I find the negativity towards this ridiculous. Many UK properties are old and inefficient when it comes to energy consumption and insulation. Bills are expensive and the big energy cartel still profit while people struggle. Anything that can save money and prevent that must be a good thing. But it takes a lot of work, retrofitting older buildings etc. And if people dont try out these new solutions, then nothing will ever change.
Some people are stuck in their ways and afraid of change from the old "tried and tested" methods. Roger I feel was this way inclined but seems to be coming around given the Skill Builder channel is slowly becoming the Heat Geek's 2nd channel 😉 As you say, we need to move forwards and without the early adopters the world would just stagnate. I went to EV's years ago and am due solar in the next few weeks (subject to the DNO app) and hope to be able to get onto the tail end of the BUS grant. Once I renovate the kitchen (long over due) the gas will be cut off. I also have the option for more PV at a later date which would see my annual electric usage offset but need to see how the first phase works out.
Anyone told him the dangers of Lithium batteries? So much so that new British Standards now ban these in lofts for safety reasons. He has them fitted inside the hotel? Funny how people will spend huge amounts of CAPITAL without a murmur to 'save' money but ignore the fact that those 'savings' do not happen until the CAPITAL outlay has been paid off by them. This will be many years hence. If he is still even connected to the grid he has to pay the Standing Charges which power companies now use as a profit taker, upping them regularly. Let us hope his ideas prove to be all he expects, as you say, we always need pioneers but this hugely complicated instal along with the additional insulation is costing him dear to maybe prove a point. Good luck to him but as a business investment he is out on a limb.
@@sirjohng1 anyone told you of the dangers of gas boilers? The BSI you refer to is currently guidance, not a regulation. You have highlighted just how little you know on this. You can clearly see that, even if we did use PAS 63100:2024 that the batteries are installed in the plant room, with smoke/fire detection as you can see above the fuse board and the sizing is under 40kWh. Furthermore you show a complete lack of understand on fire regulations as this is a 3 storey building which will have required a protected stair core so all door off of that will be FD30's under Building Regulation AD Part B, again, you can see the self closers on the room doors. On top of that, I suspect (can't see from the footage) that each room would have smoke/fire detection. Plus the emergency lighting he'll have had to install on the escape route Honestly, SkillBuilder should be picking up comments like yours and correcting this complete lack of knowledge on your part having jumped on one thing you think you happened to have heard and are running with it like a dog with a bone. System payback, I would have thought that he's on business rates for electric and not domestic so his payback will be much quicker. Go see a channel like RSymons RSEV, he installed £30k+ of solar and batteries and his payback is 3-4 years so a very good ROI. Yes he'll have a standing charge to pay, but if you listened to him, he's carbon negative, this means he produces more than he uses, so that would cover the standing charge. I'm willing to bet he's run the numbers so is far more educated to make that financial decision vs your scepticism. He sounds like he's not had the best of times with installers so his payback will be longer, but once it's paid back, he then has a more profitable business. I'm putting solar/battery on my house, payback will be under 6 years. I'm not moving any time soon and would be paying for electric regardless in that time, so the system really isn't going to cost that much, if anything extra than if I just carried on paying for the electric. But, by 2030 my bills will drop to nothing.
@vSchaub nope, I'm in the UK. Not sure how you got to pay-per-mile when we are looking at renewable heating/solar system, seems a bit of a jump to make a random point on what is a building channel? Anyway, here zero emission cars are currently exempt from road tax (an annual payment for every car based on emissions) but that is changing in 2025 although the cost will still be minimal vs ICE cars. Our system of road tax will undoubtably change to offset to drop in revenue from the higher emission vehicles. But, on the flip side, having cleaner cars and thus cleaner air, there will be a drop in hospital admission for respiratory conditions. Has we have a state funded health system there will be savings there to offset some of the drop in road tax. If you take a look at the health benefits in the US from the closing of coal plant, Shenango Coke Works facility in Pittsburgh in January 2016. Had a massive effect very swiftly. Now, that was a very concentrated amount of pollution in a small location, but scale that up to a country and the health benefits are clear. Cleaner air saves lives. I believe they did trial a pay-per-mile system in Australia but think that was rolled back as it didn't work. I honestly can't remember the details on that but sure I watched a video where on guy was travelling between territories and was then being charged by each one but it included the whole trip so was costing him double. As I say, I can't remember the full details on that, or which channel I was watching, might have been the full charge show uk, but might be one to look up. Pay-per-mile to me doesn't make much sense, what happens with multiple people who use the car? Who foots the bill? Do you have to submit an annual milage report for the car (like a tax return, which we don't have to do in the UK unless self employed)? Here we could check against the annual MOT inspection of the car, however new cars don't need one for the first 3 years, what happens there? Pay-per-mile sounds simple, just seems a very flawed system to implement. But that's just my opinion. And, as you say, "if" it passes.
Wow Guys! You’ve saved me hours by assembling as a team. Especially when I’m at an early stage 500m2 similar project on an 1840 non listed terrace. Really enjoyable. Thanks.
47 years ago I saw 4 houses that had been built to the cost yardstick (council house budget). They had masonry walls, with 150mm foam bead filled cavities, 300mm fiberglass in the roof, triple glazing and heat recovery from the bathroom and kitchen. It's sole means of heating was a gas fire in the living room which only needed to be on for 2 hours to keep the house warm overnight. It was cheap to run and with minimal servicing costs and low equipment replacement costs.
I grew up with a small anthracite stove to heat the water in the kitchen and a closed fire in the lounge used when it was very cold. We wore warm clothes and walked to school through the snow!! Some extra heat from a Tilly lamp . (1947 big freeze in Scotland!)
I dont think the guy done a bad job ,the heat geek and his side kick seems to finding faults but some specialist must fitted the stuff. You dont want a complicated system the experts here are over complicating everything ,everything has problem . To be honest with you the guy done alot better than many people so hats off to him .
Amateur Comment : The key takeaway for me is that insulating the hell out of your property potentially means a less complicated set up required. Also, I had no idea you could get automatic thermostatically blinds, awnings, or vent tubes. This was another excellent video
Yeah, I can't help wondering if you insulate really well, and have a good amount of solar, if just an electric combi boiler would do? What you lose in efficiency, you would more than gain back in lower install and maintenance costs. Would also save having to find space for a water tank in our famously tiny houses, too.
Insulation versus ventilation. Seems to be a conflict here. Personally I've no interest in being suffocated or made ill with excess CO, CO2, Radon build up..funny that no one talks about this...🤔
Everyone that knows what he's doing will install a forced air ventilation system when improving air tightness. That say you automatically control air quality and reduce losses be recuperating energy.
@@jeremylister89 Insulation is a must, as that determines difficulty (or not) in maintaining a given temperature. Air can be cycled with the outside via heat exchangers. This is the first thing to do in any property, then look at what is needed to control temperature, be that passive or active.
This is what I did in Australia. We put in full height curtains (with insulation layer from the stuff used for oven mits) with pelmets. Engineered a system that took the excess solar power and used it to heat the hot water, then 'automated' some heaters to do the same with anything left over. Net effect was the electricity bill dropped 60%. Now seriously looking at batteries to do some time shifting.
Insulate your home. Install TRVs. Be sensible about what temps you set the room(s)/hot water. Evaluate what time you actually need the central heating on. Get your boiler serviced. Keep your home properly ventilated / use a dehumidifier. Relax knowing you don't need to spend thousands changing your entire energy system, pipes, controls, having limited-life panels on your roof, losing space inside to god-knows how many boxes and cylinders, and that you don't need some ugly industrial-estate looking hot air blower sitting in your garden.
Absolutely spot on, the amount of energy that could be saved by just making sure people's existing heating systems are properly serviced and set up is huge. It is cheap to do and it saves households money and reduces overall gas consumption, all this heat pump subsidy nonsense is a total waste of tax payer money subsidising well off people to have insanely expensive and complex heating they can brag about to their right on friends. The whole approach to energy efficiency in this country is a mess, an expensive mess.
As regards MCS: if you don't have MCS the Octopus process to get an export MPAN will work for you regardless of export amounts, even on a three-phase connection. The DNO do not care about MCS or about the solar PANEL (not inverter) generation capacity. They care about the total inverter capacity on site and also the battery storage capacity on site. G98 or G99 systems can use the Octopus process. When you make the G99 application the DNO will assess the local grid in your area and may impose a restriction on total inverter capacity or may impose a G100 export limitation scheme if there is a risk of local area voltages getting out of range with high export powers. If you live close to the substation and there isn’t much other solar in your area there may be no export restrictions. Max inverter capacity you are ever allowed on a single phase connection under G99 is 17kW, on three phase it’s 50kW. If the DNO do hand you an inverter capacity restriction you can somewhat get around it by DC coupling the panels direct into the battery using something like a Victron MPPT. You will need £250, a G99 approval from the DNO and a building regs signoff (part P electrical approval for the system) to use the Octopus process. Octopus are currently paying up to 15p/kWh for export. I’m a solar installer who has used the Octopus process several times.
This is great information to know. I have just upgraded to a Victron Multplus 2 5000va and one of their 450/100 mppt solar charge controllers because my previous set up was pushing my solar out to the grid all the time so I figured getting some LIFEPO4s and storing my excess makes sense. I still need to crunch the numbers on the Octopus Flux Tariff because the 15p import price is alot more than the 7.5p I pay for 6 hours overnight on my EV tariff. Its whether the export earnings of 25p kwh will make financial sense over the 7.5p import on intelligent octopus go.
