ProDave

On the 3 heat pump installs I have done for others, I recon 2 days for the plumber and electrician so calculate that at your local rate, plus parts. Assuming you are going to have wet UFH anyway and a hot water tank, it really comes down to difference in cost between a system boiler and tank, or an ASHP and tank. There is not much difference to install in a new build. Or will bur BUS grant subsidise installation of UFH on a new build as well as the ASHP?

Definitely something odd here. But we don't know the details of your "well insulated" house. For another comparison my 150 square metre house has a worst case heat loss of just over 2kW for the whole house when it's +20 inside and -10 outside (a realistic winter temperature here) and is heated fine with a 5kW ASHP. There is a spreadsheet available on this forum that if you care to try it and input all the details of the house will give a very accurate idea of heat loss. I found even the detailed full SAP with all those same details over estimated the heat loss by some margin. Also if you do have a heat loss of say 7kW, then you will need more than a 7kW ASHP otherwise it would have to spend all it's time 24/7 heating the house and would have no off time and no time to heat your hot water.

Usually loose terminals. There will be a lot of current through that for 7 hours a night for half the year. One of the reasons a regular EICR is a good idea, that would likely have been spotted before it actually failed like that. When I did a CU replacement for a house with that sort of big central storage heater, I specified an over size board, so the 50A rcbo for the big heater, could have a vacant space either side of it to aid cooling.

So glad you got it sorted, and a shame the first electrician turned out to be no good. At least you can carry on with the heating you have for the short term and have longer to plan a longer term replacement. Keep the details of today's electrician, now you have found one that knows what he is doing.

Bearing Boys have replied offering me this https://www.bearingboys.co.uk/Miniature-Bearings/6082Z-SKF-Shielded-Miniature-Ball-Bearing-8mm-x-22mm-x-7mm-131446-p They claim SKF are better than NSK I guess that has to be better than my unbranded ebay one?

Not much luck yet. Simply bearings and Bearing boys don't recognise 608Z1 I have found this that identifies my bearing but they look to be a wholesale supplier. https://en.tradebearings.com/608Z1_C3_E-817847.html And I don't trust Alibaba to supply a "genuine Japanese NSK bearing"

My cheap bearings arrived today and I have fitted one. I can now confirm the rear bearing on this motor is 8x22x7. I did not want to pull the old bearing off to measure the shaft size in case the bearing collapsed in so doing and I would have been left with the ASHP out of action until the replacement arrived, and measuring the shaft diameter when the end of the shaft is flush with the end of the bearing was less accurate, so I had ordered a 7mm and an 8mm bearing. The ASHP is now running with a quiet fan as before. Now I have the old bearing off, I can confirm It is an NSK 608Z1 All the writing on this rear bearing was on the side facing the motor armature so completely invisible until the bearing was off the shaft. Getting the old bearing off was not too difficult. I tried my smallest puller set, but that could not get into the limited space. I was mindful of the rotor being a permanent magnet and no doubt not very strong. Levering anything against that would no doubt end in a broken rotor. So I hunted around various tubs of odds and ends in the garage, and came up with the brass nut off a 28mm compression fitting, which passed over the bearing and rested on the steel core of the rotor not the magnet, and then a screwdriver under each side to gently ease the bearing off. I will now seek a better quality 8x22x7 608Z1 to have ready for when the cheap one fails.

I very much doubt they will pay less. A long time ago now, when I was looking for my first house, I saw a Victorian terrace house for sale. It was not in a village but just a row of houses out on their own, fronting right onto a busy road, no off road parking, the only parking was a public car park about 200 metres away. I looked up the details expecting it to be cheap because of the lack of parking and inconvenient location. My bubble was burst very quickly when I saw the silly money being asked, and presumably someone paid for it.

It's all about the misconception that we can transition to net zero / sustainability without any negative impact on our lifestyle. Starting with we can all swap to ev's and they are just as good as an ICE car. No in many ways they are not. We can all switch to heat pumps for heating. Well you can under the right circumstances with the right upgrades but that is not always easy or affordable. We can all switch to cycling. Well you can for short journeys but that won't help most with a 20 mile commute to work each day. Cue they want us all to live in 15 minute cities. You don't need a car parking space because you should not be thinking about owning your own car when you can have a bicycle and use public tranport. Yes I accept we have to reduce our use on fossil fuel etc, but what irks me is the LIE we can do it with no impact on our lifestyle. I would have a LOT more respect for the people planning this, if they were just honest and had a grown up conversation with is, that not only do we need to change how we do things, we need to change WHAT we do and that means travelling less and doing less, which for most of us means our lives will be a lot less fulfilling.

I hope nobody buys them. I would not.

FORGET the electric boiler. Direct heated HW tank (just a HW tank with 1 or 2 immersion heaters. Electric panel heaters on the walls where needed. No need for water and radiators. Keep it simple. Then put the "newly refurbished" flat on the market before the winter and the tenant finds his heating bills are 3 times what they were last winter.

Gravity HW usually has the tank right above the boiler, and when heating HW it is just convection that makes the water flow, and the pump only comes on ti circulate hot water for central heating. If the pump is coming on now, look at why might be an electrical or controls problem? The big disadvantage of this system is you can't control the temperature of the hot water other than by adjusting the boiler flow temperature, and you can't have heating on without hot water.

