I don't disagree to be honest with you. We chose these valves without really looking too deep at installing them. I bought all 3 bathrooms together and took delivery before I installed the first. I could not change them so have stayed with them. We like the way these look and function but do have issues with hammer and worry what we will do if we have issues. It is easy to swap out the main valve unit and everything else is passive pipework (just too much of it). Your Aqualisa solution sounds like it would have made my life much easier.

@@JurassicJungle I understand how that happened then, I only discovered the aqualisa because there was one fitted here already (valve in loft) pipework runs were a bit long which is why its now under the floor, good to have the same system throughout though, whatever you have. BTW, I enjoyed your MVHR video, I'm still installing mine (retrofit) I did the design and install, all the pipework is in, just the unit remaining. need to get my hands on a flowmeter for commissioning

Glad you found the MVHR video interesting. I have to say I am glad we did it. I see some people asking how soon the payback is on MVHR but I don't think you can look at it like that. Its about having a comfortable home, the heat recovery part just reduces the cost of doing that. I do have to pay for someone to set ours up as I need certification for building control as we have not included trickle vents in any windows. Ours is very quiet in all but one bathroom where you can just hear it but the supplier says that will probably go away after he balances the system. I hope to record the process that he does (he seems a bit camera shy). I will get that done as soon as I finish this bathroom. I am using so much copper I am begining to hate this valve we bought but thank got I am using press fit as at least that is fast.

@@JurassicJungle I'd be very interested to see how he goes about balancing it, I was thinking of measuring mine with a bin bag, stop watch and calculator, not sure how successful that would be. Anyway, I shall look forward to that one, video's like that are sparse. Thanks for making them !

@@traversrudd4976 Fully agree. If I had seen an install of my shower valve I probably would not have bought it!

Thanks Norman. I don't think I could have used the valve I am without changing the wall, certainly the outside wall. It also means I can make the room a precise (and square) fit for the bath. I am hoping I don't have to open the walls but it would not be too difficult if I had to. I am pressure testing all the pipe work as I fit it. I will review the shower valve shortly, thankfully I tested the first ones in the early stages of the build as one had a crack in the brand new manifold, it would have been very difficult to replace that later. Another issue I have found is hammer whne the valve closes. I think partly as it slams shut when you press the off button but probably made worse with my long pipe runs. I may have to fit some hammer arrestors but they will be quite a distance from the vlaves as I don't want to bury them in a wall.

Thanks Rob, these sound like good ideas. I have no idea what we may do later ( the build has kind of zapped our thought process). As we are a bungalow I could just drop a conduit down under the bath, my last chance to do that is this week so thank you for the prompt. I will call you out if I use it later!

Adding to that, I do want to look at some 1-wire sensors, ideally on my water tank as I think the sensor is at the bottom and does not really give an indication of how much hot water is left as the shower still runs hot when the tank has dropped from 50 to 25C.

Thank you!!

Hi I am not sure I know what you mean by board and tower.

@@JurassicJungle Sorry, my brain was on backwards last night! I meant the control panel (board) and network rack (tower). Planning a renovation and trying to figure out where to put these in the house and how much space is needed. Hope this now makes sense

@@MrWhoAmI57 Ah, that makes more sense. I can't see how I can add photos. My network rack is in the garage and very small, probably too small. I have a 24port patch panel and room for a couple of small switches and a small server running home assistant. Its about an 8U rack 450mm deep. Its probably visible on this older walk about around 11 mins in kzbin.info/www/bejne/gXvXf4p7pLpmaaM The Loxone panel is a future automation unit, they do various sizes, I think my one is about as large as they go! Its aboout 110cm x 70cm and 10cm deep. I put it centrally as I just happened to get a void behind a shower and my thought process was locating centrally would be easier with cable runs. Ideally I would have a plant room with everything in it in the garage but there is a vaulted celing between that and the rest of the house which made cable runs much harder. If you do any of the other things we have done like solar and battery you may well need a much larger consumer unit, we have a large Hagar unit in the garage. As always with hindsight I would do things differently and give myself more space.

Hi There. Great questions. KNX seems to give a bit more choice of components but from what I saw its a bit harder to configure as each device has to be configured, it does have the advantage of resiliency as you are not relying on a central controller as a single point of failure. That said Loxone servers seem very reliable other than the SD card, always worth having a spare SD card. I liked the combintaion of Loxone ease of configuration and the ability to connect to other devices. I would have liked more choice of switches as I think the basic Loxone plastic switch looks terrible and the glass pure I used is expensive. I think my overall costs were about £15k with half of that being Loxone components and the other half the cabinet, psu cabinet build and partner install work. I installed all of the cables and did first and second fix of all of the devices, the loxone partner brought the panel to site and connected everything up, that took just 2 days on site including finishing off the programing. As this was really a new build quite a bit of that cost would have been required even if I fitted traditional lighting and alarm system. The light switches alone were almost £3k but they control music, blinds, lighting and act as thermostats so have avoided a lot of other cost. The dimmers are not cheap at around £500 each, I wish I had done more 24v lighting and used RGBW controllers, I may change some of that over time. The audio system worked out reasonable value in comparison with something like Sonos and sounds good enough to me.

