Home and heating

HiWe had our installation in July and haven’t paid much attention really, water’s hot, love the EcoDan, delighted with everything.And then...We’ve just had our first month’s electricity bill since having the heating on which has focused our minds. If I’m honest, we haven’t got our heads around this at all. Now we want to. We’re reading the manual and up and down to the loft, but have no idea what we’re doing.I’ve just taken readings and calculated our COP is 2.18. I have no idea what that means really other than, based on reading these threads, it’s not great.Our hot water, until a few minutes ago, was set to apparently heat up on demand, there were no timings set at all. We’ve set it to come on for a couple of hours in the night when we’re on economy 7. We had already set the temperature to 45 and the water is coming out of the taps at that temperature.Eco mode was not selected. We’ve selected it.So. For a Heat Pump numpty like me: a

I finished building my house this year and moved in back in June.  I’ve been using my air source heat pump for heating and water and not really thought anything about it until I noticed my electricity bills.  I’m spending about £13 a day on electricity and decided I need to learn how to most efficiently run my airsource and heating schedule.   There really isn’t much information online about this.  So I’m really hope someone here will be able to help me please.   Thank you My set up is as follows: Mitsubishi Electric Ecodan PUHZ-HW140VHA2 14kW air-source heat pumpMitsubishi Electric EHPT25X-UKHCW 250 litre water tankMitsubishi Electric FTC5 Ecodan Controlle

What improvements are people going to make to their insulation ? I have some areas of my loft that do not have 270 mm so that’s an obvious place to start, but should I go higher than 270 mm ?My RetrofitWorks survey suggested finding out if the cavity wall insulation done some years ago was patchy or had slumped, is anyone else going down that route ?How about an extra internal wall insulation. Then there’s draught proofing… blocking the unused fireplace, the list is long...

I have a Tado system, had it before joining OVO, installed it all myself with the wireless extension kit as our combi boiler is in the loft and TRVs on all Rads.Best solution I could find as the system supports the OpenTherm bus standard (amongst others) for those boilers that can use it.I saw that there is meant to be a way of linking your Tado account to your OVO account. I had a Smart Meter installed a couple of months back and was hoping that this would trigger the ability to link, but still nothing.I have called customer services, but they aren't sure. I have sent an email over 10 days ago, but only had the auto response saying please allow 5 days for a response. The help topic mentions a Smart Devices option in the Menu, but it isn't there for me.Does anyone know how this is meant to be achieved?Are you meant to have purchased the system through OVO to get something to kick in? Thanks for any advice.David

All was going swimmingly. The app installed. The tado arrived. I started the process and the app asked for the name and model number of thermostat and boiler controller. Happily it recognised my specific British gas models. Each device installation begins with scanning its QR code, and you are then given simple diagrams and instructions. The app led me step-by-step, screen by screen, through the installation, using in part generic diagrams and in part model-specific wiring guides. At each step, you have to touch the confirm button before the app lets you see the next step. You cannot look ahead.    

Hi all, Just starting the process of getting solar installed (ie getting quotes). I’m sure i will have more questions on this to come, but here is my first.There is a product called iboost that takes excess electricity you are creating from PV, which is going back into the grid, and uses it / some of it to create hot water via the immersion.The question is, as I now have a ASHP, is this of any use? My thinking on this is that if I had 2kWh of ‘spare’electricity from PV, then via the immersion I get roughly 2kWh of heat. But (assuming a HW COP of 2) it would only take 1kWh of electric to do the same via the heat pump. That leaves 1kWh spare which I might get paid 5p for, or at least someone else can use as green energy.The only thing I can think is that the ASHP is only heating up to 50 degrees. The immersion could push that up to say 65 degrees. This has two benefits i think. 1) the legionella setting does this every 7 days, so I might be able to t

We currently use electricity for general lighting, cooking and heating three upstairs bedrooms and two bathrooms with far infrared ceiling panels.Downstairs radiators and water heating are through an oil fired boiler.We plan to stay in the house for at least ten more years and would be really interested in replacing the oil fired system with a completely electric system (even if we don’t get all our money back) using cheap off peak power and batteries.If we got rid of the oil tank, we have a large concrete base that could house these.We’d need a water heating system and six new electric radiators.Can current batteries large enough to last the whole day, especially in winter, be charged up from off peak power?

Hi Now, I know for a like for like type of light bulb the title will be the case - e.g. 3w LED bulb will be cheaper to run than a 7w LED light bulb and a 5w energy saving bulb will be cheaper than a 10w energy saving bulb and so forth. But what if I am comparing different types of bulb? So is it still the case that a 5w energy saving bulb will be cheaper than a 7w LED bulb? All the advice I've read seems to say that LED is pretty much always cheaper 'in the long run' but that also takes into account the purchase cost of the bulb in the first place. I am only interested in the running costs and disregarding the purchase costs. Then what if I have a combination of bulbs? Would I just add up the total wattage? So in this example, will an uplighter using a 5w energy saving bulb be cheaper than a ceiling light using two 3w LED bulbs? Many thanks in advance

HI guys I am having batteries installed on the 19th Jan and my question is, is it worth going to eco7 to charge them overnight in the winter so I get next day at cheap rate until proper time of use tariffs become available?

Hi ,I've had a liberty 110 smart meter installed and I'm thinking of replacing old storage heaters with dimplex quantum The meter has a 5th terminal for storage heaters ,but is this a 24/7 power supply running alongside economy 7 ? Any help would be appreciated