Owning your own home

Focal point you say?

https://www.diy.com/departments/focal-point-es-2000-black-electric-stove/109083_BQ.prd

Rolls Royce saves the world!

but heat pumps cost £9-18k

You can get grants though

what are heat pumps?

Don't you need a relatively large m2 of land for a ground source heat pump?

Answered my own question, 400m2 for 8kW, or bore holes 100-150m deep.

I think you also need a reasonably heat efficient house to begin with. The heat you get from heat pumps is at a low temperature, so if you're losing loads of heat through solid walls or draughty windows you house will never heat up

Other sources are available. Not many people want a huge industrial looking box in their back garden though (air source).

Question for all the Tado users out there.

I bought a whole system when Amazon were selling it half price a while back.

I think I've over ordered, and now I have the choice of either a thermostat or a TRV valve in our main bedroom. I'll be sending the other one back.

Any pros or cons I should think about?

Has anyone got a recommendation for a builder to spruce up the front of my house (standard victorian terrace, North London)? A pretty standard rip out and dispose of the crazy paving and garden wall, victorian tiled path to the front door, rest of it paved and a new brick wall.

I've just been quoted ~ £14k (inc VAT) which is way, way more than I was expecting.

An air conditioner is a heat pump, as is your fridge. They move heat about rather than using energy to directly make heat.

We are more used to them being used to cool things but if they are designed appropriately they can run in 'reverse' and cool down the air outside your house while warming up your living room.

I can't even get anyone to quote for replacing my front wall. People promise to come and then either go silent or message the day before to cancel.

TRV in the bedroom means you might get woken up by it opening if you want heating before you wake up. Thermostat in the bedroom means that room will heat up when any other room in the house calls for heat.

I went for no TRV and no Thermostat in the bedroom so it's usually pretty warm in there as it's getting heated when we're using the home office during the day. The cat likes it! I also left the towel rail unregulated which works pretty well as the towels actually get dried through the course of a day.

That's great, thanks.

Wouldn't I be able to set a different zone with a thermostat though? So it would call for heat when it's temp drops below the required or when scheduled?

You would. You can set a room as 'bedroom' and assign the Thermostat to that if that's where it's placed. It would call for heat when the temp drops below specified and the room would heat up. The problem comes when you want to heat another room, but not the bedroom, as any time one of the other TRV calls for heat it would mean the bedroom heats up too, as there's nothing to stop the flow in to that radiator.

You could cap the temp in the bedroom with a regular TRV I guess but then you potentially have a situation of the thermostat is calling for heat to the bedroom and the 'manual' TRV not allowing it to flow through the radiator. If all the other [tado] TRVs are also closed at the point I don't think that would be very good for your boiler / system.

Yep, we've had a few who have expressed an interest and then never heard from them again. In fact even the window cleaner is ignoring us.

Wouldn't I be able to set a different zone with a thermostat though?

But you still need to be able to control the radiator.
If you had, say, 3 thermostats / zones in the house

One set to request heat if it's below, say, 14 degrees
One for 18
One for 22.

Then if any of those were true then the boiler switches on and all zones start heating up.

It's the TRV that'll turn the radiator off it it's too warm in that room, even if the boiler is still heating the rest of the house

(Edit: what Silly_Savage said...)

We have a Tado TRV on our bedroom radiator, Tado thermostat for the rest of the house. House warms up from 6am, bedroom TRV stops the bedroom cooking before we wake up. It opens at 7am for an hour or so. During the day it's closed as no one is in there. Open again for an hour before bedtime, closed at night. I hate a stuffy bedroom.

As Silly Savage says, it is loud. I specifically set it to only adjust once we're already awake or not yet asleep. My wife christened it The Little Printer.

https://www.checkatrade.com/trades/FirstChoiceBuildingAndHomeImprovements

I used these guys, they charged £3700+vat

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Something about the fact it's brand new, and the angle of the gate makes the second picture look like a photoshop job!

what are heat pumps?

Inverse air conditioners

Uh oh

The misalignment on that gate would drive me nuts!

Yeah, I know what you mean. TBH this was clearly a type of design they weren't used to. I had to get them back twice to remedy things which I wasn't happy with, the alignment of battens being the most obvious! The paving and patio work was decent and for the money I was pleased with the finished result (don't have pics of that...)

Wabi Sabi!!! The answer to all misaligned work!

are the hinges screwed into the end grain of the battens?

Nice fence.

Rainwater downpipe is disconnected from the gutter though...