Nick
@nick@shore.me.uk
144 following, 236 followers
Heatpump saga day one thread.
Materials arrived.
People arrived.
Machine to lift heat pump onto elevated wall position arrived.
Some consternation about the width of the metal base that the lifting machine sits upon, and how that width might exceed the width of the passage way beside the house down which it needs to fit.
Seems like they have removed my garden gate, hopefully temporarily. Lots of banging and crashing. But I think the lifting machine may now be where it needs to be. Hooray.
I mean in fairness to them. They hit a more-or-less unforeseeable snag. And they overcame it fairly quickly. So, there is that.
We haz stuff though …
And since I’m dumping photos, here are the “before” photos.
I was hoping they would do all the outdoor stuff first, and it seems like they are doing that. It feels like it makes sense to actually hang the brackets, get the unit up onto them etc. Before really trying to attack the rest of it.
Machine :
Apparently they're planning to hang the unit about 2.2m above path level. As in, the bottom of it at that level. This seems OK to me. As long as it's above head height basically. Not many people are 7ft tall.
@bloor That does mean the working at heights regulations will apply whenever you get it serviced. That's one problem sticking them up walls and why people like Octopus just refuse to do so.
My brother is about 6'10 and yes - people who are that tall are really good at ducking 8)
Probably an obvious comment but jesusfuck the heatpump is massive, compared to (say) an aircon external unit. I used to have 10kW Daikin units in my old place, and this is quite a lot bigger than those.
@bloor what have you got?
@bloor my first reaction on seeing our external unit was along the lines of "holy fuck that's huge" ;-)
Progress:
The heat pump is on the cantilever arms. Seems a bit lower than they said (though it felt rude to measure) but still high enough.
And at the end of day one…
I think it is more like six foot six off the ground but I think I’m happy enough. Also I think it would be pain to move up a few inches.
This room contains basically everything TBD.
Ok I measured- it’s 197cm off the ground. It also might start to be getting a bit near the upstairs window if it was raised. We can always adjust this later; I just want something that works now asap.
Heatpump Saga :
Day Two... The Tankening.
Electrician arrived whilst I was in the shower, bc the company had not told me when he would arrive; in fact they told me they'd be on site from 9-9:30. Suboptimal. OTOH, the sparks took a look at the job at hand and seemed to think there was no difficulty with doing it; SWA from the utility room consumer unit, behind some floor cupboards, under the back door, and up to the heat pump.
All good. I will take his card as he seemed, er, switched on.
Meta has been nagging me to try their AI, so I finally clicked ok.... And immediately asked it to make a cartoon of a heat pump install going wrong. Enjoy.
@bloor I see your problem. Apparently MC Escher did your heatpump design 🧐
Not a good idea to have Escher doing your piping work, unless he has access to additional dimensions to work in 😁
My Windows Upgrade continues. Upstairs was mostly finished yesterday in terms of actual frames and panels. Work remains to make it pretty.
Hopefully they will start on downstairs today, with four morewindows and two external doors to install. They did manage one large windows downstairs yesterday.
Should be finished long before October 14th deadline imposed by Microsoft 😉
Ok so some wiring is done. Apparently this consumer unit (installed at the time some building work was being done on this house about a decade before we bought it) “isn’t the worst he’s seen”.
Meanwhile they are collecting my radiators (which had been in my garage being painted "Overtly Olive") and reinstalling them in my living room. I have not had heating in there since the redecoration started, so that will be nice. An actual upgrade, sort of.
Taking photos intermediately is tricky as I don't want them to think I'm being critical; just documenting progress.
It's quite a weirdly disturbing, disquieting, almost stressful process, this. Mainly because our home is generally a very peaceful place just with us and Frank the parrot. But just now there are a bunch of people I don't know, making noise and doing building stuff. Kemi is away on business, and I think this is probably a good thing, for her.
@bloor now mine is in operation there's a thing about it I've noticed that's worth mentioning. The heat pump itself is nearly silent - quieter than my desktop PC fans, probably because it's huge and low speed - but the water pump makes a bit of a high pitched whine when running the central heating. In my setup it's in a location where I can probably enclose it behind a false wall/door and mitigate that noise, but you might want to be aware of that and consider what's right for you.
@http_error_418 I think my plan is to let them install it and try not to preempt problems. Obviously the pumped shower saga, aside.
@bloor yeah fair, it's not a terrible noise, just a mild irritation, and depending on where they place the pump it might not be an issue for you at all.
@http_error_418 I can be quite adept at building small diy projects too. So if a pump does whine a bit, I can probably make something up to quieten it down, maybe. We will see. I want to get it in, I think, then separately deal with any snags.
Meanwhile I now have a picture of the inside of my house walls! Anyone fancy a crunchy bar?
Yey for post-WWII poured concrete construction. 1949 was a good year for house building apparently.
These houses are remarkably robust, solid and generally warm and weather resistant 🙂🤷♂️
Cool so I really am quite pleased with the rads in the same colour as the feature wall. Glad I bothered with that. Couple of little dings in the fairly soft paint to address but this was inevitable and unavoidable.
