'll get the best out of the boiler feeding the DHW and UFH as it'll get to run a decent burn and condense properly.

The specs suggest it'll do around 913L in an hour at 60c. (1st hour) and 272l @ 60c in the first 10mins. That should run the bath and a shower at the same time?

Two showers, one in regular use. Family of three in residence. Two adults one small boy

Ok. So assuming the 240l can take the heat load without being always emptied, and I believe it can then if I can get it for around 950ish it's a reasonable deal given it's off the shelf instead of bespoke?

Does anyone have one of these installed? Just getting started and hoping to integrate with nest protect and heatmiser stats.

Hmm. That's the one. The quotes I've had for other tanks have been significantly more expensive! What should I be paying?

Looking at ordering one of these up shortly. House is UFH all the way through. 1970's build with 60mm internal insulation all over, triple glazing and loft and slab insulation. So it's insulated to a modest standard nothing more. This ain't no passivehause! Build has 8 zones of heating and circa 2800sqft of living space with a couple of 5kw wood burners. Plan is to use the existing condensing 37kw oil boiler as a primary heat source, later down the line we'll look at some micro hydro from the millstream as a backstop (thinking circa 2k continuous) we can then augment with an ASHP or similar if we want / need to. Any thoughts?

Hi Ferdinand, that's the stuff. Appreciate we can get it cheaper but we've been trying to spread the spend round a few local suppliers and 17.50 is a decent chunk under 22.50 which seems to be the going rate for a single on the shelf. The other challenge is its a 90mins round trip to wickes, local supplies is a mile away! Nick, big spud towers is fairly monochrome to allow the views to shine through and to give a neutral background to our eclectic furniture... I'm after a simple white finish all over and I like the chalky finish. (It's an old industrial site) good thing is as you say it covers anything and blends in a treat so we'll just touch up on occasion!

We've been getting on well with a 100l of leyland trade brilliant white for fresh plaster. Slightly watered and then a second coat. Looks the part and goes on easy. Managing to get it for 17.50 a tub locally so £175 to paint the whole house seems reasonable value!

Approaching the end of the project and therefore the budget! We have 70 Dow lights to second fix, with circa 30 other lights. 60 double sockets? A weeks work? Two weeks?

Updates will be along soon, just back from a post work painting and bathroom fitting session. it does end at some point doesn't it?

Has it been empty more than 2years? If so then you should be able to get 5% vat on the build as opposed to 20%

Just found my way here after being registered on ebuild. Shame the build is nearly over! I hope :-) Its been quite a voyage of creation. Taking a hideous split level bungalow and creating a barn conversion.

Velfac 29 windows and one door inc 9 French doors and a 3.6m * 4.5m screen. Lots of individual panes which really drives the cost on this system. Triple glazed. £17k Great windows, really pleased, borderline incompetent around supplies some minor fittings. Installation training was a few hundred quid, however they forgot to invoice.. negotiated a refund of a couple of hundred for hassle with this.

What worked for us was to get Velfac to supply an installation engineer to do the first day with our building team to get them skilled up in the system. Well worth the 400 quid it cost. More than I can say for the inordinately expensive compriband tape that we used 800quids worth of!