ProDave

^^^^^^ Top post

No problem. the heat loss from my house at +20 inside, -10 outside is a little over 2kW A 5kW ASHP works fine. It does not need to be on all the time (it needs to spend some time heating DHW) and it seems to modulate down enough. Agreed a 10kW unit would be too big.

Re the skillset of electricians / plumbers. I come from a generation when we all did proper 4 or 5 year apprenticeships. That is largely a thing of the past now and the skills I see in practice seem to reflect that backward step. It dismays me how often I come across a plain ordinary gas or oil boiler heating system that has never been wired properly right from the install and has never been working properly. Clearly there are a lot of people out there that do this sort of work, totally unaware that they are not doing it right. To put this right I just know any new scheme is going to come with a requirement for the installer to do another course and get another "ticket" to say he is competent to do it. Well that counts me out then, I am not expecting to work a lot longer so I would see the time and money spent on that as poor value for the short return I would get from it. I still think the answer lies in making the equipment simple enough for the existing installers rather than trying to educate enough installers quickly enough to install more complex kit. Re weather compensation, you would think it possible to build in some software so a new installed ASHP could learn the environment it was installed in, work out how much heat imput results in how much temperature rise compared to outside temperature, and auto tune the weather compensation. That would be a big step forwards.

We have very similar what I call "gable end dormers" in our house and unlike normal dormers with side cheeks, they give a lot of headroom and there is only a tiny bit of the room with low headroom. Agree a 3D model should be done just to make sure.

If I am reading the plans right (site layout would avoid confusion) you have your living room on the north facing side, so it will get no sun. I would want a pair of double glass doors directly from the kitchen diner to living room to let light and sun through, and allow you to open it up as effectively 1 big room sometimes. Small point but you have some useful if low loft spaces, don't forget a couple of doors to access the storage space. The site layout would also explain the angled wing.

Playing devils advocate, are you sure the leaking waste was not the problem all along and the bath to wall seal was okay?

Simple solution. We have 3 bathrooms in our house. I just choose whichever one of the three is furthest away away from people, so no need to worry about sound.

Do you NEED 3 phase? Ask them what supply they can provide without an upgrade single or 3 phase. I was in a similar position, I was offered a 12KVA supply (I had asked for 23KVA being the standard single phase 100A supply) anything more would need the transformer upgraded. I accepted the 12KVA supply that has been entirely adequate. I am convinced they wanted me to pay for the transformer to be upgraded but I would rather leave that for someone else to fund. ALSO have a look at this thread And in particular the link in the first post. It is not clear if this reduction in network upgrade costs apples just to export or to new supplies as well. Read it, digest it and see what you think. Here is that link: https://cms-lawnow.com/en/ealerts/2022/06/distribution-connection-charges-to-be-reduced-ofgem-publishes-its-decision-on-the-access-and-forward-looking-charges-significant-code-review This sentence may be relevant " For connections serving demand for electricity (or mixed use connection sites with import and export) in most cases no reinforcement costs will be charged to the connecting customer. " Tell them you are having solar PV and will be exporting as well as importing so you are a "mixed use connection site" and see what they say. You might want to wait a few days until we are in the month of May. The new rules take effect in April but they don't say when in April. I have not yet heard anyone reporting reduced fees so you are now officially the forum guinea pig to quote that change in network charging legislation to the DNO, and see their response, and of course tell us their response please.

If there is meant to be an attachment for us to look at, I am not seeing it.

And how would it separate heating energy use from "other" energy use? In a low energy house like ours, heating is NOT the biggest user of energy in this house.

So the extension no longer has square corners? That will cause all sorts of issues.

There was the grand designs house by the thames built on effectively a captive float, and the whole house floated up when it flooded. Stilts sounds a lot simpler and cheaper, just determine the highest likely flood level ever and make it higher. All timber construction would give you a carbon neutral design, look at all that natural carbon already removed from the atmosphere by growing the trees that you are now safely storing to keep the carbon locked up. Build it as a passive house with ASHP etc and lots of PV panels to generate more power than you use. Planting more trees would probably score you brownie points as well. I think this is definitely one where you need a good planning consultant.

