ProDave

I have pondered that. Indeed our ASHP has that as a built in function, to "stage 1" heat the DHW with the ASHP and then "stage 2" heat it further with it's built in willis heater. I can see that working if you heat your tank once a day and it is starting from reasonably cold. But to do so requires a tank that will adequately supply all your needs at any time of day. In the real world usage, showers in this house are taken at different times of day and they are by far the biggest user of HW. So the DHW heating system needs to be "on" all day, ready to re heat the tank when it goes below the target. So the problem I see is whenever it drops below the "stage 2" target, the willis heater would come on and reheat the tank, meaning the ASHP would not be doing much of the DHW heating. What is working well for us at the moment is just heating DHW to 48 degrees with the ASHP. During the day the solar PV will top it up to a higher temperature. The ASHP remains "on" for DHW heating until 10PM. Nobody usually showers that late so it goes off for the night (part of my strategy for silence at night) There is usually enough heat in the tank for a morning shower, if not the Steible Eltron heater will top it up. The ASHP does not turn "on" for DHW heating until late morning when on a sunny day there will be enough PV generation to power it.

Our familly of 3. At the moment the ASHP is clocking up about 15KWh per week heating hot water. If we guess a COP of 3 (optomistic) that's 45KWh of hot water per week, or 6.42KWh per day. The solar PV will be dumping perhaps another 3KWh per day into the hot water tank so we are using no more than 10KWh of hot water per day. So I think we are doing quite well in that respect.

This is just a trial run. The end game is a tank to take a Capri body shell..........

Interesting. I had a total of 6 quotes. Rationel were the cheapest and the second best in terms of U value, only beaten on U value slightly by Internorm who were twice the price. I did find the Rationel price was open to negotiation at least it was from ADW in cumbernauld.

The term "combi" will confuse most customers (as it did me) because we have been used to the term used to describe gas boilers that heat the DHW in real time with no hot water storage tank. Clearly that particular electric "combi" boiler does not do that. When I suggested a "storage boiler" I was thinking of one of the ones based around a big thermal store cylinder that have typically three 3KW immersion heaters and can heat a decent volume of water and use that both for central heating and DHW just like any other thermal store. The storage volume enables them to work from off peak electricity and mostly only heat up at the off peak times. They work best with E10. I know only 2 people with electric boilers both say they are expensive to run. One removed it and replaced it with an oil fired boiler and noticed a reduction in heating costs. Enough said.

Night purge is what you want. If the windows had been open all night, the house would probably be cool by now.

The house is a 3 bed semi. I have no idea yet who is building the other half, I assume they are being built as a pair. I am being drip fed information on his project. About the only thing I know for certain Is I will be wiring it. It must be on some development, as he mentioned "one of the other" houses has fitted an ASHP and his big objection seems to be they put it right next to the front door. I tried to tell him that it can go almost anywhere that suits him, but he seems stuck with not wanting it there so he is not going to have one. Granted your options on wall space are more limited with a semi than detached. Re that cost comparison table. I pay 14.8p per KWh for electric so I would expect hot water from an electric boiler to cost 14.8p per KWh not 20p?

I know where he is building, and I am pretty sure like us there is only a single phase supply available. We are about 1/2 mile from the nearest 3 phase, the cost of upgrading the 11KV overhead over that distance just so you can get 3 phase would be eye watering I did suggest if he is intent on resistance heating to consider an electric storage boiler and E10 (so it does not have to store heat for so long) But that does not solve the SAP issue. Perhaps when his architect says it won't pass SAP, he will reconsider an ASHP.

So if stainless is unreliable and not as strong, why is that normally used for Yacht mast rigging?

Our plasterer is planning a new build, out in the countryside with no mains gas. I have tried to show him the benefits of an ASHP, he has looked at mine and I have told him the costs and how it works. But for some reason he is still no convinced. Instead he has got it into his mind he will heat the house and hot water with an "electric combi boiler" So the question, is that likely to pass SAP without any renewable element?

I recall one design of strimmer that did not have a bump feed head, but instead had fixed lengths of line with a loop in the end to hook over a peg. that would work with steel line wouldn't it?

