ProDave

Black Isle renewables have "Air Source 1" painted on their vans.

Just what exactly did they do for £4500?

So "Air Source 1" let you down?

A bit more of a difference say flow 56 for cylinder 48

That says nothing about the input coil capacity so I guess it is nothing special? It is certainly not a heat pump tank with an enlarged high capacity high surface area input coil.

You mentioned the flow temperature at 52 degrees earlier? I run mine at 55 degrees to achieve a water temperature of 48 degrees. the close it is to the target water temperature the lower heat transfers. I wonder with higher heat losses you reach equilibrium before reaching set water temperature. Try increasing the ASHP flow temperate to say 56 degrees? And insulate all pipes, even the vent pipe top left. It may not have water in it but is a conduction path to the cylinder to then dissipate heat to the loft.

Nothing looks immediately wrong other than it's is a presumably cold loft so heat losses will be greater and you need more insulation on ALL the pipes you don't want to be seeing any bare copper up there.

At some point you have to get the permanent supply in. There are 3 ways to achieve this. 1) get the supply connected on site now to a kiosk on the site boundary, use that for the temporary supply and keep the kiosk there when complete and run your own cable from the kiosk to the house. This is what we did. 2) get a temporary supply fitted in a kiosk and later get the supply company to move the supply to the house. There is an extra cost to move the supply. 3) (which is what you are talking about) manage with borrowed power from next door until the house shell is ready then get the permanent supply connected to the house. Option 3 would require you to be doing ground works for the electrics later than most of the other ground works so you might want to at least install black ducting for the house supply sooner to avoid late ground works.

So BC is asking for design of the discharge pipework. It may be the designer that submitted my building warrant did specify a random make and model of cylinder and detailed the discharge pipework, but during the build I changed the location of the cylinder and chose one that suited me that may or may not have been mentioned before. The only thing the BC inspector was interested in was the G3 sign off was done by someone they know. Who is preparing your warrant? it is easy enough to detail the discharge pipe route and details and pick a random make and model of cylinder.

If you tried that with me at the moment while I was at home you would get the same. SMS messages don't seem to queue up like say emails, so if I drive into town and get a phone signal, only recent messages are there, older ones are lost. He may have lost or broken his phone. So try landline or physically knock on his door. Try phoning his mobile from a number he does not know to test your "blocked" number theory.

What contact details do you have for the builder? is is just a mobile phone? I only ask, because since mid December I have lost my mobile signal at home and customers have been having a hard job contacting me if they don't know my landline. (In my case I am preparing to change mobile provider as the present provider has spectacularly failed to fix the issue)

Sadly that was a mistake. He would be more interested in talking to you if you still owed him money. Go round to his house and knock on the door?

Post some pictures of your hot water tank. If the water is circulating through the input coil at 52 degrees, then it should reach 48 in the tank, not get stuck at 42. Heat pumps normally heat the rooms OR the hot water, never both together. If it is "stuck" trying to heat the hot water for so long it might not be heating the rooms which might explain your other issue with heating. What is the background? new install in a new house or retro fit in an older house? How are the rooms heated radiators or UFH? if retro fit did you have a new hot water tank?

Please tell us you have not paid his full price in advance?

I don't recall BC being the slightest bit interested in which UVC I fitted, they just wanted to see the G3 signoff. that is the bit you need to check your installer can do.

Ask locals. A tradesman any good will get plenty of work and won't need the check your trade outfits to find them any more work. I don't "do" facebook myself, but a lot of people tell me they ask in local groups for a recommendation and my name comes up often.

But did anyone investigating this examine or test the flue? or just re seal the leaking joint and hope? It really should not need to be a perfect air tight seal. I have worked with some builders that have an old stove they use on new builds in the winter. They just stand their "portable" stove on a couple of concrete blocks in the fireplace, a short length of flue, not even properly sealed to the stove stuck up the chimney. Because the flue draws air when working properly, not a drop of smoke leaks from their temporary unsealed joints.

As part of the investigation, did anyone check the flue? check it was not blocked? swept it? been up on the roof to check the outlet, used a smoke candle etc? Normally the flue draws and as already sated that will be a negative pressure inside the flue with respect to the room so a leak would draw air in. The fact smoke is leaking out really suggests to me the flue is partly blocked so the heat of the stove is forceing the smoke up the flue. Re sealing the joint had hidden the true fault for a while until the seal cracked a bit and allowed the positive pressure smoke out. I would get an independant HETAS engineer to check it out, check out the flue and write a report. If he can point to a defect in or blocked flue etc you might have a chance of a claim against the original installer. Or having identified the true fault it might just be quicker and easier to fix it.

What does it no now it's getting dark and no PV generation?

For maximum light I suggest a normal ridge roof with big windows, not unlike my sun room perhaps?

I would say it is broken. How long was the guarantee?

Can you post the video on here?

Thanks for the pics. No nothing obvious wrong. In a situation like this I would do a web search to find the CEO of Heatmiser and address your complaint to him (her) Say you have been fobbed off with the usual out of warranty reply. Tell them you believe the original PSU design is faulty and you believe the design fault has been corrected with the new one with the ventilation. Make it clear the stats themselves are okay and it is the back plate / psu that has failed and that is the part you need replacing not the whole thing. Let us know how you get on. If you are brave, you could open up the new one and photograph the pcb and see if it is just the same with the addition of vents, or if it is a different design.

Did you take a video this time?

I am not sure why you would want to build such a large house there, on a main road? A better use would have been for 5 smaller houses matching the plot widths of the houses it backs onto?