ProDave

I forgot to come back and say we chose engineered Oak in the end for the whole room. In fact I collected it earlier in the week, all 700Kg of it a full trailer and car load but done in one trip. Room is plastered and painted, UFH to go down soon, then we start flooring.

Building regs normally stipulate the size of tank depending on the number of bedrooms. Is is a forula something like 2 people for the first bedroom then one person for each additional bedroom (but check that is the correct formula) In any event for our 3 bedroom house the "correct" size was the 1-6 person treatment plant, so I would not be fitting anything bigger than that.

Let us know if it fits. Are you going to do a trial removal of the mixer cartridge? if so photograph it.

Just to be clear, th treatment plant will not "dry out" If the objective is to stop the pond drying out, then run the rainwater to it, but you will need a mechanism to stop the pond over filling which may be as simple as a weir that allows the pond water to run off somewhere else if the level gets too high, though it would be better to divert the rainwater away from the pond in that situation.

Are you going to buy it and donate it to the forum tool loan stock?

I doubt you would get a socket big enough for the central thermostatic cartridge and if you did, it's outside diameter would probably make the hole needed larger than the faceplate. Instead you would need a box spanner, or more likely a home made tool fashioned from a bit of steel tube with 4 "screwdriver fingers" to engage with the 4 slots around the cartridge. If ever it needs changing, I will be asking on the forum if anyone has a suitable tool, and if not, making one.

There is no plasterboard behind, the "wet wall" panels go straight onto the suds. No I didn't join the holes, I figured I can do that in situ with the multitool when the need arises.

I will keep you posted. Just to be clear the supplier and brand name it was sold under has not yet been mentioned on this thread I don't want that information to inhibit what I may or may not say. I have a copy of the receipt giving the sale date and estimated delivery date and my point of (if necessary) sending a recorded delivery claim was to establish the fact the issue was identified before the 1 year warranty had expired. It was brought from ebay I have just looked and the ebay listing is still there though the pictures have gone. I will take a print our of that in case it goes offline. In the ebay listing is a "full description" link ans when you click that, this little snippet is at the top of the description: UK Design, UK Manufactured, for the British climate Highest quality construction with corrosion protected evaporator coil 7 year warranty full parts and labour warranty as standard All components wire back to internal auxiliary box, ensuring that internal to external cabling is kept to an absolute minimum I will keep a print out of that in case they start trying to wriggle out of a warranty claim. Sorry the quote has messed up and I can't edit it. [fixed by mod]

Not so good news, no mention of them on ebac.com, not even the fact they started developing them in 2011. So it looks like they have stopped making them and erased it from even their history.

So this is what I have, a re badged EBAC heat pump http://www.pmcoppack.com/products/heat-pumps/ebac-air-source-heat-pump-5kw-suitable-for-up-to-3-bedrooms/0011933.html Just to be clear that is NOT the company I bought mine from, just the first link showing it that I found. Mine is identical in appearance, dimensions, weight, and specification, it just has a different name on the outside, but EBAC stickers on the inside. So hopefully it is using EBAC controls just with a slightly customised diagnostic interface just with a different "manufacturer" name shown. Even their description of the user interface and inbuilt wifi is the same. So hopefully if I need spares, EBAC might be able to support it.

That is always a worry. As far as I can tell the refrigeration unit is made by EBAC (that is not the name on the heat pump) but I suspect the controls are not.

The instructions for my free standing bath said to use a flexi waste. I detested the idea of that. Instead I used a fixed waste, connecting the trap and a short bit of pipe to the bath then lowering it into it's surround, them making the connection from below. It means if I ever have to remove the bath, I will have to cut a trap in the ceiling of the utility room below, but that is preferable to a flexi waste. And to try and avoid the need to ever need to service the bath I used a top access waste, not a remote control one (with bits under the bath to go wrong) and a floor standing bath filler.

If it has a leak, I think it is a gross leak as I am 99% sure now it had no gas when I received it, I don't think it has slowly leaked out over the intervening 11 months. So hopefully that wold be obvious on re gassing. I am convinced, for various reasons, that this unit was previously used as some form of in house training or development. If that theory is right, regular de gassing and re gassing might be something they did to it and forgot to fill it again. Well you can live in hope.

I have done some more looking around. What I find is the company that sold this unit to me are no longer selling this particular brand of heat pump (I won't mention the company or make of the heat pump in case it gets messy) That probably explains it's sale at a low price as selling off stock of a discontinued model. It was sold to me as "new" on 23rd June 2017. So I am very close to the 1 year guarantee expiring. Given my lack of reply from the company yesterday, I have now sent an email, and if no response is received on Monday I will follow up with a recorded delivery letter, making it clear I am making a warranty claim to rectify the problem with this unit. I will let you know how it proceeds. Perhaps a cautionary tale about buying cheap bargains in advance of when you are ready for them. Hopefully the fact I discovered and reported the issue before 1 year was up will be okay.

