Plant room location

[j_com]

Hi all,

 

Our initial house sketches include a plant room located on the ground floor at the eastern end of the house. Initially this seemed fine as I it was as far as possible from the bedrooms (to minimise risk of ASHP/MVHR noise).

 

However, the bathrooms (1 downstairs, 3 upstairs) are all at the western end, ~20 m away. Thinking about it more, it will mean the hot taps will need to run for ages to get any hot water, some of the UFH loops on the ground floor will also have very long runs.

 

What are people's thoughts on plant room location? Would it be preferable to scrap the plant room and have the hot water cylinder, UFH manifold etc. more centrally (e.g. under the stairs)? The MVHR could possibly go in the roof space above the single storey utility room?

 

Cheers!  

 

 

[ProDave]

I started with a "plant room"

 

ALL that is in my "plant room" now is the mvhr unit, a few controls, and the heating circulating pump.

 

The airing cupboard and hot water tank is in the corner of a bedroom to get the tank in particular closer to the kitchen while still being close to the bathrooms. 

 

An Air source heat pump does not need much inside, perhaps a buffer tank and some motorised valves etc, they can be anywhere so they can be in the plant room.

 

Under floor heating manifolds are best placed central to each floor so again the plant room is not the best place.

[Conor]

Thats the worst possible place possible place for an mvhr. You'll have lots of pressure drop because of the long runs, and ironically, more noise.

 

What's at the stairs where it says "store". You want it to he as central as possible. Good design and installation will mean a near silent system (oversize the unit and ducts, keep runs short, use silencers, etc, etc)

[Adsibob]

Put the hot water cylinder under the stairs and the MVHR centrally in the loft space.

 You can run a secondary loop for hot water to the basins that are far away from the staircase.

Edited September 25, 2021 by Adsibob

[smart51]

We have MHRV in the space over the stairs to the loft conversion.  The fans make the casing vibrate, which is transmitted to the loft bedroom.  It is fine in the day (where I work from home) but it is noticeable at night when the house is quiet.  It is our spare bedroom, so not a problem, but I'd advise keeping it away from bedrooms.

[j_com]

Thanks all for your comments - it has given me reassurance that having a plant room at the far end of the house is not worth it. This also helps with simplifying the layout at that end of the house!

 

I think there should be a reasonable amount of space under the stairs for DHW & UFH equipment and maybe MVHR too - that also means it is not adjacent to any bedrooms. I suppose we could also form a riser somewhere between the stairs and kitchen to run services upstairs.

 

This leaves me with the question of where to locate the ASHP itself. It is presumably preferable to locate the unit itself as close as possible to the cylinder to minimise heat losses. If the cylinder is under the stairs then the ideal location would be immediately outside, problem is right next to the front door of the house. Any thoughts on this?