ProDave

9kW heat pump will probably consume 3 or 4kW of electricity. 7kW charger That would all run from my 12kW supply allowing for diversity, ASHP mostly used in daytime, charger mostly used overnight. Especially if you are not even using the charger. To be asking for a 100kW supply for that is madness. A typical domestic supply is about 20 kW. You need to get to speak to someone. When I was enquiring they offered me the 12kW supply at a cheap price, I think they offered that, hoping I would say no, I need more in which case I would then be helping to fund a network upgrade somewhere. But my supply has been entirely adequate.

So you are asking for 200KVA total capacity, 100KVA per house. At 3 phase that is 100A per phase. That's 3 times the maximum that most UK houses have. WHAT was on the quote from 2 years ago? Re car chargers, you need supply capacity for ONE per house. The fact you may install cable for more is irelevant. To out this into contect my house has a 12KVA supply and everything works fine.

Since you have novices working on this, it is far to warn you the DC side will still be live even without an inverter. The black wired coming from the panels and entering that grey DC isolator switch will be live. So pest screw the switch back into it's box ans ensure that switch remains OFF until you connect your inveter. And yes the inverter needs to be connected to the mains otherwise it will not work. Find an electrician who understands solar.

I have not removed the immersion heater that was supplied with my Telford SS cylinder but it has been working for 5 years now without failure, and as an electrician I have yet to find one of that type that has failed. I have replaced plenty of thermostats and plenty of copper immersions in copper cylinders, but never encountered a failed heating element in a SS cylinder. I am pretty sure my element is made by Cotherm.

He is talking BS. AS you PV starts to generate power, it reduces what is imported from the grid, and when the power generated by the solar exceeds what is being used in the house it exports to the grid. Your inverter is "grid tied" so that means it has to be connected to the grid and it synchronises the waveform it generates to match the frequency and phase of the incoming mains. If you did switch it over as your guy is suggesting it would promptly switch off as it would not see the grid frequency to synchronise to. Just leave it as it is. You are getting paid a generous FIT rate, so it does not matter is a lot of it gets exported. But as @SteamyTea says you can get a solar PV diverter that sends any surplus to usually an immersion heater for water heating. Those are more important for recent installations that don't get a FIT so you want to self use as much as possible.

Not in Scotland you don't you just have to register it, (see my thread on the subject) BC have discretion to bend the rules, e.g a near neighbour could not possibly make the 10 metres from the burn distance for a treatment plant so they allowed him to install one much closer.

You wait until you work out the size of pump needed to provide that lift and flow, and the electrical power it would consume. I would only consider it if such a thing only ran in the daytime in the summer when it was likely I had surplus from the solar PV to power it.

Have you got a spare thermostat pocket? you could fit a temperature probe and read that, and then only activate the off peak boost if the tank was below a certain temperature.

You really need to try a different make of immersion heater. I think you have proved the make you have been using is rubbish.

In my case the remote dump heater switch is a dumb device. I bought a radio controlled relay and transmitter for it operating on 433.975 MHz. I had hoped it would be "better" than it is and only transmit a code to turn the relay on and again to turn it off. Instead it was rather disappointing that it transmits continuously whenever the relay is on. It blocks my Subaru key, but oddly enough not the Toyota key of my wifes car, even though both use 433 MHz. A simpler solution might be just find a different wireless remote relay to use which does not transmit continuously. For now, my disable switch works. I can either disable it totally, or disable it for 5 minutes (to give me time to get in the car and drive away) It's a good security device, nobody could pinch my car even if they had the key.

I would at least put the door opening in the wall if being built out of block. I would make it a normal hinged door opening into the bedroom. You would be creating a Jack & Jill bathroom, nothing wrong with that. Don't forget light switch wiring so the light can be turned on from either entrance.

I did our window boards after plastering. Mainly because we had not decided what to use. I left a "slot" in the PB at the bottom of each side for the window board, a bit smaller than I thought was needed. When I eventually fitted the boards I had to trim a little off that with the multitool to slide the boards in, and then there was a little filling with caulk afterwards.

