ProDave

My take is we have to do what we reasonably can. That is somewhere between the environmentalists that think we can all stop burning oil tomorrow and we only carry on doing so because we like doing so, and those that think it is all a load of nonsense. If for no other reason than we can't just go on burning oil because it will run out. so lets be sensible and transition to renewable energy as quickly as we reasonably can. What continues to bug me is WHY such high figures keep coming up for fitting heat pumps? Yes if you have to completely change your heating system then costs can add up, but as a self builder building a new house, whatever system I fitted i wanted under floor heating and a hot water tank. So it was literally choose an oil boiler and an oil tank (no gas here) or an ASHP. There really was no additional cost, in fact I think my ASHP cost less than an oil boiler and tank would have done. With the grants for ASHP's at the moment I see exactly what happened with solar PV and the FIT. Installed prices to customers were inflated to it was largely the installers benefiting from grant not the customer. When the FIT was scrapped, solar PV prices fell, and without the MCS cartel being mandatory, anyone could fit them. There should be no ifs no buts, oil and gas boilers should be banned from new builds now. As i have shown, there really is no price penalty to pay for an ASHP in a new build, so there should be no need for any form of grant. Just write it into building regs, no fossil fuel boilers.

I am sure I raised this before. All we hear are politicians complaining about the 400 job losses if Grangemouth closes as a refinery. I have not heard one raise an energy security issue with it's closure.

Start by finding out what competent person scheme the electrician is registered with. Are the electrics complete or is this ongoing work?

When we built the last house, we wanted a side by side Fridge Freezer. We bought one as a package from the kitchen company. When it arrived and we started fitting the kitchen there was a problem. The FF was too deep. In spite of even saying on the box "fits a standard 600mm deep unit" it did not, it was more like 700mm deep plus the thickness of the doors. The solution was the kitchen company supplied the additional extra wide gable end panels to space a few of the kitchen units further out from the wall.

Even more simple what was the rated power output of the GSHP? that has been working well so an ASHP with the same power output would be a good starting point.

Pictures(s) if the manifolds, pumps, valves and any other controls please.

So when he turned the temperature down you got flow. It sounds to me like a problem with the temperature blending valve then. When it reaches the correct temperature it should stop drawing hot water from the boiler and instead just circulate the water in the loops until it cools down a bit, when it will then let a bit more hot in from the boiler. I would be changing the blending valve as my next step. Surprised none of them has suggested that.

No 1 thing to do is take all the actuator heads off the bottom manifold, keeping a note which one went where so they can all go back in the right order. Do you get any water flow in the gauges? (they measure water flow rate, not pressure) Let us know the result of that. Did any of the plumbers try that?

Re roof pitch. 45 degrees any day. It just makes everything so much easier. Only consider something less if you have a strict planning height restriction.

Our kitchen is about 5 metres by 7 metres, so a little smaller than that. It makes a good kitchen / diner but although it does have a sofa and a tv in there, it is cramped as a living room, and I would not want to be without our separate living room as well.

Play the fireplace video on an old Plasma tv. Radiant heat included.

I remember as a boy my dad doing some work under the floor and installing a black alcathene pipe to "replace the lead pipe" That was about 40 years or more ago and as far as I know the black pipe was never connected and the lead is still in use.

The black could well be imperial. What I was getting at with the brass tee, is can you undo whatever is screwed onto the tee? and then find a fitting that will go from that to the blue mdpe? Best wait until the new year when the merchants are open again, you have managed the leak well enough for now.

Is that tee in the black pipe a brass compression fitting?

It sounds like you have a "plasterboard tent" The name given dot and dab plasterboard installed badly so the edges are often open to cold areas like under floor, lofts etc that let cold air get in between the walls and the plasterboard, largely negating the insulation in the walls. One of the plasterers will advise but as a minimum you need to seal all the edges of the rooms which will probably be quite destructive. The lack of floor insulation to do it properly means lifting the floor room by room to expose the bare joists and insulate properly before replacing the flooring.

That is stretching the imagination a bit isn't it?

Just using surplus wind generation that cannot be otherwise used, makes sense. But that is not what is being proposed here as far as I can see.

