ProDave

They are featuring an £18,000 heat pump install. They say the heat pump costs about £4000 and "takes a team of 6 over a week to install" So lets say 18 man days? and lets say £400 per day each, that's £7200 labour. Lets say £1500 for new hot water tank and controls, and £2000 for new radiators (that one is a pure guess) I still only get to £14700

It will be interesting if they analyse the present costs of a heat pump install to see if they are reasonable. Somehow I doubt they will.

Have you chosen your stove yet? some like the one we bought can be fitted just 100mm from combustible materials and ours is just over 1oomm from plasterboard.

Unlikely to be successful. If the builder supplies stuff "supply and fit" on a new build it must be zero rated for VAT. If he supplies stuff but does not fit it, he is right to charge VAT but you will be unlikely to be able to re claim that. If buying stuff for self install, buy it in your own name so your name is on the VAT receipt so you are guaranteed to be able to claim it.

Well as @joe90 said, Just stop Oil want us to stop using oil right now. Totally unrealistic. We are transitioning to more renewable generation, just as fast as wind farms and the electricity distribution network can be built. Banging on to "the public" about the need for change is not going to speed that up. We have already discussed how there are artificial hurdles put in the way of installing heat pumps. Buying an electric car now is just likely to result in more fossil fuelled electricity to charge them. Constantly being told "we" are not doing enough just makes me feel like "well I bloody well will buy a historic V8 petrol Range Rover and drive it all around the London LEZ then"

Sounds to me like a realisation of reality, that it is simply not possible to power everything from renewables and a realisation that electricity demand will double. I think it is the first time i have seen such an admission. What strikes me given the growth in electricity demand and the growth in renewable generation, which we know to be rather dependant on the weather hence unreliable, is just how little energy storage there is in that mixture. I have said for a while people are more likely to get on board and support the changes if the targets are realistic and achievable, and some praise is given for the progress we have already made. Set an unachievable target, and treat everyone as though nobody has done a thing yet to reduce emissions and you get a disinterested public.

The first thing I say is do you really really want the HW cylinder in the plant room? Only put it there is the plant room is central to all points of hot water use to minimise HW delivery time. If not, the HW cylinder is often better placed in an airing cupboard elsewhere in the house that is central to all points of HW use.

The main feed will be to the wiring centre. so FCU there. From there you will need a minimum of permanent L and N and switched L (call for heat) to the boiler. So use a 3 core and earth for that, and locally a 3 pole fan isolator switch would do the job of local boiler isolation.

A stone mason would make and install such an arch. It is not an off the shelf product, and it is not a trivial amount of work to fit it either.

Ah this is a "clever" pump, controlled by an APP. Sorry I will bow out here, it is far too complicated and wants to make up it's own mind when and how to run. Not what I would want in my system.

Are you employing an architect or other designer to specify the details of the building and get the building regs approval or are you doing it all yourself? By far the best approach is insulate the hell out of the building and make it air tight. If you are needing to add things like solar PV just to get a SAP pass, then the building itself is not really good enough.

Can you post a picture and more details of this "wiring centre" Without knowing what is controlling the pump, nobody can say id it operating how the system was designed or not. If designed properly, of course the pump will not run when there is no demand.

Do you mean the tank is making a noise when heating DHW, perhaps a rattling sort of sound coming from inside the tank? I had this with my Telford tank. By trial and error I cured it by opening up the bypass valve so it was bypassing water all the time. I think the issue was the heat pump demands such a high water flow rate, that flow rate was more than the tank input coil was happy with. I couldn't just turn down the pump or the HP would trip on low water flow rate, so allowing some water to bypass the tank seemed to "fix" it.

Is the underside of the B&B structure higher than outside ground level?

Then you end up with stud spacing that does not match plasterboard sheet sizes, setting yourself an other problem to solve.

Any competent electrician can fit a diverter so just get that done when the tank is installed.

https://www.screwfix.com/p/crabtree-capital-50a-1-way-pull-cord-switch-white-with-neon/90597

What is needed, is someone who has had a BUS / MCS heat pump install to come and tell us exactly what it cost, exactly how many man hours of workman time took place at their house, and exactly what heat pump and other equipment was installed. Then we could pick it apart into a material cost, and a reasonable labour cost, and see what the "MCS premium" really was. Without that all I can say is "me and my plumber mate could fit it a lot cheaper"

Just after you made a tight turn? I was going to suggest if in doubt, don't make a tight turn just by skidding round, pick up one end of the machine and turn on the tips of the tracks.

Can you imagine the uproar, if Gas Safe was run as a scheme that added at least £5K onto the cost of installing a gas boiler, compared to just paying the plumber? Why is there not the uproar at the added MCS costs?

No, but someone, some group of people, sets the policies that "encourage" customers to use an MCS company in order to claim a £5K grant, and if those people cannot see that using an MCS company adds more than £5K to the bill compared to just using a plumber and an electrician to install it, then frankly we might as well give up trying. Then add into that mix, you only get PD rights for a heat pump if you adhere to MCS rules. Why do I feel this is the next brewing scandal?

Corrected that for you (imho of course)

Crabtree do a surface mount one which is an electricians dream, you fit the switch, connect the cables, then put the cover on without flexing any of the cables in the process. Because you can be sure it is connected well it is very likely to be more reliable, but Customers don't like them because they want flush. Personally I would never have a pull switch shower switch in my house, wall switch every time.

Just one little snipped from that: That about sums it up, admitting the existing system is broken, unworkable and expensive, and needs fixing. While projects like this are good, it is no good just finding a way round the problem for a few streets who have received a grant to do so, the whole system needs to be fixed, so getting a heat pump fitted is as easy, and almost as cheap as getting a gas boiler fitted. Until someone "at the top" grasps the problem, a proper solution for everyone will not happen.

But where he is, timber frame is the normal, brick and block is the niche and has been for some time.