@@Marks-Garage generally, flux will work better if you just have a home battery but add an EV into the mix and the more expensive off peak rate makes "intelligent go" with "outgoing" better overall. This might not be true if your EV use is low mileage and it might change seasonally if you have a large PV array. Good choice on the Victron. The Multiplus range is excellent.
@@VillageVidiot100 I'm on Agile because it said on the Octopus site that Flux is only available to those with Solar generation of less than 9Kwp. And despite 4 EV chargers, I don't have an EV. Yet.
9:39 Heat Geek, I've seen 8°C difference inside a 1.2m fridge between high and low points. 4°C low, 12°C at high shelf. Old style fridge without fan assist to even the cooling. Please please check using thermometers the actual temperature difference between a floor and a ceiling in a room. You'll see a big difference. There's a huge difference when drying clothing between those lower down and those higher up. Because of this temperature difference at different heights. In the same room. Please do testing with multiple thermometers and see it for yourself. I did this for an old person because they said some of their food wasn't lasting in their fridge. I put in 2 thermometers and was astounded at the difference between high and low.
This really shows if you have the desire, that you can make a huge difference to your bills that will continue for many years by investing in your property now. The payback will be over the years and gets more benefit if electricity prices rise. Great to see Roger doing more with the greener modern technology and bringing the two sides together.
Hi Roger , here in Northern France it gets pretty cold , we burn wood fuel logs for heating the house , as does much of rural areas of Europe, its more expensive now to get the wood so we are just about to construct a Masonry mass heater, from refectory bricks etc , its a very efficient and cheaper use of fuel and it burns hotter and much cleaner , some people have their water and cook stoves connected as well , you can now buy the stoves in kit form for diy assembly.
I got from this this that as a starter good insulation is simple and cheap and offers an immediate benefit but also provides a good basis for a smaller PV /heat pump heating system with attendant lower costs. Using the PV to run the heat pump to achieve a 4x improvement in efficiency is a good one since this is a direct saving.
Expert saying "I would have done this slightly different" You ask another expert, they say: "previous export was wrong, I would do it a different way" Not a criticism in any way, but the average home owner can suffer from this syndrome when trying to get advice on any type of home installation. Every "Expert" tells you something slightly different. This guy's done pretty well I reckon. I built a large log cabin in my garden and did all the work myself including fitting a bathoom, kitchen and hot water system. I didn't follow any "in-person" advice and it's now a top rated self contained holiday let. (love this channel by the way - best place for building project advice I reckon).
I struggle to equate the huge cost with the very long and undefined payback on these systems. I am not hostile to the technology at all but I am not impressed with the alarming complexity of these systems, bearing in mind, that they will, of course, go wrong. The on-going maintenance costs, breakdowns and repairs must be significant, not to mention the countless hours spent "optimising" the system. It should be pointed out that the cost of solar generated power is very low and it is very easy to just increase solar capacity if space allows rather than go to extreme measures to use every last kW generated. The £7.5k carrot for install is very tempting. I use 5.5kW Solar PV , 10kW battery, 14kW Solar Thermal and 16.5kW and 27kW Heat pumps for the pool.
Yep there's 10s of thousands of pounds worth of tech if you don't know how to build it (speaking as an ex offshore north sea oil gas and wind electrical technician and JIB industrial electrician of 40 years)
Low technology is good technology. This is overly complex indeed. The solution is lots of insulation and attention to draught proofing. I have solar PV panels and a wood burning stove (plus access to free wood). My payback time was five years. I'm well into profit now,
It's great that this is possible with standard equipment, my concern is support and servicability. Seeing all that pipework, masses of wiring, switches and control gear gives me the willies for the future.
The pipework is "complicated" because I started out with a gas-fired boiler and made 11 circuits - 8 for the guest rooms and 3 circuits for the ground floor (2 of those are for my accommodation). Each zone needed a motorised valve as I used to heat specific rooms per booking. With the ASHP now in, I have kept the zones open for the ground and first floor, and closed the central heating to the top floor. When summer really hits, I will shut all the zones. Yes it looks complicated but I guess if you're staring at it every day it feels really simple. The setup is as ugly as sin, which is why I don't offer guided tours (!). But...its all domestic kit made to work in a house that is around 3 times the floor space of a regular house. There's a whole bunch of additional wiring just to get an internet cable to a repeater at the very back of the house so that the EV chargers would have a reliable internet connection.
@@MagnoliaHouseRye Thank you. I do understand how these things grow. My concern is having a full system diagram to make it easier to trace any faults that may occur in the future. As I am very local to you, I'd offer to take you both for a pint to pick your brains!
What a switched on couple. So good to see. Most hotels you stay in are seriously overheated to the point of gross discomfort. What do you do about it? Open the windows and let all of their money out into the atmosphere. Noisy, annoying air conditioning that simply dessicated you whilst you lie awake in bed cursing. Well done you guys, your guests will appreciate their stays in your establishment though some might not even guess why it is so nice.
(This waste was such an annoying "feature" back in the day when I lived in centrally heated accommodation blocks - without individual room thermostats, back in the day.. Such a waste opening the window in winter - in manchester UK.)
Impressive set up although I would be more interested in the facts and figures since installation. Costings for the installation as it stands, Maintenance/insurance annual costs for the system(s) How quickly can you callout engineers if there is an issue the owner cannot resolve. Ongoing costs of any upgrades required and timescales say over the next 20 years.
@@MagnoliaHouseRye Without question they are! They were just excited and minds were in design mode, you should definitely be proud of your energy achievement! Lovely looking hotel too!
It's a little misleading to start the video by saying that the hotel is off grid when later see a shot of an IHD display showing £38 spent so far this week. 🤔 Fair play to the owner for his fabric first, trial and error approach but unfortunately a lot of unnecessary kit was installed to achieve a lower than optimum efficiency. The school boy errors we still see time and again are oversized ASHP, no weather compensation, unnecessary low loss header, pumps, zoning and controls. Using solar diverters and not the ASHP for DHW is a common lost opportunity for optimal efficiency. I hope the owner manages to get his DNO and export MPAN sorted out because that is the key to achieving net zero bills.
Another great episode. I never heard of thermoskirting, but it seems a great solution for upstairs where I have a very low heat demand at all. I now use air to air upstairs but that only runs in the 3 coldest months of the year, thermoskirt could bring this down to the periods when it gets really below -5°C or so, which is probably a couple of weeks each year. Also the automation of blinds or shutters is a great idea, as is the ventilation tube. I run a similar system where in the summer I open the door to the attic and have a dorm window open there, also I open the trickle vents or crack a window on the tilt position downstairs during night and that gives ventilation without the noise of an open window in your sleeping room. I use screens on the open windows to prevent flies and mosquitoes getting in.
The main issue with Thermaskirts was the expenense for what they actually are. But, the justification for this putting them in the guest rooms was to free up / de-clutter the walls. So whilst it is an emitter, on this one thing I took aesthetics in to account...BIG caveat though..they only work as advertised in a well insulated environment
@@MagnoliaHouseRye Yes the cost is a bit detrimental. If I want to get rid of the rads a dry build underfloor heating is a probably a cheaper alternative, it just means that floor level is raised by 3 or 4cm and thus that doors must be shortened.
@@Tom-Lahaye Could you raise the door frames or would that get pricey? I considering retrofit system that is placed above the existing concrete floor, this will be on the ground floor.
@@affieuk Raising the frames would be possible in the extension, but not the old part of the house, as it would mean that the lintels above the doors must be raised too, and these are partially load bearing brick walls. Also it means replastering these parts etc. Cutting 3 cm off from each door is much easier and cheaper. The dry built system isn't more than 3cm in height.
@@Tom-Lahaye Thank you, I assumed it would be something like this, but honestly didn't think internal doors would have lintels, unless that includes the wood door frame? If anyone has any suggestions on dry fit water heating systems please let me know or at least what to look out for.
@@sirjohng1 You might just be right there. My fridge has been starting and stopping eight times a day 24/7 for past twenty years, it's not gone wrong yet, same technology.
@@sirjohng1 Ive been in the B&B game for over 20 years. I've had gas boilers fail on a bank holiday weekend. Nothing works 24/7 without issues, and I take the view that if it can go wrong, it will. But...all this kit confers a very high degree of resiliency: If the ASHP fails for hot water, I can use the immersions in the cylinders. If the ASHP fails for central heating, the A2A's can kick in. If there is a loss of water pressure (has happened in Rye and most businesses and residences were SEVERELY affected) this place functioned without issues..the cold water tank just re-filled itself more slowly. So when something goes wrong, and it will, no question, I'll have bought myself enough time to 'get through the night' and not trash my reputation. Ultimately, we're as only as good as our last check-out....
@@_Dougaldog Same principal but very different technology, heat pump systems are extremely complex to design, fit and configure, they are expensive to maintain and typically don't last as long as gas boilers. Oh and they take up a lot of space in your home for tanks and other paraphernalia.
