ProDave

Okay, I have solved this. It took a phone call to LG tech support as the manual is far from being clear. Interesting before he would answer any questions re cooling, he first asked am I claiming the RHI. When "room thermostat" is enabled by the DIP switch on these LG Therma V units, the electrical connections have 2 thermostat inputs, one for heating and one for cooling. So I have tried it this morning. I have just connected a manual switch to the cooling thermostat input and lo and behold the ASHP fires up in cooling mode. In order to get the water to flow around the UFH and open all the right valves, I have had to turn the "heating" on and turn up the room thermostats. This of course now means that both the heating and cooling thermostat inputs to the ASHP are active. I am happy to report that cooling seems to take priority in this situation and I now have water at 18 degrees flowing through my UFH pipes. I will leave it running for a while and keep a check for condensation etc and see how cool the actual floor temperature gets. Now I know cooling mode works and is after all easy to initiate, my longer term plan is to get 2 small fan coil units, one for each of the main bedrooms. It will be easy to tee into the flow and return in the plant room above the garage via another motorised valve and then run the pipes through the ceiling above the main bedroom. If anyone comes across 2 small cheap Fan Coil units please let me know.

I don't have a mortgage so didn't bother with a warranty. It's the Baumit,com render system, very similar to K rend, first coat is mixed from powder and lime based and a glass fibre mesh embedded in the first coat. the top coat is pre mixed in tubs with a primer applied before the top coat goes on.

We built a side extension to a 1930's semi. The key thing was they wanted the extension to be clearly an addition rather than trying to look too much like the original building. In our case they insisted on the front and rear walls were stepped in by 100mm from the original walls though we "bent" the rules and tiled the roof without such a step (just a bigger overhang on the extension) If I am reading this right you already have a rear extension and you want to joint up to that but the planners are saying leave a gap? I would argue you can differentiate the extension in other ways, e.g by having the rear wall of the extension stepped in or out with respect to the existing rear annex, or making a clear difference at the roof line. A sketch of what you are planning might make it clearer.

I would ask the question to you plasterer. What is important is the end result is flush, i,e back box not proud of finished plaster. Don't forget your grommets.

We used wood fibre cladding with render. No need for a cavity, it goes straight on the frame. Building control accepted it with no cavity.

I am old enough to remember when regs did demand you earthed a kitchen sink and a metal bath. Not any more.

She means MCS, the organisation that acredit microgeneration installers. You need an install done by an MCS contractor if you are going to claim the RHI payments for an ASHP and previously needed MCS to claim the FIT for solar PV. There has been much discussion here about this. You can DIY install or just use any plumber / electrician often for a lot less than an MCS contractor will charge, and you need to look carefully. With a well insulated house, the energy use, and hence the RHI payments might be so low that it is not worth bothering using an MCS contractor or claiming the RHI

What is the snag with the insulated render board? What were you considering?

What extra space? A monoblock ASHP is an outside unit. Very little inside, a pump and some controls. but you do need a hot water tank, which in any event is FAR better than most combi boilers. If you think you might need cooling then an ASHP makes even more sense. Install one or more Fan Coil Units and appropriate valves and it can do cooling as well as heating.

That looks like our house build system. Insulated timber frame, racking and air tightness panels on the inside, wood fibre and render cladding. Ours was designed by a local architectural engineer and built by a local firm of builders, and finished mostly by me.

Give the ASHP serious consideration. It should not cost more than a gas system. If you take into account not having to pay for a gas connection and not having to pay a standing charge for gas, I would expect it to be cheaper. Even with an upside down house you can have UFH downstairs and upstairs with each room having it's own thermostat so you can have cool bedrooms if you want. What sort of U values does the design have for walls woof and floor?

Haven't you just described an Exhaust Air Heat Pump? Or how about a ground source heat pump cooling the slab and dumping it into the tank?

Scaffold tower.

Thanks. I thought it was trying to show power Vs time of day or sun elevation but with no scale. That makes a lot more sense now.

BOTH. We have ASHP and solar PV. I would say ASHP is the better financially. It is hard to make solar PV "pay" for itself unless you can DIY install it now. An ASHP will deliver heating for roughly the same if not lower cost than mains gas, but without the ongoing gas servicing or gas standing charge. What are your insulation levels? I worry not enough to be so far out on the initial SAP. Most people start off viewing SAP as an annoying hurdle they have to get over. Instead, treat it as a measure of how good (and how low energy) your house is and look at all ways to improve it.

