ProDave

That looks to be a capacitor in the output circuit of a switching power supply. By the time it gets that bad, it has usually blown something else, but if you have a soldering iron and feel lucky you could try replacing the light blue one with the top split open. That £35 one is a "refurbished" used one. It has a 12 month warranty, but if I bought that I would look at the soldering of the electrolytic capacitors and any that had not been replaced already I would replace with good quality replacements.

It does seem to me a little odd to actually have the ASHP control a hot water recirculation pump. Most people wire that independent of the heating system with timers, sensors, etc which is a whole other topic how you want it to run. It might just be simpler to do that?

No, I am not aware of any domestic accessories that need ferules. That is mainly for terminating stranded cable.

Are you sure those options don't refer to a split system (unit and outdoor unit) where I think you have a monoblock? Check the obvious first, is power to the pump being turned on? any errors showing on the controller? And the vital question, is this a newly installed system and the pump has never worked, or did the pump previously work and has stopped working?

Fit MORE insulation under the ground floor slab, a lot more. 300mm is probably a good target to aim for. And wider cavity with more insulation in them. You build a house once and get one chance to do it right. You will never get the chance to improve it later and will probably regret not doing it right. You are aiming to get the heat input down as low as possible. UFH should then work fine. If you do it really well like many of us have the house ends up so well insulated you don't need any heating at all upstairs, but fit upstairs UFH unless you are really certain of that and really determined to detail it properly. Do it properly and many of us are heating a house that size with a 5kW ASHP. If you are doing this properly, you get a Design SAP done which will tell you all that. It is a requirement for building regs in Scotland, but so few people seem to get it done down south that I suspect it is optional? It is not so much the design on paper that lets a building down, but unless you are detailing everything yourself, or have a really trusted contractor who actually understands low energy houses, then a typical house gets let down by poor details, e.g badly fitted insulation so cold air can bypass some of the insulation, and poor details at junctions. If you are having a cold loft then the details of how to insulate and air tight seal the upstairs ceiling is one of the major details that is often done poorly. And I know you are only asking about heating, but don't block your downstairs hallway. You WILL get fed up having to go through the kitchem / diner to get to the back. Scrap those cupboards and have a hall you can walk through front to back.

Don't waste money on 1.5mm, totally unnecessary. Use 1mm 3 core & earth and the terminals are large enough for three of those.

Tell them you meet their space requirements. Then the guy on the ground that comes to do it won't care and will fit it into the space you have available.

I see. R290 is a posh name for Propane gas. Propane is heavier than air so they don't want a leak filling up drains, getting into buildings etc. Is is possible to swap to an ASHP using something other than R290?

And then the councils and the government wonder why landlords are quitting that business and there is a shortage of rental properties and rents are rising. Just the latest in a long line of "changes" chipping away at the viability and desirability of being a landlord. Milk the cash cow too hard and the cow goes away.

But if you rotate it 90 degrees from how it is shown with the front in line with the house I bet it will meet the 1 metre from the door opening. They draw ambient air in the back and cooled air gets expelled from the front, so site the front facing the road and the cold air will blow that way not towards your door. Alternatively, if they insist on that orientation, then surely the 1M would be measured in a straight line from the corner of the door opening, to the nearest corner of the ASHP. So how much further out from the building would it need to be for the front edge to be in line with the front of the wall and the 1M distance achieved. Cut a large piece of cardboard or plywood or whatever you have around to the size of the ASHP and go and try it on the ground.

Yes it is a mystery where all the water that is clearly there has been going all the years it has been blocked. Raising the water table in the field I would imagine to the point is appears as surface flooding then drains into the burn. As we have a dry day today, and it is still flowing nicely I decided to follow it with my divining rods. It does seem to go in a roughly straight line across the field for as far as I bothered to try following it roughly following a low point in the field, so it would make sense if it was originally installed as a land drain to dry that dip in the field. If so with a bit of luck that field will be less prone to flooding and less likely to flood into our garden again. Should i send the farmer a bill for restoring his land drain to operation?

As above, 25mm batten and 12.5mm plasterboard is perfect for a 35mm back box.

Taking down a lath and plaster ceiling is a miserable job. But the best way to start from a clean slate with a fresh clean ceiling. Re the walls, I would batten and plasterboard leaving the old stuff there. The main reason being I never ever want to rewire a "plastered on the hard" house again. I left that miserable task behind when I moved to Scotland where most houses are timber frame or battens and plasterboard on the walls.

+1 for Frametherm 32 But what else are you using? 140mm insulation in a timber frame is not enough on it's own. So what else, external wall insulation, something over the inside of the frame? It needs to be designed as a whole package.

Thanks for the clarification. Frankly I would just move it back a touch so the front edge of the unit is in line with the front of the house. So the back edge will be less than 1 metre from the back door. What practical problem is that going to create? Who is going to notice let alone measure it?

Can you explain the drawing? There is a rectangle box and an L shaped box, joined together by a red dotted rectangle. If one is the original and the other the modified position why the different shapes? If there are two outside boxes what are they? In any event I seen no harm in moving it / they back to the L shaped one is in line with the front of the building.

They must all stay together. The easiest way is a fly lead from the earth terminal in the back box to the earth terminal on the switch. Strip a bit of 3 core flex to get a short length of green and yellow for the fly lead.

This is more likely going to be a planning issue if it is in front of the house. Care to post a plan showing old and new location?

Cooling can easily be powered in summer by solar PV, which will be in abundance when cooling is needed. Just about everything else can be adjusted for. I look forward to winters when we don't get a week or more of -10. The one I never hear discussion of how we are going to solve, or deal with, is rising sea level. This has been talked about for a very long time. I don't see any evidence yet that it is happening (being a boater I watch tides etc) But if the predictions of a large rise in sea level do come true, how are we going to deal with the many coastal cities and towns that will find themselves below sea level? Massive defences? Abandon them and relocate?

The frame is easy. What about the actual heat exchanger, how are you making that?

For the as built SAP my assesor required confirmation that wall floor and roof build up was as proposed, in my case roof insulation was more than originally proposed. They required Uw values for all windows, design SAP would have been assumed. Air test results, design SAP assumed 3. Actual model of ASHP fitted and stove fitted, design will have been assumptions. And amount of solar PV fitted. As built SAP came back better than design SAP as expected.

The ones in the metal frame are especially strong to support a wall hung pan. Totally pointless if you have a floor standing pan.

At least this is painted. Wood filler is your saviour. You wait until you try Oak architraves.

Well I failed to find any suitable pipe to go in it or outside it, so I set about trying to connect the detached bit, as it was now holding up my rebuilding of the bank. So first I set an ordinary concrete block in, in front of the piece of pipe still embedded in the bank. I offered the detached piece up to it and it seemed to sit okay and stable. So I "fixed" it in place with stixall,. which is one of the many glue / sealants that claims to work when wet. A Very generous bead all around the end of the detached piece and then push them together quickly. It seemed to seal okay with no water leaking from the joint. That's okay, but it would soon get knocked out of place when rebuilding the remainder of the bank. So I mixed a barrow load of muck and encased the whole lot. Once that has had a chance to set and harden I can continue rebuilding the bank.

CLS stands for Canadian Lumber Standard. It is usually nice stuff to work with, with slightly rounded corners. Perfectly fine for a non load bearing stud wall, if I use that I normally build at 400mm centres. Simple enough to box in a concealed cistern, it needs a lot more thought if you are going to mount a wall hung WC pan on it.