Hi Roger. Have worked with heat pumps since about 1988 and they have all had a lot of maintenance issues. Some people have stripped out electronic controls and retro-fitted pressure switches etc. The physics of 1 in=4out is great, but would love you to show what the "REAL" lifespan maintenance costs are. i.e. compressor replacement / re-gassing etc
We have had a Samsung unit for the past 9 yeaars, it has been superb. We run weather comp with a max flow temp of 38c and a min of 27c, after a lot of tweaking we find this is the best compromise (for us) in terms of satisfactory heating performance and efficiency. Our annual SCOP is around 4.0, which I am very happy with.
Did your unit need an annual service to honour warranty requirements, if so what was involved, presumably not much more than cleaning external vaporisation grid ? Hopefully you've had no problems at all, or have there been any niggles over the nine years it's been operating ?
@@_Dougaldog yes, but it is only cleaning and cursory checks which I now do myself. We have never had an issue with it, but I did replace both fan motors this year as preventative maintenance. Over time the bearings can get noisy and it's good practice to replace them every 8 or so years. They cost £320 for the two and it's an easy DIY job.
On the one hand I admire what they have done, but on another, that is a very complex and technically diverse solution - mean time to failure (MTTF) would be a serious concern with such a system and whether a failure could cascade. Also lightning strikes would be a nightmare, from the simple 'turned to smoke' case down to the crashed controller or a failed/intermittent sensor.. Automation is great, but to do it right is expensive and requires ongoing maintenance as a square of the total complexity usually (i.e. double the systems/sensors/controls, 4 times the maintenance). This is one reason I did my own thing and took 'dumb' systems and them made them smart with the minimal automation, this also set the static energy load (constant power suck of the automation) to a minimum - all those screens, LED's, lights, etc cost energy which soon adds up, no free lunch...
Didn't see all the backups. The air splits can probably do you for heating with reasonable efficiency, and the hot water tank does have at least one immersion heater.
Excactly, most homes for most of us, are run down, old type property and most are not updated, not good insulated , and a lot of bad bad landlords, not all but there are a certain percentage of bad homes, old homes, and a lot of damp properties . MOST UK properties for old types are dumps
I love learning new things & enjoy Skill Builder channel. I got most of the gist of what’s going on here, but my main takeaway from this is that I don’t want my house looking like an oil refinery 😂. I wanted a HP system but living in a small mid terraced property MCS 20 regs made it near impossible. Enjoy watching Roger & Co & the people like the hotel owners who are early adopters & push the boundaries where others dare not to! We can learn so much from their experiences & mistakes! Great!
@vSchaub We now know what your level of knowledge is. Any power used by any electrical device is converted to heat and lost, it really is that simple. You can change the power factor (Cosine of phase difference between Current & Voltage) by adding capacitive reactance to an inductive reactance. Power factor of one is the most desirable, where apparent power (VA) becomes equal to the real power (W).
And what about heat lost as a result of the resistance in the wire of your circuit where the energy transfers between magnetic field and charge on capacitor, it might work if you have super conductivity, but as soon as you use that energy for any purpose then it is lost to your system ? I'll stick with mainstream academia, they tend to be right 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the time.
Since Roger and Co were here, I've replaced the inverter, batteries are on-line, already picked up some great advice on here (looking at you, VillageVidiot100). And waiting on a call-back from Cory, lol....
As heat pumps and solar gain market share I can see a job for someone to come and set up and maintain these systems. For the average joe they are bewildering (turning down the flow but keeping the same heat) 🤪
This installation is basically becoming a net energy generator rather than a hotel. I like this, a lot. All new builds should take this approach. Every building should either be energy neutral o ra net generator producer. The combinatio of PV solar, heat pumps, battery storage and export to grid should achieve this. Other than total cost for retrofit to old properties then effective and low cost insulation strategies will be the limiting factor.
Very nice video, only thing missing out was the en-suite extractors. Are they heat recovery? Owner is so right, I hate hotels at 24C in the winter. Reducing the flow to much less than 40C might leave it too cool for showers? Venting air using the soil vent pipes is something I hadn't thought about. Could make it a lot easier to add a basic extractor. Heat recovery venting through the house is easy enough on the top floor from the attic. Fresh air from the soffits, and side drill into a soil pipe? Building regulations still apply, might not be allowed at all.
Heat flow for radiators and DHW are treated as separate items by HP, so can easily have radiator flow as low as you like (mine works perfectly at 33C LWT), HWC on other hand can be heated up to 55C on my 'low temperature' HP (or 65C with resistive heater boost, but that's wasteful). 45C is a nice cosy shower or bath, and setting HWC to heat to 45C means less wasted heat, no point in heating to 70C and then adding 'cold' to cool it down again. Hot water is 1/4 of cost of electric shower, and with money I save on gas standing charge pays to heat 150 litres to 45C every day.
@@plinble If system is well designed and good flow rates available then achieving good efficiency is not difficult. By design the heat output from emitters is such that each room will sit at optimal temperature for each room, based on the calculated loss for that room. Defrost cycles should not be an issue, a smaller system like mine has a volumiser tank to provide sufficient heat without pulling the emitter temperatures down too much. But unless set properly by installer, the information required from unit to set best weather dependant curve is in short supply without monitoring system power in real time.
VRF, or variable refrigerant flow, is a three-pipe system that allows for simultaneous heating and cooling. The third pipe is a heat recovery pipe, which allows for the transfer of heat from one area to another without having to collect the heat from the outside air.
The small low loss headers are fitted by most just to cheat the heat pump in thinking it has enough flow especially when doing a retrofit. Usual thing so called MCS approved companies finding a means of not getting any calls for low flow faults. Rather than doing the job properly. A friend of mines parents had a heat pump fitted through a grant by a mcs registered firm and the install was shocking but as they got it for free they didn't feel they could say anything so are paying to have it put right. Dies the MCS ever check companies work?
@MagnoliaHouseRye Thanks! I'm actually going to put it right myself I have fitted quite a few heat pumps over the last few years including my own which replaced an old oil boiler and although all my friends said I was mad as my house is 220 years old and solid stone it works great and has done for 4 years now
From the videos I've watched, you're likely going to at best end up at about the same running costs as your existing setup. Only makes sense if your existing setup is really bad and you can take advantage of the BUS grant, with people that know what they're doing, maybe Octopus, but I've got no personal experience. The best "advantage" that I can think of is that your heating will be stable all year round, doesn't include cooling though. Best bet if your boiler isn't ancient, improve insulation, drop your flow rate as far as you can.
I have put in extra insulation and new windows and what you describe is really what happens here. The living room can often be heated just by lighting the candles in the evening and us just being there watching TV. The only downside of good insulation is everything just getting too warm upstairs in summer. But with the savings in winter, buying and running an AC for hot days is just minor cost in comparison.
Technically it looks very impressive, but for the average Jo inormously complicated & therefore enormously expensive. Besides this, it seems to need a huge space in which to install, which most homes do not have. However, this does not mean home owners wouldn't wish to have their Energy Bills brought down to near zero
I've now replaced the SolarEdge inverter with a 3 phase AC coupled SunSynk, so my batteries are finally online and I now have the ability to control the export :-)
@@MagnoliaHouseRye I use Solaredge and Sunsynk inverters with the Solaredge on main roof and Sunsynk on another builder - main house uses a Powerwalls and the Sunsynk is connected to a 60kWh LFP battery store I built. Investigate using Homeassistant as you can connect the Sunsynk to it using an RS485 to TCP/IP so you can get precise control over whether you store or export the energy. Homeassistant will also enable you to use cheap wireless thermostats to get a real time view of thermals and get alerts and alarms.
Did miss the costs of this project and saving figures ? However the video show a beautiful street views then we see a roof full of black glass panels I don’t think there be many postcards of that being printed. The engineer says he has bifold doors and suggests if its not the tight temperature close blinds or awnings why dod we all live in a 1 metre thick polystyrene box.
Automating your VELUX etc will cost a fortune in time, money and mess. This is far too complex a system for heating a house. Most householders want a system that keeps them warm when it's cold and gives them hot water when they want it. Gas boiler all the way, you can do the underfloor heating if the opportunity is there. That's a big plus if you can.
Would really love to learn more about using emitters to extract heat. Heat geeks had made a video about a while back using their office as the test piece. Couldn't this option be used here?
The ASHP with the Thermaskirts can be used to extract heat but in my case I'd possibly shave 2c; the split air to air h/pumps are far more efficient and great during our mini-heatwaves 😎
My understanding from the Heat Geek video is that you'd really need a separate high level circuit (as in, upside down radiators at the top of the rooms as heat rises) that include water catch trays (either manually emptying them or draining to the outside) and all the pipework thoroughly lagged to prevent condensation under the floor or wherever your pipes are running. As Adam says, the passive approaches (The valved chimney thing he mentioned for air flow, and the automated awnings) are a much better fit for this country. Cheaper and effective enough for the sort of heat we generally see. PassivHaus design actually includes a passive overhang (Just wider than normal eaves) designed based on where the sun is in the different seasons to get free heating in the winter but block it in the summer when the sun is higher.
There was some talk at the end of the video about ATA units and did I hear correctly that there are some units with ATA that have a split value that could be diverted to heat the water , did I hear it wrong ? If there is such items could you do a video on those ? I still struggle with the idea of getting a heat pump that heats water to the heat radiators to then heat the rooms rather than getting an ATA system, just don’t get it , if the aim is to keep thinks simple is that not as simple as it gets or am I the only one thinking this way.
