Marvin

Work scheme designed properly and carried out compentently I would expect there to be no problem. However impossible to determine without detailed information.

COOLENERGY Invertec ASHPs: Fuse for this should be a Type C MCB. See installation manual page 15. Cable for a 10kW could be 4mm, 6mm, 10mm,16mm.... depending on what cable and how your fixing/what your fixing it to or encasing it in. A good example to help: https://www.doncastercables.com/technical-help/ Good luck Marvin

I think they are referring to the length of the screws: https://www.toolstation.com/drywall-black-phosphate-phillips-screw/p39626?utm_source=googleshopping&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=googleshoppingfeed&mkwid=_dc&pcrid=&pkw=&pmt=&gclid=CjwKCAjwoIqhBhAGEiwArXT7K3NK8eSTXD41__TXnzGfqcA8-GCdC5GO91Z2LDTVImlZGmxJDWUjRBoCHmwQAvD_BwE&gclsrc=aw.ds

Building regs approved document K https://www.planningportal.co.uk/applications/building-control-applications/building-control/approved-documents/part-k-protection-from-falling-collision-and-impact/approved-document-k

hi @Andehh Not sure a hand rail would be enough. If you remove the stub wall, then I think you would need a banister set. You may need 3 forms of protection: One to stop children's heads going through a barrier. Two 900mm high protection at kitchen level. Three a hand rail to the stairs. In my humble opinion, the blue rails would be an option but not the rails at kitchen level. Good luck Marvin

Hi @WindowNerd MVHR: Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery. How MVHR works. A mechanical ventilation and heat recovery (MVHR) unit will usually contain two fans; one to push fresh air through the heat exchanger and into the building and the other to pull the wet stale air through a separate circuit and out of the building. An MVHR system recovers about 75% of the heat that would otherwise have been expelled outside with the stale air.

+1 having read @Canski's reply.

Hi @Sailchick If you live in Malta you will have different weather to the UK. With low temperatures typically averaging 9C in December, January I'm surprised you require such a large ASHP. However this could be due to very poor insulation or summer cooling requirement. A buffer tank is usually used to store a volume of water to help the heating system work properly and a Solar collector is usually used to supply water heated by the sun to heat up a tank full for hot water use . In the UK one does not work the same as the other. Malta has between 50 and 100% more sun a year than England, with an average of 5 hours a day in December (something unheard of in England!) I would have thought a solar collector supplying all the heat for your hot water was a given (everyone would have one installed in Malta??) However this has nothing to do with a buffer tank which adds more volume of water to your heating system. A buffer tank is often used when there are several zones of heating pipework individually turned off and on which reduce the available water to heat passing through the ASHP. This can cause the ASHP to heat up and then stop, heat up and stop, and so on, in short succession (called cycling). In tests an ASHP is best run with times of heating up exceeding 10 minutes, ideally about 20 minutes??. If you only have a small amount of water running through the ASHP it could stop heating before reaching optimum efficiency costing you more money to run. The solution to this is to install a buffer tank that will hold more water increasing the amount of water available. the buffer tank heats up (which takes longer because of the volume) and cools down slower for the same reason. As @IanR comments, the decision making about a buffer tank is: Good luck Marvin.

I used to work about 40 hours actual work, plus 5 hours doing quotes, plus 4 hours on material ordering, hours over the year doing paperwork, accounts, sorting out insurance, van alarms, van broken into and materials/ tools stolen, van rear ended and written off meaning no work for 2 weeks. No pension. Paying thousands to qualify to be gas safe (Corgi at the time), unpaid weeks of work to attend courses. At the time I made about £12 an hour for my wages.

Hi @WindowNerd In my humble opinion I think that peoples health should be the first issue. Use a cleaning product that has a small amount of bleach in it and clean all the window frame to kill the spores. There are many types of common mould that can cause serious health issues. Laying in a room for hours breathing in the spore riddled soup can damage a person for the rest of their life. I know this doesn't solve the problem, but please just keep cleaning off any mould you find in the mean time. I'm no expert. I would guess it could be Stachybotrys or Ulocladium. This should give you an indication as to what level of mask you should be wearing: https://www.familyhandyman.com/list/common-types-of-mold-in-the-home/ Typical cleaning material: https://www.screwfix.com/p/no-nonsense-mould-mildew-cleaner-1ltr/31686?kpid=31686&ds_rl=1243318&ds_rl=1241687&ds_rl=1245250&ds_rl=1245250&gclid=Cj0KCQjwlPWgBhDHARIsAH2xdNdLOoG0lhEnvUK81YnbRoCED47isNirvpUt_ZbURA0k9KUB7RXDyDcaAp3iEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds Good luck M

Yes. I've had started producing scripted answers which I hope will be comprehensive enough and yet help. We should employ an AI to sort the basics....

