ProDave

When booking the next person, say you want a "G3 service" If they mumble, pause, or say "what" they are not the right person. Before that, when the system is next cold and reading 0, you could try reading the pressure at the valve on the top with a car tyre pressure gauge and tell us what reading you get. It might just need topping up.

Distance from the coast. I found that in Oxfordshire, in winter like this last week, it can get very cold, Benson was -8 earlier in the week. And in a summer heat wave it can be one of the hottest places without the coastal influence to moderate things. That "inland" effect is very evident in the mid west USA. for my sins I had 4 weeks just outside Chicago in summer, and found it unbearably hot, you really wanted to be in an air conditioned building or car to be comfortable. Then i went again for 2 weeks in December and found it unbearably cold. When I mentioned the cold a local said something like "cold, this isn't cold, you wait until it gets below 0" (he was talking Fahrenheit) I did wonder how much spring and autumn fall they had where the temperature was pleasant. I suspect not much.

Okay keep the container as a store cunningly hidden by the new workshop built in front of it.

Drag the container to somewhere it will be accessible, then build the new workshop. Might annoy the neighbours a bit until the container has finally gone.

If you are happy with the container, clad it with nice wood cladding, put a window in one side and tell here the new workshop is finished. If you really want a new workshop, it is obvious, the new workshop is NOT built where the container is, so the container can remain until the new workshop is complete and everything moved, only then can the container go. This is the very reason we got the static caravan included with our planning with permission to retain it. It does look better than a shipping container.

Yes, already proven here. Very early on in the build I confirmed the heat loss calculation was correct by leaving a single electric convector heater of known power on and plotting internal vs external temperature for several days. That gave me the Dt for a given power input, which tied exactly with the calculations. In any event I bought a 5kW ASHP to satisfy a max demand of just over 2kW. For me the only leap of faith was no heating in the bedrooms. SWMBO likes a cool bedroom about 18 degrees. Usually we have to keep the bedroom door shut to keep it down to that. In this cold spell we had to open the bedroom door occasionally to let a little bit of heat in, and still achieved the required temperature with no actual heating there.

Get all the kick boards off and go around the whole room perimiter with a can of spray foam and fill the gap between the walls and floor especially where the drain pipe goes down. It sounds like there is insulation under the floor boarding, but the (sadly usual) lack of attention means there are likely to be cold draughts getting in from almost anywhere between the wall to floor junction.

Only a mere -8 here last night and not been above 0 for several days. Snow well over 12" drifted deeper in places. I shovelled the snow off the balcony today as I was getting concerned at the weight. Still able to get in and out. The gritter made an appearance today followed not long after by the postman, but yesterday's bin collection did not happen. Local mountain pass shut and A9 north of Helmsdale shut then open then shut...... Still toasty warm inside. But this is "normal" winter weather here so no surprises been here before. A power cut now would not be fun, I would be back and forth to the wood shed frequently if that happened. No sign of an end to the cold snap for another week here. As to be expected, I have not seen the ASHP need to defrost while it stays below 0. RH inside house starting to drop, about 32% now.

So the ASHP is consuming 1.6kW to heat the house, assuming a COP of 3, that will translate to 4.8kW of heat delivered to the house. It is very cold at the moment. Our very well insulated 150 square metre house needs about 1.5kW of heat at the present sub zero average outside temperature. So your house is larger, older and no doubt less well insulated, so 4.8kW of heat does not seem at all unreasonable. Don't expect to reduce that significantly other than as above move to a smaller much better insulated house. What exactly does that mean? surely not the heat pump is set to heat water to 88 degrees? Sounds very like it does not have the right sort of hot water tank for a heat pump. Not much you cn do there as the system is not your to make alterations to. It sounds like your expectations of the property are not matching reality, and as above again, all you can do is move to a better property.

If you still have the old type of ball cock valve that shuts off the water slowly and can take ages dribbling to fill the last little bit before shutting it off, then change if for a modern fill valve, that will fill at full flow until quickly shutting off when full. You will never again want to go back to the old slow ballcocks.

So that is not a rainwater pipe, but outflow from a bathroom? Bodgit and scarper plumbers strike again. Replace that downpipe with the proper round downpipe that will mate with the other black pipes all the way down.

Cuddle Puddle

They may be a reputable company for complete light fittings, but I have not found spares on sale anywhere yet. Perhaps try contacting Siteco directly and asking them if they can supply you with a new driver?