Did not spot any warning signs in the plant room about the increased risk of electrocution with equipment on different electrical phases e.g. the immersion heaters in close proximity.
@ 24:30 this is why I like VRVs: can move heat between refrigerators, freezers, hot water, heating and cooling… but they are expensive 😅😊… and if you only have One system and It has a fault your in big trouble😅 … and the trouble are coming usually after 6-8 years:D If you think that a plumber can do great damage and that good plumbers are hard to find, then you will realize that good and responsible refrigeration technicians (the combination of good and responsible is hard to come by) are hardly found at all😢 This is why I don’t like standard/clasic heatpumps - they are very limited … and knowing what It can be done in hotels for example or large homes are the perfect candidate for VRVs😊 but It will cost an arm and a leg to Install one…
I think the complexity of this set up would make many a plumber or electrician call for help. I recall when my parents bought a house back in the late 70's and it had a complex Satchwell mechanical system the looked out various temperatures and individual flow to radiators. It never worked and my Dad and anyone he called in could work it out and the previous owner was a design engineer for that said company.
Hi Sean I agree with you. I had a veery complicated duel fuel set up in my house and my wife said that if anything happened to me nobody would have a clue what went where. It was a reality check. I ripped it all out and went back to something very simple that anyone could work on. I have continued in that vein ever since. I hoenstly believe that heat pumps and solar etc. should all be plug and play, that is the mission for those making the kit.
@@SkillBuilder Fully agree Roger, I will add a heat pump to my setup when I get some time although I have a farm and have a boiler room that feeds the farmhouse, cottage and workshops. In this setup it will be easy to experiment and see how it works but obviously for me I can easily lay pipes for ground source and have a friend that has done that on their farm but they do have to complement it in winter with their oil boilers. I've also been looking at pure electric boilers which are more of a plug and play where I already have one in one of my holiday lets and the cost isn't that bad but a simple setup.
I'm interested to know more about the heat recovery multi-splits that Adam discusses at 23:50, that system is the three-pipe VRF-HR system but I've not seen any at the domestic scale, aside from one Australian brochure that I can no longer find. Can you link to the specific products for the domestic market?
Just wondering how you protected your potable water from the douches, as they are category 5 fittings.. (by they way a super video, the guys are so knowledgable)
If you're in Scotland then all new builds as of 1st April this year will have heat pumps fitted, England and Wales to follow in April 2025. I'm sure they'll manage to find space.
Only glanced through the video i admit but didn't see any water heating solar panels anywhere - which are far more efficient per square metre than PV panels, plus don't require the barely and/or totally unrecyclable high tech materials or their manufacture energy and cost. With PV panels and no sun heat harvesting, i don't see this building as 'eco friendly' at all, though it may be good for his consumer bills for the time being.
The last thing you want to do, as a property owner, is fine tuning. So all these suggestions to simplify things, and then do things manually, aren't really smart suggestions.
being to a hotel smoking outside in the rain and wind when you go back inside with a winter jacket on top blowing the air from the heatpump inside 17 degree cold and whet the only place to have some heat is a shower or down at the toilet were a heater is to dry your hands no they are coplete crazy.
I still haven't had the u values worked out, and I didn't have a heat loss survey either. The thermal envelope is this, from the inside to outside: Plaster-board wall, 75mm timber frame with 50mm insulation, brickwork, air-gap, brickwork, render. The floors and ceilings were stuffed with 140mm insulation with a buildings reg specified superquilt over the loft.
Not quite sure how this is not using any power from the grid. Heat pump jargon over my head, lots of settings, lots of fiddling, works to a point but not to suit me. Living in Australia where solar is king, I can follow that. I have way more solar panels than that and it is mostly sunny. Yet that wouldn't run my home let alone a guest house. He has a few batteries to store power and looking to get more. But currently doesn't have enough to do much. And if they are Lithium batteries, I would have them at the bottom of the garden. So many cases of those things catching fire and burning your house down. In Oz the Tesla wall things have burnt and LG have recalled thousands of units because they burnt. Don't trust them. Upload to grid is obviously different in Oz. The grid provider here stipulates if there are any restrictions, and if so what your maximum upload can be. And if there is a restriction, as stated, your system can be set up to only upload to your maximum limit. Then we can choose different service suppliers to get the best deal on what you are uploading. The other thing with heat pumps is the need for constant power. With normal water heaters off an element, I have mine set to only come on during daylight hours and using solar power to directly heat the water. On a good day he might go OK. But on a bad day or in Winter generally in UK I reckon he would still be pulling a fair bit of juice from the grid. Take the cost of all the installations against savings. I reckon you would be looking at quite a long time to break even and make a profit. .
The interesting thing about Rye is that it was until recently a port on the coast but the coast has moved away. When people talk about rising sea levels they neglect to mention the many places that were once covered by the sea and are now high and dry.
@@SkillBuilderIt's called "longshore drift". The sea erodes the coastline farther up the coast and deposits the sediments here. This is why Rye, up on an elevation, used to be on the coastline and the land is flat as a pancake out to the coast. And Rye is super-quaint 🙂
Roger it feels like winter today and I've been looking in to how to make my lounge warmer, and as we all know heatrises so would it not be a good idea to put the stuff you put behind radiators on ceiling may look daft but the heat would bounce off it and keep us warm.
@ceo786 - yes, about 60. That's 'a few grand, isn't it?' Insulation 20K, two cylinders, a tank and pump, 6000, heatpump, 12,000, solar array 15000. Sorry mate, folk need to stop pretending folk have 20-30K to throw on insulating and installing expensive to run systems on the promise of lower long term costs.
Great video. The hotel owner will offset the massive cost of this install against his profit so not costing a penny, double bubble . Average house owner would never get his money back
I find the negativity towards this ridiculous. Many UK properties are old and inefficient when it comes to energy consumption and insulation. Bills are expensive and the big energy cartel still profit while people struggle. Anything that can save money and prevent that must be a good thing. But it takes a lot of work, retrofitting older buildings etc. And if people dont try out these new solutions, then nothing will ever change.
Some people are stuck in their ways and afraid of change from the old "tried and tested" methods. Roger I feel was this way inclined but seems to be coming around given the Skill Builder channel is slowly becoming the Heat Geek's 2nd channel 😉
As you say, we need to move forwards and without the early adopters the world would just stagnate. I went to EV's years ago and am due solar in the next few weeks (subject to the DNO app) and hope to be able to get onto the tail end of the BUS grant. Once I renovate the kitchen (long over due) the gas will be cut off. I also have the option for more PV at a later date which would see my annual electric usage offset but need to see how the first phase works out.
Thanks for the vote of confidence :)
Anyone told him the dangers of Lithium batteries? So much so that new British Standards now ban these in lofts for safety reasons. He has them fitted inside the hotel?
Funny how people will spend huge amounts of CAPITAL without a murmur to 'save' money but ignore the fact that those 'savings' do not happen until the CAPITAL outlay has been paid off by them. This will be many years hence.
If he is still even connected to the grid he has to pay the Standing Charges which power companies now use as a profit taker, upping them regularly.
Let us hope his ideas prove to be all he expects, as you say, we always need pioneers but this hugely complicated instal along with the additional insulation is costing him dear to maybe prove a point. Good luck to him but as a business investment he is out on a limb.
@@sirjohng1 anyone told you of the dangers of gas boilers? The BSI you refer to is currently guidance, not a regulation. You have highlighted just how little you know on this. You can clearly see that, even if we did use PAS 63100:2024 that the batteries are installed in the plant room, with smoke/fire detection as you can see above the fuse board and the sizing is under 40kWh. Furthermore you show a complete lack of understand on fire regulations as this is a 3 storey building which will have required a protected stair core so all door off of that will be FD30's under Building Regulation AD Part B, again, you can see the self closers on the room doors. On top of that, I suspect (can't see from the footage) that each room would have smoke/fire detection. Plus the emergency lighting he'll have had to install on the escape route Honestly, SkillBuilder should be picking up comments like yours and correcting this complete lack of knowledge on your part having jumped on one thing you think you happened to have heard and are running with it like a dog with a bone.
System payback, I would have thought that he's on business rates for electric and not domestic so his payback will be much quicker. Go see a channel like RSymons RSEV, he installed £30k+ of solar and batteries and his payback is 3-4 years so a very good ROI.
Yes he'll have a standing charge to pay, but if you listened to him, he's carbon negative, this means he produces more than he uses, so that would cover the standing charge. I'm willing to bet he's run the numbers so is far more educated to make that financial decision vs your scepticism. He sounds like he's not had the best of times with installers so his payback will be longer, but once it's paid back, he then has a more profitable business.
I'm putting solar/battery on my house, payback will be under 6 years. I'm not moving any time soon and would be paying for electric regardless in that time, so the system really isn't going to cost that much, if anything extra than if I just carried on paying for the electric. But, by 2030 my bills will drop to nothing.
@vSchaub nope, I'm in the UK. Not sure how you got to pay-per-mile when we are looking at renewable heating/solar system, seems a bit of a jump to make a random point on what is a building channel?