FWIW I did use paint that said it was for radiators; an "egg shell" finish. But nonetheless it is still somewhat soft and easy to scrape off. So a little touching in will be necessary and I always expected that. I am very happy with the colour though.
Sparks just cut the power off without warning me. Which isn’t optimal. Apparently it won’t be very long, though. Also to the unique way my office (I now learn) is wired, my network stayed up. But my Mac died.
@bloor so your network uses a power feed from next door?
@damien haha if only. When we replace the consumer unit, we will unite both original house circuits AND extension circuits into one panel. But kinda bodgy extension of a decade ago installed a decent consumer unit for extension circuits. My office is part old house and part extension.
@nick @damien That's a good idea. But in the medium term (next year) I'm going to do something a big bigger I think. My plan currently involves 25mm2 SWA from my utility head/henley blocks (via an isolator) to my garage, where it will feed the grid input of a Victron Quattro 15K. Then the inverter output of the Quattro will come back to the consumer unit in the house via another 25mm SWA. Garage CU fed direct from the Quattro too. The Quattro will have a Fogstar 32kWh 48V LifePo pack on it.
@nick @damien == 15kW "whole house UPS", ability to buy power and charge up on cheap rates. And use from the battery. And then finally, I think I can squeeze 16-20kWp of solar on my roof, to hopefully make it so I pretty much hardly have to buy power off the grid. At least, I think this will be doable about 3/4 of the year, ish.
No export. No hassle with G99/G98 etc.
The Quattro has a 2nd power input, and I'll attach that to the V2L of my car, for extra offgrid capacity.
I am feeling somewhat smug about this, even against a normal white wall. This is the other lounge rad.
Oh so you're the chap with bits of a jet engine as a coffee table.
I know I'd come across you eventually 🤣👍
@bloor Is this what happens when you don't have power and internet? You just go around taking pictures of radiators?
@bloor oh man, how big are the oranges you're juicing 😯
@runningrobderby @bloor Ah, THE coffee table <3 .
Ok I think now shit gets serious.
Current sit rep: No hot water and no heating.
Plan is by close of play today is to have hot water back, via immersion only. Then by end of tomorrow, heating and hot water delivered by heat pump.
@bloor My sit rep since November 2024 has been: Some hot water and no heating.
I do not recommend it.
@jonty To be fair, they did say this would be the way it would be. So I'm kind of OK with it.
I will be significantly less OK if mine turns into yours.
I just want to make clear, this is what they told me would happen exactly. So I mean, I can't really complain.
Given it’s an old CU, I kinda expected it not to be all properly glanded onto the SWA, but in fact it is. Also: wiring into heat pump started and isolator on wall.
Old tank out.
Unexpected expense. You see the volvo parked behind all the workmen's cars? Well what you cannot see is my car, which is blocked in by the volvo. The bread I was planning to eat for lunch turned out to be mouldy. I am, nonetheless, hungry.
I have ordered a "footlong breakwich" subway via Deliveroo. It cost sixteen pounds, including delivery.
UNFORESEEN EXPENSES AS A RESULT OF HEAT PUMP INSTALLATION.
@bloor SIXTEEN QUID. FOR A SANDWICH?!?!
Old knackered leaky gas boiler gone.
Power flush starting.
New cylinder ready to go in. However I’ve now been told that unfortunately the power flush didn’t happen until too late in the day to have time to reconnect the new cylinder, and as a result overnight and tomorrow morning no heating and actually no hot water after all.
No point getting cross because what can they do?
Ok I get the feeling they are just tackling tidying up jobs. They have rehung my garden gate, which had to be removed to get the lifting machine down the path. So that's something. But, yeah, no hot water tonight. I think the power flush is done now.
Heat Pump Saga Day Three
Interestingly, although they gave the impression last night that they'd simply run out of time to do the cylinder after the powerflush was finished, pre 0830 this morning a delivery from Wolseley containing copper fittings. Presumably they needed these to do some bits? IDK. Maybe not, they're quite wide, so may be for the main flow/return.
The house is slightly cold. And it sucked not having a shower. I did have A/C in the bedroom and a oil radiator by my desk though.
Hmm didn't turn up until 10 past 10.
On the other hand they do seem to have implied they will stay late if needed. So, I guess that is something.
@bloor ours was scheduled for a week, although it was basically functional by Thursday. They weren't super long days though (and we did have it plumbed in parallel with our existing boiler so it didn't make much difference to us...)
@bloor Remember, they're working to hit the completion date they gave you up front, not to get it done as quick as possible.
If they can hit that date working from 10am-3pm each day, then they'll work from 10am-3pm...
Otherwise they'd be there from 8am-8pm every day.
@psfshr @bloor ours usually aimed too finish at the customer by 2 or 3 on the Friday. Was scheduled for the week, though the under floor in the kitchen was done on the Tuesday before so that we could tile under where the hot water tank is, which worked well. Something that we should have planned further ahead to have a longer time between the underfloor and rest of it.
