ProDave

Yes but I don't want to be the Guinea Pig testing technology that is not mature enough. One day I will have an EV but not until the technology has matured to meet my needs. When changing one of our cars last year, we thought about a plug in hybrid. My logic was it could run much of it's time on the local journeys purely as an EV but with the range of an ICE car. I was woefully disappointed with the pure EV range of what I found, barely capable of doing the 50 mile round trip to go shopping. So we settled for a mild hybrid as our previous car was.

Tell the English planners to allow wind farms on all major UK hills, just like we have in Scotland, that includes Chilterns, downs, Cotswolds etc. THIS is where more wind power is needed and can be accommodated by the grid, but currently not allowed. So those that say we need more wind farms and we need them quicker, start petitioning the UK government to remove the ban on on shore wind farms in England, and then please don't object to them because you don't think they and their pylons are ugly. I agree, a LOT of our usage could be done by an EV but both our cars need to so long journeys regularly and carry heavy loads or tow something. IF ONLY there was a way for us to have a THIRD car in our household, and EV for all those local journeys, but present car insurance, road tax and MOT would not make that cost effective.

We are not "too stubborn" We have been installing wind and other renewable generation for years, and it is working. What the tree huggers want us to do is stop using oil NOW. That is simply not possible. We are transitioning as fast as we can already. BUT a lot of people, including me, are to some extent put off by "we must change or we will ruin the planet" That puts a lot of people off because it is simply not believed by everyone and not actually proven fact. That added to the fact there is no choice but what we are offered (present EV's I am talking here) are in many ways inferior to what we have now. So trying to "sell" to the non believers you MUST have an EV but by the way this EV will not do all your present vehicle does you will just have to accept that. I am convinced if the move to more renewable electricity generation and more use of electricity for heating (heat pumps) was "sold" to the public as an energy security policy due to our diminishing oil reserves then more people would be likely to adopt it. Fixed usage, like home heating, industry etc is far far easier to switch to electricity without being inferior. So that should be the priority. Transport is much harder. We are not there on the technology yet for an EV to have the range, load carrying or towing capacity and refill/ recharge time anywhere close to present ICE cars. So it really irks me that these are the ones being mandated to switch over first. Why not home heating with heat pumps first? That works and is no worse than a gas boiler so why not mandate that switchover first? Oh and if you want the public on board, stop telling us all how bad we are, and start telling us how much good we have done already, but there is more to do.

If doing a lot of work yourself, then things can be very cheap. e.g. My wet UFH for the 2 bathrooms, the pipe and spreader plates were leftovers from doing the downstairs, so all I had to buy to put wet UFH in the bathrooms was a small manifold a 2 port motorised valve and a few plumbing fittings.

@Jothetaxi what work were you having done? New build? Extension? Other? When I employed a contractor to to the foundations and timber frame erection I was surprised that they asked to see my self build insurance policy. I guess in the event of anything similar happening here, the costs would have been claimed on my self build policy?

I don't get this bin storage lark. Our bin store is round the back of the house, where it is convenient for us to put rubbish from the house into them. The night before bin day, we wheel the approporiate bin to the front of the house and place it adjacent to the road for collection, then bring it back afterwards. I don't see what relevance this is to the planners where your bins reside when not awaiting collection?

I wish I shared your optimism. Sadly, the UK is pretty rubbish at manufacturing things now. You only have to look at the pathetic attempts at getting two Calmac ferries built by a shipyard on the Clyde. It didn't used to be like that, and I am sure it can be like that again, but it won't happen quickly.

What I was talking about is great long tie rods that pass right through a building front to back with a large plate or cross and a big nut on the outside if the building front and back to stop the walls moving further apart. Take a walk round any town or village with lots of old houses and that is what those plates with big nuts are that you will see on many houses. typical example (first stock photo I found on the web)

I think in this case the usual treatment is tie bars through the building holding the walls together. Often seen by a cross or round plate with a big nut on the outside of the building. It would be an SE that specifies that sort of thing usually.

But it's not supporting all of it, there is a gap not supported by this wall yet managing to stay up. What was further to the right in that shot?

We have wet UFH downstairs and wet UFH upstairs only in the bathrooms. We like a cool bedroom 17-18C is fine. Most of the year to keep the bedroom that cool we need to keep the door shut. In the cold weather we have been having for the last few weeks, we occasionally have to open the bedroom door to let a bit of heat up the stairwell in. I fitted an electric point on the wall of each bedroom to fit an electric panel heater should it be required. None have ever been needed.

The only SSR I use is for my solar dump controller. I guess I went into it knowing at the heart of an SSR is some kind of semiconductor that will have a voltage drop when on, and thus dissipate heat. I did not use DNI rail as they have no particular way to get rid of that heat. Instead I used one that has a metal back plate that bolts to a heatsink with some heatsink compound. Even at full power it is barely warm to the touch.

No not normally that much movement. I suspect they have not been fitted properly. Take them off and re fit.

Lets hope it continues to work. Keep us posted. I hope they reduced the bill somewhat as they didn't need to replace the expansion vessels. Re the rattling sound. I had this with my Telford cylinder. There seems to be a conflict that a heat pump demands a very fast water flow rate, that makes the coil inside the tank vibrate and rattle. If you reduce the flow rate so the tank is happy, the rattling stops but the heat pump has a hissy fit because the flow rate is too low. In my case I had an automatic bypass valve which is really there to cover the time the motorised valves take to open. It took a lot of fiddling with the settings on the bypass valve to essentially make it bypass all the time just to keep the heat pump flow rate happy and reduce the flow going through the cylinder.

It is difficult to advice on heat pump wiring as each make is so different. Mine, an LG controls the motorised valves which connect directly to the heat pump. Mine has 3 terminals labelled "motorised valve" which actually turns out to be 2 outputs one for heating and one for hot water. You could use a 3 port changeover valve, but I chose to use individual 2 port valves. So I wired mine according to the heat pump wiring diagram. Then that over heat thermostat on the cylinder. That is a mechanical changeover contact thermostat. So I just connected the normally closed contact in series with the feed to the hot water motorised valve. So normally everything works as it should. But if by chance the cylinder gets too hot, the thermostat would open, breaking the feed to the motorised valve and shutting off any flow of heating water into the cylinder.