I suspect there is no technical or legal reason why not. Best of luck now finding an MCS registered installer actually willing to do that and sign the MCS certificate.

Postcrete is also rapid set (very rapid) you won't be able to mix it and pour it, it will set in your barrow. It is designed to be poured into a hole around a fence post dry, and then water poured into the hole. for that it does a good job.

My strimmer also came with a "brush cutter" head. Similar principle though perhaps even more brutal. The one BIG WARNING I will give is do not EVER try strimming up to or close by any form of wire fence, e.g chainlink or indeed anything that the "blade" will not easily cut through. For this reason, I do not normally use the brushcutter blade, as most of my strimmer work is tidying up edges with far too many things for the brushcutter blade to snag on. My strimmer head is just fitted with a left hand metric screw thread, I would have to measure it to be sure but about M10. If yours is the same then I am sure you could buy a brush cutter head for it. I find the weakness of a standard strimmer head is the holes where the line exits wear, even if they have metal inserts. You can just buy a replacement universal line head like this one that has a variety of male and female LH thread adaptors of different sizes so I am sure this would fit my machine https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dual-Bump-Feed-Head-Base-Strimmer-Line-for-KAWASAKI-Petrol-Brush-Cutter-Trimmer/282586006843?epid=2144946364&hash=item41cb70453b:g:NCAAAOSwQWFZd0Gy It is probably worth having a look at a small electric strimmer to see if they have the same LH thread coupling arrangent for the head.

Mine is no MOT now as >40 years old. But if you live on certain islands with no RoRo ferry connection to the mainland, vehicles used on the island are MOT exempt. There is a list somewhere of which islands those are. EDIT As noted below it is islands with no public "road" and which "do not have a bridge, tunnel, ford or other suitable way for motor vehicles to be conveniently driven to a road in any part of Great Britain"

Which is why the older you get, the more sheds you have.

An extra cupboard for all that stuff that is not easy to accommodate in all the existing cupboards.

This would fail Scottish building regs, as we have to leave a certain amount of clear wall space at the top and bottom of a flight of stairs, to allow for a stair lift to land. Check nothing similar applies to England and Wales.

Most of us look round to see what scraps we have left over and make the best we can with that.

The Americans referred to an adjustable spanner as an "English Key"

Could be. My dad was a plumber, so just because he used them as nut crackers does not mean that was what they were designed for. He chose which of the 3 "holes" to use depending on the size and strength of the nut being cracked.

My dad had a set of nutcrackers that looked very much like that. Well that at least was what he used them for.

Taking shape slowly but surely. The entrance hall is finished and grouted. Working on the utility room now that is a bit more fiddly. You can see in the hall I am part way through building the coat, shoe and hat storage. The utility room is more fiddly as it incorporates under floor heating set into the chipboard layer, I need to fill that new loop with water and pressure test it before covering any more of it with the plywood later. Then it's get the plasterer to plaster the room, paint it, and then get the tiler back to tile the utility room. Scottish building regs require that you make provision for a downstairs shower. Our provision for that is we could divide the utility room to make a shower room. The drain for it is laid under the floor. This drawing documents it's position, and a gap left in the under floor heating. Should we need to fit a shower we would need to break out 1 or 2 tiles, cut an access hatch in the floor, fit the drain, and re tile.

I am still running mine "unballanced" and have been for a year. The reason (very weak reason) is the utility and en-suite are not finished, utility not even plastered, so I have not put the proper ceiling cowls on those yet, and without those there is no control over flow rates from those rooms. I set it up "intuitively" i.e ceiling vents at the opposite end of the house are pretty much wide open, and vents closer to the distribution plenum, are closed down a bit. All I know is the system runs silently (at normal speed) and the air quality in the house is always good, nowhere seems stuffy and smells, e.g cooking, don't linger. So it can't be far out. It will be interesting when I do set it up properly and measure the flow rates how it measures up. If I find I have to increase the fan speed to meet BR ventilation rates, then I will probably slow it down again afterwards if it is not totally inaudible as it is now.

I am glad I did not bet my pension or house build fund on this scheme then.