ProDave

I can't see your neighbours best pleased with you taking the hedge down and then having a window from your gym looking straight into that gable end window (presumably a bedroom)

In cold weather it is normal for an MVHR to ice up and therefore need to defrost itself. It does that by reverse cycling for a few minutes to heat the outside heat exchanger to melt the ice. Condensation from that just drips out of the bottom. If it is dripping continuously you might have a problem but say once an hour in this weather, nothing to worry about. Temperatures close to 0 are the worst for this, when it gets really cold and stays below 0 even in the day, there is not enough moisture in the cold air to condense and freeze.

I have never been aware of the actual heat pump needing a "service" as such apart from obvious things you can do yourself like keep leaves and other debris clear of it and in particular behind it, and listen to it every now and then to see if it is making any strange noises. The rest of the heating system, particularly an unvented hot water cylinder is supposed to have an annual service which is mainly to check the expansion vessel and the safety valves are operating correctly. Any competent plumber should be able to do this, try asking a local plumber to check and service an unvented hot water cylinder? Does the heat pump documentation make any reference to a service being a condition of any warranty?

Yes, -17.5 last night https://meteostat.net/en/station/03044?t=2025-01-05/2025-01-10 I think Braemar still holds the record for lowest ever?

-9 last night here. The sun is about to pop up from behind the forrest.

Some context please. Is this a new system and you can't get it working, or an existing system that previously worked and has stopped heating the house? Have you changed ANYTHING at all? Is the water circulating pump running? It will show those flow and return temperatures even when the unit is idle. I can't be much specific help as mine is an older one with a different controller. But mine is set to heat under "room thermostat" control. How is yours set up and how do you normally regulate / time the heating?

Taping and filling also needs skill in the PB installers. Taping is less forgiving of poor boarding, in particular you need sufficient screws into solid studs to ensure joints cannot move. As above quite hard finding a decent plasterer in the Highlands and not many do it, but that is what we chose.

That is most definitely not normal behaviour for an ASHP. If it is defrosting that often there is something wrong.

How do you know the chimney does not continue to the lower flat? It looks to me that where the basin is in the lower flat could well be the stack in the corner and boxed out to make a flat wall across to the window for the basin. You will never know without an invasive survey downstairs. If this is all that worries you, forget about it.

"Efficiency" does not matter. The only thing that matters is £ cost perk kW of generation capacity. How do lots of individual roof tile size PV panels compare cost wise to fewer large panels?

The housing market needs to wake up, and surveyors place a lower value on houses with a poor EPC to reflect the extra running cost, or money you are going to have to spend to bring them up to a reasonable standard. the idea of paying the same money for a quaint old house. then spending lots upgrading it, and it makes no difference to the value is just bonkers. Re fuel poverty. If you are struggling to heat your house, then paying a lot of money to swap your gas boiler for an ASHP which at best might give you a very marginal saving in running cost, and at worst will cost you more to run than your gas boiler is not going to be a high priority is it?

Once it stays below 0 even in the day, there is little humidity in the air and I rarely see the ASHP need to defrost. I think our record was -18 one year, and a friend with a Cool Energy ASHP (that I had wired for him earlier that year) phoned me to say it was not working. Looking up the error code given it was "outside temperature too low" so I guess not all of them work in real cold. Something worth checking. It is no particular hardship at these temperatures, but that is the benefit of a well insulated house, I am not worrying if I can afford to have the heating on like many do. It only becomes a nuisance when you want to go out, and the daily ritual of shoveling last nights snow away. At least i am getting some exercise. If I was not doing that and it was less cold, I would probably be chopping firewood instead.

Interesting video. But lets be honest all they have done is turn a hopelessly poor old building up to the EPC standard of the pretty ordinary 40 year old house. No particular attempt to improve air tightness, and no testing of that. I would like to see something like this taken to the next level. Install MVHR. Lets find out once and for all does MVHR improve the energy efficiency of a not particularly air tight house or not?

