ProDave

@Jothetaxi what work were you having done? New build? Extension? Other? When I employed a contractor to to the foundations and timber frame erection I was surprised that they asked to see my self build insurance policy. I guess in the event of anything similar happening here, the costs would have been claimed on my self build policy?

I don't get this bin storage lark. Our bin store is round the back of the house, where it is convenient for us to put rubbish from the house into them. The night before bin day, we wheel the approporiate bin to the front of the house and place it adjacent to the road for collection, then bring it back afterwards. I don't see what relevance this is to the planners where your bins reside when not awaiting collection?

I wish I shared your optimism. Sadly, the UK is pretty rubbish at manufacturing things now. You only have to look at the pathetic attempts at getting two Calmac ferries built by a shipyard on the Clyde. It didn't used to be like that, and I am sure it can be like that again, but it won't happen quickly.

What I was talking about is great long tie rods that pass right through a building front to back with a large plate or cross and a big nut on the outside if the building front and back to stop the walls moving further apart. Take a walk round any town or village with lots of old houses and that is what those plates with big nuts are that you will see on many houses. typical example (first stock photo I found on the web)

I think in this case the usual treatment is tie bars through the building holding the walls together. Often seen by a cross or round plate with a big nut on the outside of the building. It would be an SE that specifies that sort of thing usually.

But it's not supporting all of it, there is a gap not supported by this wall yet managing to stay up. What was further to the right in that shot?

We have wet UFH downstairs and wet UFH upstairs only in the bathrooms. We like a cool bedroom 17-18C is fine. Most of the year to keep the bedroom that cool we need to keep the door shut. In the cold weather we have been having for the last few weeks, we occasionally have to open the bedroom door to let a bit of heat up the stairwell in. I fitted an electric point on the wall of each bedroom to fit an electric panel heater should it be required. None have ever been needed.

The only SSR I use is for my solar dump controller. I guess I went into it knowing at the heart of an SSR is some kind of semiconductor that will have a voltage drop when on, and thus dissipate heat. I did not use DIN rail as they have no particular way to get rid of that heat. Instead I used one that has a metal back plate that bolts to a heatsink with some heatsink compound. Even at full power it is barely warm to the touch.

No not normally that much movement. I suspect they have not been fitted properly. Take them off and re fit.

Lets hope it continues to work. Keep us posted. I hope they reduced the bill somewhat as they didn't need to replace the expansion vessels. Re the rattling sound. I had this with my Telford cylinder. There seems to be a conflict that a heat pump demands a very fast water flow rate, that makes the coil inside the tank vibrate and rattle. If you reduce the flow rate so the tank is happy, the rattling stops but the heat pump has a hissy fit because the flow rate is too low. In my case I had an automatic bypass valve which is really there to cover the time the motorised valves take to open. It took a lot of fiddling with the settings on the bypass valve to essentially make it bypass all the time just to keep the heat pump flow rate happy and reduce the flow going through the cylinder.

It is difficult to advice on heat pump wiring as each make is so different. Mine, an LG controls the motorised valves which connect directly to the heat pump. Mine has 3 terminals labelled "motorised valve" which actually turns out to be 2 outputs one for heating and one for hot water. You could use a 3 port changeover valve, but I chose to use individual 2 port valves. So I wired mine according to the heat pump wiring diagram. Then that over heat thermostat on the cylinder. That is a mechanical changeover contact thermostat. So I just connected the normally closed contact in series with the feed to the hot water motorised valve. So normally everything works as it should. But if by chance the cylinder gets too hot, the thermostat would open, breaking the feed to the motorised valve and shutting off any flow of heating water into the cylinder.

DO fit the safety thermostat. What if the HP has an immersion built in that it uses as backup? many do? What if you have an immersion in the tank itself?

Following with interest. One of the things that bugs me about heat pumps, is there is no standard for how you wire them. Mine, an LG needs a LOT of individual connections to the heat pump itself. It looks like with yours all those connections go to this indoor box presumably connected to the outside unit with a simple cable. It makes swapping from one heat pump to a different make a lot more complicated.

