MikeGrahamT21

We know Solar battery is too much at present, and having a cylinder is going to be a good £1k more than standard combi as far as I know. Its a shame where we can put it is the other side of the house to both the heat generator and the point of use, but not the end of the world, we just need to super insulate the pipes. We've 2 others coming tonight to discuss all options, see what they think about it.

Gas engineers. We've already got 4kw of PV, but we don't currently have a water cylinder.

Got people telling me its not worth getting the extra cylinder, labour etc??

and I guess the killer question, because we dont have a cylinder, is the extra spend going to be worthwhile overall?

Also, is this any good? https://solarimmersion.co.uk/features-of-solarimmersion/ One i'd heard of before was immersun, more expensive than this, but the company seem to have gone bust. This one allows primary as water cylinder, and if we still have excess, we can add a secondary load, even a battery, though not sure how that would work totally in practice, as it doesn't seem like a Solar Battery inverter, so not sure what type battery they have in mind.

Looking at water cylinders, some appear to come as standard with a 3kw immersion heater, do these things accept variable power input? Can't imagine its going to be very often we have a spare 3kw of generation. Or would it be necessary to add our own heater with a lower wattage? Looking on ebay there are much smaller wattage ones, 500, 750 etc, however it would be nice if the 3kw one could be used in a variable manner. EDIT: Think i've found my answer, and thats a yes it does do that: http://vi.vipr.ebaydesc.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItemDescV4&item=263692558672&t=1499859105000&tid=310&category=20715&seller=solarimmersion&excSoj=1&excTrk=1&lsite=3&ittenable=false&domain=ebay.co.uk&descgauge=1&cspheader=1&oneClk=1&secureDesc=0

And I think I should also not discount converting to a system boiler with a water tank and solar diverter, instead of going down the battery route. we’d look at an unvented tank, what sort of size for a 2person household, who use a little more than average hot water? We have 2 concrete posts sticking out of the wall in the loft, which is where the old tank used to be, but they are as far away from boiler and point of use as you can get, I’m guessing the ceiling joists wouldn’t take that kind of loading? Would it matter too much if tank want approx 15m away from the bits that need it?

Yeah it’s definitely a new thing for sure, this boiler has been on the market for a couple of years, keep seeing it advertised in my free building mags, started with 3yr warranty and has slowly worked to 8yrs. I’ve read somewhere the flue heat recovery has been put into building regs requirements from April this year, not looked into that yet but will have a read tomorrow. ill not forget this one, but what mainstream boiler would you recommend? Must have opentherm as we can make full use of that, and be combi, other than that I’m open to options. really not sure how much to spend on this 10yr old ideal boiler, no one rates it well even tho we’ve had virtually no issues with it, so gotta have a plan in place for every eventuality. Annoyingly had insurance last year but didn’t carry it on as they wanted near £30 a month!!

Other day our boiler started leaking, it’s the notoriously bad ideal isar he24, but it has lasted 10 years, bar a PCB change I did last year £50 off eBay, this time the manifold valve has gone, £100 for parts and it’s tricky to replace so labour is going to be high, we’ll see what the quote is anyway... ive already done some research for this point in time and have come across the Johnson and Starley HR24C but can’t find any pricing for it anywhere, it’s labelled as the worlds most efficient boiler without requiring additional components due to it having the flue heat recovery system built in, in a standard size case. has anyone come across this particular model before, or any Johnson and starley boiler? Anyone know a buy price? any info would be great, likely going to have to move fast on this, all I know is it does everything we need, opentherm etc, but if it’s extortionate then will have to rethink. found info on a site about green deal, if it still exists, this boiler qualifies for £1000 back, as it classed as two energy saving measures, only issue is we already have a condensing boiler, so may only get the flue heat recovery component, going to ring the firm up tomorrow and ask Mike

We do 10Gb OM3 between Core switch and the edge cabs these days to provide A 10Gb backbone, but then it’s copper to the desktop

Dont bother with fiber, its extremely expensive to terminate, and if not done properly it won't work. Theres nothing in a home which requires that kind of bandwidth, so just stick with CAT6 (the low smoke version). I install HPE Aruba Modular switching in my day job, and often do 10GbE installs, but they are only useful if you are pushing a huge amount of data, i.e. multiple stations streaming full HD, and even then it doesn't get saturated, in fact the most useful thing for 10GbE is iSCSI SAN installs, where you can really use the bandwidth in a Hyper-V environment. In a house, i just don't see a use for this.

