ProDave

16C is way better than the 0C or less it would have been here for the last few weeks if you did not have heat recovery. turn off the ventilation and you have poor quality stuffy and probably moist air. MVHR is not perfect but it is way better than the alternatives.

If you need to pour concrete above ground level at the lower bits you will have to fit shuttering to contain the pour.

You are doing that backwards. Dig the trench to the depth required, pour the foundations, build the wall and THEN fill in any low ground to build it up. Remember building up ground inside the building that will support a floor can't be done with any old spare soil, it must be inert and clean and something that will compact well in layers. Your general "spare soil" pile is only of use for landscaping outside the building. We bought in several lorry loads in inert non organic infill to build up the solum and used all the spare excavated soil to level the garden.

Why do you say that? The house clearly has poor air quality, insufficient ventilation at the moment. So some improvement is necessary. Dehumidifiers will remove most of the excess moisture so will cure the most noticable issue, the condensation, at the expense of needing electricity to power them and generally being noisy irritating things. But that does not cure the poor air quality. for that you need proper ventilation. I keep seeing people recommend DMEV or PIV for this, but all that does is blow in fresh cold air or suck out stale air with the same amount of cold air being sucked in any way it can. Neither have heat recovery so while they will improve the air quality, they will cool the house / increase heating required. Yes for sure for best results you want an air tight house. But I don't understand the logic of saying mvhr is a waste of time if the house is not air tight. If you do fit mvhr to a leaky house, at least some of your ventilation will benefit from the heat recovery. Balance the system properly so you are not pressurising or depressurising the house and little else will enter or exit through all the leaks except perhaps on a windy day. I would certainly say if you get the chance go ahead with mvhr. Since I appear to be in the minority here, I await incoming.

I wonder if you could do it from outside through the holes in the air brick? At worst case enlarge say 2 of them, one at each end with a drill to get the gun nozzle through Might help to have an observer inside directing the squirting. (having typed that I could see how that could go wrong......)

I would empty the contents of an expanding foam gun into that hole. No that's not how you connect a drain but that will be equally awkward to fit properly with the units in place.

So can we STOP calling it MAN MADE global warming. It wasn't us wot did it.

I am assuming the circuit you are connecting to already has, and if not as part of the additions to that circuit you would update the whole circuit

Sorry the term I should have used is Absorption Fridge. This is how they work: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Absorption_refrigerator They are less efficient than a compressor fridge, but silent in operation. They are common in caravans as the heat source to make it work can be gas, 12V or 240V electricity so very versatile. Here is a 240V one designed for silent domestic applications https://www.amazon.co.uk/Barcool-Bar40-LED-Bedrooms-Guesthouses/dp/B0875NVX17/ref=sr_1_11?keywords=absorption+fridge&qid=1674297318&s=appliances&sr=1-11

A short term solution might be to swap the parts on the worn out window with ones from a seldom used window. Then it does not matter is the seldom used window is less than perfect.

Running horizontally or vertically from an accessory is a "safe zone" and the only places you are supposed to run cables. Some people seem to forget or not even know about the horizontal safe zones, as I found out once when I had a stand up finger wagging argument with a joiner trying to tell me I could not run a cable horizontally from one socket to the next.

If it only needs to be small, how about a caravan style evaporator fridge, totally silent, no compressor.

The trouble with penny pinching and going for 18mm if you have 400mm joists is where you meet the stairs, where every set I have seen the nose is 22mm thick.

I installed a Grant ASHP this time last year on a new build being built for sale. I didn't do the plumbing and was not impressed with the plumber that did, he did not use blending valves or even pumps on the UFH manifolds, he just relied on the water pump inside the ASHP to push the water everywhere. But it did seem to work. I wired it according the the installation manual. It was very basic, a call for heat input and a call for hot water input, and the only controller used was the one Grant supplied. It all appeared to work but I never delved deeply into the finer details. but one thing that struck me was if you did a bit deeper than the basic "how to connect it" instructions, is there are a lot of additional inputs and outputs and a lot more things it can do, but most not very well explained.