The tank WILL stratify. Not so much when it is being heated, but as you draw hot water it exits at the top and is replaced by cold water entering at the bottom. Those don't mix much so the hot / cold transition just moves up the tank. So you want the heat pump probe, the one the heat pump used to measure temperature in the lowest pocket available, so it detects the cold water as soon as possible and starts re heating. I initially tried mine in a higher pocket, and the tank did not re start heating until half the hot water had been consumed. The immersion heater one? Are you talking about the safety thermostat part of the cylinders safety system? I have that in the higher pocket. this is the one that is supposed to shut down the heating demand and close the motorised valve to protect from a runaway out of control heat source.

Looks hopeful. Can't wait for your later update.

The AC/DC thing. Volt drop in AC is critical, with PV it manifests itself as voltage rise, i.e. the voltage at the inverter will be higher than the voltage when it gets to the house. Now most inverters have an upper limit where they will limit power output or shut down completely. This is typically 253V. If your grid voltage is already high, there might not be much tolerance and the inverter may shut down often. Voltage drop on DC will still give the same power loss but is very unlikely to cause the inverter to shut down, so does not cause much of a problem.

Yes it's a long standing known problem without a sensible off the shelf solution. All I could find was a very few fire rated outside doors (it does not need to be weatherproof) at a high price and you still had to fit the closing mechanism yourself. I ended up fitting a standard FD 30 door, making the frame a good fit and adding a draught seal in addition to the intumescent fire stop seal. It is not perfect and no doubt the source of some heat loss and definitely the source of a bit of a draught, but I took the view the small heat loss would just add a little heat into the insulated garage.

We don't know much about the house, but I would deduce from the floor plans, the lack of windows in any of the ground floor rear wall, and doors from the first floor rear wall to outside, that the ground floor is set into a bank. So if you divide the garage as proposed, there will be no prospect of creating a separate door from the pool room to outside. A door via the WC or just in front of the downstairs WC might be possible. I also suspect that once you have divided the pool room off from the rest of the garage, what is left won't be long enough for a car to fit it. So if you decide you are not going to put cars in there, then it might be better to convert the room as a whole to something else?

I may be wrong but I would expect a 3 phase meter to have 3 metering coils, one per phase. It would then be up to the software how it combined them. The old spinning disk meters could do nothing other than net metering, even going backwards unless there was a ratchet mechanism to stop that. From a legal perspective you might expect an electronic meter to give the same result as a spinning disk meter ?

What stage of the build are you? Why not put the VCL across the top of the joists? Or as above slim downlights. Some will literally fit in the thickness of plasterboard.

So are ALL 3 phase meters installed now "net metering"?

I posted a while back that the national grid operator has declared there will be no more wind farm connections to the grid in Scotland (after the ones already scheduled for connection) until at least 2035 and that more wind farms are needed in England and Wales. We just need that implemented in planning policy because planning applications are still being decided for wind farms near us. If you try objecting on the grounds they will not get a grid connection the planners say that is not a planning matter. As usual no joined up thinking. If a grid connection is not possible, then planning should not be possible. Unless you want a load of wind farms built and probably paid some form of compensation for not generating because they cannot get connected?

This for me is ringing alarm bells that it is NOT the white water expansion vessels at fault. If it were then the tank would be discharging on over pressure and that would be 45 degree hot water from very near the top of the tank. I would still want a plumber I trust to test everything and find out exactly what IS at fault. One thing I did when plumbing my own system is I fitted a pressure gauge on the top of the hot water tank so I can see if it is over pressurising. That is not normally done, but I had one spare. Perhaps when the guys come with their new white expansion vessels you can agree with them, if this does NOT solve the problem they will fit the original ones back and refund that cost? It is sounding to me like "fault finding by substitution"

Are these houses being lived in, or is it as the website suggests a "home exhibition"?