Anyway, here zero emission cars are currently exempt from road tax (an annual payment for every car based on emissions) but that is changing in 2025 although the cost will still be minimal vs ICE cars. Our system of road tax will undoubtably change to offset to drop in revenue from the higher emission vehicles. But, on the flip side, having cleaner cars and thus cleaner air, there will be a drop in hospital admission for respiratory conditions. Has we have a state funded health system there will be savings there to offset some of the drop in road tax.
If you take a look at the health benefits in the US from the closing of coal plant, Shenango Coke Works facility in Pittsburgh in January 2016. Had a massive effect very swiftly. Now, that was a very concentrated amount of pollution in a small location, but scale that up to a country and the health benefits are clear. Cleaner air saves lives.
I believe they did trial a pay-per-mile system in Australia but think that was rolled back as it didn't work. I honestly can't remember the details on that but sure I watched a video where on guy was travelling between territories and was then being charged by each one but it included the whole trip so was costing him double. As I say, I can't remember the full details on that, or which channel I was watching, might have been the full charge show uk, but might be one to look up.
Pay-per-mile to me doesn't make much sense, what happens with multiple people who use the car? Who foots the bill? Do you have to submit an annual milage report for the car (like a tax return, which we don't have to do in the UK unless self employed)? Here we could check against the annual MOT inspection of the car, however new cars don't need one for the first 3 years, what happens there? Pay-per-mile sounds simple, just seems a very flawed system to implement. But that's just my opinion. And, as you say, "if" it passes.
Wow Guys! You’ve saved me hours by assembling as a team. Especially when I’m at an early stage 500m2 similar project on an 1840 non listed terrace. Really enjoyable. Thanks.
47 years ago I saw 4 houses that had been built to the cost yardstick (council house budget). They had masonry walls, with 150mm foam bead filled cavities, 300mm fiberglass in the roof, triple glazing and heat recovery from the bathroom and kitchen. It's sole means of heating was a gas fire in the living room which only needed to be on for 2 hours to keep the house warm overnight. It was cheap to run and with minimal servicing costs and low equipment replacement costs.
I grew up with a small anthracite stove to heat the water in the kitchen and a closed fire in the lounge used when it was very cold. We wore warm clothes and walked to school through the snow!! Some extra heat from a Tilly lamp . (1947 big freeze in Scotland!)
I dont think the guy done a bad job ,the heat geek and his side kick seems to finding faults but some specialist must fitted the stuff. You dont want a complicated system the experts here are over complicating everything ,everything has problem . To be honest with you the guy done alot better than many people so hats off to him .
Made too complicated for minimal financial saving
Amateur Comment : The key takeaway for me is that insulating the hell out of your property potentially means a less complicated set up required. Also, I had no idea you could get automatic thermostatically blinds, awnings, or vent tubes. This was another excellent video
Yeah, I can't help wondering if you insulate really well, and have a good amount of solar, if just an electric combi boiler would do? What you lose in efficiency, you would more than gain back in lower install and maintenance costs. Would also save having to find space for a water tank in our famously tiny houses, too.
Insulation versus ventilation.
Seems to be a conflict here. Personally I've no interest in being suffocated or made ill with excess CO, CO2, Radon build up..funny that no one talks about this...🤔
Everyone that knows what he's doing will install a forced air ventilation system when improving air tightness. That say you automatically control air quality and reduce losses be recuperating energy.
@@jeremylister89 Insulation is a must, as that determines difficulty (or not) in maintaining a given temperature. Air can be cycled with the outside via heat exchangers.
This is the first thing to do in any property, then look at what is needed to control temperature, be that passive or active.
This is what I did in Australia. We put in full height curtains (with insulation layer from the stuff used for oven mits) with pelmets. Engineered a system that took the excess solar power and used it to heat the hot water, then 'automated' some heaters to do the same with anything left over. Net effect was the electricity bill dropped 60%. Now seriously looking at batteries to do some time shifting.
Insulate your home. Install TRVs. Be sensible about what temps you set the room(s)/hot water. Evaluate what time you actually need the central heating on. Get your boiler serviced.
Keep your home properly ventilated / use a dehumidifier.
Relax knowing you don't need to spend thousands changing your entire energy system, pipes, controls, having limited-life panels on your roof, losing space inside to god-knows how many boxes and cylinders, and that you don't need some ugly industrial-estate looking hot air blower sitting in your garden.
Agree. Best comment here, thanks.
Absolutely spot on, the amount of energy that could be saved by just making sure people's existing heating systems are properly serviced and set up is huge. It is cheap to do and it saves households money and reduces overall gas consumption, all this heat pump subsidy nonsense is a total waste of tax payer money subsidising well off people to have insanely expensive and complex heating they can brag about to their right on friends. The whole approach to energy efficiency in this country is a mess, an expensive mess.
Agree. You don't need to be an electro mechanical engineer to operate your house.
As regards MCS: if you don't have MCS the Octopus process to get an export MPAN will work for you regardless of export amounts, even on a three-phase connection.
The DNO do not care about MCS or about the solar PANEL (not inverter) generation capacity. They care about the total inverter capacity on site and also the battery storage capacity on site. G98 or G99 systems can use the Octopus process. When you make the G99 application the DNO will assess the local grid in your area and may impose a restriction on total inverter capacity or may impose a G100 export limitation scheme if there is a risk of local area voltages getting out of range with high export powers. If you live close to the substation and there isn’t much other solar in your area there may be no export restrictions. Max inverter capacity you are ever allowed on a single phase connection under G99 is 17kW, on three phase it’s 50kW.
If the DNO do hand you an inverter capacity restriction you can somewhat get around it by DC coupling the panels direct into the battery using something like a Victron MPPT.
You will need £250, a G99 approval from the DNO and a building regs signoff (part P electrical approval for the system) to use the Octopus process. Octopus are currently paying up to 15p/kWh for export.
I’m a solar installer who has used the Octopus process several times.
Thank you so much for this! I'll get on to this ASAP. Get in touch if you are heading this way 🙂
This is great information to know. I have just upgraded to a Victron Multplus 2 5000va and one of their 450/100 mppt solar charge controllers because my previous set up was pushing my solar out to the grid all the time so I figured getting some LIFEPO4s and storing my excess makes sense. I still need to crunch the numbers on the Octopus Flux Tariff because the 15p import price is alot more than the 7.5p I pay for 6 hours overnight on my EV tariff. Its whether the export earnings of 25p kwh will make financial sense over the 7.5p import on intelligent octopus go.
@@Marks-Garage generally, flux will work better if you just have a home battery but add an EV into the mix and the more expensive off peak rate makes "intelligent go" with "outgoing" better overall. This might not be true if your EV use is low mileage and it might change seasonally if you have a large PV array. Good choice on the Victron. The Multiplus range is excellent.
@@VillageVidiot100 I'm on Agile because it said on the Octopus site that Flux is only available to those with Solar generation of less than 9Kwp. And despite 4 EV chargers, I don't have an EV. Yet.
@@MagnoliaHouseRye amazing project! What u values did you achieve for your wall/floor/roof insulation?
9:39 Heat Geek, I've seen 8°C difference inside a 1.2m fridge between high and low points. 4°C low, 12°C at high shelf. Old style fridge without fan assist to even the cooling.
Please please check using thermometers the actual temperature difference between a floor and a ceiling in a room. You'll see a big difference.
There's a huge difference when drying clothing between those lower down and those higher up. Because of this temperature difference at different heights. In the same room.
Please do testing with multiple thermometers and see it for yourself.
I did this for an old person because they said some of their food wasn't lasting in their fridge. I put in 2 thermometers and was astounded at the difference between high and low.
This really shows if you have the desire, that you can make a huge difference to your bills that will continue for many years by investing in your property now. The payback will be over the years and gets more benefit if electricity prices rise. Great to see Roger doing more with the greener modern technology and bringing the two sides together.
Hi Roger , here in Northern France it gets pretty cold , we burn wood fuel logs for heating the house , as does much of rural areas of Europe, its more expensive now to get the wood so we are just about to construct a Masonry mass heater, from refectory bricks etc , its a very efficient and cheaper use of fuel and it burns hotter and much cleaner , some people have their water and cook stoves connected as well , you can now buy the stoves in kit form for diy assembly.
I got from this this that as a starter good insulation is simple and cheap and offers an immediate benefit but also provides a good basis for a smaller PV /heat pump heating system with attendant lower costs. Using the PV to run the heat pump to achieve a 4x improvement in efficiency is a good one since this is a direct saving.
I soooooo wanted one. But you know....money and all that 😝
oooops, that was intended for @petersimms4982
Expert saying "I would have done this slightly different" You ask another expert, they say: "previous export was wrong, I would do it a different way" Not a criticism in any way, but the average home owner can suffer from this syndrome when trying to get advice on any type of home installation. Every "Expert" tells you something slightly different. This guy's done pretty well I reckon. I built a large log cabin in my garden and did all the work myself including fitting a bathoom, kitchen and hot water system. I didn't follow any "in-person" advice and it's now a top rated self contained holiday let. (love this channel by the way - best place for building project advice I reckon).
I struggle to equate the huge cost with the very long and undefined payback on these systems.
I am not hostile to the technology at all but I am not impressed with the alarming complexity of these systems, bearing in mind, that they will, of course, go wrong.
The on-going maintenance costs, breakdowns and repairs must be significant, not to mention the countless hours spent "optimising" the system.
It should be pointed out that the cost of solar generated power is very low and it is very easy to just increase solar capacity if space allows rather than go to extreme measures to use every last kW generated.
