Ferdinand

I hope it has sufficiently strong bollards in it, unlike the one outside the Primary School in Wimbledon. Or the kind of rock that features in Rock Cam (personally I'd go for a bigger one). I'm a huge fan of the World Bollard Association, bith for its corporate objective of making BMWs extinct one at a time, and also for the Dogs and Bollards theme.

For a comparison, these are how my usage has worked out recently. Factors are: - It is Gas for heating, nearly all hot water (one electric shower), and cooking. - The A2A heat pump as described. CoP about 2->2.5, so puts out 2.5->3kw for 1>1.5kW of input. - I have a new air-fryer cooker which I have been using quite extensively -> transfer from some wok cookery on the gas, but also from the Electric Oven. - I have a solar array put in in 2016 which reduced my annual electricity consumption by something like 30-35% like for like (finger in the air estimate). If I go for more electrical heating that will work the other way. - Living on my own in a largish 4 bed house (200 sqm approx). Usage numbers. - During the summer I was using about 4-5kWh of imported electricity per day. Figure from smart meter. - When I got the air fryer in, and started dabbling with the ASHP in heating mode during Oct, that went up to around 7-8kWh per day. - During the current cols snap that has jumped to around 10kWh per day. I hope to keep it at that level as a max. - Gas use during the summer was cooking / water, so very little. - Since early Nov I have been running a bathroom radiator a couple of hours AM and PM. Put usage up to about 1-1.5 cubic m per day (which I make ~15 kWh). - My downstairs heating controller was replaced in mid-Nov, and I have that on driving the UFH over the downstairs to provide some baseload heating. That has put usage to about 4 cubic m per day, which I make around 44 kwh. - For an early morning boost I have occasionally been using the wok ring for 15 minutes whilst cooking breakfast, which is not quite optimal efficiency or C02 wise, but a good instant boost. - Bills for 4 Nov -> 3 Dec were £60 gas and £70 elec. I think I need to get to grips with the the new GFCH controller to use gas more efficiently by setting up daily timings rather than default, judging by the weekly gas usage where 45% of the last 4 weeks was in the last week, or it could run away with me like last year. - TBF, my current regime is a little hair-shirty, back to the old "warm certain rooms" method (baths + kitchen-diner), and the rest running .. er .. 'cool' ! House is OK-good, rather than near-passive. Graphs Reflections - Last year I was caught out a little by the amount of gas I used for heating, which having done a retrospective audit of bills recently was more than I thought it was. But I was incapacitated by illness. - This year my stretch goal is to keep bills below £100 per month except for Nov / Dec / Jan / Feb (say £800-£1000 total for 12 months), and to break even when solar exports and FIT are added in. That is a bit of a stretch goal TBH, especially on the heating side. - Further improvement will depend on the supply side and a switch to electric heating, so likely more solar / solar export and a house battery. Not much scope for improving fabric performance since it was all done just before we bought it around 2008 - except perhaps draughts and drylining as I need to redecorate certain areas. A detailed heat model analysis may help.

It's notable to me how much difference each progressive step makes, since I developed it slowly due to my serious illness. I'd suggest making a point of doing all three: 1 - Insulated duct *not* uninsulated duct (leaving it uninsulated creates a duct-surface-area-inside-the-room radiator working against your heating or cooling goal). My 3m one cost about £35. 2 - As good a baffle in the window opening as you can make. The one that came with my unit was suitable for windows with an obtangular opening (eg sashes), but sized for an uninsulated pipe. I started with cardboard and eventually made one from plywood. The gap around the edge is less of a hit than might be expected - at an average 3mm gap around a 150mm pipe with 25mm insulation it would be leaking area/inlet area = (2*PI*100mm*3mm)/(PI*75mm*75mm) as a fraction, which I make 0.05. Not zero, but fairly marginal. (That calc ignores edge leakage around the baffle and temperature variability effects between where the baffle is located and where the end of the pipe is located.) For cutting the leakage I would use a bit of rockwool or material round the pipe, and probably sticky foam strip around the window frame. 3 - Sort out your water drainage outlet - I use a watering can and a piece of beer-making-type hose with the end cut at an angle to concentrate any flow, which was easier to manage/cut tidily than hose pipe. HTH F

