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MBC timber frame heating advice


Heppy

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On 10 October 2017 at 18:51, dogman said:

Interesting as i am currently talking to them as well. Spent a good hour today at their office chatting to Nick and he fully understands the concept of a passive MBC timber frame and heating the groundfloor only. In fact he has responded to the need for a low temp blender valve and can now supply this:-

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I am taking a slightly different view on upstairs and just picked up 3 fan coil rads from them as i want to be able to cool the upstairs in the summer.

 

 

How much for that pump and blender set please?

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  • 3 weeks later...
1 hour ago, dpmiller said:

 

 

Looks very much like one of several units being sold on Alibaba.  A search for 15kW heat pump on there will pull up quite a few that look very similar indeed, even down to having the same type of scroll compressor, inverter drive and stainless case.

 

I suspect that ESP are, as has been the case in the past, sourcing units from China and then making sure they are suitably approved for use in the UK.

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We used ESP for our MBC TF build, I agree that they did try and push us to the larger size ASHP for our house but after talking to them over the course of a few months they realised it wouldn’t be required.  We have a Varimax ASHP, Ecocent for DHW and their MVHR, all installed and designed by them and can’t fault any of it. They have been great from beginning to end, and unless things have changed would have no issues recommending them for anyone to use. In hindsight we probably should have installed a fan coil raditaor or something upstairs we have one very large master bedroom upstairs with 4 large velux’s and a 3 meter high glazed gable and it can get a bit cooler in the depths of winter, but 5 minutes with a 1.5kw fan heater it is fine.  Although we only got round to putting up the curtains in the summer and I expect that will have a big impact as it’s not cold in the morning when you have slept in there. 

 

We applied for RHI after the ESP install we currently get around £400 a year and our heating bills all electric for a 300 m2 house is around £900 a year. We have no solar either. 

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4 minutes ago, Mikey_1980 said:

We applied for RHI after the ESP install we currently get around £400 a year and our heating bills all electric for a 300 m2 house is around £900 a year. We have no solar either. 

 

As a point of comparison, our electricity bill was £650 for a 289m2 MBC house, with DHW and UFH handled by a 5kW ASHP.

 

We do have a whacking great load of solar with an immersion diverter, which means hot water is more or less free for several months of the year, and I'm convinced there's still something to be saved by reducing the amount of immersion boost we use during winter and the shoulder months.

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15 minutes ago, Mikey_1980 said:

We we applied for RHI after the ESP install we currently get around £400 a year and our heating bills all electric for a 300 m2 house is around £900 a year. We have no solar either. 

 

Allowing for the fact that your house is double the size of ours,, that RHI figure implies a heating and DHW requirement is still nearly 3 times higher per unit floor area than ours, so why is that?

 

Our RHI worked out at less than £80 a year, IIRC, payable for 7 years, and that didn't come close to covering the additional cost incurred by having an MCS approved installation.

Edited by JSHarris
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12 hours ago, dpmiller said:

I knew I'd seen it posted somewhere- this is the new all-singing offering from ESP.

 

Not sure that is from Earthsave Products.

 

it looks like a company called coolenergy, A quick look at their site and you can find the specification. Cannot see that any are MCS listed so be careful if you want RHI

 

 

 

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13 hours ago, dogman said:

Not sure that is from Earthsave Products.

 

It looks like a company called coolenergy, A quick look at their site and you can find the specification. Cannot see that any are MCS listed so be careful if you want RHI

 

 

The thing that makes me very slightly uncomfortable is that all the products ESP sell are manufactured by other companies (in the proper sense that none of the component parts are made by ESP themselves).  There's nothing wrong with this, Navitron have been reselling very thinly disguised Chinese products for many years now, and even the big players subcontract out some component supply, and assembly to China.

 

Initially, at least, ESP were just exporting Chinese stuff, chucking their stick label on it, and selling it at a higher price.  This is not supposition, I was told this, face to face, by an ESP employee a few years go, when  I showed him some photos of Chinese products that seemed identical.  Since then, ESP, have been at pains to stress the work they do to get these units manufactured to UK specs.  However,  both I, and a custom bike builder friend, have fallen foul of some quality issues.  My bike building friend now employs a UK agent in China to stop this, as it's a cultural thing; price take absolute precedence over quality and reliability, unless someone is there to stop it.

 

The basics of the 15 kW ASHP here is that it sees to use either a Copeland or EVI scroll compressor (OK, but a million miles away from being a "Rolls Royce") plus a load of off-the-shelf components, that do a reasonable job for the price.

 

Does the real-life performance match the claims?  Who knows.  Based on previous claims, and known energy performance, I suspect not, but it's up to each person to make their own conclusion as to whether to spend a few hundred more on electricity bills or have the peace of mind of lower energy use and guaranteed very long term support.

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13 hours ago, dogman said:

 

Not sure that is from Earthsave Products.

 

it looks like a company called coolenergy, A quick look at their site and you can find the specification. Cannot see that any are MCS listed so be careful if you want RHI

 

Oops, you're quite correct. Dunno where I got that from?

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  • 3 months later...

Just had quotes back from ESP. Seems mixed feelings from this thread. Suggested 17kW ASHP + Ecocent. 

Any progress reports much appreciated from a similar system in daily use. Our self build is timber frame, EWI, heaps of insulation, VCL etc, triple glazed, mvhr.

@Mikey_1980  @dogman

I don't expect many replies tonight......

 

 

ST Drama..jpg

Edited by JamesP
Drama.
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Our house is well-insulated, airtight, triple glazed and 130m2 net internal floor area.  Worst case heating requirement to keep the house at 21 deg C when it's -10 deg C outside is 1.6 kW.  I can't imagine how big a well insulated house needs to be to need more than 10 times as much heat, and strongly suspect that there may be an issue with the heat loss assessment being massively in error.

 

The spreadsheet I knocked up ages ago does a pretty reasonable job of calculating this, good enough to size a heating system: http://www.mayfly.eu/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Fabric-and-ventilation-heat-loss-calculator-Master.xls

Edited by JSHarris
typo
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3 minutes ago, JamesP said:

Thanks @JSHarris using your spreadsheet our build has a total heat loss power (W) of 3590 when its -10 deg C outside.

Monthly heat energy input kWh) for minimum OAT in January is 1762. 

 

Give that information to whoever quoted you for a 17KW heat pump and ask them to re think.

 

My max heat input is 2.5KW and I have a 5KW ASHP (not installed yet)

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Cannot really help yet @JamesP as we are still not in residence. All i can say is to back up what others are saying that if you are building to a high insulation standard like am MBC twin stud wall etc your heat load will be very low. It was -5.5 last night and our house with no heat only dropped 1 deg from 16 to 15. that is with two 6 "  holes in the walls and drains not connected.

As for Earthsave Products equipment. I use them as they are local to me and have been utterly reliable. We have an ecocent and heatpump from them in our current house and have bought  all the parts from them for my current house.

 

I am in the process of fitting them at present and am impressed with the quality and ease of fitting

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