The £7.5k carrot for install is very tempting.
I use 5.5kW Solar PV , 10kW battery, 14kW Solar Thermal and 16.5kW and 27kW Heat pumps for the pool.
Yep there's 10s of thousands of pounds worth of tech if you don't know how to build it (speaking as an ex offshore north sea oil gas and wind electrical technician and JIB industrial electrician of 40 years)
Low technology is good technology. This is overly complex indeed. The solution is lots of insulation and attention to draught proofing. I have solar PV panels and a wood burning stove (plus access to free wood). My payback time was five years. I'm well into profit now,
It's great that this is possible with standard equipment, my concern is support and servicability. Seeing all that pipework, masses of wiring, switches and control gear gives me the willies for the future.
The pipework is "complicated" because I started out with a gas-fired boiler and made 11 circuits - 8 for the guest rooms and 3 circuits for the ground floor (2 of those are for my accommodation). Each zone needed a motorised valve as I used to heat specific rooms per booking. With the ASHP now in, I have kept the zones open for the ground and first floor, and closed the central heating to the top floor. When summer really hits, I will shut all the zones. Yes it looks complicated but I guess if you're staring at it every day it feels really simple. The setup is as ugly as sin, which is why I don't offer guided tours (!). But...its all domestic kit made to work in a house that is around 3 times the floor space of a regular house. There's a whole bunch of additional wiring just to get an internet cable to a repeater at the very back of the house so that the EV chargers would have a reliable internet connection.
@@MagnoliaHouseRye Thank you. I do understand how these things grow. My concern is having a full system diagram to make it easier to trace any faults that may occur in the future. As I am very local to you, I'd offer to take you both for a pint to pick your brains!
@@abbersj2935 Fab...drop us a note through our website 🙂
What a switched on couple. So good to see. Most hotels you stay in are seriously overheated to the point of gross discomfort. What do you do about it? Open the windows and let all of their money out into the atmosphere. Noisy, annoying air conditioning that simply dessicated you whilst you lie awake in bed cursing. Well done you guys, your guests will appreciate their stays in your establishment though some might not even guess why it is so nice.
Thanks so much for that! Pay us a visit and see how nice it is for yourselves 🙂
(This waste was such an annoying "feature" back in the day when I lived in centrally heated accommodation blocks - without individual room thermostats, back in the day.. Such a waste opening the window in winter - in manchester UK.)
Wow. So much to learn about. I need to look closer into this. Thank you all.
Impressive set up although I would be more interested in the facts and figures since installation.
Costings for the installation as it stands,
Maintenance/insurance annual costs for the system(s)
How quickly can you callout engineers if there is an issue the owner cannot resolve.
Ongoing costs of any upgrades required and timescales say over the next 20 years.
Wow that really is a great video on offgrid. The expertise is astounding. Well done Roger. Oh and music at the start really captured the trip!
The credit goes to Dylan and his son Abe who film and put these videos together. I am just a mouth on a stick.
This was both very educational and also entertaining. It was really supportive and constructive, but also kinda a roast 😂
Yeah but off camera, Adam and Szymon gave me some REALLY helpful advice. And they're really decent blokes.
@@MagnoliaHouseRye Without question they are! They were just excited and minds were in design mode, you should definitely be proud of your energy achievement! Lovely looking hotel too!
It's a little misleading to start the video by saying that the hotel is off grid when later see a shot of an IHD display showing £38 spent so far this week. 🤔
Fair play to the owner for his fabric first, trial and error approach but unfortunately a lot of unnecessary kit was installed to achieve a lower than optimum efficiency.
The school boy errors we still see time and again are oversized ASHP, no weather compensation, unnecessary low loss header, pumps, zoning and controls. Using solar diverters and not the ASHP for DHW is a common lost opportunity for optimal efficiency.
I hope the owner manages to get his DNO and export MPAN sorted out because that is the key to achieving net zero bills.
We genuinely believed it to be off grid before he took us on the tour but we didn't want to reshoot the intro because we had a long drive home.
I haven’t got a clue what these guys are talking about but I’m guessing they know what they’re talking about.
Visit us and I'll show you 🙂
Me too
Snap!
Who wants to?
Another great episode. I never heard of thermoskirting, but it seems a great solution for upstairs where I have a very low heat demand at all. I now use air to air upstairs but that only runs in the 3 coldest months of the year, thermoskirt could bring this down to the periods when it gets really below -5°C or so, which is probably a couple of weeks each year.
Also the automation of blinds or shutters is a great idea, as is the ventilation tube. I run a similar system where in the summer I open the door to the attic and have a dorm window open there, also I open the trickle vents or crack a window on the tilt position downstairs during night and that gives ventilation without the noise of an open window in your sleeping room. I use screens on the open windows to prevent flies and mosquitoes getting in.
The main issue with Thermaskirts was the expenense for what they actually are. But, the justification for this putting them in the guest rooms was to free up / de-clutter the walls. So whilst it is an emitter, on this one thing I took aesthetics in to account...BIG caveat though..they only work as advertised in a well insulated environment
@@MagnoliaHouseRye Yes the cost is a bit detrimental.
If I want to get rid of the rads a dry build underfloor heating is a probably a cheaper alternative, it just means that floor level is raised by 3 or 4cm and thus that doors must be shortened.
@@Tom-Lahaye Could you raise the door frames or would that get pricey? I considering retrofit system that is placed above the existing concrete floor, this will be on the ground floor.
@@affieuk Raising the frames would be possible in the extension, but not the old part of the house, as it would mean that the lintels above the doors must be raised too, and these are partially load bearing brick walls. Also it means replastering these parts etc. Cutting 3 cm off from each door is much easier and cheaper. The dry built system isn't more than 3cm in height.
@@Tom-Lahaye Thank you, I assumed it would be something like this, but honestly didn't think internal doors would have lintels, unless that includes the wood door frame?
If anyone has any suggestions on dry fit water heating systems please let me know or at least what to look out for.
All good if you have the room to install all that stuff.
And the money to pay for it. And for an install like this, pretty expensive i would imagine.
Excellent, the dream team all together. You guys can help and country out when sorting the appalling government out.
Good job this bloke knows how this works because if he gets a problem and he had to get somebody to fix it he would be stuffed.
Ah, but apparently these systems never go wrong, 24/7 for ever it appears???
@@sirjohng1 👍😂😂
@@sirjohng1
You might just be right there.
My fridge has been starting and stopping eight times a day 24/7 for past twenty years, it's not gone wrong yet, same technology.
@@sirjohng1 Ive been in the B&B game for over 20 years. I've had gas boilers fail on a bank holiday weekend. Nothing works 24/7 without issues, and I take the view that if it can go wrong, it will. But...all this kit confers a very high degree of resiliency: If the ASHP fails for hot water, I can use the immersions in the cylinders. If the ASHP fails for central heating, the A2A's can kick in. If there is a loss of water pressure (has happened in Rye and most businesses and residences were SEVERELY affected) this place functioned without issues..the cold water tank just re-filled itself more slowly. So when something goes wrong, and it will, no question, I'll have bought myself enough time to 'get through the night' and not trash my reputation. Ultimately, we're as only as good as our last check-out....
@@_Dougaldog Same principal but very different technology, heat pump systems are extremely complex to design, fit and configure, they are expensive to maintain and typically don't last as long as gas boilers. Oh and they take up a lot of space in your home for tanks and other paraphernalia.
It would be interesting to watch how the experts improve the set up for both heating and electrical setup. Good advert for the hotel too
Would love to know what the true total cost of the total install is relative to the cost of on-grid supply.
Hi Roger. Have worked with heat pumps since about 1988 and they have all had a lot of maintenance issues. Some people have stripped out electronic controls and retro-fitted pressure switches etc. The physics of 1 in=4out is great, but would love you to show what the "REAL" lifespan maintenance costs are. i.e. compressor replacement / re-gassing etc
We have had a Samsung unit for the past 9 yeaars, it has been superb. We run weather comp with a max flow temp of 38c and a min of 27c, after a lot of tweaking we find this is the best compromise (for us) in terms of satisfactory heating performance and efficiency. Our annual SCOP is around 4.0, which I am very happy with.
Did your unit need an annual service to honour warranty requirements, if so what was involved, presumably not much more than cleaning external vaporisation grid ?
Hopefully you've had no problems at all, or have there been any niggles over the nine years it's been operating ?
@@_Dougaldog yes, but it is only cleaning and cursory checks which I now do myself. We have never had an issue with it, but I did replace both fan motors this year as preventative maintenance. Over time the bearings can get noisy and it's good practice to replace them every 8 or so years. They cost £320 for the two and it's an easy DIY job.
@@davidstorm4015
Thank you for prompt reply, that is more or less what I'd hoped for as my three month old unit ages :-)
@@_Dougaldog Very useful for me to know as well :-) Thank you for sharing
On the one hand I admire what they have done, but on another, that is a very complex and technically diverse solution - mean time to failure (MTTF) would be a serious concern with such a system and whether a failure could cascade. Also lightning strikes would be a nightmare, from the simple 'turned to smoke' case down to the crashed controller or a failed/intermittent sensor.. Automation is great, but to do it right is expensive and requires ongoing maintenance as a square of the total complexity usually (i.e. double the systems/sensors/controls, 4 times the maintenance).