Looks like you can buy the gas in bulk (as I would expect a refrigeration engineer to do) for about £29 per Kg https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/R410A-Refridgeration-Gas-Air-Con-Virgin-Bottle-11-35kg-Unlimited-Quantity-s/302759201166?hash=item467ddac98e:g:MbAAAOSw3UZbA9zh

Given the history., I am hoping it is not a leak, but was supplied to me with no or low gas. When I first got it, I tried to run it up, but with no water connected. I expected the input to the PHE to start getting very hot very quickly and I would have then shut it off. but it didn't. it behaved as it is now, the compressor ran for a couple of minutes and nothing got hot. I didn't do any more then as I thought it was shutting down because of no water flow. And to be clear I didn't just run it and cook the thing, it honestly did not get hot. So if it's got no gas, that is how I received it. EDIT Just looked back at the event log for 10 months ago and it is logging water flow AND low pressure as faults so it was low on gas then, it has not just leaked out over the last 10 months.

So the gas cost I was quoted is about right, I need to work on getting someone cheaper for the labour. I will let you know how the conversation goes on Monday when I suggest the supplier pays for the re gassing. As I say when you run it, it is ONLY the output from the compressor that gets at all warm. That warmth never makes it anywhere near far enough around the circuit so at the drier and check valve both input and output pipes to both are stone cold. As the gas is so expensive, is is possible to fill the system say with compressed air to check for leaks first (obviously without trying to run it like that) and if the pressure holds, vent the air and fill with gas? Can I make any pressure tests at either of the Schrader valves? what sort of pressure would we expect at each?

Just to clarify it was sold to me as "new" 11 months ago, but I found out when I got it it was not actually "new". It looks in new condition i.e. it has not been installed anywhere outside, but the paper labels on all the connectors on the wiring loom suggest it might have been used as a training or demo unit. Anyway I have just found the "event log" and that confirms it is tripping on a "low pressure" fault so I think that confirms it either has a leak, or was supplied to me with no refrigerant. Monday's phone call could be "interesting" I did a quick search for refrigeration engineers up here and only one answered the phone this late on a Friday. He estimated £160 for the labour to re gas it and a similar amount for the gas. That sounds like a piss take to me. I can't think it's more than an hour to re gas it, and how much does 1.8Kg of R410A actually cost? Can you ask your mate what a proper re gassing cost would be? And to be clear it's a monoblock unit.

I am trying to comission my ASHP and can't get it working, and finding the supplier so far frankly useless. At first I thought it was a controls issue, because the web based diagnostics is not showing the water flow rate, so I thought it was refusing to run because it thought there was no water flow. But now I am coming to the conclusion that is a red herring and the on line diagnostics are not much of a reflection on what is actually happening. So I am trying to do some self diagnostics and wonder if it's a refrigerant problem. Here is the refrigerant pipework diagram from the manual What is happening, you give the heat pump a heating demand. the fan starts up. The compressor starts up and ramps up in speed. After a short while the output pipe from the compressor starts to warm up. Notice the term warm up, it is by no means "hot" just warm. Nothing much seems to flow around the regrigerant circuit, you can just detect slight warmth in the pipe going into the reversing valve, but I can't detect any warmth making it past there out of the reversing valve and certainly no warmth reaching the plate condenser. After a couple of minutes the inverter ramps up a bit faster in speed then it all shuts down. Am I right to be thinking this may be a lack of regrigerant in the system and that might be the problem rather than an electrical fault? I am trying to formulate an understanding of what might be wrong before I go back to the supplier wihich probably won't be until Monday now.

How about getting a local, or even a national paper to run a story. Headline: "If you want to build a house, get planning permission for a stable block and the council will never take enforcement action" Quote the HOP statement above. That should ruffle a few feathers. This would be good in the Daily Wail.

In our case (stick built timber frame) the builders made the window openings 50mm bigger in each dimension. They then lined the window openings with 20mm PIR insulation, fitted the windows, and foamed the remaining very small gap. The air tight membrane taped to the windows on the inside. Outside, cladding in Wood Fibre, Compriband was used to seal the wood fibre to the windows.

Is this the one where the building is being built in the wrong location on the plot and not following the plans? Surely they can enforce THAT issue? When building a house and living in a caravan on site it is normal to get temporary PP to use the caravan as a dwelling so the whole familly can legally live in it.

Most of the compression joints were unavoidable, things like valves, manifolds, the HW tank, pumps, etc. I think I only used 6 compression fittings just to join pipes together, and that was just to use them up.

Well it's all piped up now. As I suspected, it was a struggle getting enough antifreeze in. I filled at 3 points, the 3 highest points and only just got the required antifreeze in before finally topping up with water and bleeding. It's been holding steady at 0.6 bar for 48 hours, I guess 1 bar is a good pressure for final filling? I still have all the UFH pipework to lay and fill, UFH manifolds valved off at the moment. Should start laying the UFH pipe downstairs in a week or 2. 30 soldered joints and 22 compression joints and the only weeps were a couple of compression joints not tight enough

With a timber frame that is being clad (with block) it is usual to use Kwikstage or Cuplock and hang a few Hop Up's on the inside for the frame erection, then remove them as the brickies build up. With my own build and my own scaffold, I didn't have any hop ups. So when it came time to clad it and the scaffold was a little to close, I moved it in place. A gentle tap on each foot with a sledge hammer moves it about half an inch. Just keep moving up and down the run half an inch at a time and it's not long before you have moved a complete scaffold over 6 inches. Probably not official advice "don't do this at home" but if you are as stupid as me and try it, make sure EVERYTHING is removed from the scaffold and you wear a hard hat.