A problem we have at the moment is just about every heat pump has a TOTALLY different way of connecting to the required controls and by default only operates from it's own supplied controller which tends to be a non intuitive grossly over complicated and awkward thing to use, such that the average home owner has no hope of even adjusting the time settings. In my own case I left the manufacturers controller as an object of curiosity in the plant room and integrated the system to a standard central heating programmer on the wall of the utility room. A user interface that most home owners are familliar with and they can easily turn heating and hot water on and off and program on and off times just as they have always been able to do with any heating system. But to do that was not easy as there was no hard wired hot water on and off input with my heat pump, so I had to fudge my own interface to allow the hot water to be enabled or disabled by something else. And the wiring is totally different between one make of heat pump and another. So an electrician going to wire the system if he has not done that one before he first has to read, digest and understand the manual. Only then can he work out what cable is needed between the inside and the heat pump sitting outside. You don't have this problem with a gas or oil boiler, they are virtually all the same control interface, permanent supply, call for heat, call for hot water etc. It would be good if the heat pump manufacturers could bang their heads together and come up with at least some standardisation.

Great stuff. I love reading this sort of topic. I guess the next thing is try it on your real boiler. If it works you just have to set the Pi to send the required temperature each time you change from heating to hot water. Storage temperature might be some combi boilers keep a small store of hot water internally for faster response to a hot tap being turned on.

I bought my ASHP from a business seller on ebay. It sat in my part built house for 11 months until I finally installed it, only to find it did not work. I got it replaced, but it took a fight. What a damned good job it was only 11 months after the purchase before I installed it not 12+ months.

Heating "engineers" that UNDERSTAND any form of heating are in short supply. Most will wire a standard S plan or Y plan heating system with a standard boiler by connecting the wires according to their colour in a standard wiring centre from the standard drawings. If it then does not work, they are stumped. If there is just one thing a little out of the ordinary they are stumped. I have lost count of how many wrongly wired / not working heating systems I have found and had to correct. And none of them understand a 3 port mid position valve and know the symptoms if it has failed and the heating or hot water has stopped working.

The real "fault" is the bath design. A completely flat top. In a previous house we had a more styled bath, there was a slight raised edge right on the outside with the rest sloping down very slightly to the bath. Never had any problems because water naturally drained away from the edge and the shower screen seal therefore did not need to do much work.

Yes fit a Fused Connection Unit for the towel rail with a 3A fuse in it. And a switch outside the shower room to turn the towel rail on and off, then just a flex outlet plate inside the room to connect the towel rail heater. Re sealed system, you are supposed to leave an air gap at the top i.e. don't fill it to the brim with water.

Yes. Worst I saw was an old kitchen wall cabinet on a post with a bit of roofing felt tacked on the top and the DNO were happy.

Self use is king. Since i installed my PV, I have exported 334kWh. If I had been paid for that at 5p I would have been paid £16.70 Even some of the more realistic rates like 15p would only have earned me £50.1 I will let someone else calculate how long it would take to repay the "MCS premium" to enable me to claim that pittance.

Eaves level

But for those that didn't want to pay for an MCS install, and / or do not for various reasons want a smart meter, there is no SEG payment available.

It looks like at least part of your upper floor is above the garage? While heat going down from upstairs into a room below would not be "wasted" any such heat going downwards into the garage would be. Also with that portion of the upper floor above a garage, it is likely there will be air paths due to leaks etc allowing the cold air from the garage to the inter floor space. I suspect the solution lies with taking it all up again and doing it properly, making sure the entire ceiling above the garage is properly air tight sealed and properly insulated, then re fit the UFH. With carpet is is likely you will need the UFH pipes closer together than the downstairs UFH. Probably not what you want to hear.