This is one reason I did my own thing and took 'dumb' systems and them made them smart with the minimal automation, this also set the static energy load (constant power suck of the automation) to a minimum - all those screens, LED's, lights, etc cost energy which soon adds up, no free lunch...
Didn't see all the backups. The air splits can probably do you for heating with reasonable efficiency, and the hot water tank does have at least one immersion heater.
@26:11 High end split air conditioner can get very high scop (Daikin Ururu Sarara up to 5.5)
Yeah, many A+++ in the market that go above 5.0
Yeah 👍 I think tho it’s more like 4 for cooling & 5 for heating .
@@bcpbrennan your answer may be correct depending on the climate zone where the device is installed... in England it should exceed SCOP of 5.5
They only serve the eggs, sunny side up
The eggs are solar-powered ;-)
Excactly, most homes for most of us, are run down, old type property and most are not updated, not good insulated , and a lot of bad bad landlords, not all but there are a certain percentage of bad homes, old homes, and a lot of damp properties .
MOST UK properties for old types are dumps
I love learning new things & enjoy Skill Builder channel. I got most of the gist of what’s going on here, but my main takeaway from this is that I don’t want my house looking like an oil refinery 😂. I wanted a HP system but living in a small mid terraced property MCS 20 regs made it near impossible. Enjoy watching Roger & Co & the people like the hotel owners who are early adopters & push the boundaries where others dare not to! We can learn so much from their experiences & mistakes! Great!
"It's more like the innards of a nuclear sub", said a good friend of mine. He's been inside one 😁
@vSchaub
We now know what your level of knowledge is.
Any power used by any electrical device is converted to heat and lost, it really is that simple.
You can change the power factor (Cosine of phase difference between Current & Voltage) by adding capacitive reactance to an inductive reactance.
Power factor of one is the most desirable, where apparent power (VA) becomes equal to the real power (W).
And what about heat lost as a result of the resistance in the wire of your circuit where the energy transfers between magnetic field and charge on capacitor, it might work if you have super conductivity, but as soon as you use that energy for any purpose then it is lost to your system ?
I'll stick with mainstream academia, they tend to be right 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of the time.
@vSchaub
I'm well aware of the principles, I studied them 50 years ago, and nowt has changed since then.
Thanks for such an inspiring and informative video, much appreciated.
Feel like a call to Cory at OY is needed! Get that solar system sorted!
Since Roger and Co were here, I've replaced the inverter, batteries are on-line, already picked up some great advice on here (looking at you, VillageVidiot100). And waiting on a call-back from Cory, lol....
I assume this is an "older" building. What type of wall insulation was added?
Air to air can reach a scop of 4.5 (for heating if you get me)
As heat pumps and solar gain market share I can see a job for someone to come and set up and maintain these systems. For the average joe they are bewildering (turning down the flow but keeping the same heat) 🤪
This is the way to go.
This installation is basically becoming a net energy generator rather than a hotel. I like this, a lot.
All new builds should take this approach. Every building should either be energy neutral o ra net generator producer. The combinatio of PV solar, heat pumps, battery storage and export to grid should achieve this.
Other than total cost for retrofit to old properties then effective and low cost insulation strategies will be the limiting factor.
I had a solar battery storage system installed. I couldn't stand the emfs being given off. I had it removed and the nasty feelings went away.
Very nice video, only thing missing out was the en-suite extractors. Are they heat recovery? Owner is so right, I hate hotels at 24C in the winter. Reducing the flow to much less than 40C might leave it too cool for showers?
Venting air using the soil vent pipes is something I hadn't thought about. Could make it a lot easier to add a basic extractor. Heat recovery venting through the house is easy enough on the top floor from the attic. Fresh air from the soffits, and side drill into a soil pipe? Building regulations still apply, might not be allowed at all.
Heat flow for radiators and DHW are treated as separate items by HP, so can easily have radiator flow as low as you like (mine works perfectly at 33C LWT), HWC on other hand can be heated up to 55C on my 'low temperature' HP (or 65C with resistive heater boost, but that's wasteful).
45C is a nice cosy shower or bath, and setting HWC to heat to 45C means less wasted heat, no point in heating to 70C and then adding 'cold' to cool it down again.
Hot water is 1/4 of cost of electric shower, and with money I save on gas standing charge pays to heat 150 litres to 45C every day.
@@plinble
If system is well designed and good flow rates available then achieving good efficiency is not difficult.
By design the heat output from emitters is such that each room will sit at optimal temperature for each room, based on the calculated loss for that room.
Defrost cycles should not be an issue, a smaller system like mine has a volumiser tank to provide sufficient heat without pulling the emitter temperatures down too much.
But unless set properly by installer, the information required from unit to set best weather dependant curve is in short supply without monitoring system power in real time.
VRF, or variable refrigerant flow, is a three-pipe system that allows for simultaneous heating and cooling. The third pipe is a heat recovery pipe, which allows for the transfer of heat from one area to another without having to collect the heat from the outside air.
The main thing that was not talked about, is the cost of all of this. What is the ROI?
The small low loss headers are fitted by most just to cheat the heat pump in thinking it has enough flow especially when doing a retrofit. Usual thing so called MCS approved companies finding a means of not getting any calls for low flow faults. Rather than doing the job properly. A friend of mines parents had a heat pump fitted through a grant by a mcs registered firm and the install was shocking but as they got it for free they didn't feel they could say anything so are paying to have it put right. Dies the MCS ever check companies work?
MCS don't check anything. Sorry to hear about your parents' cowboy experience and hope it works out.
@MagnoliaHouseRye Thanks! I'm actually going to put it right myself I have fitted quite a few heat pumps over the last few years including my own which replaced an old oil boiler and although all my friends said I was mad as my house is 220 years old and solid stone it works great and has done for 4 years now
When will you have paid off for all this equipment and regular servicing to be into any savings whatsoever?
Talk about nerding out to the technology wonderful video
Yes, we should hope this will become a lot less nerdy for normal people in the future.. Just plug and 'forget'..
High investment
Any cost benefit analysis?
From the videos I've watched, you're likely going to at best end up at about the same running costs as your existing setup. Only makes sense if your existing setup is really bad and you can take advantage of the BUS grant, with people that know what they're doing, maybe Octopus, but I've got no personal experience.
The best "advantage" that I can think of is that your heating will be stable all year round, doesn't include cooling though.
Best bet if your boiler isn't ancient, improve insulation, drop your flow rate as far as you can.
@@affieuk many thanks for analysis
I think i will just try getting fitter or wear an extra jumper
@@tictoc5443 Hah, I use thick blankets
Thank you 🙏🏼
If you have a super insulated house, would a few candles keep it warm or 20 press ups?
LOL....The bathroom towel radiators can also heat a guest-room, and I am too old for press ups 🤣
I have put in extra insulation and new windows and what you describe is really what happens here. The living room can often be heated just by lighting the candles in the evening and us just being there watching TV. The only downside of good insulation is everything just getting too warm upstairs in summer. But with the savings in winter, buying and running an AC for hot days is just minor cost in comparison.
Passivehaus aims for 10W/m² heating load. So almost.
Technically it looks very impressive, but for the average Jo inormously complicated & therefore enormously expensive. Besides this, it seems to need a huge space in which to install, which most homes do not have. However, this does not mean home owners wouldn't wish to have their Energy Bills brought down to near zero
Not able to export power because of no MCS go to octopus energy they don't require MCS.
Put a modbus meter on your Solar edge to limit export.
I've now replaced the SolarEdge inverter with a 3 phase AC coupled SunSynk, so my batteries are finally online and I now have the ability to control the export :-)
@@MagnoliaHouseRye I use Solaredge and Sunsynk inverters with the Solaredge on main roof and Sunsynk on another builder - main house uses a Powerwalls and the Sunsynk is connected to a 60kWh LFP battery store I built. Investigate using Homeassistant as you can connect the Sunsynk to it using an RS485 to TCP/IP so you can get precise control over whether you store or export the energy. Homeassistant will also enable you to use cheap wireless thermostats to get a real time view of thermals and get alerts and alarms.
Here is my takeaway, it's all way too complicated. More so than it ever should be.
Did miss the costs of this project and saving figures ? However the video show a beautiful street views then we see a roof full of black glass panels I don’t think there be many postcards of that being printed. The engineer says he has bifold doors and suggests if its not the tight temperature close blinds or awnings why dod we all live in a 1 metre thick polystyrene box.
Automating your VELUX etc will cost a fortune in time, money and mess. This is far too complex a system for heating a house. Most householders want a system that keeps them warm when it's cold and gives them hot water when they want it.
Gas boiler all the way, you can do the underfloor heating if the opportunity is there. That's a big plus if you can.
Such videos are like reality show.
Would really love to learn more about using emitters to extract heat. Heat geeks had made a video about a while back using their office as the test piece. Couldn't this option be used here?
The ASHP with the Thermaskirts can be used to extract heat but in my case I'd possibly shave 2c; the split air to air h/pumps are far more efficient and great during our mini-heatwaves 😎
Yes but it didn't really work in their office. There are problems with localised condensation
My understanding from the Heat Geek video is that you'd really need a separate high level circuit (as in, upside down radiators at the top of the rooms as heat rises) that include water catch trays (either manually emptying them or draining to the outside) and all the pipework thoroughly lagged to prevent condensation under the floor or wherever your pipes are running.
