ProDave

Thanks. you can rely on buildhub to solve a problem.

I have managed to get a photograph of the device I am trying to identify

Is it doing that "bouncing" all the time? I've not seen anything like that it is too regular and too harsh a noise for it to be air passing through, so my though is a mechanical failure with the pump. @Nickfromwales is the proper plumber around these parts, I wonder if he has seen this before?

Trying to do a repair and stuck with identification of a surface mount thransistor. What I know: It's a SOT23-3 package, and it's a PNP bipolar transistor (has b-c short but identified that from still working b-e junction) The writing on it says A7 in large letter then in smaller text either s or 5 And then perpendicular to that in smaller letters it says 64 The best I have come up with with a lot of searching is this ebay listing https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234621418101?hash=item36a086ba75:g:Cr4AAOSwpG9htJOf Select the 4th down on the part number box. That tells me it's a BAV99 but googling that tells me it's 2 series switching diodes. Now it may be that, if so one of the diodes is short circuit. So before I order some random component that may or may not be what I need, anyone got any idea how to identify from the limited information what I have?

Although I was disappointed with my air test result of 1.4, the tester was almost having kittens at the result, being the best he had yet tested.

I never wanted to get mine certified as a passive house, I didn't see the point. I just wanted to do the best that I could and know it was using a lot less energy than most new builds. I was a little surprised when I gave the as built EPC to building control and they remarked it was the first A they had seen. And I do wonder if I had built the same house in a much less cold place, just how low the heating bills would be.

No they are not. It was over £1 earlier in the year, even ignoring the silly panic peak in March.

That's last weeks figures before it got colder. I worked it out as an average of about 0.9kW of heat into the building. I normally read my meters once a week on a Friday, but did a mid week reading yesterday and in this cold snap the ASHP is consuming 13kWh per day space heating so witht he same assumed COP of 3 (might be a bit less now it's colder) that would be about 39kWh of heat per day or an average input of 1.6kW House temperature is 20 degrees downstairs, unheated upstairs currently about 18 degrees. Night temperature has been down to -7 and day temperature not above 0 since the weekend. A few days like today has been good sunshine so probably some useful solar gain, and "as good as it gets" PV generation with the sun at almost it's lowest. Actual heat input per square metre as measured suggests it is just about reaching passive house levels, but it would fail passive house certification if we had tried as the air tightness was only 1.4

Without seeing how your system is plumbed and wired, I don't think we can be much help. But there is no reason in principle why it can't operate as you want.

So if you feed that oil into a generator that achieves 30% efficiency then you self generate electricity at 31p per kWh Not such a stupid idea then? But if you can self generate at small scale for 31p per kWh why is wholesale electricity even at it's capped price ABOUT 33P?

I was sure JET achieved more power out than in in 2021? All this has shown is an alternative method of achieving the conditions for fusion has worked. But can this method heating with a number of lasers be scaled up to power station requirements? It is more certain that a Tokamak design can be. One day. I still don't think we will see a fusion power station in my lifetime.

At present gas in in the region of 11p per kWh and electricity abut 33p per kWh, so a heat pump achieving a COP of 3 will cost the same to run as a gas boiler. What are the present prices of oil per kWh? @SteamyTea ? (Boilerjuice suggests about 90p per litre so what's that per kWh?) I get the impression some people are "selling" an ASHP as a super cheap means of heating. They are not. Set up properly with a properly designed install they can offer heating to an all electric house at comparable costs to mains gas. They won't improve on the cost of mains gas in many situations. They also give environment benefits as the raw energy use and CO2 emissions are lower.

Most modern stoves like the one we have, limits how far you can shut it down, they claim that is needed to meet the present emissions limits.

We have discussed before, an unvented HW cylinder fed with mains water, there is no way for bugs to get in, so no need for a high temperature. Mine heats to 48 degrees only.

Their little infographic talks of a temperature range from 118F to 78F That's 48C to 25C In a typical UK house with indoor temperature 20C and outside temperature much less than 20C, I fail to see the relevance of this 48 to 25C band they are talking about? I could see it stopping, or substantially slow a house from heating inside in a very hot climate? Is that it's aim? Oh and it looks remarkably thin and like a multi layer foil type product and I don't think a lot about them. If it really is a pcm then surely even that would need some mass of material to store the heat in, not an ultra thin sandwich of materials?

I fitted a repair coupler in our first house, with UFH in pug mix, after we changed the shower layout slightly and fitted a bigger shower tray, and jig sawing the opening for the shower trap resulted in a fountain. Oops, especially as it was me that laid the UFH pipes so I should have known.

Unless you are having full MVHR, building regs stipulate you must have an extractor fan in a kitchen, and there are different extraction rates for extraction via a cooker hood to extraction elsewhere.

You would be doing exceptionally well to self build for £1000 per square metre. That would put your build cost at £300,000 We just got under £1000 psm finishing a couple of years ago and doing 5 years of a mostly DIY build. Most are now saying with the price rises since then that you would do well to achieve £2000 per square metre, I will let you do the maths on that figure.

What @Onoff needs is a WBS in his bathroom.

So the structural warranty providers certificate is what they want. That is after all about the only use for it.

Have you considered just emptying a can of expanding spay foam in there?

I would be surprised if it has frozen. Much colder here and our unheated sun room has not gone below 2C yet.

Try it and see. At 37, radiators will not "feel warm" but will still deliver heat to the room. But it may not deliver enough heat so try it and see.

Yes run the flow temperature at the lowest that will deliver enough heat into the house. What is the temperature at the UFH blending valve set to?

It really should not be frosting up much now. the worst temperature is just above freezing where the evaporator will be below freezing and the moist air will condense and freeze. Once you get a day or 2 of air temperature below 0 there really is little moisture in the air, and icing is very rare. -7 here last night and daytime high of -2 and hardly any defrosting.