ProDave

What I did is used an anemometer to measure the speed of airflow flowing past the fan to achieve equilibrium at 50Pa. then knowing the area of the fan you calculate the volume of air flowing past the fan in a given time and that Vs the volume of the house gives you ACH. Just a case of scaling to get airflow units and volume of house units the same. So if you want ACH calculate the volume of air flowing past the fan in an hour, and compare that to the total building volume.

Recirculating cooker hood about a metre away from mvhr extract duct.

There is a different set of requirements for constantly running mvhr, I am sure it is less than 60L/min. but that is why mvhr has a boost mode where it runs faster while showering and cooking. In our case we have a choice of 4 speeds to run the MVHR so I have set it for the very fastest when boosted by the upstairs boost switch and one down from fastest when boosted by the kitchen boost switch. In any event you don't want or need a separate extract fan for a kitchen or a bathroom when you have mvhr. The Scottish regs call for 0.5 ACH continuous ventilation with mvhr and a 25 to 50% boost. Check what the English regs say.

Check there are not larger distances required from a watercourse and a road (there are in Scotland) If you don't have enough room on your plot you need to look to other land, the soakaway does not need to be on your land. Under a field behind your plot is common up here. This really is one of the things you should check before buying a plot, as no drainage solution = no house.

We fitted a 3M wide 3G slider with 4 men and 4 sets of suckers. Obviously took the sliding sash out to halve the weight to lift in one go.

Yes a satisfied Rationel customer here. I put our windows out to tender to a lot of companies and Rationel were half the price on Internorm, and almost as good. So worth a try.

So mvhr covers your kitchen and bathroom extract requirements.

I assume as you are building in ICF you are trying to build a nice warm comfortable house that does not need much heat? Well it WILL need ventilation. the best way to achieve that in a well built air tight house is whole house MVHR. Just 2 holes through the building instead of lots of uncontrolled trickle ventilation holes and various extrac ventilation holes. Don't forget bathroom and utility room extractors needed so yet more holes through your building. Just 2 looks very attractive.

My take is that "surrounding" wall has been filled presumably with some hardcore or other infill, and that is creating outward pressure on that wall which is now spreading and pushing apart. that "surrounding" wall should have been built as a retaining wall for that application.

I looked at ground source. It would have taken up (and meant digging up) almost all our garden. It was not the hard work that put me off (I had my own digger at the time) but the additional cost. the pipe and brine to fill it would cost as much as the GSHP and then add the cost of replacing that every 5 years or so, and that would kill any savings from efficiency. The noise thing. It am always puzzled my why people detest the noise of an ASHP outside the envelope of their house but are happy to put something that makes a similar noise inside their house.

I used to in rental properties as that is apparently a requirement.

In Jeremy's case he had improved the insulation in the building but they ignored that and just used a standard guess at what the typical insulation levels would be for that type of property. That is not "undermining the standard" That it taking into account what the building actually is. If this attitude does not change, how do you improve the EPC rating of a building by insulating the walls if the assessor is going to ignore it? Or is it just a "jobs for the boys" scheme that you only take the improvements into account if done by some company who is a member of some over charging scheme again? If anything, an under occupied building should cost more to heat as less incidental heat input.

Get him a proper variable speed drive. Or a single phase motor for the lathe.

It looks to be made of boulders, not cut stone. When I worked on a similar looking building, they propped the roof, then dismantled stone by stone the opening they needed, just a bit larger, and built back the edges using cut stone to form the corners. There was never any attempt to just cut a square hole in it. It will obviously need a new lintel above and rebuild the stone above that to the roof line.

For my calculation and real world costs, I work on 20 degrees inside. I don;t believe it would triple my energy usage if I wanted 23 degrees not 20

That could be why my SAP estimated the energy usage to be about 3 times what a simple heat loss spreadsheet, and real world bills suggests. I guess I am in an unusual position of not getting the final as built SAP done until I have at least 2 full years of real world energy usage data available.

Some find just cooling the UFH slab works well. Other alternatives are a duct heater / cooler to introduce cooled air to the MVHR system, or fan coil units in the main rooms that want cooling. The important thing is if you have an ASHP that will do cooling, you need nothing else outside.

Just a few weeks ago.

I remember Jeremy trying to get an EPC on his old house when he sold it, providing the assessor with documentary evidence on all the improvements he had made, which he promptly ignored and just used the standard assumptions I was looking again at my own EPC (A94) and in the report it states my estimated annual heating and hot water costs. Well my actual costs are about 1/3 of their estimate, even based on the current higher electricity price. Since CO2 emissions are largely linked to energy usage, I wonder what the EPC would have come out as , if it had accurately predicted the energy usage, not a 3 times over estimate? and for clarification, I worked out my estimated energy use using Jeremy's heat loss calculation spreadsheet, and that simple spreadsheet gave an almost perfect estimate of the energy usage, very much closer to real use than this SAP assessment did. I think there is little hope for ever getting a meaningful surveyors estimate of any form. Surely a FAR more accurate and easier way would just be to go by the actual metered energy use of a house in a 12 month period?

My EPC came with the following 2 recommendations: solar water heating. Cost £3000 - £6000 saving over 3 years £309 (so payback time between 30 and 60 years) Wind turbine cost £15000 -£25000 saving £2052 over 3 years (so payback time 22 to 44 years)

A bungalow, if it has conventional ceilings (i.e not all rooms vaulted up to the ridge) then you have plenty of easy scope for adding new wiring and piping in to any room in the future. Alternatively what heating system are you planning? If an air source heat pump, then choose one that can do cooling (most can) and you are half way there already.

There will be a lot of rewiring there, most will not just be long enough to re route. Create a proper service void with battens at least 25mm deep before the plasterboard goes on and all the cables run in there. Don't go drilling every rafter. I assume a ridge beam is being installed to allow the roof structure to alter?

50Pa is only 5mm H2O on a manometer. Hard to read with any accuracy but you will get an idea. An inclined manometer may be more accurate.

Buy the latest boiling water tap from Howdens. It is actually a re badged Proboil 2. Don't ask me how it works, but it does not need any form of vent, drain or tundish. (unlike the original Proboil 1 that did need a drain via a sort of tundish that they supplied)

You need to know the heat input on the coldest day of the year. Assume 18,000kWh is for the whole year, and you use heating for half the year, that is an average of 98kWh per day in the heating season. then assume the coldest day is twice that, that so 196kWh. If the heating is on for 12 hours per day that comes out at 16kWh so I would not want to be going lower than the 18kWh heat pump. More important is how you deliver the heat to rooms. If normal radiators they will probably all need replacing to work at a lower temperature.