I have mentioned before the supplied controller with my LG heat pump is well beyond the ability of most folk over the age of 20 to understand. I chose to control mine from a normal boiler time clock that most people understand. I had to get quite inventive to mimic a "call for heat" input for the HW to the heat pump to control that from a simple time switch.

I thought we discussed before, the treated chlorinated mains water just means you can be pretty sure there is nothing nasty entering your HW tank. Assuming it is an unvented cylinder then nothing else can enter, so once the clean water is there, it does not matter if the effect of the chlorine diminishes. It has no further function.

So if the bottleneck is installers (assuming supply could then keep up if the installers could be found) then the solution has to be simplify heat pump controls. They already mimic a system boiler from a plumbing perspective, in that they just have water flow and return. It is the electrical controls that complicate things. I have already mentioned the Grant ASHP's seem nearest to that at the moment with just a call for heat for HW and a separate one for heating. Surely that is not too much of a step change for the average electrician wiring a heating system to get used to two separate call for heat commands? Plumbing wise, dump any 3 port mid position valve and replace with two 2 port valves or a 3 port 2 position valve. So there you have a relatively simple swap a system boiler for an ASHP with little change. BUT the water temperature maxing at 55 degrees may not be enough and it won't be optimum efficiency. So now you offer customers a choice. Simple swap with little plumbing alterations for a cheap price, BUT warn them of the lower temperature and that it may under perform. Then offer the upgrades, new larger heat pump cylinder, larger radiators IF they find they need them. Of course for the huge percentage oh homes with a combi boiler and no HW tank you have to fit a HW cylinder with a heat pump, so many will see that as too expensive and unnecessary. Like the discussion in the GW thread about cars, what is likely to happen is people won't be swapping heat pumps in anything like the required volumes and if new boilers become impossible to get the immediate task will be maintaining ever ageing boilers. Lets hope the spares supply side steps up, once the easy option of replace rather than fix has gone.

The very sticky tape you use on the floor to wall joints when tanking a wet room would be a good candidate for that.

Here is one more topic I have never seen analysis of. The conservation of energy. We all know that. So, if you build a LOT of wind turbines and solar farms, and extract a LOT of energy from the natural environment, then SOMETHING is going to change. I wonder what analysis and modelling has been done about that? We don't extract much power from the natural environment yet but as that increases what guarantee do we have it won't cause problems?

We are looking into one of these garden storage boxes to fix up there perhaps. No the price does not include good weather, that's why we are indoors.

Re the cost. As mine is just about finished I added ut the cost of the parts, and it has come in at about £100 per square metre. That is aided by a very cheap timber price from a joiner friend who bought a job lot in lockdown and was selling it at cost.

The only person I know to have had a serious electric shock was a lad at school. He was trying to repair a valve tape deck, the chassis was propped up with a bit of wood. He got the inevetable shock, but as he pulled back his hand, it knocked the prop out and the chassis dropped on his had trapping it and prolonging the shock. It was his sister in the next room that heard the screams, ran in and quick thinking kicked the deck off his hand. His hand was badly burned and needed skin grafts over a period of time but he survived to tell the tale.

Unless it was a really serious shock I would expect that to be so. There is this misconception that an electric shock is usually fatal. Not from 240V it is not, in most cases it is "ow bugger that hurt" then a minute or 2 later all forgotten.

Mine is 4M wide and 2M deep. Now it is up, it seems pretty big, bigger than I expected it to feel. Now, another issue I bet nobody has ever thought about. We want a couple of chairs out there, but don't want to leave them out all the time. Hands up everyone that designed in a handy "outdoor furniture cupboard" inside the house very close to the door to the balcony. Don't all rush at once........ Now we are waiting for outside weather.

We call them Skews up here. There may be another English name for them.

1) ignore. 2) If he persists ask the CARPENTER what tests he did to "test for dead" and safe isolation practice of the circuit BEFORE he removed the fan and if he isolated at the consumer unit, what lock off device did he use to prevent it being re energised. Ask for his electrical qualifications, details of test equipment used, and a copy of the calibration certificate for his tester. And ask to see a copy of HIS Public liability insurance policy. That should shut him up.

That would be me. Leaving SE England where "plastered on the hard" walls is the normal and moving to Scotland where timber frame and plasterboard was the normal, was a revalation. I never want to chase cables into a "plastered on the hard" wall ever again. What an utterly stupid and inflexible way to build houses.