ProDave

Ours (Kingspan / Mitsubishi) is in the plant room next to our bedroom, with just a door (FD30) between the plant room and the bedroom. Even with the door open, you cannot hear the mvhr at normal speed, and when you put it on boost, for a shower, more noise comes from the ceiling vent than directly from the mvhr unit. I wired a house a few years back where they wedged an mvhr in the loft, it was really tight access, and they created 2 loft hatches so you could crawl in from both ends to change the 2 filters, but I have a suspicion it was going to be such an awkward miserable job that it might not get done as often as would be desirable.

What was the reason for reducing the size?

I am not sure how. My static caravan gets 2 bedrooms, a living / dining / kitchen, a shower room and a WC into 28 square metres and just a shade over 3 metres wide. but you can't copy that for a house layout as it would no way meet building regs for a house, it is all too small, tiny doorways, tiny rooms. But this house is 6 metres wide. That is about the width of the "standard" semi detached house. so you should be able to get a reasonable layout. My only suggestion is that collection of 3 doors (bathroom, left and centre bedrooms) Rotate the orientations of the doors by 45 degrees, so instead of taking a square of one room, it takes a little triangle off each of the 3 rooms. Put a turn at the end of the stairs so the landing (hall?) does not need to have a square of landing at one end.

Do you KNOW you only have a 60A fuse? We were only offered a 12KVA supply which you would think came with a 60A fuse, but it connects to the same 100KVA transformer as all our neighbours houses, with the same size cable, and I asked the DNO when they installed the supply, what rating fuse they are fitting and they said "100 Amp" Happy days.

Click is my brand of choice now, made easier by the fact that Toolstation now stock them so I now have a local over the counter source as well as mail order. Tip: If you want a multi gang light switch with some intermediate switches, I usually change ALL the switch modules on that plate for intermediate, because there is a slight difference in feel of their operation. Don't forget an intermediate can function as a single pole 1 way or 2 way as well.

I didn't want to rely on the floor being air tight, in particular how would you seal the VCL to the underside of the boards? So I laid conventional DPM over the joists with the joints taped and taped to the wall VCL then laid the flooring.

I wanted a lower ceiling for our small, spare bedroom. The reason being to maximise the space above it which is a mezanine floor accessed from the adjacent large bedroom. I did a mock up and concluded 2300mm was as low as I would want to go, and that has worked out well as it just (for a short person) gives standing height on the mezanine.

Yes that will be safe, just harder to lift the planks up.

I don't know about irigation, but I would be thinking hydro power.

I used Tescon Vana. I bought it from a German ebay seller that sells it a lot cheaper than anyone in the UK I think it was this one https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/pro-Clima-Tescon-Vana-Klebeband-6-cm/261428419557?epid=1806367413&hash=item3cde591be5:g:m3IAAOxyeR9TKgJ7

Don't trust the inbuilt tape in the Protect Barriair. I found some was starting to come unstuck before I plasterboarded. I "solved" this by screwing strips of plasterboard offcuts over all the joints (those that did not coincide with studs and hence service void battens) to keep the taped joint held tight in a sandwich.

Corrected that for you.

In my case I am finding there is little "waste" that could be usefully captured by batteries. About the only time we export any power is around mid day when the inverter can be producing anything up to 3.68Kw and our immersion heater is only about 2.8Kw so there can be 600W of surplus that isn't used if there is nothing else on in the house at the time. Obviously once you go over 3.68Kw there is more likely to be a significant amount of surplus power that you can't self use in real time, so battery storage may start to make a lot more sense for a larger array.

Correct. But the way the diverter works it it only sends power to the immersion when nothing else is using it, and even at hot water savings rates taking into account the COP, it is still better than 5.5p per unit.

The 2 things you are missing in your evaluation, is you change your behaviour. It is better in summer to use the washing machine etc at mid day mostly for free, than use it at night on the E7 rate. And your immersion dump controller automatically sends spare power to the immersion heater whenever available, even if only for 30 seconds at t time.

60mm is way too little floor insulation, I doubt that even meets building regs let alone coming anywhere close to "good" What is the TF being clad with? no provision for example for a block or brick outer wall in that foundation. And yes why 150mm below ground? Are planning that strict on a maximum height? I would at least lower a good path width of ground all around the house to avoid that.

Like @JSHarris my experemints this last week showed cooling the downstairs floor kept the downstairs okay but did nothing to stop the bedrooms overheating. We are lucky that I have a route to add extra cables and pipes for 2 fan cooling units in the bedrooms. I would certainly plan to put flow and return pipes and ducting or cabling so you can add those later should you find you need them, even if you don't plan to install them straight away.

There are others, e.g Victorian plumbing, That still does not answer if they are related though.

The one in our office was definitely a heat pump, it certainly made that sort of noise. And the ones linked to above talk of a separate box in a cupboard that is usually outside, that sounds like the heat pump bit with just the fan coil on the wall in the room.

That is the unit I described a few posts back that we had in an office. I didn't think they would still be allowed. I would be very careful with thoughts of storing lots of warm water for use elsewhere, you would want to be sure it was HOT water, not warm. As these are basically an ASHP I doubt they heat the water much above 50 degrees before dumping a tankful down the drain and starting again. Or perhaps unlike the one we had, they just work on a constant slow flow of water through them so continually emit a dribble of warm water but again I doubt it will be much more than 50 degrees. You would not want to be putting water that waste warm into a stream, I am sure SEPA or the EA would not like that. Nor I doubt would you be wanting to put that in a treatment plant.

People like me that installed second hand panels won't be counted in those figures though. As I have said many times you have to buy the kit very cheap and DIY install it to be financially viable without the FIT. the average person that wants a turnkey solar PV system installed for them will likely find it is not financially viable. And the export payment scheme is a political gesture so people can't complain about giving away electricity for free. Even if I could sign up to it, I would have been paid about £5 so far this year.

I have ruled out a duct cooler, there is only one place I can fit such a thing and that would cool all the rooms, upstairs and down. Downstairs is not the problem. So I am still set on fan coil units and will probably take a punt on some from Alibaba but not yet, other more important things to spend the money on.

Thanks for that link. I have been using Weather HQ for years. I keep an eye on the WX at Inverness before going sailing. I like it because not only did it show current weather, but historical so you could get a good feel for what the wind had been doing and therefore likely to do. But not much good if it is only updating once every 6 hours. CheckWX.com seems to offer what I want as a replacement unless or until Weather HQ sorts itself out.

A stick built on site timber frame would make more sense for this.

Our total space heating requirement is a little over 2KW when +20 inside and -10 outside. Heating bill for last winter £234 for heating via a 5KW ASHP and UFH only downstairs. If I had done that just with an electric fire, the cost would have been more like £750 so the ASHP is saving us £500 per year in heating bills. Considering it cost less than £1000 I would say it is well worth it.