What actually needs doing to it? Can you do it yourself? i.e can you just do it without sensors and keep an eye on it manually?

Here you go https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/400-GRAM-FERNOX-WATER-HAWK-POTABLE-WATER-JOINTING-COMPOUND/291969968978?epid=533104274&hash=item43fac42b52:g:rWsAAOSw-K9ZI0gL

If I get a leak I use my tub of Water Hawk Potable Water Jointing Compound. That pot was my dad's and must be nearly as old as me.

I would be interested to hear if cooling during the day (while the PV is generating) and turning it off at night is okay, i.e.does it stay cool over night. Previously in our old 1930's house we tried a portable aircon unit but the house leaked heat so quick that if you turned it off the room was warm again in half an hour, so it was a choice of be over hot, or put up with the noise to keep it going over night.

Sorry to appear dumb, but can you explain what that picture is showing me?

This is a symptom of just about all councils being short of money and trying to find any way they can to save it. Whether it really saves them money is another matter. In the case where someone goes to the next county to dispose of it yes they have saves some, but if it ends up fly tipped I doubt it. I was speaking to a lady up here who works for the council and her job is to go round on bin day looking for over filled wheelie bins. If the wheelie bin is full to the point the lid will not close completely on it's own, she slaps a l;abel on it and the bin men will leave it. Quite how that solves the problem beats me as it will then be 2 weeks before the next bin day and the householder has to get rid of the excess AND their next 2 weeks rubbish by next bin day before it will be emptied. Also I was warned of one estate in a local town that as is the case in loads of places there is not enough parking. Most people park on the street, but there are no parking restrictions, no yellow lines. There are many places where people park that allow enough space for a car to pass. But if you park there on bin day and the bin lorry cannot fit, you will get a fine slapped on your car. I just avoid doing jobs there on bin day.

I would be writing to the leader of your Council, asking first what percentage of your council tax bill goes to paying for the recycling centres, and then stating you are going to reduce your council tax payments by that amount as you have been denied the use of them for no fault of your own, and you cannot afford to pay for a service that you cannot use. I wonder if you could get crowd funding to pay to take that to court?

Yes your unit seems much better thought out. My LG unit has very few "user" inputs so I don't have that flexibility it all has to be done via the silly controller, and as I say some things even need DIP switch settings changed. This is the sort of thing you need to know before you choose a particular unit, not find out afterwards. But of course you won't find that info in the sales brochure.

Okay I hit a problem trying cooling on ours. I tried to set cooling mode on the LG controller, but it would not allow me to select that option. So I dug out the manual. I find that "cooling" mode is not available when you have opted to use an external room thermostat input. I use the room thermostat input as that is what allows me to control the heating from a normal programmer using the "call for heat" contact from the UFH manifold as the "thermostat" contact to the ASHP. To disable the room thermostat option (and thus allow cooling mode) would require opening up the ASHP and changing a DIP switch on the controller board. It is not even a software parameter that you can change. A future mod, when I can be bothered will be to connect that particular DIP switch to something more accessible, even a waterproof outdoor switch mounted on the outside of the ASHP would do it. Of course doing so would mean soldering 2 wires onto the back of the controller board and would invalidate any warranty I am sure. I have said before, the difference between one ASHP and another is in the detail of how they implement their controls, and I have to say the LG one that I have is very poor in the way it interfaces to the real world and the silly obstacles it throws in the way. Of course unless you ask other users who know it in detail you won't find this out until after you have bought the unit. And the silly bit, it even has a separate input for a cooling thermostat, separate to the heating thermostat input. One assumes that would still work if I disable the heating thermostat input and then set it to cooling mode. I think I said before, I get the feeling I have the V1A beta software in my unit with much room for improvement.

Mine is only really set up for heating. If I wanted to cool the floor, I would have to go and switch the ASHP to cooling mode on it's control panel, and then go and turn the heating programmer to on, and turn all the room thermostats up to stupidly high temperatures as all the controls assume heating mode and at the moment all the room thermostats would be turned off. If you were regularly going to use it for cooling you would want to re think the controls somewhat.