I've been doing internal master taps on tenanted houses for a number of years. I find Ts usually like that an an external double socket, especially if they like gardening. Ts who like gardening are worth their weight in tomatoes. In one memorable case I have no idea where the pipe goes when it vanishes underground, it is so old. That was my own cottage which my gran and grandad owned from 1926. So when it froze originally we had to dig a hole around it to give space for the plumber to work. On that one it has a stop tap at the base of the outside pipe, and a normal two-headed tap at the end (one for hose plus one for buckets - T uses it a lot). My call would be leave external tap open, and cloe the inside master tap, for the freezing period. And insulate a box with some rockwool just for a bit of extra resilience if it is away from the house or an outbuilding. F

Ha ! Why is everyone suggesting technical solutions here, when the issue is clearly that you can't blow (or suck) hard enough? You have a need for that versatile buildhub practitioner known as an elephant. There are two methods: 1 - Attach the elephant to the inside pipe, and then make it sneeze. Requires pepper and a tolerant elephant. 2 - Attach the elephant to the outside of the tap, put a clothes peg on it's trunk and take it off when it is desperate for a breath. At that point there will be a sharp intake of breath by the elephant and the water will be extracted from your piece of pipe. It is wise to have your running shoes with studs on at the time. Elephants can do 40kph. I believe we discussed this in the past when we were talking about getting ropes through ducts, as an alternative to using moles or pigs. An alternative is to have grown up playing the trombone, or as an apprentice town-crier. I did the former with the trumpet and I have a routine asthma test in 45 minutes, for which I am stood in good stead thereby. (More seriously, it sounds as if you should be OK.) Useful content: There are some styles of tap that have the turn handle on the outside and the valve deeper in the wall to keep it warmer. There are also things like this one which have a built in drain: https://www.arleymosssupplies.co.uk/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=2711 If you go for a pump, is it suitable to use one that does your car tyres, or bicycle? I don't see why not. Ferdinand

Here's a piccie of my temporary setup using the AirFlex15. The insulated duct is quite chunky. t the extent that a more perma-solution is not imo acceptable looking like that in my kitchen. I would either want it done as a real outlet hidden behind the unit going through the wall. In that case I think I am better with a real A2A one (inside or outside unit) and a 70mm connector.

It would have to be done in an insulated duct.

Remember you can get fine jigsaw blades that cut on the downstroke.

I'd point you to the manual, but of course one of the two (inlet or outlet) is in the room, and the other exits through a window or a hole in the wall. I have to think about it again every half year when I reverse the unit to change it from heating to cooling by plugging it in the other way round, to keep my brain straight.

I would not put one in a bedroom, and want it to work whilst I was asleep. But you can arrange it so that the unit is outside eg on a balcony. The thread I linked has a copy of the manual linked, which tells you a lot more. I am not sure that it would be able to drive the flow up the height of a chimney. My view is that I would probably not make one a permanent installation but would go for a minisplit, or one of those where there is a single unit inside the room and a 70mm hole carry the connections. If eg I had a summer office it would be useful as tactical heating. / cooling. For me, it is also a spare powerful dehumidifier which I might ultimately use as another lend-to-tenants or dry-the-washing device.

Heh. I have a conservatory with double glazed "external" doors to inside and outside, since the previous house-adaptor ran out of getting his money back and did not built it. So he turned it into a patio and put external doors on the kitchen and lounge. We finished it. I'd say it's a useful buffer for a boost for the kitchen in the morning, but that is about the extent of it. I also get solar in the morning as it is mainly East Facing, so that helps boost the CoP. Conservatory: 12 sqm. Kitchen: 30sqm ish. As I sit here in my blogging pants in my kitchen-diner dispensing my wisdom (don't get excited - I am talking about Yankee-Doodle blogging 'pants') the temperature is about 15-16C, which is a little below my comfort zone, so I hope my Trombe-Conservatory will give me a couple of degrees extra over an hour or so. F

I wonder how much having the external air feed from a conservatory (with an external conservatory window) helps? AFAICS the warmer-than-outside air initially in the conservatory should provide a short-term performance buffer until the conservatory has been cooled down. That will afaics help the initial boost, but has benefit only for an initial period, and then needs the conservatory to heat up again as outside air hopefully heats up. So potentially helpful on eg a cold morning where it heats up to a degree later.

Went for one of these, which is now here. Looks very good for £50. Two batteries, two chains, oiling facility, 6" edge.

