ProDave

We only have one such joint where the door to the bedroom balcony joins to the bedroom window. This was fitted by our builders. I believe there was some form of flat joining strip supplied, it was very thin and not visible when completed. Lots of sealant was applied before offering the 2 halves together, and the builders hid the fixing screws by removing parts of the door frame that the locks latched into, drilling and fixing through behind those, and then re fitting them, so all fixings at the joint are completely hidden. No daylight visible, no draughts ever noticed, even when the house was depressurised for the air tighness test.

The problem is not much better with a conventional unvented hot water cylinder. The ASHP uses the lower of the 2 thermostat pockets to measure the tank temperature. Near the end of a sunny day like today it is reading69 degrees. All that lovely heat courtesy of a bit of sun, some chemistry and some electronics. BUT from watching what happens next, there is "room for improvement" Someone takes a long shower (far longer than necessary, but they blame the duration on the amount of products needed to be applied to their long hair, a problem I do NOT have). The water at the top of the tank is still coming out piping hot, but what has happened is the hot water in the tank has all just "moved up a bit" and at the bottom replaced by cold. As soon as the hot / cold transition gets above that lower thermostat pocket, the ASHP thinks the tank is cold and fires up, and I am there shouting at it saying why the b****y hell do you want to come on? If I were designing this system again, I would specify a whole row of thermostat pockets up the tank, and I would specify an extra tank tapping near the bottom of the tank, not far above the cold inlet tapping, and I would have a circulating pump that could come on to stir up the hot water in the tank to even it;s temperature out a bit, and hopefully avoid the ASHP coming on when not really needed. but I can't see a way to retro fit that with no tank tapping low down to circulate the water to.

Well done. Much the same for us, our air tightness was 1.4 though we could find no particular leak. I was disappointed but the tester was nearly wetting himself with excitement at how good it was. We achieved an A94 so you beat us. But it is a smug feeling having an EPC A and no improvements suggested. In spite of SAP supposed to be accurate, it still managed to estimate out heating load as way more than practice actually says, and in fact in that respect Jeremy's simple heat loss spreadsheet was more accurate. Our EPC A is printed and on the wall next to the consumer unit. I think our BC inspector at completion remarked it was the first EPC A he had seen.

If the frametherm goes right to the apex I don't see an issue. Put any cables in e.g. for lights before you close it all up.

Cut the PIR edges at an angle to match the roof pitch and there will be no gap?

I think the example in the photo works, because it is just 2 doors, and one slides each way, meaning just one door sliding into a pocket. There is it much easier for that one door to seal to the pocket both open and shut. I also note in that picture the bottom storey of that wall gets thicker than the upper storey, presumably to give a wider cavity for the pocket. If you could compromise and have your door as just two, that would be a better way to think of it, but your right hand section of solid wall would need to be wider to accommodate a pane sliding in there (effectively meaning you doors would be narrower), and one very long steel to span that larger opening width.

If you are going to pursue this, there is one word you need to understand. COMPROMISE. If you slide all 3 panes into a pocket on one side, that will take up a lot of the width of the frame of the house. Much of that width would normally be filled with insulation. By leaving a gap there (that is what you are doing, leaving a great big open gap in the wall occasionally filled with the doors) you compromise on the amount of insulation so that part of the wall will be cold. You might look at making that section of wall thicker to get that insulation thickness back? But the big one for me is air tightness. If as in your example photo just one pane slides into a pocket, then you might be able to design the window frame so it makes a reasonably air tight seal whether that pane is slid into the pocket or slid into normal closed position. But you want all 3 to slide into the pocket. Just how do you think you are going to get anything like an air tight seal around a hole in the wall 3 panes wide, when they are all shut, and only 1 pane is filling that hole? Find a real world example of 3 panes sliding into the same side and come back and show us how they did it.

That would be putting the heater outside under a rain canopy.

They are in Scotland for 5 days I think. Why was the system drained down? What did the pre sales enquiries say about the state of the heating system?

I would say get those waders on. Be careful you don't end up with those bogged down in the mud, sticky "seabed" mud is lethal stuff (literally in some cases) Or work from a boat?

I am now exporting about 2kWh per week. That is mostly mid day when if nothing else is running in the house, the PV generates more than my immersion can absorb (it's actual power appears to be 2.8kW) and it's too hot in the house to dump any to the 700W convection heater. I do say out of spite I will just move that dump heater out to the garage.

I much prefer ground floor option 1. Option 2 seems a bit disjointed and does not flow as well. If you want more direct access from the side create a corridor from main hall to side door through what is currently plant room.