Most likely to be the driver. Trouble is I can't find that exact driver anywhere. The important thing is you want a constant current driver set at 145mA or an adjustable one that can be set to that. Most I have found are 300mA or more. Then it has to be small enough to fit in the space occupied by that one. If it were mine, I would open up the case of that driver which may involve cutting it open of the plastic is welded or glued shut. Like @Temp my money is on a failed capacitor or 2 which is probably repairable. Even if you then had to glue the case of the driver back together. P.S the U Out 340V DC makes one not trust much of what is written on it.

Can you post a closer picture of the Sireco module. Even if I zoom in, it is too fuzzy to read the numbers.

That looks like a 1W switch (simple on /off) A 2 way switch would have another terminal in that hole circled in red. For the few p you save I only buy 2 way switches

How much did you use in your house? No more than 500M in mine, if that, and by buying new offcuts you can get it pretty cheap. e.g 90 metre "offcut" for £60 with postage https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/316187121886? 5 of those would have done my entire house. At that price, just put it in, it gets used, or if not, you have not wasted much.

I used to build industrial control systems and there is a defined risk assessment that considers likelihood of a failure and consequence of a failure to determine what sort of control system was required. For most of what we did (machines that could kill if the safety systems failed) that was 2 contactors in series, with a safety relay monitoring the state of the contactors and would not allow the machine to start if it detected one of them had a stuck contact. Now given a boiling unvented cylinder could explode and kill someone if the safety systems failed, I would not want to be the one standing up in court explaining how I designed my own 24V contactor driven "safety" controls rather than using industry practice as described in the installation manual. I did encounter an ASHP installed to it's manufacturers instructions (I forget which make / model) and that connected to the immersion heater in the UVC WITHOUT a thermostat on the immersion heater itself. I was most uncomfortable with that, but I neither installed it or altered it, just observed what was fitted.

I am not familliar with the heating system you propose. Is it warm air heating delivered by the MVHR? If so previous discussions suggest to deliver enough heat it will have to run at much faster flow rates than normal mvhr. I would put those UFH pipes in and go that way. You will almost certainly only need that on the ground floor as we have. What do the heat loss calculations say is the heat input needed on the coldest winter day you can expect?

Does your heat pump expect to connect to the immersion heater? If so that dictates a lot of the controls and you have to work or adapt around that. In my case the ASHP does connect to the immersion heater (though I have disabled all use of that in the settings) and it does so with a control box supplied with the heat pump, which contains a contactor and mcb's. To integrate that with my PV dump controller, I modified the supplied box to single pole switching, so only switching immersion L via the contactor, and then connected a solid state relay in parallel with the (now single pole) immersion contactor switched from my dump controller. The use of a remote SSR for the dump controller was a big motivation for making my own. The immersion heater will have it's own normal thermostat and secondary over heat protection should that one fail. The cylinder mounted thermostat with a probe in a cylinder pocket is to protect the cylinder from over heating when fed from an external heat source, so should be wired to close the motorised valve on the cylinder input coil if the cylinder is overheating.

Okay 1 more. First self build, over 20 years ago now. Originally planned a square shower tray. UFH pipes laid out to suit that. Floor marked with big marker pen showing where every single pipe was. Changed plans. Decided on rectangular shower. Waste in a different place. Cutting the hole for the waste, a fountain of water started to come from under the floor. Yep I had failed to see my own markings and cut right through an UFH pipe.

Neither. For simple white switches, I don't think you will beat Click Mode for quality, value and reliability. But Screweys don't sell them. Toolstation do. https://www.toolstation.com/click-mode-10a-switch/p73508 A little "quirk" of these switches is the switch mechanism can be removed from the plate, enabling you to mix normal and intermediate switches on the one plate. Almost like a grid switch.

As above , if it is just a workshop / shed (i.e. you don't intend to fit a car in it) I would be very tempted to have two buildings within the size limits for permitted development and not requiring building regs. Given the aparent L shaped nature of the garden from your plan, I would personally tuck the building(s) just around the corner to the right so not obstructing the straight run of garden from the house.

Yes is does sound like it is not shutting off. Only way to find out for sure is remove it, then you might as well fit the new one. PITA having to drain down to do so.

^^^^ Ah yes safe zones. Everybody know never to drill a hole in a safe zone without checking first. Except the person hanging something on the wall, and then of course they measure meticulously to ensure the thing they are hanging exactly lines up with the centreline of the switch. BULLSEYE