@JurassicJungle thanks for this, I am planning a knock down rebuild of my house and working through the electrical and automation. I have a background in engineering, IT and programming so I am comfortable with building a knx system, but I do wonder if it would be wiser to pass it over to pro. Probably not as I think I will enjoy doing it and I have worked out most of the knx details already. One element I really liked was the integration of audio control into your Loxone glass switches. Can you control audio source? What kind of level of control do you have there. I would like to do whole home zoned audio, integrating with knx switches is probably possible but I expect challenging

@ The switches can turn on an existing source adjust the volume and mute. We have a default source as a radio channel. It works pretty well. The advantge of using loxone is that the speakers can also be used for the doorbell, burglar alarm fire alarm and announements which would not be possible with Sonos. You have to use an app to select the source or pair rooms together but that can also be done as a scene but I have not dabbled with that yet. I think there is an argument for going best in class as its simpler, creston or Lutron lighting and blinds for example but I wanted the ability to have functionality across functions. Our presence based lighting works pretty well, what I do like is that i don't need to use the switches much and only need to go to an app to select a different music source or do something not yet automated. I had Fibaro in my old house and did that all myself. I wanted the foundations of the house automation to be rock solid which is why i chose to pay an installer. Now its up and working I want to understand how it all works so that I can adjust and maintain it myself. I am from an IT background but not really in software, I usually found someone better than me at scripting to do things for me. The other challenge is this all needs to be signed off. I am lucky that i have a very friendly electrician who has overseen all of my cable install, he installed all of the cunsumer units, battery, solar etc and will shortly do the full inspection and test of my work. If I had paid an electrician and installer to do all the work I suspect my costs would have doubled. I have lost count of how much cable I have installed but it must be getting close to £2k work

@@JurassicJungle thanks for taking the time to reply, hope you enjoy it

@ Hope this has helped you decide what you want. There are so many things to think about

Hands up I think we made a mistake placing the unit where we did. We looked at the list of choices for location which were to keep it away from bedrooms etc. We also wanted to keep lost storage space. We installed the unit early on and it looked a good location but once we had installed all of the pipe insulation and now loft insulation and flooring we made a poor choice. I can get to the unit now and swap the filters no problem but as I get older thats just not going to work. I think we will relocate the unit next to the loft hatch. Thankfully that will not mean too much rework as all of the smaller pipes stay as they are and we just need to swing the primary pipes around. If you have the option I would install the MVHR unit in a utility room or similar. The filters need checking quite regularly and replacing more often than I thought. Now it is installed it really is not noisy at all, I wish we had known that upfront. We live and learn.

@JurassicJungle Thanks for that, I wasn't being negative, I'm relatively new to the MVHR concept myself and my head is full of information at the moment, some of it conflicting. I think that the utility room idea seems to be the preferred site, especially if removal or replacement is ever needed. I've worked in houses with this system fitted and it makes such a difference to air quality it's very noticeable if it's switched off for any reason. Looking forward to seeing more of your experience. Thanks.

Thats a very fair point. I would still argue that my initial instal was really not good enough but if a higher specification is requested that’s going to take longer. It probably took me 2 weeks on my own to remove all of the insulation in the vaulted ceiling re cut it all and gapotape it (about 6m square room). I am nothing like as fast as a contractor would have been but it would still take longer to do it to that spec. What frustrates me is that one trade does not consider the impact on the next. For example If the design and installation of the roof timbers was done with insulation in mind (assuming a correct 400 or 600 centre) then there would be much less waste insulation and time. Our roof had every timber at a slightly different spacing often tapering form one end to the other. That made it take 2-3 time longer to measure cut and fit each piece. Perhaps that accuracy would only be possible for factory built structures like SIPS panels? The way that work is done on site really has not moved on much in decades. Things may be different on a new build, ours was an extension/ renovation so we were looking to exceed building regulations and doing things our contractor had not been asked to do before. I can't see how they would pass blower tests but perhaps doing extension work its not a problem they need to worry about?

We did consider putting in conduit to allow any future changes. Do you mean running 2 to each light switch for example? I think that would have been a great deal of work for something that would probably never be needed. Also as quite a bit of our house has either vaulted ceiling or a warm flat roof there would not really be any way of getting to the top of the conduit or it would have had a complex route in the loft space. I did use conduit under the floor for some of the socket wiring. All of the socket power is traditional, we have only used KNX cable to sensors and switches. I do wish I had run a bigger conduit or a second one for low voltage to the kitchen island, its not really possible to do anything now as we have UFH and screed all laid. The Island has a 50Amp feed and a sub consumer unit so we have plenty of power flexibility and can use Loxone Air to control any lighting. I am not saying we got everything right, there are things I would do differently. We had to take on a lot of first fix that we never intended to do and that mean we lost focus on some of the automation install details.