I would be very keen on something so important, to be buying in a certified product, rather than crossing my fingers with poured concrete, I mean what if a few air bubbles get stuck in it?!?

That is a beautiful house! Well done for all the hard work on it. And the area looks stunning too, very lucky people! ?

Wow, glad you noticed all that and got it sorted, id say a near miss?!?! Are you sure whoever is putting your house up is up to the job?

Came across these on ebay last night, still the same LiFePO but these support 100% DoD, same batteries used on the London Buses apparantly: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/BYD-B-Plus-2-56kWh-Solar-Battery-storage-100-DOD/322754585457?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649 Still a bit top heavy on price, but not too bad considering the 100% DoD?

Thats an aircrete trench block, will be 7N at most. Definitely wrong as a pier for the house to sit on

Not a problem. I used Marmox many years ago as a tile backerboard, and I had no idea they could be used as a drylining board, until i stumbled across instructions on their website. Its a revelation! They are super lightweight, brilliant for a 1 man installation such as mine, and even better you can create curves with very little cost + effort. Sd value is 3.2m, not quite as high as some VCLs, but this will be more than enough to stop vapour moving in to the wrong places ? I too am using Marmox for the inside of an extension with external wall insulation applied, as the internal VCL and drylining in one.

Have you considered something like a Marmox Multiboard/Wedi Building Board? These are used in the same way as plasterboard, but have integral XPS which forms a VCL (as long as the joints are sealed with marmox multibond), and can be plastered direct, the same as a plasterboard. Come in a variety of thicknesses too, dependant on how much insulation you want.

For me, ban wood burners completely, even existing ones (maybe im biased though because it means we can't even have MVHR since smoke is all around us in the winter)! They are far too dirty for the modern era, people only use them because they are cheap to run!

This is probably not the case with them being brand new, but I often find when the bottom of our bath gets a tiny covering of limescale on it, it gets rather slippy, quick go with the cillit bang, and its grippy again, worth a shot even if its just on one of them to try.

Correct me if im wrong, but with block > Cavity > Brick, and 100mm cavity, you can only go a max of 50mm with standard PIR boards (for building control). There are products such as Xtratherm CT-PIR which is designed to full fill, but its insanely expensive, and is a very specific product for fully filling a cavity.

Seconds and Co sell through ebay too, sometimes even cheaper than their website. Question: Some of their boards of non foil faced, so no vapour control layer, would this be OK for suspended timber floor, where we don't need the reflective coating for heat, and we are putting in a proprietary AVCL anyway?

I’m not too bothered about the acoustic, though that’s only because we make the most noise lol. If we are quiet we can often hear phone conversations. But it’s another added benefit. I’ll see how much they want, the £300 quote was from 2 years ago, can’t imagine it being that much more now, and if it’s funded all the better, it certainly won’t harm the building it can only improve it. We also have a few nasty cold spots on the party wall which I am positive this will sort. If the guy changes his mind the only the only other option will be IWI and that will be expensive and probably not as effective, plus we’ll lose thermal mass which currently keeps us nice and cool in the summer

Sealing would be almost impossible retrofit. Yes definitely would only use the fluffy stuff on this, we had one firm trying to do eps, but it would be horrid for sound transmission. expected outlay is around £300, they quote £90 a year saving, but that’s way out. Going to see if we can get any funding for it. so you reckon it’s not worth it then? It’s always hard to gauge how much these type things will make a difference, if it’s cheap enough though and won’t cause any upheaval inside the house then I’ll take a punt on it, at least we will have insulation all round then as a complete solution

Leeds Met did some research on it years ago, they also assumed party wall was a 0 uvalue element, but then found out that its actually a very high heat loss component, due to what they now call the party wall bypass effect, blocks on both sides heat up, warm the air in the cavity, and because its not sealed, it rises, and draws in cold air, continually cooling the blocks down, and hence you get massive heat loss. You also see on the roof tiles, above this cavity, any frost/snow always melts there first. I put my hand inside the cavity this February, and my word the amount of heat in there is slightly insane!