RichardL

Layout Downstairs Dining room - 6m x 4m room, with staircase Upstairs landing - 4m x 4m directly above the dining room and connecting to 3x bedrooms, 100% electrically heated - Dining room:A2A, Bed1: A2A + Bed2/3: Infrared panels Challenge The challenge - the bedrooms have their own heating and fine, the landing however has a cold spot by the window (where its traditional wet radiator was & your traditional cold spot) The original plan was the A2A in the dining room downstairs, + B1 might flow into all upstairs areas - but in actuality I suspect the air is just reaching equilibrium and not moving. Proposal/thought A vent between the dining room and the landing immdiately above it - its the other side from the stairs so - posit - might setup a convection loop. I'm assuming the vent will be different air flow capacity to the staircase, being orders of magnitude smaller, so one will prefer to let the warm air downstairs up and/or the colder air upstairs down & only then reach equilibrium when the heat is more evenly distributed between the two? Sound transfer between floors is not an issue. Sure - naive simple thinking with no maths and no experience in modelling air flow Its also potentially a simple project with 15cm of duct and vents top/bottom and wondered if its worth a play? Q How do I learn more about convection between rooms or ducting rules of thumb?

Have you got a remote bathroom somewhere with its own local water heater? It would only fire up when the water cools or someone uses a tap.

Theres a ledge/cill to go in the outside surely although the window would sit on that normally - have they measured for a cill and not fitting it?

This - for now... If the batteries are charging they're not discharging and if yesterday was sunny then overnight they'll have some residual to reduce the overnight top up. Keeping an eye on the overall draw from the grid with batteries/immersion and car all pulling at the same time. I still think a time of day based system is simpler than relying on layers external infrastructure/cloud to be up and talking to each other, You just have to look at solis inverter forums for the regular changes/breaks and downtime on their offering, I suspect others are similar or at least out of the consumer's control? I can only offer it IS possible to keep it simple - for the moment.

Is your EV sitting in the drive when the sun is shining? I found it easier to charge the car on the known off peak overnight, along with water heating and let the PV/Batteries time shift some of that off peak to run the house. Granted it depends how much PV you have and if the car is there when the sun is shining vs. a work destination. Not yet bought into the over complex cloud solutions/integration.

Certainly air leakage - its not obviously drafty inside, but in the floor space and loft space theres no issue with ventilation - eaves seem to let air through to both areas relatively freely.

Around 1' -18" thick.. outside - stone facing cement/roughcast render, from what I saw when re-tiling I suspect rubble infill. The bedrooms sit half in the roof space, both have a gable end wall / end of the house.

Hi - looking for pointers: I have a couple of rooms in a solid stone walls part of the house with 2x and 3x external walls respectively, one has the inside of the chimney stack. I can keep them warm if I push in enough energy - but overnight in winter they drop back to 12ºC at the drop of a hat. Room floor sizes ~3m x 3m I have external insulation elsewhere but it's not possible/desirable for this part of the house so thinking internal insulation. Ceilings above to loft are insulated. Question Is IWI a potential DIY job - battens/insulation materials followed by a professional to skim/plaster? Drilling/cutting boards etc I can do. Can anyone recommend any products to shortlist - especially thin as possible options, any build up needs to be <10cm per wall or I'm stealing a lot of internal space. Many thanks;

Re the water - makes sense, Go for a fixed short glass screen - perhaps 30cm then shower curtain. The fixed screen isn't too deep so you can still get to the taps & catches most of the water, didn't go for a hinged screen re leaks (to your points), just a curtain that hangs inside the tub. e.g. this was the bathroom from our old house with a Bette Set tub, that room was probably about 2m x 2m, Loo is on the left outside shot. Boxing in is to hide pipes & match the window cill - the LHS was an outside wall. After refurb ~2006 After real life use when we sold the house ~2017 For fun - this is the before picture - nice corner tub in green with gold taps & carpet... is that retro cool yet ? After living with the corner bath for a year or so - they're super uncomfortable!

+1 for the shower/bath... Bette used to make nice shaped square one end/flat bottom tubs. In a smaller bathroom I went for a square ended steel bath and shower at one end of it rather than squeezing in a shower cubicle. There's no substitute for space giving that feel of a little luxury vs. too much stuff.

What do you actually 'need' in a power-cut, Understood - depends on your local situation - how often you get them and how long for etc.. Freezers will last a fair while if sensible about opening them, Cooking can be put off usually until power comes back/live on cold snacks .... Think it through and work out if a full blown house disconnect and backup is worth it, vs (in my case) an off the shelf UPS which keeps the internet router up for work for a couple of hours and laptop/phone batteries maintaining a similar uptime. Medical equipment accepted - I'd assume that sort of kit has its own local backup option rather than relying on a whole house/site solution?

Consider a new back to the cupboard to hide most of it, removable inside, it looks like most of it would be behind the old back-wall of the cabinet. Assuming the plumbing is functional.

+1 THIS, now is the time to overthink things, make lists & decisions - sleep on them - and re-visit and simplify a few times before finalising. It's going to be much cheaper now than after contractors are on board.

External wall insulation on timber frame I can recommend, it transformed part of our house into a space that could actually keep heat inside vs. before the upgrade it just wouldn't go above 15ºC in the winter no matter how much heating was on! I would even go so far to recommend the firm we used in Blackwood, South Wales - for the EWI only though which they do themselves and pretty good job. (Take care if they sub-contract any part of the job) https://eliterenderingsystems.co.uk

That works - much better than measure everything guess materials - for existing builds. IMO you'd have a much better chance of a. making that work with installers, b. be understandable by the customer - than the current standard approach. I don't doubt the latter (measure heat loss & calc sizes etc) works - it needs work on making it transparent and be seen to be working.

