ProDave

Our main bathroom and en-suite are the only upstairs rooms with any heating, wet UFH, more so the tiles don't feel cold than because the rooms actually need much heat. But the main bathroom has an electrically heated towel rail. Mainly because daughter wants to be able to pick up nice warm towels off the rail at the end of the shower. Me personally I file that away as "gross waste of energy" but I am outvoted.

I did not know "sample inspection" was allowed in Scotland? I know in England typically only 1 in 10 of developer new builds are. The regs in Scotland do demand proper sound proofing levels things like sound insulation in the inter floor space, other measures like resilant bars for mounting ceiling plasterboard on etc. Is there anything downstairs like flush mounting downlights that you can pop one down from the ceiling and have a look up through the hole to see the construction and see if there is any soundproofing insulation. We know our self built house was built properly, to regs, with proper BC inspections and it does not suffer any of the noise problems you mention. Normally if inspected an air test would need to be done. Is that something they are also only sampling a few not every house? What does your EPC say about the house? Have you just got a basic EPC or the full SAP calculations. Again for a self build a full SAP assesment based on actual air test etc is required.

The field does not appear to have any restrictions, but likewise has no right of light etc. The access strip is subject to covenants that may have been imposed earlier but are not specified.

To be honest, I would just do it. If you do sell in X years, unless it's an obvious bodge of a job, any buyer will probably assume the door has always been there and not question it, it is after all what you expect a door from a utility to a garage. Assuming by the time you sell the time limit for BC enforcement has passed, then in the unlikely event of someone noticing the door was recent, a simple indemnity policy should satisfy any buyer. Just make sure you do get proper trades to make the opening and properly support it with the right lintel.

Here you go, have a read of this thread. It explains why a tradesman charging £200 per day is not a rich man, and other thoughts on the matter.

Get the UFH connected in your other bathroom then you can use that, while you go for a record post count gutting and re modelling this one.

Didn't we have a thread on this recently?

It might be the Windy city, but they would certainly have to work over a very much wider seasonal temperature range than UK housing.

Interesting read, I have not yet fully digested it. but a few initial thoughts. Most of the houses tested are >10 years old, hardly cutting edge, and only a few have MVHR. There is a clear conclusion that passive or trickle ventilation is not adequate, and the houses with mvhr perform better. There is the strange observation that most bedrooms are overheated and the notion of wanting a cool bedroom is unachievable in a well insulated air tight house, which is strange because we have been managing this since our house was built. There really is merit in not heating the upstairs at all if a cool bedroom is your requirement.

It really is simple. Work out how much your required fall falls in 1 metre. Make a spacer of that amount and tape it to one end of a 1 metre level. Then you set all the pipes level with the bubble. What can be so difficult?

I keep on saying it but the proper old fashioned mechanical thermostats when wired properly with a neutral connection for the accelerator heater work damned well. But it is harder now to find the proper ones. If they don't "click" as you turn them up and down when not connected they are electronic imitations.

I would try some tape. Something like Frog tape is sticky to try sealing it for a test but will peel off with no residue. If sealing inside makes no difference try sealing outside, though you don't really want to be up a ladder when it is blowing a hoolie.

Yes in normal use DHW would start re heating when it goes a few degrees below it's set temperature. So a normal reheat is easily done in it's half hour window. But Daughter likes to shower until the water goes cold. I just can't get through to her you are not going to come out any cleaner after a half hour shower than you would after a 15 minute shower. So when she is done, most of the 300L in the tank will have been displaced by 6 degree incoming mains. Allowing for mixing with the small residual tepid water that was left in the tank, I have seen the temperature sensor starting at 9 degrees when starting a re heat from that.

A bit slow. I can't accurately define how slow but I am sure someone will do the sums and tell us how long it should take to heat 300L of water from 6 degrees (yes that is the mains water temperature at this time of year here) up to 48 degrees at 5kW heat input. Most (if not all?) heat pumps set time limits on how long it will spend heating DHW before reverting to space heating (they never do both at the same time) I have mine set at the moment for 30 minutes heating DHW then 30 minutes heating the house. So whatever is the theoretical heat up time, double it with my present set up. I could set it to spend much longer heating the DHW, with a near passive house you don't have to worry about the house going cold if the heating input to the house stops while it is heating the DHW.

Pictures of the window from the outside both close up at the details and a zoomed out view to give overall context please. We had a similar noise at our last house, though lower frequency. I believe it to be nothing to do with the window but a seam in a Tyvec layer around the timber frame not taped properly, and able to blow like a reed and make that noise at the seam.

Many on here including myself will confirm a near passive house building will work perfectly well just with UFH downstairs and a small ASHP. My 5kW ASHP works fine even over here on the east where I am sure it is colder than Ayrshire.

Re mvhr "evening out" temperature. When we light the WBS, we tend to put the MVHR onto the medium boost speed for a couple of hours in an attempt to spread some of the heat around just a little and it does seem to work, it can easily lift the temperature in the non heated rooms a degree or sometimes more in an evening.

I suspect what it will do, is at temperatures close to the dew point, is increase icing up as the recirculated air will be colder, and increase defrosting frequency, and hence reduce efficiency that way. I still favour rotating the unit 90 degrees so the cold air gets blown past your door not across to your neigbour.

FAR more important than size, is the type. We once made a gravel area with 20mm stones, but they were all rounded stones and they just rolled on each other, bad enough to walk on, hopeless te drive on. Whatever you get make sure they are crushed or irregular shaped stone.

This is the you tube vid about guys deliberately boxing in a heat pump and watching the air flow with a smoke candle.

I assume the open door in the picture is yours? Rotate the ASHP 90 degrees so it blows along the passage not across it. It would blow the cold air past your front door not your neighbours. Putting screens in front of them is very bad, on another thread recently someone posted a you tube clip of an experiment to box one in, and it ended up recirculating it's own air and choking itself.

It was at the time Kingspan had a little forray into the market and had re badged the Misubishi Lossnay units. They had abandoned that idea and the Kingspan units were coming up on ebay. I think i paid £400 for the unit and £100 to get it delivered.

How much are CO2 meters now? I remember looking when they first became mandatory (we missed that requirement for ours) and thought HOW MUCH?

My recollection of school classrooms is at change of period when you all march to the next classroom previously occupied by the last lot, the air in the room as you walked in was rank, and all the windows were thrown open to make it breathable. You tend not to notice the stink and lack of oxygen when it is you creating it and it creeps up gradually. Scottish regs now demand a CO2 meter in the master bedroom. If they were not so expensive I would buy one out of curiosity, as a measure of how well the mvhr is actually doing.

I find that a staggering cost. My mvhr unit was about £500 and all the ducting about £1000 all DIY fitted. Even allowing for doubling due to inflation I don't see where £10K comes from.