34% in the living room here. It's been sub zero for several days now, not much moisture left in the air.

Yesterday the daytime high here was -5C Next few nights are going to be cold, -20 mentioned as a possibility. Nowhere near that cold yet. I expect when I take my Friday meter readings this might be the coldest week of the year. But toasty warm inside with the stove burning nicely giving the ASHP a rest (not that it needs one)

Ours is also a convection stove and has very small distance to combustibles figures from the back and the sides of the stove. But the front is a normal door, with a large glass window, and that is just like any other stove, it radiates a LOT of heat and not at all surprising it could set fire to something with a low flash point close to it. Oddly enough there seems to be no requirement to publish a "distance to combustibles" figure for the front of a stove.

BS88 usually. You would normally only need that sort of information for an EIC.

Distance to flammable materials was one aspect that BC checked meticulously on their final inspection.

Don't come back complaining about the quirks and limitations of hot water from a Combi Vs an UVC. You were warned.

I would NOT trade a UVC for a combi. If you have a defective UVC change it for a new, better make of UVC. Who is offering this combi and why?

But he is talking of renting out his former home, not the self build with the CIL exemption. The question is does owning and letting another property affect the CIL exemption on the self build?

Who is offering you this combi replacement and why? Many of us here are happy with Telford stainless unvented cylinders.

I had had enough of being a landlord. Having previously owned 2 buy to let properties for a number of years, I have a low opinion of the average tenant and their inability to look after a property that they do not own, and the (usually avoidable) repairs needed at each change of tenants. That and the added raft of legislation a LL has to comply with, including paying to be registered as a LL (In Scotland) The final straw is end of no fault evictions, so if you let your house, then decide you do want to sell it, don't bank on being able to evict the tenant quickly, if they don't respond to you asking them to move out, then it has to go through court to get an eviction order etc. You might be fine with all that, we were not, we just wanted it sold but circumstances dictated what we had to do, but thankfully it all ended well.

It is NOT that simple. HMRC just take your original purchase price (which could be a LONG time ago) and your sale price, and draw a straight line and assume the gain has been linear throughout your ownership. Then the period of time it has not been your principle residence is charged pro rata CGT. the actual calculation to make it so is in true hmrc fashion a bit more complicated. The point of that being there could be a house price crash and you then sell it for less than it was worth at the start of letting it, but tough the hmrc calculation still shows an overall rise since you bought it donkeys years ago so you still pay on the "gain" while it is let. CGT allowance is now pitifully low so you almost certainly will be liable for some CGT and it has to be paid very swiftly after the sale, no more waiting until the end of the financial year as it used to be. We did this with our old house, as at the time we could not sell it, and like the OP we could see old house from our new house. It was not what we wanted to do but the best offer we had at the time and I would not want to do it again. BUT 6 years of rent from it before it sold did wonders for our final retirement position.

MCS is the root of the problem, I am sure many agree. Their heat loss calculations often come up with silly answers and result in an over large heat pump, particularly for new builds, and their pricing structure seems to end up with a very large figure, even after deducting the £7500 grant, leading many to conclude the only person benefiting from the grant is the installers who pocket a very large sum for the install. A TOTAL re think is needed. Zero VAT on heat pumps even to retail customers would be a good start. Get rid of the MCS monopoly. Allow anyone to install them, and then submit their invoice for parts, labour and material to receive some of the cost back as a grant. Make fitting of ASHP's permitted development under planning. Of course it won't happen, too many vested interests. Ask Norway how they do it? I bet they don't have anything like MCS? First thing is ensure from NOW (not some date in the future) all new builds have a heat pump for heating. Just write it into building regs. No heat pump, no completion certificate. No bureaucracy, simple. Or just make a properly calculated SAP EPC A mandatory for new builds. Same for at least some PV on the roof. Swapping out boilers for heat pumps is not proving value for money under the current schemes, concentrate on new builds first then find a better way to encourage heat pumps in existing houses.