ProDave

Probably the opposite "Oh a combi great idea, no hot water tank, plenty of hot water on demand" Until the reality kicks in "Hot water takes ages to reach the tap, furn it down and it gets too hot to hold your hand under, go for a shower and the flow rate is pathetic and it goes either stone cold or scalding hot if someone in the house uses another tap or flushes a loo"

What are your plans? Develop both plots yourself? Sell the plots? build on one sell the other etc? It is clearly best to get services connected to both plots together, and it can take a long time, so I would start now and if you do sell them, they could be sold as serviced plots. What about drainage?

No 1 question is where is the leak and was it fixed? No 2 question is the expansion vessel okay and was it checked. The 2 are very probably related.

So time for a "finished" couple of pictures. First the outside finished and with all trimmings. The whole design idea of the slim door framing with the door opening going right to the corners worked well. Framing a bifold door with a track across the top is a lot harder to get right than an ordinary door. I started with the door track fixed direct to the 3 by 2 framing, i.e. not a finished surface. I then fixed 12mm Oak trimmings either side of the door track to give the finished surface to the top of the door frame, effectively making the track recessed into the door liner. Otherwise just fitting the door track to the finished surface of a normal door liner would have looked horrible. The slim moulded Oak profiles to finish off the edges worked well as conventional architrave would not work with this door right to the corner idea. Then there was the shelving for the inside of the short wall. I was looking for some shallow shelving for tins, jars etc. We ended up with this. This is shelving units quite cheap from Temu. They do them as solid flat shelves or baskets. The flat shelf ones work best being exactly 2 tins deep and 4 tins wide each. 2 more are on order so when they arrive, this will be re jigged to give virtually floor to ceiling shelving with the baskets at the bottom and the solid shelving ones higher up.

It is compounded by the fact that with an UVC everything should go through the pressure reducing valve and all cold taps fed from that for balanced pressure. We feed the kitchen tap directly not through that but still regard the pressure reduced water in the bathrooms as potable.

I am not sure I would want my drinking water passing through (and sitting for some time in) a radiator not designed for potable water. However, if I had planned ahead, it would have been very easy to make the cold feed to the HW tank (which is above the pantry) pass though such a radiator. Or the cold feed to the WC flush tanks.

The simple solution is for one of the automation / smart switch providers to make a smart switch with changeover contacts aka an intermediate light switch. Then you could wire conventional light switches, any number of them in each room, AND a smart switch that would all work together. And if the smart switch died, it could easily be bypassed leaving just the conventional switches until you could fix the problem.

When we built the house, the pantry was always intended, so that corner of the kitchen and the place where the fridge sits, does not have UFH under it. Now it is finished, the pantry does seem to remain cooler, subjectively. But I suspect that is more a case of when we light the stove in the evening as long as the door is kept shut, the pantry does not warm up like the rest of the ground floor of the house. I must put the min / max thermometer in there to see.

The very last place I want my phone at night is by my bed. It gets plugged in to charge overnight in a different room.

And that could have been solved 10 years ago at a pen stroke by a change to both planning rules and building regulations. Think how many thousands of houses are still being built that fall a long way short of passive house standards and will take their turn in the upgrade queue eventually.

So delete the G3 course and add the £1500 to pay a plumber and electrician and that is still a sub £5K install, so should be entirely covered by the BUS grant. If only.

I say it needs instructions. Pester them for the instructions. While some of it might be obvious there are for instance 2 identical 3 pin connectors on the new board. It may or may not matter if they are connected the wrong way, but I would prefer to know rather than hope.

If the room heat loss is 1800W and this unit is rated at 1680W at 50C water but you are going to feed it with 40C water at an estimated derating of 50% then it won't have enough heat output for that room.

You have not mentioned what is your mains water pressure and flow yet? If good, then forget pumps, unvented HW tank any day will knock the socks off anything else for shower flow and pressure as long as the mains supply is good.

Post a picture of old and new and it might be obvious.

Of course I was, but I would not wish to accuse anyone of pure profiteering without absolute proof, but what other conclusion can you draw from the high installed prices everyone seems to quote for an ASHP installation?

Let me be the first to say don't mix UFH and radiators. they have such different heating characteristics. If you really must then do it as an S plan with a 3 channel programmer so you can have different upstairs and downstairs heating times. You don't say the heat source, but if an ASHP then DEFINITELY don't mic them. Conventional system is an UFH manifold so you can set the flow rates for each loop and if you desire have individual room thermostats That would be fed from the heat source via a 2 port valve. another 2 port valve would feed upstairs radiators and the third 2 port valce is for the HW tank.

Ask at your trial for the EPC certificate of the prison they are proposing to send you to.......

And in the summer when there is no heating? I bet you are worse off on E7?

If you are not really using E7 and only a small amount of your usage is in the off peak times, then seriously consider switching to a single rate tariff. At the moment you will be paying higher for the day rate than you need to which is most of your usage.

Does your house insurance have anything to offer like they will pay for new locks in the case of a lost key?

I would tackle the issue another way. The PD height limit is from "ground level" Clearly there is a step in level between your harden and that of the gardens behind. So I would just regard the upper slab as "ground level" and work from that. If the ground level varies, then PD rules say you measure from the highest point.

Yes my house is cheap to heat because I built it well. Actually the extra costs of building it well are not that much. Extra insulation and 3G windows really. Most of what makes it good is the detailing to get everything right, and reasonable air tightness. Another £1500 to buy and install mvhr, with the cost of ducting etc exceeding the cost of the MVHR unit itself. I have said many times I don't see why MCS companies are charging so much for heat pump installs. ASHP from ebay new under £1K and Telford stainless steel heat pump unvented hot water cylinder for about £1K EVERYTHING else, pipe, programmers, pumps, under floor heating is the same as would be fitted if I had put an oil fired boiler in. I did not look at prices but I bet an oil fired boiler and a bunded oil tank would be not far off the cost of my ASHP and unvented cylinder. I have so far installed 2 ASHP's in new builds for others, and 2 days labour for both plumber and electrician should cover it, so with rates here that's under £1500 for labour. So £5K should cover it i.e. should be entirely covered by the BUS grant and cost the customer nothing. So I await an explanation why it costs the customer often £5K or more after the BUS grant has reduced it? But I agree the cost to properly upgrade older houses to get the heating load down low is high and it will be VERY disruptive. This is a problem the politicians don't want to talk about. Who is going to pay for that work etc. Except the Scottish Government have stated that by 2025 all rental properties must be EPC C or better. That will likely just mean landlords selling up and quitting the business and leave the new unsuspecting owner occupiers to deal with the old buildings. And they will later have a "surprise" when they find the SG expect all owner occupied properties to be similarly updated by 2033

Was the old one on a key ring saying "12 Laurel Avenue"? If not even if someone found it how would they know what house it fits?

I use under 1500kWh heating the house for a year. The solar PV generates more than that, but of course not when you need the heating.