But at the times when the sun is shining and you are using surplus PV, there won't normally be any lights on (except in a basement perhaps?)

No it will be more like 700W

I will watch this with interest as we too have a "balcony pending" but ours probably won't be done this year. This years money is being saved up to get the driveway finished and surfaced properly. The difference in design, is ours, the support pillars (there will only be 2) will be at the mid point of the balcony, not the outer edge, so almost all the weight will be on the pillars and the attachment to the house wall is just to stop it falling over. And we hope to use glass ballustrades.

It's a bit like watches. Ask a man with one watch what the time is, and he is sure. a man who has several watches is never quite sure. If you measure a gap with one measure, then mark the bit of wood with the same measure, all will be fine. Work out which one is missing a bit and throw it in the bin.

you mean the other half filled with everything to had to move to make this half look tidy? Looks very good.

That is interresting. I have mentioned before my LG ASHP seems to use almost nothing in standby. I have split metering that meters usage in DHW mode and useage in heating mode. Heating mode in my case is any time other then when it is heating DHW so covers idle periods in the summer when the heating is turned off. Unless the unit decides to turn on the circulating pump as part of it's anti freeze cycle on a cold night, then nothing whatsoever is metered on my spinning disc electricity meter, so the standby power consumption must be very low in standby. I wonder if this is because I am using the hard wired "room thermostat" input to control the heating, and when the room thermostat is open, it is "more off" than it would be if just programmed off by it's internal timers?

Re the floor. Drop wood into the bottom of the frame void so it sits on the bottom of the C section frame members. It will be a tedious job as you won't be able to do it in once piece per void, it will be separate bits cut so you can slot them in and slide them into place to drop down. Once you have that you have support to full fill the void with frametherm. Sheet over the top of all that with PIR as well if you want more insulation. Don't leave any gaps in the support timber, you don't want vermin to get in.

It used to be more clear, simply putting a fence anywhere between the building line and the road needed PP. Then it changed to "adjacent" which is very subjective. I remember one similar case here, where they had set the fence back from the road / path slightly, and the planning officer stood at the edge of the path and reached out and he could not touch the fence, therefore it was determined not to be "adjacent" If it would not make your garden too small, you could leave your low wall where it is and place a taller fence, just on wooden posts (in case it needs moving again) say 1 metre back from the low wall. But you still won't know for sure if your particular council claims that to be "adjacent" unless they come and inspect it. Or just plant a quick growing hedge right by your low wall.

If it is only the landing window, you could probably get it passed by putting a ballustrade in front of it and then (cough) remove it later. We did this to get our completion certificate without having the balcony build

Have you tried that odd cafe, run by some religious group where they don't have set prices, you just donate what you feel it was worth.

So I have been tinkering with my collection of "stuff that will come in handy one day" Anyone reading beyond this point has to make a promise not to laugh, at least not out load. So put together a test water wheel entirely from bits you have to hand: The business side, that will collect the water. Yes that is a bicycle wheel, and the trial set of "buckets" that will go around the outside to collect the water and so cause it to rotate, are indeed baked bean cans. Looking at the other side, that is the pulley and belt from a dead washing machine. It is driving a little DC servo motor as my trial generator candidate. Initially I tried the pulley from the washing machine motor, but that only gave a 9:1 ratio, I felt it wanted more, so I made a very much smaller pulley for the servo motor and I have got to about a 17:1 ratio. The whole lot is mounted to the end of a length of aerial pole. The shaft is a length of M12 threaded rod and the bearings are old idler bearings left over from a previous cam belt change on my car. They mount to the aerial pole with a heavy duty aerial pole clamp set. The proposal is to mount the aerial pole pivoted about it's mid position giving somewhere for a counter weight and easy height adjustment. And since the motor is right in the "splash zone" it will have a plastic cover to keep it a bit dry A similar one will will also be fitted over the bearings We need to eat some more baked beans before there are enough cans to give it a water trial.

Thanks. I will be interested in how you get on with building control? My only comment (and this applies to all GSHP's) is you spent £1500 on the pipes in the ground (which is less than i would have expected) I paid less than that for my ASHP and did not have the work of laying the ground pipes.

That sounds like they were thinking of a heat exchanger in the air stream? My idea would be a Fgas to Water heat exchanger on the "output" of the chiller. Then the water can do a useful function like heat an adjacent building or some hot water, and only dump the "waste" heat to a radiator and a fan if there is nothing else needing to use it.