I think the panel build is very good, it’s very neat and tidy. The cables at the top are quite difficult to dress and there are many different types coming in. Not sure what could be done for it to be better to be honest.

Hi Richard, the switches are very responsive the only issue I would say is getting the timing right for a double click to turn off. We find the audio and blind control work well and if someone uses a full hand it just does the lights. I do like the theatrical down light on the switch as well. The rgbw spots would be great for colour accents but not really as good for white lighting. The while lamp is ina central part of the fitting and does have a narrow beam. I have a couple I am going to use in a walk in wardrobe but I have used over 40 normal spots around the house so the Loxone ones would have been well over £3000. I would suggest you try and see some. I bought a second hand demo case and some switches and rgbw lights. I fitted a couple of lamps in an mdf sheet and tried them in various locations. As you say the ability to control every lamp is cool.

I think this is the one I ordered but it was a bit more expensive then. I just found this on AliExpress: ￡94.74 | POE Wall Mount Fast Charger Tablet Magnetic Holder Support iPad 10.9 for iPad 10th Power Supply 18W Iipad stand emonita a.aliexpress.com/_Ezcxnd2

Hi, I would have to confirm the design with Hugh that built the panel but the CU has RCBOs that are generally higher rating that the MCB in the Loxone panel. He specified what we needed in the CU and built the panel. Most of the Loxone panel MCB are just 6Amp. The main breaker for the Loxone PSU is I think 10Amp as I have the big loxone power supply. I guess I could get a situation where an earth leakage fault would trip the CU but not the Loxone breaker but having RCBO in both locations could make it even harder to diagnose?

Thank you!

Does the latest Loxone Miniserver integrate with Matter and MQTT independently? I thought I read that. It would be great to have an MQTT server running allowing the use of all sorts of lower cost sensors and for them to integrate with Loxone.

Hi Rob, I have used 1 Wire before with Zwave/Fibaro. The only sensors I have on the tank are the Dakin ones which are terrible so I may get a 1Wire interface for loxone to add a bit more resolution. I am currently getting the tank temperatures by Modbus from Daikin but I think its the temperature at the bottom of the tank. It would be good to have more sensors but its all sealed and insulated so not sure how I could do that. Also as we have a heat pump we really wnat to use that to heat water rather than the immersion.

Ok, on this question I will have to come back to you later as we are working hard just to finish the house so not had time to dig deeper into what is possible. I am currently playing with Home Assistant and 1Home to bring in Matter and MQTT to Loxone but there may well be other ways of doing so. Home Assistant will certianly bring in MQTT and 1Home does add Matter but you seem to have to automate in 1Home whcih sucks. Our reason for going with Loxone was that it would be a solid core to the home and just work which it does. Adding things like Matter and MQTT as great and may become more important but less so than a 100% reliable home setup. our build is to be reliable and solid first and add toys later that do not risk stability. Hope that make sense.

Hi Rob, Yes Loxone has an MQTT connection, looks pretty easy to setup. I may try a link and link presence senors to see if I can get that to work.

Hi Sam, Glad you are enjoying our journey. We are in West Dorset (They don't do much tech like this around here, they all think I am crazy)

I did look at Faradite PIR and I think they look nicer, I was initially against the Loxone surface mounted ones as I thought they looked cheap and also people described the recessed ones as looking like a failed lamp! While Faradite would work as a PIR I don't think it can use the audio to sense continued occupation. We still need to adjust that a bit for some of our rooms but we are not actually living in the house correctly yet (we have our bed in the utility room!). I didn’t use a lighting designer but seriously considered it. I agonised over what to do in the large open plan room with a vaulted ceiling. I installed a number of extra cables behind the plaster just in case my planned cable lights looked crap. Thankfully they look pretty good (only installed them this week). Our lighting is pretty simple at the moment so I didn’t see the need to DALI or DMX. We were going to do a lot more with RGBW washing walls with colour but so many people warned us against it as it shows up every detail in the plaster. We finally found an amazing plasterer for the big room but even then I can see lines where I used a roller to paint it. The reason for going 240v was for a number of reasons but I may well change to 24V later as I have loads of spare capacity on my PSU. I liked the Loxone RGBW spots but they are not bright and have a narrow beam angle I would have needed a lot more spots (I think) to get the effects I wanted and they would have cost >£3000 more. I liked the idea of colour adjustable lights but there were no off the shelf options. I see Loxone have now partnered with Weaver and Ducre who can fit colour adjustable bulbs in their fittings but I could not find a price and the only dealer was in Knightsbridge so I assume £££ for them as well (this announcement also came out after I had made my decision) It was not done as I thought I would need to revert to traditional lights I have committed to a data cable to all switches so if Loxone came out it would still need a smart system of some sort to replace it. As an example I have fitted Paulmann cable lights on the vaulted ceiling and I REALLY wanted to do that with 24v controller via RGBW modules but I really struggled to find decent 24V GU5.3 lamps. I will still look at making that 24V later as all I need to do is swap the lamps and remove the transformer.