Our water softener softens everything except our water filter tap in the kitchen, the outside tap, and the water supply for the heating system.

We have the same 125 extracts with no grease. However we rarely cook greasy food and we have an extractor hood above the hob which pulls air through a charcoal filter and back out into the room at the top of the kitchen wall units. 4 years no problem with the MVHR. (we have a boost button for the MVHR in the kitchen and a humidity sensor)

I though CO alarms were mandatory, er.., or not in Scotland?

I think Vonjy Rajakoba is right, it doesn't make sense. Yes you can do it, but who would want to pay the energy bill to run it? Does BOSCH have a vested interest in promoting something else? Sure! Does this make the comment invalid? No! Do I have an ASHP in my home? Yes. Would I install one in my home if it was an older home that lacked extensive insulation and was not detached? NO! WHY? Because it would cost too much to run! The report is absolutely right @TW9! However, did you see anywhere that the reports discussed energy costs? I didn't.

Hi @BarumMike The problem here is defining the air entering your existing kitchen now, I'm sure it's plenty, but how much? If you improve the air tightness will what is left be enough? Not that this gives you an answer, it just defines the problem. (hopefully)

Surely your Gassafe engineer will advise you when inspecting the equipment and location! A CO detector is, I think, obligatory, as is an unobstructed air supply (usually an air brick through the external wall). Also the gas AGA instructions for your model of AGA will list installations requirements. Good luck M

Hi @Wil We had about 190kWh's in December 2022. Oh and our hot water tank is super insulated (immersion and cables protected) by the equivalent of about 300mm of fluffy and the original insulation (205 litre tank). ALL pipes super insulated (LOTS of insulation) We basically improved anything we could to reduce heat loss.

Roof pitch? Roof Azimuth?

Hi. My gut feeling is that the CH temp is too high, but I'm sure someone will correct me. It seems to heat up very quickly and the shut down then heat up very quickly and shut down... Me, I would have it at 55C and see the difference....

