Marvin

Looking at your picture of the meter, the blue lever is in the on position. If the meter numbers are not increasing with the valve open you have no leaks.

We're the numbers changing when you looked at the meter?

Yes. 10mm Hammerfix = 10mm drilled hole. When drilling the hole through the frame you need to avoid the cavity. If your frame is set well in from the outside wall face this may be tricky may be an angle job. Be careful not to push the drill in so far that the drill (not the Drill bit) rubs on the gasket or frame marking it. I used window fixing clips: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/194404674704?mkevt=1&mkcid=1&mkrid=710-53481-19255-0&campid=5338365712&toolid=20006&customid=EB61532596& These knock into the grooves in the side of the window frame and you have to chistel a groove for them in the window reveals to be fixed in. Youll get the idea from this: Good luck

It worth considering all the AIM and APE elements before making decisions. That is Airtightness, Insulation, Mechanical Ventilation with Heat Recovery, and Air Source Heat Pump, Photovoltaics and Electric Vehicle. Some of these will not work properly without the others: A MVHR will not work properly without Airtightness. An Air Source Heat Pump will have to compensate for the lack of Airtightness and 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. 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

Hi @ProDave, @markc, @Miek re green energy after dark, as I understand it Drax B uses wood pellets (delivered from USA) I think its defined as a renewable energy source.....

Yes but we use PV in the EV 95% of the time.

I think your missing the point. We ordered our new EV car last Xmas and there is still no sign of it appearing before next year, so no second hand EV from us! You try buying a new EV from a dealer right now and you will be on a waiting list. So no new ones, no secondhand ones.

BP pulse EV charging rate now 55p/kWh . That would cost about 12p a mile for us.

Sounds like a melt down....

Library, hospital, shopping mall, garden centres, huge DIY stores, and so on.

My thought would be that having mentioned that you are awaiting planning permission, a discussion with the builders about the type of project and if this sort of thing is of interest to them and have they completed similar projects would be a start, and commenting about when you hope to start on site. I would first want to find out if I could work with the builders, then how much and when. I'm with @Canski building plans show the complexity of the building. Site location the logistics. Bill of quants the amount of work. Given a set of plans, location and a specification that's a days work to figure out the quantities and price them up. (Not so on new build because there's more "standard" work) Good luck M

Small number of vehicles? 1.35 million in the UK.

Batteries in base of vehicle makes lowering the floor for wheelchairs a pain.

Yes I can see that some would find it almost impossible. It works differently for different lifestyles. Just because it works for us doesn't mean it would work for the next person down the road. You have to evaluate the situation. As with @Kelvin we would not go back to an ICE. The real p***off for us is nonexistent disabled EVs.

Not being one of the wealthy of the parish, I think it does matter. However, we take the view in attempting to measure the typical cost, that if the system lasts 7 years it will have cost us £1.50 a day. How much of what we produce we use, we are not sure, but I bet its more than 3kWh a day.

Another layer of plasterboard to bring the wall out?

Thanks for all the info. Yes were really looking at background warmth and SWMBO has already commented about controls which we will be experimenting with. (as SWMBO says I cant help myself!)

I didn't want to mention until tested.

Try again.... Having analysed the historical data output form the PHOTOVOLTAIC GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM for my PV setup in the winter of 2019-2020 the results show me that even in January 2020 we would fail to use about 75kWh produced by the PV, even after taking into account all manipulations we could possibly do (except wasting power) like only washing, heavy cooking, washing, tumble drying, and topping up every rechargeable battery we have (about 12kWh) on sunny days. Doing all this we still expect to buy in about 200kWh in January. In order to keep our bills down we are installing night storage heater and converting the energy supply to come from excess PV during the day producing "Day Storage Heaters". Looking at the raw data (the PGIS broken down into hourly records over a year and weather broken down to half hour records) its easy to conclude that the days in winter when sunny with a clear sky give rise to high PV generation and cold nights. We are low tech here and will be using CT clamps and relays to engineer the charging control. I am testing out a different way, but won't comment until tested. Just to say the storage heaters will only be using a resistive and not an inductive load. There are multiple issues regarding output control which will be addressed at the time.

Having analysed the historical data output form the PHOTOVOLTAIC GEOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION SYSTEM for my PV setup in the winter of 2019-2020 the results show me that even in January I would fail to use about 75kWh of PV, even after taking into account all mernipulations

The regulator on top of your gas meter reduces the pressure of the supply to your house. If I remember correctly the regulator reduces the pressure of the gas coming into your home down to about 25 mbar from about 75mbar. It's very unlikely that this is anything to do with the problem. More likely is the resistance to the flow of the gas due to the length and internal diameter of the pipe to the garage. You could easily find out the pressure of the gas but not the flow rate. You could use @Temps suggested calculator, but sadly the only way to be sure is to run an appliance on the other end. Can't really open a gas pipe and measure the flow with nothing on the end and expect to live very long....

Tricky to do on a bungalow like ours.

I think your right about the efficiency of the machine, but I'm not sure about the whole system efficency due to the location of the equipment and ducting. I have adjusted my expectation after testing the actual air inlet temperature and comparing it to the calculated air temperature. Individual results will be greatly dependant on if the MVHR and any ductwork is inside or outside of the thermal envelope.

True. Using the data over the year 2020 we had an average temperature of 12.1 centergrade here. The average temperature in the home was 21C (19 for about 8 hours over night and 22 the rest of the day. We would require about 1157 Watts to heat up the same amount of air taken directly from outside, as apposed to, the 231 Watts of heating required and 32 Watts to run the MVHR. So a saving of about 926 Watts an hour. 926 Watts by 24 hours by 365 days is 8111 kWh a year! Note: In this example both ways of calculating do not take into account heat produced in the building, from people, heat all electrical appliances or solar gain. Estimating these brings the difference between air inside to air outside to only about 4.1C and the saving down to about 2000kWh a year for us. FYI our home is about 105m2 on plan! In my humble opinion, you have to have some really really poor MVHR design for the running of the MVHR to cost more than the saving on heating.

Except for the wind chill effect on the external temperature of the building...