@JurassicJungle I'm all in with the 24v system but my missus is hesitant. Her fear is what do we do if it goes wrong or Loxone ceases to trade. I've tried explaining to her that it can be converted to KNX but she's still unsure. It's good to hear your decision was just based on preference and not adversion to 24v

OK, so this is an interesting one, I spent lots of time considering Loxone Audio vs Sonos which i have used before. I also bought some high end Meridian digital speakers that work with Sonos but would need some work to make work with Loxone. Loxone is not as good as systems like Control4 when it comes to video and audio but we are not big movie watchers so felt the integration of Loxone to its Audio system for things like door bell, alarm and TTS were worth going that route. We have not really used these yet so time will tell. It is certainly possible to feed audio into the AUX and used that but I have not actually tried to do so. I bought a loxone demo box and audio server to play with this sort of thing before made my decision. Our room is open plan with Kitchen and TV. We currently just use the TV speakers but I get your point about zoning audio. I would just make sure you install all of the required cables to allow you to make that sort of change later. The Audio server does not have to be installed near the mini server so you could install it near the TV. You would have to think about how you control the audio to give what you want, I am yet to play with scenes that control audio but I understand it should be possible.

@JurassicJungle I'm not big into movies either and there will only be 4 TVs in our entire house when built. I plan to do a HDbaseT 4x4 matrix system from Orei or similar with inputs being 2 Sky TV pucks, a Unifi Display port (so every TV can be a CCTv monitor) and a Plex server for the DVDs we do own. It's more than enough for a two person household. This will all be in the plant room along with the Loxone cabinet so being able to send the audio from one of the HDBaseT outputs into Loxone is a big requirement for me.

As you may have seen I used an Ipad but an Android one may be more flexible. I am still looking at what I do with cameras and would like them to appear on the tablet. I tend to run the app in what I think is Kiosk mode, that allows loxone to control the tablet so that it turns on when you enter the room and adjust brightness with the room lights. You can also connect to Loxone via the web interface so if you can set your tablet to have 2 browsers open one could run unify and the other connect to Loxone. You can also just run the loxone app in standard mode rather than Kiosk. I have not had an android tablet for a while, if you can have 2 apps open in a split screen that should also work I think.

@JurassicJungle i have the Unifi Dream Machine SE already and will be using Unifi protect for security and then the new Unifi Gate Controller for the electric gates as you can have ANPR access (no more reaching for fobs) when you approach. The ability to display both apps on a tablet is a must for me which is why the 14"POE panels are the way to go I think. A custom bootloader to fire up both apps in side by side mode when it powers up should ensure that it's always working correctly.

Hi and thanks for your comments. I am happy with my choice of Loxone but it is a leap of faith. The platform itself has been pretty solid which I can't say is true for Home Assistant which I have also been using to add a few buts of functionality. I do plan a number of videos to dive deeper into Loxone but please feel free to add questions and comments on any other videos. I found there was very little of end user reviews of Loxone on KZbin, mostly installer tours. I will cover the Modbus connection to Daikin, being fair this was configured by my installer but I am still having to tweek a few things as it did not quite work as expected in the first place. I will also cover the Connection to Somfy Tahoma which again the installer get working to start with but I hope to add blinds to 13 windows myself and document it partly just in case it stops working but also to help others. I have purchased 1Home. I find their marketing is better than their product and the constant amazing discount offers. I think I miss understood what it was going to offer me as a lot of the marketing about functionality seems to refer to the older "Bridge" product. The new one is Matter only so lacks a lot of what I thought I was buying. 1Home does allow Alexa control but only for certain functions (not audio for example) so I am not sure how useful it will really be. I had assumed it would allow Loxone to see and control Matter devices and they are looking at that but currently they seem to want me to configure matter automations in 1Home not really linked to Loxone but I reserve the right to update my views as they update the product.

@@JurassicJungle Really good to know about the 1Home system. I ultimately want it as a conduit between loxone and Google Assistant. Stuff like Smart ovens and Washing machines would be set up in my Google Home much like it is currently but then any alerts or notifications would be pumped through as an audio/visual alert in Loxone. If i Can't do that then its probably a product I can skip.

What brand of devices are you looking at? Loxone connects to Bosch, Neff, Siemens home connect so that should be possible without 1home

@@JurassicJungle it will be Neff for the cooking appliances but Samsung for laundry.

Ok Neff should be good but not sure about Samsung. That may support smart things which may work via home assistant or 1home

Hi, All very good questions. I have not actually connected any RGBW yet as plans changed a but but I do have 4 modules. You can get 5 core 1mm flex cable (need to calculate voltage drops as may need thicker cable), there are some now that are the correct colours to make life easier but currently at a premium. The dimmers are very expensive in comparison with using a relay or even better an RGBW module that could run 4 sets of lights for a fraction of the price. I bought 2 dimmers as I wanted at least 5 dimmed channels so used the 3 spare ones as I had paid over £500 for the dimmer. I am not currently adjusting the warmth of the light other than the fact we bought switchable fittings. It would have been nice to take advantage of the colour adjustment in Loxone but I found that colour adjustable lamps are hard to find and expensive. Hugh was looking at importing some and I did trial one but it came with loose wires so I would have to adapt all of the light fittings to install them. In the living room I have installed cable lights where the power is supplied by the suspension cables so that rules out colour changing. I really want to run these at 24V as they are currently 12V run via a transformer but I struggled to find decent 24v GU5.3 lamps. If I can I may well change that later by removing the transformer and using an RGBW unit to run the lights. I think Hugh also said I could get a 12V supply and run the RGBW units at 12V rather than 24v but it would limit capacity and perhaps have voltage drop issues. The Loxone RGBW lights are really nice but they have a narrow beam angle and are not that bright. It was going to cost me over £3k to use them rather than less than £300 for the collingwood fittings I used.