As Adam says, the passive approaches (The valved chimney thing he mentioned for air flow, and the automated awnings) are a much better fit for this country. Cheaper and effective enough for the sort of heat we generally see. PassivHaus design actually includes a passive overhang (Just wider than normal eaves) designed based on where the sun is in the different seasons to get free heating in the winter but block it in the summer when the sun is higher.
This is a big initial investment but over many years would pay off. And the owner has a really good understand of how this all work.
There was some talk at the end of the video about ATA units and did I hear correctly that there are some units with ATA that have a split value that could be diverted to heat the water , did I hear it wrong ? If there is such items could you do a video on those ? I still struggle with the idea of getting a heat pump that heats water to the heat radiators to then heat the rooms rather than getting an ATA system, just don’t get it , if the aim is to keep thinks simple is that not as simple as it gets or am I the only one thinking this way.
Did not spot any warning signs in the plant room about the increased risk of electrocution with equipment on different electrical phases e.g. the immersion heaters in close proximity.
Interesting video.
The look of the roof would be improved by completely covering in solar 😉
I soooooo wanted one. But you know....money and all that 😛
Noticed no word on total cost and payback time .
Great content, nicely edited👋
@ 24:30 this is why I like VRVs:
can move heat between refrigerators, freezers, hot water, heating and cooling… but they are expensive 😅😊… and if you only have One system and It has a fault your in big trouble😅 … and the trouble are coming usually after 6-8 years:D
If you think that a plumber can do great damage and that good plumbers are hard to find, then you will realize that good and responsible refrigeration technicians (the combination of good and responsible is hard to come by) are hardly found at all😢
This is why I don’t like standard/clasic heatpumps - they are very limited … and knowing what It can be done in hotels for example or large homes are the perfect candidate for VRVs😊 but It will cost an arm and a leg to Install one…
I think the complexity of this set up would make many a plumber or electrician call for help. I recall when my parents bought a house back in the late 70's and it had a complex Satchwell mechanical system the looked out various temperatures and individual flow to radiators. It never worked and my Dad and anyone he called in could work it out and the previous owner was a design engineer for that said company.
Hi Sean
I agree with you. I had a veery complicated duel fuel set up in my house and my wife said that if anything happened to me nobody would have a clue what went where. It was a reality check. I ripped it all out and went back to something very simple that anyone could work on. I have continued in that vein ever since. I hoenstly believe that heat pumps and solar etc. should all be plug and play, that is the mission for those making the kit.
@@SkillBuilder Fully agree Roger, I will add a heat pump to my setup when I get some time although I have a farm and have a boiler room that feeds the farmhouse, cottage and workshops. In this setup it will be easy to experiment and see how it works but obviously for me I can easily lay pipes for ground source and have a friend that has done that on their farm but they do have to complement it in winter with their oil boilers. I've also been looking at pure electric boilers which are more of a plug and play where I already have one in one of my holiday lets and the cost isn't that bad but a simple setup.
I would be very interested to compare capital outlay on the system versus energy cost saving of the system.
Yes that is worth considering because you have to consider what that money would return if it sat in an ISA
I'm interested to know more about the heat recovery multi-splits that Adam discusses at 23:50, that system is the three-pipe VRF-HR system but I've not seen any at the domestic scale, aside from one Australian brochure that I can no longer find. Can you link to the specific products for the domestic market?
Mind blown 😮🤯🧱👍🏼
Just wondering how you protected your potable water from the douches, as they are category 5 fittings.. (by they way a super video, the guys are so knowledgable)
the douches, showers in English, have an air gap so there is no issue.
How much did it cost to get all this work done?
Thats the real question that never gets answered. All subsided by people who struggle to pay their energy bills. It's toys for wealthy people.
New builds around our area and my home has no place to put a water tank, the only place is outside. There's no place in the roof space.
If you're in Scotland then all new builds as of 1st April this year will have heat pumps fitted, England and Wales to follow in April 2025.
I'm sure they'll manage to find space.
Only glanced through the video i admit but didn't see any water heating solar panels anywhere - which are far more efficient per square metre than PV panels, plus don't require the barely and/or totally unrecyclable high tech materials or their manufacture energy and cost.
With PV panels and no sun heat harvesting, i don't see this building as 'eco friendly' at all, though it may be good for his consumer bills for the time being.
I was thinking I swear I’ve seen this guy before! And It was Three in a Bed channel 4?
ROFL....Back in 2010, Three in a Bed, Season 2, Episode 2.......watch out for Four in a Bed next March....
The last thing you want to do, as a property owner, is fine tuning. So all these suggestions to simplify things, and then do things manually, aren't really smart suggestions.
Note with Thermoskirt... don't use it with soften water... The Ali really doesn't like it.
I didn’t know NASA did heating systems🤔.
Those panels couldn't run his freezer. Stay there in the winter but you'll find the owners have gone somewhere warmer for three months.
being to a hotel smoking outside in the rain and wind when you go back inside
with a winter jacket on top blowing the air from the heatpump inside 17 degree
cold and whet the only place to have some heat is a shower or down at the toilet
were a heater is to dry your hands no they are coplete crazy.
What u values were achieved in the thermal envelope of this building? Very interesting video thank you
I still haven't had the u values worked out, and I didn't have a heat loss survey either. The thermal envelope is this, from the inside to outside: Plaster-board wall, 75mm timber frame with 50mm insulation, brickwork, air-gap, brickwork, render. The floors and ceilings were stuffed with 140mm insulation with a buildings reg specified superquilt over the loft.
@@MagnoliaHouseRyeThanks so much for sharing, and for caring about climate breakdown
Not quite sure how this is not using any power from the grid. Heat pump jargon over my head, lots of settings, lots of fiddling, works to a point but not to suit me.
Living in Australia where solar is king, I can follow that. I have way more solar panels than that and it is mostly sunny. Yet that wouldn't run my home let alone a guest house. He has a few batteries to store power and looking to get more. But currently doesn't have enough to do much. And if they are Lithium batteries, I would have them at the bottom of the garden. So many cases of those things catching fire and burning your house down. In Oz the Tesla wall things have burnt and LG have recalled thousands of units because they burnt. Don't trust them.
Upload to grid is obviously different in Oz. The grid provider here stipulates if there are any restrictions, and if so what your maximum upload can be. And if there is a restriction, as stated, your system can be set up to only upload to your maximum limit. Then we can choose different service suppliers to get the best deal on what you are uploading.
The other thing with heat pumps is the need for constant power. With normal water heaters off an element, I have mine set to only come on during daylight hours and using solar power to directly heat the water.
On a good day he might go OK. But on a bad day or in Winter generally in UK I reckon he would still be pulling a fair bit of juice from the grid. Take the cost of all the installations against savings. I reckon you would be looking at quite a long time to break even and make a profit.
.
Love the fun, tv episode intro bit but shakey camera person work lol. Maybe get a tripod or cradle etc.
The shakey was part of the style, it was meant to look like a fly on the wall documentary. We have gimbles and tripods but sometimes NYPD works.
Great informative video. Rye looks quaint.
The interesting thing about Rye is that it was until recently a port on the coast but the coast has moved away. When people talk about rising sea levels they neglect to mention the many places that were once covered by the sea and are now high and dry.
@@SkillBuilderIt's called "longshore drift". The sea erodes the coastline farther up the coast and deposits the sediments here. This is why Rye, up on an elevation, used to be on the coastline and the land is flat as a pancake out to the coast. And Rye is super-quaint 🙂
Blood* sexy video. Tech heaven for a converts.. thanks Roger & co.❤
Is it a jumper
Roger it feels like winter today and I've been looking in to how to make my lounge warmer, and as we all know heatrises so would it not be a good idea to put the stuff you put behind radiators on ceiling may look daft but the heat would bounce off it and keep us warm.
Love this.
Must have cost a pretty penny
A few grand tops
@@CEO786 ... A few grand. There's a few grand in 2 ports and thermostats alone lol
@JamesKing-ev1wcwell I'm sure they pay taxes as well.
@ceo786 - yes, about 60. That's 'a few grand, isn't it?' Insulation 20K, two cylinders, a tank and pump, 6000, heatpump, 12,000, solar array 15000. Sorry mate, folk need to stop pretending folk have 20-30K to throw on insulating and installing expensive to run systems on the promise of lower long term costs.
This system would cost you about 25 -30 thousand pounds you would need to know what you are doing or it would expensive loss.
Crikey... this is way overkill. Just put a jumper on if you're cold. Costs nothing. Win win.
I wonder how much this is actually costing and what the real savings are. the whole installation looks extremely expensive and labour intensive.
Looks like this is 50+ years away for home use.
It's all domestic equipment...just a lot of it 😀
Mention "climate change," and I switch off. And that's exactly what I did.
Thanks for sharing that.
Plant room caretaker wanted.😅😊😅😊
Great video. The hotel owner will offset the massive cost of this install against his profit so not costing a penny, double bubble . Average house owner would never get his money back
Overheating and lots of free stuff mentioned,but not defined at 19 minutes
Neat and tidy systems cost you less on the long term as they are quicker to work on
To me, what he has is neat and tidy.
All great until you cant get any of these heat pump experts and you mate gary comes to have a tinker.