I did a thread starting in summer 2022 about this, with some background (including a rude joke about Boris Johnson.) I will add a few more recent notes on this thread. TL:DR - at under £400 it's imo a bit of a steal, even if you just use it as a portable dehumidifier / heater / cooler. Remember that there is a Wi-Fi controllable version. If you install it with a direct external outlet, you are looking at a 200mm hole in your wall - which is BIG. Here:

My current one is a portable thing I'm experimenting with, which can be installed in all sorts of ways. One of these: https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/airflex15/electriq-airflex15

To me the Octopus deals look potentially good, as they cover necessary radiator work, and other things too. https://octopus.energy/get-a-heat-pump/

My parents did more or less that from 1976, but perhaps with a larger house (5000 sqft) and from a more basic start. It was also listed. One question is how much money do you have to throw at it? If you plan to stay for 30 years and have or can get say £70-150k, there is a lot to be said for an expensive blitz now. You really need imo to consider fabric carefully *before* you decorate. If you are starting from solid walls as the only barrier a simple technique such as drylining over 60-100mm celotex will make a hell of a difference. But once you have decorated you will not want to go back and redo it. I would say an important principle is quality over haste. Each room, once done, is something you will probably live with for your lifetime in that house. Get it right first time. There is a lot that can be really innovative and cheap with a little thought. Consider your windows carefully - one thing we did over Georgian windows was secondary glazing by using toughened polished edge sheets made to spec. size, and mirror hinges to hold it on plus sticky foam round the edges. It was left in place in some rooms and removed from April to September in others. Pay careful attention to floors, and ventilation if you change the insulation / airtightness. ATB Ferdinand

So there is cause for caution at lower temperatures,. and probably a need for some sort of Plan B. Mine 'defrosts' - or I assume it is defrosting when it stops and starts draining water into the bucket on the drainage pipe - from time to time.

I love "personal treatment plant". That would be a dual purpose hot-tub then? That gives you two of your types of Unknowns. 1 - Everything not guaranteed by the planning process. 2 - Everything in "Reserved Matters". What do you know about the farmland? Could you suddenly get 2000 free range pigs or 26,000 chickens next door? How big is your buffer around the barn? How much land - space to grow big hedges or windbreaks? What guarantees do you have that nothing will be developed agriculturally near your Shangri-La?

Thanks, Gill. Won't a normal Smart Meter give you a good shot at this last requirement? I'm will Octopus. and I can just download a whole lot of data as a spreadsheet, or look at various charts in my account online.

Hello, good morning, and welcome my Fluffy friend ! My comments? 1 - Thinking and reflection time really matters - making mistakes is cheaper if it's in a thought experiment. 2 - Get into a habit of being curious about things outside your current experience - known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. 3 - See Buttercup's advice. Ferdinand

I'm in the market for a pruning chainsaw - one of those which is 6", 8" or 10" long. Circumstances: 1 - I have a set of remains of shrub to remove to ground level or just below to put a fence across the top. Needs doing PDQ and my handyman is not available to dig it all out by the roots. 2 - Having been ill quite long term I have a number of small-medium sized (4m->7m high ish) fruit trees which need some pruning, having got somewhat out of control. 3 - I use Makita, and have lots of batteries. SO I think I am after 2 items: 1 - A Makita pruning chainsaw for longer term use. With versions of normal chainsaw features. 2 - Possibly a cheap as chips Makita battery compatible one that I can afford to risk breaking. There seem to be Chinese ones around for <£50, which have no chain lubrication system but I have an oil can. Can anyone recommend models or sources? As ever, all comments, and especially cautions, are welcome. Thanks Ferdinand

Let me add a couple of comments. 1 - We have our own Heat Model spreadsheet written by a former member, which many have found useful. Here: 2 - I often think that the easy way to upgrade your radiator is to upgrade from single to double panels as often as needed. Less new plumbing required. OTOH redoing radiators and pipework can be quite cheap - the last house (I am an LL) I did replacing all the radiators and pipework was only slightly more than a Powerflush. 3 - I think your £499 British Gas number indicates £7999 minus the grant which goes direct to the supplier. 4 - When you get your EPC done, ,make sure you can prove all your good insulation points, and discuss beforehand with your EPC consultant. If it is not proven (eg 2G performance, possibly cavity insulation) they quite often have to make low-value assumptions, which can slug your number. F

Welcome. Explain and ask away.

Can anyone give me a quick summary, or link, as to the minimum practical external temperature for A2A heat pump installs to function? Background is that I am currently using GFCH underfloor downstairs / rads upstairs, and I have been experimenting with a portable A2A heat pump heater / cooler for about 18 months in the kitchen diner. I am satisfied that it puts off any need for GFCH use by a few weeks either end, a boost to the house via air flow, and gives me a nice cooling facility in high summer. But my unit says it is not practical below 7C external temperature. Were I to look to install A2A units as an eventual replacement for the GFCH would that limit be about the same ie not much use below 7C? Hence my question. Thanks in advance for any replies.