Hi, There. We went with triple glazed windows for everything other than the sliding doors. I found it quite difficult to get U-Values from window companies, they don't seem to want to share them! We went UPVC for all our normal windows as we found Aluminium had poor u-values and the alu clad timber was going to add another £30k. I think the patio door with a special coated glass (double glazed) was about 1.6. You do have to trade off poor U-values with glass by adding more insulation elsewhere. While the doors are large our build overall does not have a very high percentage of glass. I do wish we had spent a bit more on the windows. We went with top hung and many of them have dropped a bit and catch the seal when opening, I think our windows were about 1.0 with triple glazing, would have been 1.3 with double.

Hi Richard, I am just about to film a couple of follow ups. The first will be second fix and all the things I found I had forgotten to wire for (so far). The second will be living with Loxone, what’s good, what’s not so good. We are not quite finished yet as I am waiting for deliver of blinds which is a choice I have agonised over.

@ thanks for the reply. Looking forward to seeing the new videos. Blinds is also something we’re debating. Did you hardwire yours or go for battery operated? We’re considering dual blinds for south facing bedrooms (one semi-transparent for light shading and privacy and one blackout) and wondering if/how both could be controlled using the touch pure.

@@Richard-t1t8c Lots of options on blinds! I ran a 4 core 1mm flex to each window to keep my options open. I didn't want battery as you have to charge them and the batteries will need replacing after a few years. If you use relays you need 2 per blind or 4 in the dual blind option. We have 13 blinds so thats a couple of relay modules for a start. We had a national blind company quote over £16k for blinds but that included a fancy one for the gable glass. I also have Electric Velux windows and blinds so have gone with Somfy Tahoma controlled via an API, that works perfectly with the touch pure. For the windows I plan to use Somfy Zigbee 24v again controlled via Tahoma. I felt Zigbee was a safer long term option. We are hoping to use some day/night blinds but I need to test how that can work with the touch switch. It will need some sort of double tap to set it to a favourite position. We have audio in most rooms so the Touch Pure is fully utilised.

Thats OK if all of the timber is straight and been installed true which was not the case for us sadly. Also timbers will over time in the seasons possibly opening up gaps. Our insulation had been just cut and hammerd in but very poorly. Perhaps if it had been done better in the first place we would not have felt the need to remove it and do it again which was a lot of work. We will never know if it was worth spending the time and money doing it with tape or not but we are happy that the room is toasty warm with our heat pump and I can't see any obvious cold bridging when I use an IR camera. If we had not done this and the room felt cold we would have wished we had done our best and it would have been near impossible to try and improve it later.

Thanks, glad to hear you find them useful

HI, THe design and panel build was done by my Loxone partner "Thames Valley Automation". Hugh is ex Loxone and did a great job. We installed all the cables and peripherals supervised by our electrician and Hugh built the panel off site. I will put up a video of the install shortly. Hugh did a video of how he designs panels. the software he used is Affinity designer but I think Hugh may have created all of the loxone components. you can see his video here kzbin.info/www/bejne/bmTGmX19ap1glaM

@JurassicJungle Thank you.

Hi there, glad you found it useful, did you see the update I posted yesterday? I will also show the commisioning process in a few weeks once that is done by Terry at heat recovery south. The pitched roof is about 3.6m, we were limited by the low pitch of the original house that it joins to. I would ideally have had a higher pitch and looked at a warm roof construction but we simply did not have the space for that. We are very happy with our MVHR setup combined with UFH, the place just feels so comfortable and we don't get any condensation. The old roof is not yet fully insulated so I reserve judgement on overall running costs but think it is inline with what gas would have cost. If you do look at ASHP I would 100% go for a big battery, we run most of the time on low rate energy and we are heavy users with an EV and lots of washing and drying from a holiday rental business.

@ Thank you, yes I have watched that too. We’re planning a ‘caravan act’ structure where the internal height has to be no more than 3.05m. Hence my question. I won’t take your time up now, but would like to pick this up again once we progress. There are so many areas that you have touched on during your build, and I’d like to expand on some. Thanks for your swift response and just to add, what you’ve achieved to date is outstanding. Best wishes Paul

@@OffgridinSouthWalesUK-yw5gl Please feel free to reach out. I have had phone and video calls with quite a few people about our project and questions they have with theirs. We have learnt so much doing this project it would be great to help others have a smoother journey.