This scheme is going through planning near us. https://www.cromartyhydrogenproject.co.uk/ It is an "electrolyser" plant to be build close to one of the wind farms near us. So it will take electricity from the windfarm and electrolyse that to produce "green hydrogen". So dig down and find some more details. The water will be conveyed from a pumping station at a water treatment works about 20 miles away. So that will be potable or near potable water pumped nearly 20 miles and about 400 metres up. The hydrogen produced will be taken by road transport to a number of distilleries to "decarbonose their energy supply" My thoughts: This wind farm does not have "surplus" generation, everything it generates goes to the grid. Anything taken from the wind farm for the electrolyser just means less goes to the grid for general use, which in the real world results in more fossil fuel used to generate the "lost" electricity. The water to electrolyse needs to be pumped there, So that is energy use I bet they have not thoroughly accounted for. I hope the trucks transporting the hydrogen are themselves powered by hydrogen. But the final thought, would it not just be simpler for the distilleries just to use electricity for their production? I refuse to believe electrolysing water to make hydrogen, then transporting that hydrogen by truck to then burn it can produce more power to the end use process than just using electricity from the grid. If ever there was a case of "greenwash" this has to be it? If schemes like this that are at best "creative" with the facts are allowed to proceed then we are all being conned that they are "solving" the problem.

It will work, but you will miss out on being able to read the tank temperature. I like on mine when someone has had a long shower and almost emptied the tank, being able to read the tank temperature on the ASHP display to see how it is doing re heating the tank and is it ready for another shower yet.

You really need a themometer on the flow manifold to check what temperature it is at. A simple solution is to buy a cheap infra red handheld thermometer and use that. Only then can you tell if the flow temperature is correct and being regulated properly. What do you mean by "venting the circuits"? Do you mean flushing water through them to ensure there are no air leaks? If so shut the red and blue isolating valves, connect a water supply hose to the fitting on the right of the top manifold and a drain hose to the fitting on the right of the bottom manifold and run cold water through each loop in turn until water flows through each with no air bubbles. You really want to do that one loop at a time, so put the actuators back on (not energised) and remove one at a time to allow water through each loop one at a time.

Yes that is still in use. I use the "room thermostat" input to call for space heating when required. As pointed out, there is no official way to "call for hot water" from an external source, so my solution was to use a relay to switch between the cylinder temperature probe (which is a thermistor) and a fixed resistor, chosen to mimic a hot water reading which fools the control system to thinking the tank is above the set point so it does not do any heating water. The way I have it, is with the relay not energised the fixed resistor is connected so no hot water heating happens. When I want it to heat the DHW I energise the relay, that connects the temperature probe and the heat pump heats the water if it is lower than the set water temperature.

And there is a more fundamental issue. If you are heating with an ASHP (rather than direct electricity) an ASHP will never get a thermal store hot enough in the first place. So a thermal store is a complete non starter if a heat pump is in your plan.

My ground mounted PV is now about 6 years old. I read my meters once a week to record usage and generation etc. When doing that on Friday I noticed the weeks PV generation was tiny (even for the time of year) and the inverter was showing an error. Yesterday was time to investigate. The inverter was tripping on excess leakage current, and powering down and re starting it did the same every time. Shut down and disconnected the DC from the inverter and sure enough one string was showing a leakage to earth of just under 1 megohm. Next step was go and disconnect the panels in the solar shed. Thankfully the interconnecting cables now showed very good IR. That was a relief as I had feared an issue in the 100ft long buried DC cables. Next go round checking panels one at a time. I soon found the rogue panel that on it's own shows this high leakage. For the time being I have reinstated things with this one panel bypassed so it is working again but one string is 1 panel short. The repair plan is this. I had 2 spare panels that are one on each end of my shed vertically connected to a cheap Chinese inverter to try and give a little extra early morning and late afternoon power. I will take one of those to swap with the faulty panel on the main array. Thankfully by happy accident is is the easiest panel to access on the main array that has failed. I will then investigate what has gone wrong with this panel. Though I suspect used singly on the cheap inverter it may just work, as I doubt that cheap inverter has all the checks that the proper one has. This is the first time I have come across and insulation resistance issue on a PV panel before. They are after all designed for outdoor use but clearly damp has got in somewhere on this particular panel. I am very thankful that this is something I can do myself, that I have a spare, and being ground mount I don't need the complication of scaffold (though I have that if it were needed)

I have a customised tote for my work tools, the customising is to divide the main section into compartments using several offcuts of very large trunking glued together. It has lasted surprisingly well. 2 of the metal cantiliever toolboxes for all the garage tools, spanners etc. You don't want to carry them far. and 2 metal barn toolboxes, the one I made as an apprentice and the one my dad made as an apprentice.

A bizarre twist to this, is those on pre payment meters won't get this surcharge as they can't go into debt. And already the prices of PPM have been levelled so it is not more expensive. Perhaps en-mass we should all switch to pre payment meters? Like I suspect most consumers I pay the same amount each month building up a credit in the summer to pay for the higher usage in winter. Does that not qualify as "pre payment"? If I did, as a matter of protest switch to a PPM it would mean me paying less in summer and more in winter. Is this a "solution" they really want?