The safety valve (actually two, over pressure and over temperature) are on the hot water cylinder . This is where the discharge pipe leads to, it is just an open end of pipe, in this case turned back to face the wall. If the blow of valves open, then it may be very hot water existing this pipe, so it is put behind a cage, and it must be somewhere visible.

We have a burn through our garden. Occasionally the water flows a funny colour, almost milky white. So one day when it was like that I walked the burn upstream and found the source, a drain pipe entering the burn from under a farmers field. I took a picture of the milky white liquid exiting and notified SEPA with a photograph, the exact location of the pipe and the date and time. Their reply was "it looks like sediment" and did not even come and look. So agreed, they have no intention of actually dealing with pollution. Not fit for purpose, waste of tax payers money.

Yes it should be okay. I had a load of "receipts" from the likes of B&Q who won't give you anything more than a till receipt, even when you ask for a VAT receipt. It has the VAT number of the company so it should be okay.

Then they are not fit for purpose then are they? Building my new house, I had to jump through lots of hoops to get a CAR permit before building control would issue the building warrant. All good and correct. But they are also supposed to ensure pollution does not happen and deal with it where it does. If they don't even bother checking the basic details of old systems that they register then how can they be performing the most basic of checks to see if those are up to date and okay, or old and in need of upgrading? Quite shocking really at the total negligence I am seeing.

My complaint to SEPA about their negligence has been sent. I will post any reply if I get one.

It is correctly behind a cage as when it blows off it could be near boiling water coming out.

It is a requirement in Scotland (and probably elsewhere) when selling a property, you have to register any private waste treatment system with SEPA. I have often wondered how old systems with a septic tank discharging to a watercourse continue to get away with it and why SEPA does not enforce them being upgraded. Well now I know. I have just registered the septic tank at our old house with SEPA. This still complies with the general binding rules as it is a septic tank discharging to a land drain. Well upon submitting my registration, ALL I provided was the property address, my email address, tick a box to confirm it serves between 1 and 9 properties, and tick another box to confirm it has been in use for more than 2 years. Then give payment details so they can fleece me of £170. I then expected to have to provide some details about the system, where it discharged to for instance. but NO. My registration was approved immediately. So no wonder I continue to see old systems discharging straight to a watercourse, they don't even bother to seek ANY details of the system you are registering to confirm it complies with the general binding rules. Why do I feel this is incredibly poor value for the £170 I have just given them. If my blood has not stopped boiling by the end of the day I will be complaining to the head of SEPA.

Yes "fit just enough PV" is a common mass market builders trick to gain a couple of extra SAP points to scrape through.

The only time I had this was a neighbour who when a fence blew down, took the splintered bits, "rebuilt" a panel and put it back up. In the end I suggested I put up a new fence. I took the two posts at the ends, put s string line between them and put up my new fence. In the middle I had "gained" nearly 2 feet of garden the original line was that crooked. The neighbour never complained.

I have a dislike of 3 port valves but that dilike is 3 port mid position valves. You can use a 3 port 2 POSITION valve to switch from DHW to UFH but that does not help you if you want two manifolds operating independantly or a mix f UFH and radiators where you will be better off then with three 2 port valves.

Protect Barriair was the cheapest I could find: It comes with pre taped edges but I did not trust their adhesive and taped with Tescon Vana as well (the blue tape in the picture)

1: Most ASHP's have a temperature probe that goes into a thermostat pocket on the tank. 2: Most ASHP'will have some form of call for heat / thermostat input. 3: Weather compensation will lower the temperature of water to the UFH when it is less cold outside to get the best COP from the ASHP. 4: I would personally have a 2 port valve for each manifold and one for the DHW tank. 5: you have a room thermostat for each zone, not each loop, a large room or zone will be multiple loops. All dealt with by the manifold control box. An alternative school of thought on a very well insulated house where the heat input is low, is don't have individual zones, have the whole floor as one zone. 6: I would always have at least 1 room stat per floor. The problem with all these general answers, is the details of exactly how each ASHP communicates and deals with the other heating components is not a standard thing and it varies a lot from one make of ASHP and the next. So expect the detailed design to be very ASHP dependant.

If they do that, you have dodged a bullet, they would not have been a company I would want to do business with.