@ Thank you, very much appreciated 👌

Hi, I hope that will be this month. The last room is not finished but we do have all of the vents in so no reason it can't be done. I have one room (ensuite) that is a little noisier than others, it has a very short pipe run with a tight radius which may well be the culprit so I have asked Terry who will do the set up if we should try and make than a longer smoother run. It all seems to be working OK but interested to see if it gets better or if he has comments on anything we need to fix. While he gave us a design the pipe runs were left to us. I think I am going to relocate the MVHR unit itself in the long run so that it is easier to maintain. We did install a loft hatch just about big enough to replace the unit if it ever failed.

Thank you! Cheers! We are getting close to the end. This was filmed a few months ago

Hi Rob. We cut them about proud or perhaps a very small lip. The plasterer wanted to be able to smooth the area so would want the rim to be below his surface level. There is quite a bit of tolerance allowed when you install the outlet both in depth and the size of the hole. The problem we found if we added the vent afterwards was the seam in the pipe (its made from rolled sheet) needed to be eased in the plaster or you risked cracking the new plaster. We will here to commission the system in a few weeks to will post another video after that.

Hi, I will see if I have any photos as it was tricky. That only needed to go to 2 rooms and in both cases we could run the pipes the the end of the joist and down between a pair so avoided having to cut any holes.

Hi Mary. i really need to film a follow up as this as been in and running for quite a while. I am waiting for the final commissioning as the guy doing it wants me to finish the final bathroom before he does that. We are very happy with MVHR, we have had no issues with condensation or potential mould that the original property had. If you have any specific questions do get in touch,

@JurassicJungle Many thanks for that. What concerns me is the airtightness and how effective the mvhr is if it's not perfect. My build is a timber frame, clad in SIPS with masonry on a large part of the ground floor. So I am also concerned about condensation occurring within cold bridging within the insulation.

@@maryhaddock9145 As you may have seen our build was an extension (we left almost nothing of the old house behind) so we have not had to test with blowers etc. We started this project trying to exceed what was asked for with building regs and tried to make it as air tight as was practical. We have a mix of construction with the few old walls having a 50mm cavity and the new parts 150mm. We have flat warm roof, and old style cold roof areas. Our original building had just about zero ventilation, no trickle vents, no bathroom vents etc. We have damp and mould all over the place. Our driver for MVHR was to have good air quality and humidity across the house. 2 of our 3 bathrooms have no windows so good ventilation was very important. I later read of possible issues with lack of air tightness, I can see there is potential for the lower air pressure in some rooms to allow cold air to be pulled in th the house. Our house is still not really finished, the old cold roof insulation is nothing like complete, we removed all the old fibre glass and are installing 300mm of non itch insulation. So far I have only installed 100mm across about 60% of the roof. My view is that our MVHR is working very well and we are very happy. We would have had to install 5 separate vents so still expensive. What is your alternative to MVHR? I assume you would have to fit several extractors that just blow your warm air outside and would be less effective against your cold bridging risks. The one thing I would do differnetly is locate the MVHR unit somewhere that it is much easier to get to. We have a low pitched roof and wanted to keep it away from bedrooms etc. Not the loft is finished and the pipes are all in it is going to be very tricky to change the filters and service the unit so I can see I will probably relocate it to the centre of the loft close to the hatch. If I could I would have installed it in a utility room.

Its been pretty good overall. I have had some issues with it not charging and had to reset the POE power but the overall combination of a Loxone managed tablet using POE is good.

Thanks Jim. We wanted very clean lines which is why we wanted UFH. Also using the Loxone light switches the one switch controls music, lights, blinds and is a thermostat. I am also considering a hidden door to my home office ;-)

Thanks, we are really pleased how it is coming together, just wish I was a little bit faster. Jobs I assume will take a day seem to take 3! Looks like the flooring will be after Christmas and they need the heating off for a week so may have to move out for a few days.

Lol, Do you not like our camping table? It has served us well over the last year. Our dining table is also a very minimal glass one but also very heavy so we only want to move it once after teh floor has been laid. Glad you are enjoying following and thank you so much for your comments

It will be interesting to see how Thread/matter expands over time. I have been using home automation for many years including X10 (powerline), Zwave and Zigbee. I have a 1Home gatewaybetween Loxone and Matter but there is very little that really works so far. Somfy will support Matter via the Tahoma switch but have said that the Zigbee motors will not be upgraded to support Thread. The blinds are going to be quite an investment as we need 13 so we want to make sure we make the right decision. I will be doing an update on "Living with Loxone" shortly but we are only really starting to see what we can do with it and the frustrations of presence detection. Overall its pretty solid so far and the multi room audio is pretty good. We went that route rather than Sonos as it integrates into the alarm. All hell breaks loose when then alarm is triggered!

@@JurassicJungle- agreed with Matter. It’s becoming quite widely adopted, but little thread support, and many only support it on their Zigbee based hubs. Looking forward to your Loxone update video. I’d be interested in how you’re finding their touch switches in your rooms vs traditional tactile ones.

