ProDave

One thing you need with under floor heating is the electrical controls for the manifold. As an electrician I have wired many different makes. Most have struck me as over complicated with features that are never used, poorly thought out making them very hard to wire neatly with insufficient space for cable termination, and over expensive for what they are. Then I found this one: On sale very cheap on ebay https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-ZONE-UNDERFLOOR-HEATING-WIRING-CENTRE/132318857114?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649 Before I bought it I did some searching and found the instruction manual http://www.auraton.pl/wp-content/uploads/_instrukcje/en/manual_AURATON_4DPRO_en.pdf That is it. That is the entire instruction manual, you get a paper copy of that with the item. First impressions. The manual is about as much use as a chocolate tea pot. There is not enough information to safely and correctly connect it and expect it to work, let alone understand what exactly it is doing. However once you work it out, it does indeed do everything you need it to do. You just need to fill in the blanks. Firstly the themostat terminals (variously referred to as such things as "terminals of cable controllers") There is a pair of terminals for each room thermostat for the 4 zones. It is important to note that the left hand of each pair of terminals is the L supply out (internally linked to the L into the unit) to the thermostat, and the right hand of each pair of terminals is the switched L back from the thermostat into this unit. If your thermostat needs a neutral, you will have to link that independantly. The output terminals are one pair for each zone. The left hand of each pair being N internally linked to N in, and the right hand pair being switched L to the zone actuator valves. There is a global switched L out to turn on the pump when any zone calls for heat, and a volt free changeover relay contact to link to the boiler / heap pump etc. So it does what it should, just shame you have to do a bit of detective work to fathom it out. I just thought I would mention this if anyone else was after a budget controller.

Last house I didn't have to do this, it came pre assembled. But in a bid to get everything as cheap as possible the manifold and the pump / blending set came as separate items for "simple home assembly" There is one instruction leaflet for the manifold, which came with two isolating valves, and one for the pump / mixing valve set. So here is first try: Question 1: The pump does not fit. The gap is too wide. As both halves of the mainfold are held together on the 2 mounting brackets, is it just a case of bending the brackets to bring the two halves of the manifold closer together (a bit poor if that's what you are supposed to do) otherwise what have I done wrong, it seems to follow the instructions. Question 2: The instructions for the manifold show those isolating valves there. The instructions for the mixing valve and pump never actually show the two attached to each other. Shouldn't those isolating valves be in the flow and return from (in my case) the heat pump rather than between the mixing valve and the manifold?

Have you got the correct flashing kit? Sarking and no battens on the sarking to me means slate nailed direct to the sarking. I suspect you might need a different flashing kit.

Hi and welcome. Another one cautioning your budget may not be big enough. We are building a 3 bedroom house and have already spent over £100K on the build and it is not finished yet. The actual build cost is likely to come in at about £130K which is still under £1000 per square metre. It is only that low because I am doing so much of the work myself, and estimate I have saved £30K in labour costs already.

I guess this is one of the advantages of remote mounting the pump? I will be interested to hear how you get on. Ours too emits a low hum. Some form of accoustic mounts would probably help because with ours if you just pick up the pump and hold it in your hand it is fairly quiet. Most of the noise comes from standing the pump on the base of it's chamber which acts like a drum. This is a "to do later" project for me so I will be following your findings. SWMBO has already noticed our garden "hums" This does not seem unique to one or 2 makes. There is a general lack of care I believe. I wired a Graff treatment plant a year ago and when powered up almost sounded like a knackered old lawnmower. 2 bits of the casing were vibrating together. Just putting your foot on it stopped the noise. That clearly needed some attention to detail in the design.

So are you saying a well sealed party wall will lose more heat than any of the external walls of my detached house? I'll stick to detached then.

Unless your neighbour habitually keeps his house very cold, I can't see a great deal of saving from party wall insulation. What am I missing? Now soundproofing benefit, that is a lot more likely.

DO NOT try lighting a bonfire with petrol. It WILL end badly, if you are lucky just with singed eyebrows. Diesel yes, petrol NOOOOOOO. I light mine when I have one with a gas blowtorch.

