Hi, @chickenbig

That all looks exciting and you’re obviously not at the very start of your journey. Good luck and welcome.

One thing I will say is that your plans look to involve a lot of cost at the beginning, perhaps even more than most of us have contemplated in our respective situations. Personally I would urge you to either invest in or hire a thermal camera andthen concentrate on your last point first (probably including your point about door and windows as a matter of course). Money spent reducing the energy you have to pump into the property will pay divivends later and understanding where exactly the energy is leaking out is a huge part of that.

I would also take a close look at payback times for your plan of an MHVR solution. When I looked into it, it appeared to be very expensive for limited gains, especially when compared with money spent on conventional insulation. That said, if you’re gutting the place and are able to install a whole house system easily, it may justify itself better.

I look forward to reading the spin-off threads you mentioned.

Hi @majordennisbloodnok

Yes, now that it is in list form it does look like rather a lot! Some things we were going to do regardless of the heating source (certainly the double glazing as the road outside is surprisingly busy, and the desire for solar panels was stoked by a city council group buy scheme).

That's a good point about knowing where the heat is going; the IR cameras look to be a bit pricey, but having instant diagnostics is well worth the cost. The rear of the house has the most promise for easy savings, as the main house has solid brick walls and floorboards (without easy access to the underside), although not having the IR camera (yet) this is just conjecture!

I included the MHVR in this list because, living in a Victorian house, one has to be very careful about the moisture in the air and ground. Our house has crinkled wallpaper in the corners of rooms (all rooms have an external wall), and the surveyor pointed out damp (or salt from previous damp) issues on the back wall. I am hoping we can thread MVHR into the living room, dining room and bedrooms through the chimney/fireplaces, with the box of tricks living in the loft. Fingers crossed!

Which company is running the council group buying scheme? A similar scheme in our area is how we got our panels and battery installed and the savings in our case effectively meant we got the battery for free. Our council joined up with Solar Together to get the interest and negotiate the bulk buying, then put the installations out to tender.

I’ve recently read that Octopus Energy are prepared to loan out thermal cameras (Link to article) for customers to find insulation leaks, so if you’re with Octopus there’s no harm in asking.

As for Victorian housing, I’m only too aware. However, there are other interesting options for breathable insulation that can help lock in the heat but not the moisture. Worth investigating.

Hello and welcome. I've little to add just now except that microbore is probably going to be a nuisance. I think all of the ASHP installers who answered our enquiries wanted to know if we had it (but fortunately we don't).

@mjr An article in Feb 21 by Vince31 mentioned that they had sized up their heatpump due to having microbore to the rads. What issues does it present as I think I may have it?

Should be an interesting journey. I sold my 1930s semi in Cambridge last summer to move to Norfolk.

The main problem with the 1930s house was the solid brick walls, there was no practical way of improving the energy efficiency (beyond replacement windows and loft insulation) without gutting it and adding insulation to the external-facing interior walls and under the suspended ground floor floorboards. Not practical when living in the house.

@majordennisbloodnok 

Yes this group buy scheme is also being run by Solar Together (specifically this). They should be contacting us in the next few days, so I wait to see what they come up with. Strangely I am quite looking forward to seeing how far the money will go.

We are moving to Octopus as soon as possible (when Opus Energy finally let us leave their deemed rates, which are perhaps the only tariff to have gone down since the 1st April), although it looks as if the infrared camera scheme will be winding down soon.

As for insulating the external walls, my googling did find the Lime|Green Warmshell system for breathable walls, although my DIY skills do not yet run to that. I think I need to create a building model before doing that kind of intrusive change.

@cycleneil 

The house EPC estimates that wall insulation will cost between £4,000 and £14,000 and save £130 per year, so I am struggling with the economics unless the estimates are wrong or this is a DIY-able project (not so likely). But as you say, the disruption involved is another big factor.

@chickenbig 

You can borrow a thermal camera from Cambridge Carbon Footprint, free:-).  They offer training courses too, free:-).  
I’m in Cambridge, I EWI’d our house, with a mix of diy(insulation) and pro(render finish).  I’ve a couple of friends who did likewise, one of them used brickslips(diy).  I can recommend it to transform the energy use of a house.  Windows are best changed before EWI though - they are best overlapped by insulation, so it’s harder to change them afterwards.  Best to fit the windows flush or even proud of exiting brickwork prior to EWI, there’s less thermal bridging that way.  
External Wall Insulation (ewi) seems more daunting than internal, but there’s less disruption, and I think it’s a better place for the insulation, so your bricks stay warm and happy and dry.  Most ewi systems out thee are breathable.  We went with platinum eps, its the most common.  Wood fibre or rockwool are breathable as well.  The final finish must be breathable too, there is a variation in them.

Lots of plans, very exciting!

@saz as I understand it, flow rate is higher and more critical with heat pumps and a lot of microbore was installed badly, with sections shared between too many radiators, more and tighter bends and suffer other restrictions like clogs due to accumulated system sludge because they had less diameter available to start with. I think flow matters more because of the lower flow temperatures which mean you generally need a larger volume of water in the rads, but I could be wrong.

I found some 11-year-old discussion on DIYnot at https://www.diynot.com/diy/threads/ashp-suitable-with-microbore.260283/ but @ghendra wrote last year that it can work sometimes at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/heat-pumps-microbore-why-can-excellent-bed-fellows-graham-hendra/ so it's not a certainty but be ready for some installers to object (they prefer the easy jobs) and even the best installer/designers to check carefully.

@mjr And even curiouser is the fact that the heating in this house was never gas CH so looks like the initial heatpump (a Dimplex LA6MI) installers used microbore with Stelrad type radiators even though it was a newbuild so could easily have had bigger pipework fitted  😏

Thanks for all that info. Yes definitely seems flow rate more critical and existence or otherwise of sludge. My rads are nearly 10 years old now. I wonder if there was ever any inhibitor added 😐