@@II-ct7vx Hi, Sorry I will try and film that living with Loxone video. I was waiting for my installer to share his timelapse of my panel build. My initial comment on the switches is that you don't need to touch them as often as you think. (I went touch pure as I didnt like the look of the basic version). We don't have the window blinds configured yet so only using them for lights and audio. I am quite happy with them. I have installed more than I think I actually needed, we have 3 in our large open plan living space and could have managed with 2 or possibly 1 as motion detection works quite well. at over £200 each that would have been quite a saving.

I did consider using the Lxone valves but the original version had a poor reputation for reliability. I noticed they only just announced a new version and use the words durability and strenght quite a lot. Loxone partners I spoke to suggested a 10% failure rate. Having seen that with an air source heat pump most of the loops are open most of the time so I may well actually just remove the valve heads and run fully open. The control is all in Loxone as Loxone controls the current valve heads using the relay modules and it seems to work well. The Heatmiser wiring centre is just used as a junction box.

@@JurassicJungle But with UFH relay is all you need. You don't need the 0-100 control tbh

@@s31teg Not sure what you mean. The relays are controlling the zone valves (but we may remove them) the ASHP control is via Modbus with Loxone defining the required water flow temperature. That seems to be working very well.

@@JurassicJungle If it works then all good.

I did consider the KLF200 but as far as I am aware it only controls Velux and not the Somfy blinds I will probably use. The KLF would also need 10 relays in my Loxone panel or using Home Assistant or Loxberry. I will have 13 power operated blinds which could require another 26 relays. If using Tahoma does not work (we hope it does as it is being used with control4, Creston etc) we can still go relays as a backup plan but I would have to add a 3rd relay module to give me that 39 required. The Somfy unit DOES talk to Homeassistant with no issues at all so thats another alternative. Ideally I would like to avoid too many links between different platforms as there is always the risk that a software update somewhere will break functionality.

@@JurassicJungle It's very old school using relays. Why not just use a zigbee motor then you can run zigbee2mqtt on a docker and easy to do the data exchange with tags. I used hardwired motors but this required lots of 0 voltage switches which i made with x2 pokeys and passing the control words over the network to trigger the relevant outputs. tbh well over complicated and if I was to do it again would use a zigbee or another wireless option.

@@s31teg I am yet to press the button om buying the blind motors as there does not seem to be a perfect option. My preference is to use the new Somfy 30 24V Zigbee motor as I think that will be more open and future proof. I don't want wireless as the batteries will need to be charged and replaced after 5 or so years. I have run 4 core mains flex to each window so that I could use a mains motor but ideally just power the 24v DC using spare capacity from the Loxone panel. I would have liked a native Loxone control without having another gateway ideally but Zigbee seems to be safest next option. My integrator is confident that he can get control from a virtual device into the Somfy API as that can control Velux and Somfy Zigbee blinds. I have had a play but it's beyond my skills. I have been able to connect Home assistant to Somfy and control it OK but I think that is currently a cloud connection. The choice of valves and blinds has been the most difficult on this project. I was also considering going almost fully 24V lighting at one point but it restricted what I could do so I dropped that idea and used a combination of dimmers and relays for most lighting control. I have 4 RGBW units that I will be using.

Hi Tom. The system was designed for a max of 45C flow temperature. We had lots of debate about pipe spacing, we went with 150mm as going tighter made pipe layout more difficult and added larger manifolds as more loops are required. We are going into our first winter with the pump and My automation system is working well with the heat pump. We are seeing flow temperatures of just 27/28C at the moment but its not that cold. We were very dissapointed with the hot water temperature to start with but found we had a faulty 3 way valve so when heating water we were also heating the house via the UFH. Now that is fixed it seems to be working very well. I will add a video update on this soon but really need to wait until the spring to be able to say if it is working as we hoped.

I agree with the height issues with a warm roof, we were OK on height. Gapotape is a great product to work with but there is no competition and it does add up to quite a lot of money, even worse with a pitched roof install like ours. Its hard to calculate what the level of improvement is in financial terms and if that investment is worth it. I like the approach that Robin Clevitt takes, he spaces timber at just over 400 so that he gets no waste from a 1200mm PIT sheet and also make sure they are all evenly spaced meaning he can install much faster with no waste. Our timbers were all over the place with lots of narrow sections probably caused by support for the roof lights, that resulted in needed much more gapotape. We need to work to much better levels of detailing and consider the impacts on each job on the following trades.

@@JurassicJungle I was told by a builder/architect that would install the insulation at the same time as the rafters. eg put the insulation up against a rafter then hammer another rafter against the insulation. In reality it would not work as you cannot put screws in the joist hangers on the insulation side. If only rockwool had the R values to make it an alternative as it's so easy to install. I still think hot roofs are best (lots of reasons) and you should get height allowances for using the system.