It won't need to support the load, that is what the big concrete lintel is doing. What is this bit? I am going to take a guess and it's a porch and steps at the front or back of the house, not the main structure of the house? Someone has made that gap for some reason, what is inside when you remove the loose bricks? is access needed for something?

What are you using to tell you that the off peak circuits are "on"

You have a canal on your doorstep, Would it not be easier to make a viewing platform to see that?

I would simply ask them HOW can they QUOTE (note quote not estimate) the total cost before they have done a heat loss calculation and therefore before they even know what size heat pump they are fitting so they don't know the materials cost. Anyway it does not take a genius to realise they are taking the pee and that is a grossly over inflated quote. I would run a mile. The more I see examples like this, the more I know this is where all the former double glazing sharks have gone to try and rip off as many unsuspecting customers as they possibly can.

This is as much an exercise to confirm beyond doubt what size I actually need. I have ordered 7x22x7 and 8x22x7 and I won't know which it is until I take the old one off. Bearing boys only have one of those sizes. Once I have it working even with a cheap bearing, I will seek to get a quality one for an ultimate replacement.

Some things are particular to a particular stove and will be detailed in the instalatlion instructions, such as distance from the side or rear of the stove to combustible materials.

My bearing learning curve is progressing. Googling 5201Z only really gave a handful of foreign hits that even when translated did not yield much information. Searching for 5201Z on ebay was a little better, it gave one USA seller offering a 5201ZZ bearing from which I gleaned it was a "Double row angular contact bearing, shielded" And i also determined from his listing the correct way to identify a bearing is bbxddxtt Where bb is the bore of the bearing, dd is the diameter of the bearing and tt is the thickness of the bearing. So my rear bearing would be 7x22x7 and my front bearing would be 12x32x10 Searching for those sizes presented like that gives lots of options on ebay for not a lot of money. I have that nagging doubt if my rear bearing is in fact 7mm or 8mm bore, so I am minded to order one of each (yes I have put the motor back together now and back in the ASHP)

Over the last winter the fan on my LG therma V 5kW ASHP has developed a whine, the fan is not normally audible inside the house but it is with this whining fan. It has finally reached the top of my "to do" list. It is extremely easy to reach and remove the fan. Power off. 5 screws removes the plastic front over the fan section and a single bolt removes the big fan blade. 3 nuts unbolt the fan motor and you need to take the lid off to unthread the cable and unplug it from the PCB. Here is the fan motor before disassembly. 3 little self tap screws undo and the front can be gently prised off. Inside is a permanent magnet rotor with 2 bearings This is a variable speed motor and all the electronics are potted into the rear part of the housing. So beyond bearing replacement this motor is probably not servicable. The front bearing Measures 32mm overall diameter, 12mm shaft diameter, and 10mm thick the rear bearing Measures 22mm diameter, shaft 12mm diameter, thickness 7mm Both bearings have NSK Korea stamped on them but I cannot see any other numbers. It appears to be the smaller rear bearing that is noisy, so while I intend to try and buy replacements for both, I will probably only replace the rear bearing for now. So help please from that size information to find a replacement bearing for each. EDIT: Further information: I now think the smaller rear bearing has a smaller diameter hole. I measured 12mm as the shaft diameter behind the bearing, but I now think it presses onto a reduced diameter section of shaft. I now think that is 8mm diameter, but it is hard to measure properly without removing the bearing and that is likely to put the motor out of action until I get a replacement which I don't want to do at the moment. Also, I have found a number "5201Z" on the front bearing. I have started looking at bearing suppliers but of course I have no idea if these are ball bearing, roller bearing or what variant so feeling a bit out of my depth.

I would be VERY surprised if any wall is cold enough at this time of year for condensation to form. Most likely some form of damp. I would be wanting to lift some floorboards to see what the wall and sub floor space is like in that region.

It needs to be a "5 terminal" meter. L and N in. Permanent L, N and switched off peak L out. Just like the old off peak meters have been for 40 0dd years. (okay it took them a while to put it all in one box, previously the meter and the time clock / switch were separate boxes) I have even read of ridiculous stories of the off peak output turning on and off, but not at the same time as the rate changes.

You have to admire the British who have a habit of taking something that works ?E7 / E10) and replaces it with something unreliable and complicated to the point the people in charge of the network don't understand it (smart meters) My understanding is quite apart from the simple task of just getting remote readings from a smart meter, the thing they struggle with is turning on the off peak circuits, so they just come on when it is on the cheap rate.

Done.

First (no criticism meant) for a fault like this call an ELECTRICIAN not your energy supplier. Let him diagnose exactly what is wrong. Calling the supplier assumes you think the problem is with the dual tariff metering system. It might be, it might not be. As you have found, the "solution" by the suppliers seems to be replace the old dual rate meter with a smart meter. But frankly I hear so many issues with getting off peak supplies to work with smart meters, I doubt the competence of many of the supply companies to set them up properly. At this time of year you should not need heating, so hot water is the immediate concern. In all but the most basic designs of off peak hot water heating there is a means to turn on a daytime immersion heater to heat the hot water even if the off peak supply is not coming on. We need to know more about what was "reset" during these visits. Hot water heating up first night of off peak then not heating up the next night, is often a failed immersion heater thermostat. Again nothing for your supplier but something an electrician can test and repair. You should NOT be needing to change the heating system to "work with the smart meter" Get on the blower to an electrician, let him test and work out what has gone wrong with what you have.