ProDave

Yes selling the old one is only viable to someone who can collect it. I believe carriage is something like £80 with Palletways so a big cost to anyone wanting it from afar.

The list price of the new one is a LOT more than he one I bought, but then the list price of that was a lot more than what I paid. I very briefly toyed with the idea of paying to fix the old one and selling the new one, but that would just be silly.

It's not our fault we have a stupid system. I still believe a much better system would be simply to pay you a slightly below retail price for what you export, but that would mean everybody having a meter that measures export separately o import.

Another "wrong end" way to look at it, is you want to bu the kit as cheap as possible, so keep your eye out for bargains. Something may come up as a particular bargain and what is available cheap may end up dictating what size of system you install. For self usage there are 2 basic things that will go a long way. First is use the big appliances like washing machine, dishwasher and fluffy towel machine one at a time in the daytime. The other is excess power diversion to hot water heating. Another one to keep an eye on but I don't think we are there yet, is battery storage. There will come a time, and I suspect not far away, when that will be viable to store excess power for the evenings.

I now wish I had tried this as soon as I got it. All I did was power it up and establish communications with it's built in user interface. I now wish I had rigged it up with some hoses to a water butt and tried running it to make sure it worked.

That is a valid point. I knew we would not do well with roof panels due to the shading from the trees, so on my planning application I included ground mounted panels. I must admit is was more for completeness rather than thinking we actually needed PP for them. A sort of fortunate accident that they are now included in the PP.

I still think it best not to mention the companies involved, such threads occasionally "go bad" when names are named. Watch out for a new thread when the new one arrives and I start to connect it, probably some time early next week. I will probably try and sell the old one on the bay. The problem is I am sure it is repairable, but if as I suspect it is lacking it's refrigerant gas, then it's about £100 worth of gas, and finding someone to do it. The one person I found locally that would do it was talking of at least £300 for the gas and the job of filling it. It's not even very useful to strip for parts. The control boards are too proprietary to be of any use for anything else. There is a small inverter and a Raspbery Pi in there which is about all of use.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_tracker Basically a device to move the panels to follow the sun. I might make a very much easier very basic single axis tracker to flip the E facing panels over to the W for the evening.

I think the key to maximum self usage is to try and spread the generation throughout the day. For instance I plan to start with 4KW arranged as 2 banks of panels. One will face just a little south of East along that boundary to try and catch the first sun of the day and start useful generation as early in the day as possible. The second string will face due South to get the main mid day peak. If I can, I might try a third, probably smaller string facing West to get more late in the day generation, but that is not so easy. Of course if you have the capital (or can DIY it) and have the room, put them all on a tracker. The normal arrangement for a FIT system is put the whole lot facing due South. This gives the maximum yield, but also a much larger mid day peak, that will be harder to self use, and less generation at the ends of the day. Sticking with no more than 4KW means you can fit it and notify later without fear of being refused. Any more than 4KW and you have to get permission first. All a bit of a moot point if you don't intend exporting anything significant.

The "resolution" to this is on it's way. Literally. Firstly how did I persuade them to take the issue seriously? Well mainly thanks to another forum member, I found that the company I bought it from, and the brand name that it was sold under, are owned by a well know national company that owns amongst other things a builders merchant and a DIY chain (I did not know that at the time of my purchase) So I stopped talking to the monkey and went for the Organ Grinder in the form of the CEO of that parent company with my issue, keeping the message polite, factual and non threatening. I typed my message last Thursday and kept in in my draft folder reading and re reading it until I was sure everything was correct and finally sent it late Thursday evening. By mid Friday morning I had received a phone call with the offer of a resolution. They really don't want to repair this unit and then have to support it throughout the remainder of the warranty. So the resolution offered is they are sending a different make of heat pump, a more well known make and still a current model. I now have confirmation it is on a pallet en-route to me. There will be a small amount of re plumbing and a lot of rewiring when the new one gets here but lets hope this one is not another dud. At least I will be connecting and testing it quite quickly after it arrives. They don't want the old one back.

I think you are getting confused. 12KW might be the maximum amount of electrical power you would want to use on one appliance on single phase, but a 12KW heat pump will probably only use 4KW of power. So on that basis if the heat pump were to use 12KW of electric power it would be a monster with an output of over 40KW Re heating power requirements, our house is not as good as some on here, but not bad, needing about 2.5KW of heat to maintain 20 degrees inside when it's -10 outside. And that will be provided by a 5KW ASHP.

Don't tell me you bought the one Jeremy was selling?

I was just commenting that people in general have a fear of noise from a heat pump, but you never hear anyone saying "I don't want an oil boiler in my house because they are so noisy"

It is funny that some people get bothered by a gently low level noise from a heat pump outside, yet the same people are happy to have a pressure jet oil burner roaring away inside the house creating very much more noise.

Get your site insurance BEFORE you start. Some get shirty if you have already started. Surely you should not start until your building control have all the drawings and have signed them off?

That all depends who plumbs it and what valves they use. I prefer separate 2 port valves and this programmer will do fine, there are other 3 channel programmers around but not many.

I will be using a Horsman Channel plus H37XL. One of only a few 3 channel programmers so I can have separate times for upstairs heating, downstairs heating, and hot water.

Easy question snd yes I would. I had something like 5 quality window suppliers quote, Rationel were the cheapest and the second best in terms of U value. Only Internorm offered slightly better UW values but at twice the cost. But do shop around, prices vary and someone even once reported Intenorm being cheaper than Rationel.

I have and @Stones and I am sure a few others.

17M is a long way. The issue is the time it takes the hot water to get to the tap. I would first look at getting the HW tank more central, if not a recurculating hot water system.

They should have a maunfacturing date somewhere. That site does not say WHEN the Firex brand was discontinued, just that Kidde took over he brand in 2009 and it is now discontinued, so it might have only been last year that they were discontinued and they might still have been current?

Your electrician is going down in my estimation. Old stock, discontinued in 2009 https://www.kidde.com/home-safety/en/us/about/firex/

Buy a decent make like AICO. They are not that expensive if you search on line, and there is no issue replacing a failed or time expired unit. Apart from anything else, AICO are one of only a few with decent back plates and decent electrical terminations.

A number of issues. The rules are different in Scotland and require hard wired mains powered smoke alarms. That requirement may come to England in the future. The electrical regs are all about voltage not power. A 240V smoke alarm comes under the same regs as a 10KW heater. England and Wales has Part P which imposes restrictions on who may do certain wiring e.g new circuits, or circuits in bathrooms. Scotland and NI does not have this.

What is it about ASHP's that has put you off? The other side of the coin is GSHP's require rather a lot of antifreeze, which is supposed to be replaced after a few years with a disposal cost. That was what put me off them. I have no doubt they work but the extra eficciency compared to an ASHP appeared to me to be lost in additional costs. Another factor which is not often discussed, the "workings" of an ASHP usually go outside. but the workings of a GSHP usually go inside which is more likely to be a noise nuisance in the house.