Hi - I'm in Essex and have solar pv, solar thermal and ASHP (Daikin). I look forward to reading everyone's posts particularly with regard to costs and efficiency.

hi all,found this forum when researching afhp,looks interesting so thought i would join.

i am in essex and been in this house 32years heating it on oil and a large log burner all linked together with a H2 panel,you will need to google that i expect.

1 year ago i changed oil to gas as i am not very mobile and it was a pain to make sure the tanker could park outside the house to empty,one way and permit parking so went gas although i had new oil heater only installed 7 years ago and never had any problems with it,in fact its still in where it was fitted with new gas boiler fitted on wall above it,gas man only needed to cut 2 pipes to oil boiler and connect same 2 pipes to connect the gas one.

2 years ago i had the honeywell evohome kit installed,best bit of kit and does upto 12 heat zones,mainley becouse my front room is 28 20 and is a bugger to heat but with evo i have the room on constant so its at a nice heat day and nigh as i some times come down in the middle of the night due to pain.

my only gripe with evo is it eats rad valve batteries lol,other than that it heats rooms to the temp i set all controlled by master controller next to my chair,you might want to google that as well.

however the heat pumps that are now up and coming,might start to kill themselves due to new lecy price and another big one due in april,so i am no rush to install as like i said gas only 1 year old.

due to fragility i cant chop,saw split logs now so do not use burner much although i have built up a lot of wood to use.

looked into pv but roofs not in the right way as did wind turbine but council says no,even when as far as getting a lister lump to gen my own lecy,this will run on old cooking oil as i used to run my cars on it for 20 years,but cant go about collecting it now though.i never got around to get a 5to 7 kw gen to fit onto the lister but again defeated by health.

think thats enough as my intro,hope some will reed it.

@panelbeater 

Hi Panelbeater,

Welcome to the forum and yes I did read your post with interest.

@panelbeater Read indeed and found it interesting.  I think you are correct that many, like me, are concerned at electricity prices.  I have just removed my oil boiler for an ASHP but find that my Kw electricity price is doubling and nearly treble my oil price.

Howdy folks! 

Family of six with four little crotch goblins. We've gone and bought a terraced Victorian house in Cornwall that we will be in by the end of the month. Very much a blank canvas - never had central heating and the hot water boiler is broken. Insulation is in the form of about 2cm of powder in the loft. Walls about 2 foot thick in most places with a little cavity wall extension out the back. Thankfully we have a fireplace at least. Challenge? naah!

I'm all for fun things like ASHP, solar PV, solar thermal, batteries.... yikes, where to start?! So far any grants and assistance from LA Flex or ECO seem about as useful as a chocolate teapot so I'm trying to work out what on Earth we're going to do, especially for any hot water in the next couple of weeks lol. Hey-ho, fun times!

Saying hi to everyone here anyway \o/ 😀

@mikefitz, the price of electricity is going to affect every heat pump owner this winter, and it's going to be an expensive winter. Oil prices are also steadily rising though; but I agree with you, running oil would be at least half the price to run at today's tariffs. 

@literallynoclue, welcome to the forums and we look forward too fielding any grant or installation questions you may have.

@literallynoclue, hello and welcome.  I'd start with getting some loft insulation; it's cheap and makes a huge difference.  I assume your water heating is electric?  If so maybe you'll have to fix it in the short term.  But if you are going to have to replace stuff and want an ASHP in the future, maybe look to getting components that are 'ASHP ready'.

The other thing you could consider is Air to Air heat pumps. 

Hi

We are busy planning the details of our new self build and are very interested in others’ unbiased views and experience as we try to decide if an ASHP really is the right way to go. With plenty of insulation and MVHR planned, had thought it was but the more we look into it the less sure we become.

We weren’t planning on having any backup source of heating but that looks like a risky decision for mid winter, just when we would need it most. And it looks pretty complicated to live with, needing lots of detailed data monitoring, not to mention regular attention and repairs. 

So we will be keen to read about people’s every day experience to try to tease out whether we are worrying needlessly or whether there are still too many teething issues with the technology in this country to make it a wise choice at this stage.

@helensq It is not a bad choice if it is done properly.

Install thick screed under floor on the ground floor with pipe spacing of 100mm,  no zoning thermostats or actuators, let the heat pump control the temperature via weather compensation, radiators with TRV valves in the bedrooms, if you have bathrooms upstairs, take a loop from the downstairs manifold and heat the floors, do not try to heat towel rails, they will not work with the low flow temperture. Do not install a buffer tank or system seperation. The heat pump is connected directly to the heating system, usually the pump inside the heat pump is big enough.

The most important thing is to seal your house up properly and get an air test of below 1 m3/m2/hour.

If you do this you will have a maximum flow temperature of about 26 Deg C at -5 degrees outside and have a heating bill of less that £1.00 / m2/ year. We have completed many projests like this and have had great sucess.

However, if it not done properly, it will be very expensive to run.

@heacol Thanks for such a quick reply.  Some really useful pointers here. We had been given some preliminary advice that air tightness would only need to be below 4m3/m2/hour but it sounds as though we should challenge that.

We had been planning on UFH upstairs as well as down.  What is the advantage of rads?  

@helensq An air test of 4 m3/hr/m2/hour is not good at all, it is fine for a normal house with passive ventellation but not with an MVHR system, the higher the air test is, the less effective the MVHR will be. At 4 m3/hr/m2/hour, there will be little effect and it will be a wast of money installing it.

Your MVHR, if working correctly will be removing air at 21 deg C and returning it to the property at about 18 Deg C in to the lving areas and bedrooms which is a form of heating as you want your bedrooms at about 18 Deg C. In many well insulated, sealed new builds we do not install any heating upstairs, for best heat pump performance conducting a whole house heating approach, not zoning.

You can inatall under floor upstairs if you want but it will not be necessary if you build your house correctly.

God luck, if done right, it is a compleatly different, pleasent living envirement and very low running costs.