I don't know - seems part of the problem is a mistrust, or can't be bothered/afford to learn, or can't measure accurately heating requirements using the extrapolate from materials/rooms sizes etc method. For whatever reason that approach (fabric measuring) wasn't used on pre-heat pump sizing - the trades/installers - just scaled up to make sure there was enough. Just because heat pumps amplify the rule-of-thumb & experience methodology is not good enough - that on its own won't drive change before the heat pumps get a bad name for themselves (already happened) A rule of thumb method - even the controlled test Tech.Connections did may work better to ramp up use of heat pumps? I don't think I'm a luddite re methodology - just looking at what happens on the ground. Post-note - you could regulation the heck out of it and try and make that regulation mandatory (see MCS) - That doesn't tend to solve the problem though - I suspect it needs a simpler rule of thumb/sizing methodology.

+1 This, concur - I get very similar numbers when its near/below freezing. So far comparable with oil and I'd only expect that behaviour for 2-3 months a year - 6 tops. If it did that for 12 months I'd be phasing the radiators and oil boiler back in.

Often if you google the specific model number & pdf, install, user etc/ Either the manufacturer site, or other reseller sites have the user guide and install manuals available.

Similar feeling to above post by @Gill Mitsubishi A2A - tried Melcloud for about 5 minutes - its not designed for home heating control really & anyway, feels more like large multi-site control. Central heating control over the cloud isn't something that makes sense to me. Monitoring solar over the cloud, sure, but control - nope - to many stacks of infrastructure in the way of reliably heating my house. Reverted to using contactless control on each unit and a shelly to switch them on off. If you use MAC-3971 units you can have 2x dry contacts for on/off and heat/cool - which is perfect for control by a shelly Uni. A central oldschool single timeclock has a shelly i4 to distribute that single timed switching to 3 zones in the house and we're back to square one with simple single timer central heating control. i.e. - one clock for the whole house - simple up to 3x a day on/off - simple on/off/auto/all day setting Another shelly i4 and control box will also provide a central 'heat cool' and 'we're out/in' buttons - work in progress. The remotes that came with the A2A units all still function if you need a local override.. DHW I left on immersion - 60p of electric on an overnight tariff tops it back up - not sure its worth getting more complex than that.

Is this a thing? How does it work.

Air pressure is a thing - Rather than the cold exhaust fan facing the other opening - can you position the machine so the exhaust is near it - in it almost? i.e. so the path of least resistance (ideally the only path) for the air is out of the building? (Path of least resistance may well not be a straight line) I would guess (check with an expert) the exhaust fan is not expecting to generate any pressure - so ducting is probably? not an option. If that cold air finds a way back to the radiators easier than the relatively warm air from outside you'll have a problem.

I used https://www.herschel-infrared.co.uk/product/select-xls-white/ XLS ones need power to the panel, and then an option of battery or wired stat which communicates to the panel wirelessly - i.e. simplifies wiring if thats useful. My 2mx2m shower room has the 300W 30cm x 90cm. Their own thermostats also have time clocks and the mains ones will talk to an app via wifi if thats your thing. Personally I use their stats in manual mode for temp control and switch the panel power off/on via a central oldschool time clock. Avoiding a proliferation of timers in the house & any reliance on cloud (This isn't by any means the cheapest place to buy IR panels, but I've no idea if the cheaper ones are the same thing)

Option - Noted the dryness comments which this may not help; Small 300W Infrared heating panel on the ceiling of my, again small 2mx2m shower room does a good job of heating the space. Not instant heat - takes a few minutes but that is resolved with a timer for the must have morning rush - does the job of removing the chill when stepping out of the shower. It's a flat white panel - you wouldn't notice it apart from the radiated heat.

My experience buying for a Bathroom conversion and home office DIY: Shutters Blinds/Shutters - Hilary's are pot luck re your installer and charge a premium of course. If you order the wrong product or get the wrong installer its a nightmare (family experience) Seems like everything is sourced in china anyway so your looking at 6 weeks-2 months on delivery. I used 'California Shutters' (https://www.californiashutters.co.uk) - which are decent enough, needed some fitting into the frame, but thats up to you how tight you go on dimensions/how square your frames are etc. You have to get that order right first time and no-one to look at if it doesn't fit! Also if you're unlucky (top right my picture) some surface damage in shipping which I had to rectify - they did offer and good response / options - however I opted to fix it vs. weeks delay on a replacement part. Rollers Not keen on rollers - pleated blinds are worth a look & blinds to go very good - quick/good products https://www.blinds-2go.co.uk/pleated_blinds.htm Again ownus is 100% on getting the order spec right first time & eyes open re fitting in/around lintels etc. Depends on what your into - above may give some options?

A2A Personally I run the indoor units when I'm in that part of the house: - Core of the house - on all day at the weekend, but only in the mornings during the week, - Living room/home office all day when working from home - but on demand at the weekend, - Bedrooms to top up in the evening until I sleep. I'm coming from a background/habit of never heating the house overnight though, + insulated but moderately leaky house & combined with A2A units can heat up a room in 20-30 minutes personally don't see the need to keep them on 24/7. It's a sort of 'depends' answer. (Zones is a very loose concept in a house though - they all affect each other especially when you're heating by moving air)