Never sign up to the full price. I have just renewed with BT for £23.99 per month, that being a price match of what Plusnet are currently offering.

I wonder how that will impact the sale of wood and coal?

Yes like Joe I have a Kingspan badged, Mitsubishi Lossnay mvhr with a waxed paper heat exchange core. We are not yet living in the house, thought all the clothes washing is dried inside the house, and have never had any problems. I don't have an RH meter but can't say I feel in any way unconfortable. I spend a lot of time in the house as my office is there even though we are still living in the static caravan. I would definitely turn the mvhr speed down. Mine is only running at the very slowest speed. I have not done flow measurements and comissioned it properly, but my feeling is even when I have done that, air quality will be what sets the speed, not some measurement on a table to satisfy a building regulation number.

It's a clumsy process. You contact Open Reach who will work out where to run a line and do the bulk of the work. If the work is going to cost more more than £3K they will bill you, less than that and it is free. Then when you are ready to be connected you contact your provider (most likely BT at least to start with) and they will charge you the standard connection charge which was £65 when I had mine connected.

My single phase ASHP has soft start variable speed inverter drive, that is not a feature limited to 3 phase models.

I am sure most of us of a certain age have been exposed. I recall at school the corridor ceilings were clad in some form of insulation, it had a hard crust but was damaged in many places and you could put your finger in an pull out bits of fluffy white stuff. Then one summer holiday it all got stripped out. That was 40 years ago so I guess the time window for it causing a problem has passed?

If you are into machine tools you can often get 3 phase machines cheaper . You may pay a higher standing charge for a 3 phase supply and it may limit some of your options like economy 7 Of you install solar PV, self usage may be less effective if your domestic load is split. Installation cost will be more, possibly a lot more, depending on what infrastructure is near you (e.g. we are on the end of a mile long single phase 11KV overhead line, imagine the cost if I wanted 3 phase)

Actually no. In the end I paid the same price for a 240m coil as I was originally looking at for a 300m coil but I dithered too long and all the 300m ones had gone.

We set up an old spare BT home hub to be a dumb wired wifi point for the static caravan as that was out of reliable range of the house wifi. Some devices will switch seamlessly as one goes into or out of range, others most notably the W10 laptop need to be told to switch to the other one. It was just a simple no cost option at the time.

If you want a cheap holiday home size property, look at the "caravan" regulations. You can build a single storey building a shade over 100 square metres as long as you stick to a few maximum dimensions, and by making it "portable" in sections it can legally be claified as a "caravan" and be exempt from building control. It does NOT need to be on wheels to be a "caravan" and lifting by crane onto a low loader is sufficiently portable. Where are you going to be building this?

I would not be filling with any type of soil. If you want something to wack down you need type 1 or similar.

You can do a lot with a tiny digger. At the top of our road where years ago a saw mill used to be there were 2 wooden log cabins. Someone bought one to knock down and rebuild. He never questioned it's locally elevated position, until he started digging and found it was on a mound of sawdust. To dig the foundations he just dug down and down through the sawdust until he hit proper ground. His little 1 ton digger must have been at the bottom of a 10ft deep hole by the time he finished. He had dug the cavernouse hole one side open to the slope so he could get the digger out again.

Hi and welcome. I am aiming to complete my 3 bedroom house for £200K including the land (which is a lot cheaper up here) but suspect that will creep up to more like £220K max. But to achieve that I am doing a lot of the work myself. As above a fixed priced wind and watertight shell would be a good low risk starting point.

I will finish the bathroom when I have finished making the digger.

The other side of the coin is I have plenty of sand and cement left over, and an electric mixer, so biscuit mix = £free but a bit of effort mixing barrowing and pouring. Indeed if I don't use all this sand, it is "waste" to get rid of (though freecycle would take care of that) The last house used biscuit mix and it worked fine.

My decision was slightly swayed by the fact all the sellers with the 300M rolls are currently out of stock.

And just how long would it take you to build it from a kit?