Hi @Wil To clarify our position we have good AIM and APE. That is Airtightness, Insulation, Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery, and Air Source Heat Pump, Photovoltaics and Electric Vehicle. We have 5.12kW of panels on a south facing roof with no shading, but also we live in the south of the Isle of Wight so we have about 400 hours more sun a year than the East Midlands. For our 104m2 well renovated bungalow with Airtightness, Insulation, Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery we're now using about 1650kWh to heat the building for a year. We installed and are testing our off grid battery system during this winter but expect to use it almost every day in the summer. We only have 1 rate of electricity. Our PV produces 1/4 of the output in the winter compared to the summer. Compared with us I think your HP's are sucking all the available power up. This may be of interest: Aim to go APE It worth considering all the AIM and APE elements before making decisions. That is Airtightness, Insulation, Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery OR Heat pump Ventilation, and Air Source Heat Pump, Photovoltaics and Electric Vehicle. Some of these will not work properly without the others, and some will complement others: A MVHR will not work properly without Airtightness. An Air Source Heat Pump will have to compensate for the lack of Airtightness and/or Insulation to the degree that the benefits become questionable, especially during winter, without them. An ASHP uses electricity and Photovoltaics can supply a little during winter and a lot during summer when cooling can be a problem and an ASHP can supply cooling. PV can supply a little to an Electric Vehicle during winter and plenty during summer if your vehicle is at home during sunny days. Extending a property and only doing AIM works to the extension will be no good, you have to do all the property within the thermal envelope. And thinking of running costs: a) Airtightness and Insulation should have no running costs and last (Well, loft insulation lasts over 40 years, in our experience) with the exception of UPVC units for windows and doors, but that being said it will last 30 years? b) Our MVHR unit servicing 100m2 floor sized home uses about 260kWh a year; far far less than would be used to heat incoming cold fresh air in winter, and we clean the filters twice a year. c) ASHPs are, in my opinion, still in their infancy but we are now in the second year of use here. We were very careful to follow best practice in the design and installation of our system, did a lot of bespoke tweaking, and we now have an upgraded 1970’s timber framed bungalow that uses less than 20kWh per year per m2 of floor for heating. d) PV would be a lot less attractive if there is no ASHP or EV (or battery backup) or diverter to the hot water immersion. In my humble opinion, if you have a suitable roof you should install as much a physically possible. Electricity production costs (cost per kWh) are difficult to evaluate because it depends how much is used and how much is supplied to the grid. We decided to go with the PV cost divided by 7 years, which for us works out at £1.60ish per day. Yesterday the PV produced 12kWh all of which we used. Remember, 5kW of PV panels will not produce 5kW because you would have to have: · No shadowing of any of the panels during sunlight hours (like trees, buildings or chimneys.) · All the solar panels face exactly the right angle in relation to the summer solstice midday sun for their position on the planet. (Perfect angle facing south and perfect slope) · solar panels completely clean · the sun is completely unobscured · the Inverter 100% efficient · no other losses due to cables, and equipment, and so on. e) Knowing the above PV limitations professional installers often add extra panels to make up for these losses. (Our inverter allows us to add roughly 28% more panels than its kW rating) f) PV panel installations will produce about one fifth of the power in December compared with what is produced at the peak of summer. g) The electric vehicle and charging from the PV only really work well together if you can have the vehicle plugged in during the day and supply over 3kW from your PV (or a large proportion of that). This is why we went for the biggest PV that would fit on the roof. We then installed a system which 95% of the time only charges the EV when the PV is on and generating over 2kW in winter and 3kW in summer (we have a 13amp charging system). So, if finances cause you to have to consider only a few in my humble opinion AIM first and go APE later. (But prepare the property for the APE works as much as you can). Best of Luck Marvin

Ditto

Hi @markocosic I beg to differ. What you say seems to be right when you do the maths, but in fact this is not what happens. To be clear our electricity diverter (which diverts energy to our immersion heater in our hot water tank) only diverts energy which is not being used and would otherwise be diverted to the main grid. As we do not sell our electricity we direct the energy to the immersion. (In the winter when the hot water tank is up to temperature we redirect to an electric storage heater) This is especially useful during the winter when the ASHP is on. It is normal for an ASHP to 'cycle'. This means it heats up and then stops heating every, what 20 mins or so. When the ASHP is not running in our house we average about 600 Watts but this is not constant ( freezer, fridge on/off, kitchen equipment on/off, and so on.) So in between all these on and off demands are moments when surplus energy goes to the hot water immersion. Also it uses the ASHP less but the immersion more: ASHP £ 3,429. Immersion heater under £100. (or under £500 including diverter) Also we set the immersion at 61 degrees centigrade just to make sure we avoid any legionella issues. Also the higher temperature means that we can store more energy from a sunny day to the next not so sunny day as our tank will last the two of us for about 3 days: A day when all the electricity used to heat the water via our ASHP would come from the grid. Since the end of October we have used the ASHP about 4 times to heat the water when there was not enough sun. Oh, and we charge the car during the day when available as well. Hopefully anyone reading this who has PV and a hot water tank with an immersion will check out what I am saying. It is 8.54am and right now the PV is heating our hot water. Marvin

Hi @sharpener We have a Cool Energy inverTech Air Source Heat Pump CE-iVT9 4.3kW-9.5kW with the buffer tank installed using the 3 pipe connection. As has been said it adds to the volume of the system. Our buffer tank is within our thermal envelope and acts a bit as a radiator so any heat we loose is still used. We have a bypass valve on the pumped radiator circuit. Marvin

As I understand it some DNO's have previously permitted the equipment being "limited", however, whether this is still so or not I don't know. In my understanding, as a basic principle if the battery supply is controlled through the approved inverter and then to the mains then ok. If the battery supply avoids the approved inverter or goes through another inverter and is connected to the mains, then need to apply to DNO.