Thanks Norman, I think you are right and I may have spent a lot on relays that I don't need but its easy enough for me to just remove the heads. It looks like my system keeps them open all of the time that it requests heat at the moment. Loxone is currently set to do the weather comp and send a desired water flow temperature to the ASHP. The circulation pump is activated by the buffer temperature turning on at 25C. It just isnt cold enough to do any tuning yet as the flow temperatures are very low. I think its useful for me to be able to see the temperature of all of the rooms as that will help me tune things. I have a couple of rooms that are not warming up enough at the moment, both the only external walls of the original construction with just a 50mm cavity, the rest of the roosm have a 150mm cavity with 140mm of insulation. The UFH design did have the heat loss calculations for each room so I had assumed the flow rates would be correct but may need to increase the flow to these 2 rooms. We are not fully insulated yet either as we have no loft insulation and I plan to clad the old external walls and add a little external insulation there which should help. We don't expect to have much of an issue with thermal gain, the main areas of glass are North facing so at least we wont have that issue. Loxone can take control of that to circulate water around the rooms should that be the case.

@@JurassicJungle Having the rooms instrumented up will certainly help fine tune your curve, especially once you have the fabric complete. It’s a very slow system (the house) and with low temperature heating there is just no need for ‘fast’ controls.

Hi, Its a future automation panel. It was supplied by Hugh at @thamesvalleyautomation3217 . Hugh built the panel off site and connected it to our site wiring.

Hi, I find chatgpt a useful tool but would not trust it 100%, still useful for iterative questions. If you are extending an exisiting property the regulations are less strict than a complete new build so I think the lesser level would apply. We had the decision to exceed what we were asked to do, indeed I think we exceeded then minimum new build regulations in some areas of insulation. From my experience of homes with a bedroom above the garage they are often colder than the rest of the house so I would add more insulation under the floor and pay attention to air gaps that could bring thermal bridges. You will have to use fire board or double board the garage ceiling if there are rooms above. Why not try chatGPT and see what answer you get (but don't trust it, always chedk with building control).

Hi Steve, Not sure where you are based but given notice we would be very happy we welcome you to visit the project. Hugh has been great and I think he knew from the start I was a "special" customer. Hugh has been really great to work with and I not hesitate to recommend him to others.I think his experience of working at Loxone and seeing the challenges that Loxone partners has gives him better perspective. @thamesvalleyautomation

Hi Andrew, I hope you find some of the videos useful. We have gone way beyond what most would do for a renovation, some of it for environmental or economic reasons and others more for entertainment. We have no plans to sell but I do wonder what buyers would think if f all the technology in particular the Loxone system. It could be made a bit more dumb reasonably easily. We still have a lot to do setting that all up but I plan several videos on living with the technologies and if I think they were worth it. Best of luck with your project.

Hi Howard, I wish I had built the roof my self as I would have done the same assuming it met with the structural needs. We didn't have the room to fit too much more below the rafters as we have a very low pitch. I think if I did it again I would fir a second layer of PIR and then plasterboard rather than the expensive insulated plasterboard sheets. Glad you enjoyed the video, I am trying to share the lessons I have learnt to save others the same pain.

I guess if you leave a laege enough gap you can get foam in but its hard to ensure you fill the entire space fully with a 100mm board. We used foam at the eaves based on suggestions by Steve Roofer and it worked very well in an area where we had little choice to do anything else. The foam can get quite messy. I am not sure I trust some of the answered ChatGPT gives me but it absolutley makes sense to fit the insulation as tight as you can.

It is not a cheap product, I think we used about £800 worth to insulate our living space and hall. I struggled to find solid details of the difference it would make over poorly fitted or even well fitted PIR. As you saw our insulation had been fitted badly and we have an air source heat pump so wanted to do the best we possibly could to ensure a warm and efficient home. We will never know if it was worth fitting. That said I do like it as a product and it just felt right fiting the PIR that way, its a shame there is no competition as far as I am aware to help level up market prices.

@@JurassicJungle don’t get me wrong, I’m erring on the side of using it for my renovation

@@CivilisedMuffin Dont forget the discount code RC2023 for a 10% discount

There are so many skills and techniques used across renovation work that any tradesmen will have a view on, but you can hit a nerve when you venture into discussing standards of installation, an example being insulation! I’ve had many conversations over many topics, with: ‘never had a problem’ being a typical response. We learn all of this on our journey, which can be incredibly upsetting (let’s face it). So it hands us a dilemma how to proceed. I think you’ve made the right calls. No-one teaches us this stuff. To be fair the trades have a job to do and assign so much time and cost of materials and tbh if you wanted a particular standard then you should have specified it. Ha! I could go on forever, so many examples of workmanship that could be better. You’ve done well, and it looks fabulous.

​@@AndrewWardle-d8q Thanks Andrew, I fully agree on the time it takes, would a trade get the job if he quoted to do things to such detail? I come from a more a workplace that demanded more precision and I am sure i do things to too high an accuracy at times. I have some brick players on site at the moment who call me Mr millimetre! The problem is that some things do need to be done better than they are. My other poor example (see my other video) was a 6m steel with a drop of 18mm across its width. That took me several days to try and box in square and make it look as true as I could. I really should not have had to do that.