Ok there is progress. Not really sure why we have an expansion vessel given it is gravity fed from the loft tank still. But, ok. I guess it’s future proof for when we replace all the showers with unpumped mixers and get rid of the loft tank.
@bloor that is mandated by the hotwater tank I think. Funny they are keeping the gravity fed system after installing the hot water tank…
@piofthings they had to. Going mains fed would have probably destroyed all my showers.
@piofthings their original plan, before I pointed out the shower problem, was to go mains fed
@bloor missed that bit… what’s wrong with mains fed showers? You have some fancy ones already with built in pumps?
@piofthings all of my showers are either Mira event or event xl or Aqualisa. All pumped power showers.
@bloor I see…
@piofthings longer term we will look at the true feasibility of going to mains pressure/scrap the loft tank. This cylinder can cope.
@bloor funny thing is after going mains fed, via the softener I feel like pressure is adequate but could be better… before that we had 8kWh instant heating showers, damn those were some costly baths we took back then 🤣🤣🤣
@piofthings I mean, we will see. I’m happy with the pumped showers mostly
@bloor no no, pumped shower are great! Keep them as long as you can and once done switch to ones that can handle mains pressure… (if there are such things)!
@bloor That's smaller than I expected.. Octopus wanted to install one 2mx2m and the only place they could suggest was the kitchen..
@tony there are only two of us 99% of the time. And we shower opposite ends of the day, so I think it will be fine until we have guests. Then i am happy enough firing up the immersion
@tony I think it's roughly the size of the old one, anyway. And that was fine all these years.
@bloor Yeah we're a small house with two people too, but they insisted.. It was a big part of of why I gave up on a heat pump for this house (the other part was the noise requiring full planning permission - 60db - out neighbours complain if we talk too loudly..)
Ok so we will have (immersion) hot water tonight. But not heating. I’m not wildly impressed honestly given they rocked up at gone 10 this morning. Again no point losing my shit with the guys installing it. But am somewhat dismayed.
Also the one radiator they were replacing has not been replaced and the lock shields haven’t been replaced on my lounge radiators as was intended.
This will easily be covered by cupboard. This is on the inside end of the pipes that go out to the heat pump outside.
@bloor just a quick thank you for sharing this. It's been really useful as it's something I'm considering having....
@cryptomoose I will continue until the project is done. They will be back again tomorrow.
@bloor @cryptomoose ok this seems to be going less well than mine on the plumbing side. My plumbers were done by about 5:30 on Friday having started 9:30 on Monday. In fairness your ASHP is wall mounted and I don't know how inconvenient the tank placing is (mine was super easy for them to run pipes to) but on the other hand I had 9 out of 10 radiators swapped out.
@http_error_418 @cryptomoose well that’s another thing. I’m expecting one rad replaced. It has not been.
@bloor @cryptomoose what have they been *doing* all week? Doing the rads at mine accounted for half of the entire job
Sigh. Just spotted a leak. From that cover below the lower lever valve. Probably not tightened. They were still on site but I don’t think they would have noticed had I not said as they were on the upstairs stuff.
Also I’ve noticed that the washing machine then pulled out to run a cable behind it, which necessitated disconnecting it from cold and drain, has been shoved back without reconnecting. Hopefully the pipes aren’t kinked. But again, I feel they would have left site tonight, feeling they’d put it back, but actually leaving me without a functional washing machine as well as without function heating.
My working theory is their subcontractor sparks moved the machine and they put it back, so might not have known. But still. Check.
@bloor grr… death by 1000 cuts and all that! One question though. Is the external unit just outside where the old boiler was (on the inside?) is the proximity to the old connection important?
@piofthings literally opposite sides of the wall. Balanced flue hole used for one of the flow/return pipes
@bloor hmm… assuming least amount of piping to old joints help. I can’t do that… wracking my head on where a good position would be in/outside my house with reasonable WAF!
And now I’m a bit annoyed and dismayed I’m obviously looking around for things to be miffed about. And I didn’t have to look very hard.
Appears they drilled a cable. And never mentioned it. Now I think it won’t be needed after this. But I cannot see how that can be safely isolated.
They may intend to tidy this up. But they haven’t said they intend to. Either way I don’t think it is acceptable to leave it like this, even overnight.
Maybe they are holding off filing this huge gap around the pipe through what was the flue hole, but again. It’d be nice to be told.
And again, maybe they intend to address this but you can see the brass fittings for flow and return here. I don’t think these should be totally un insulated.
And finally I don’t regard this as having cleaned up.
@bloor Jesus. That's all a bit shonky. I can well understand you not being too impressed.
We could have eaten dinner off the floor when ours was done.
There was one moment during our install where I flushed a toilet and the water was hot. The plumber was very embarrassed and rather annoyed at himself; the rest of the crew (and us) thought it was hilarious. And he stayed behind for an hour and a half to fix it, too.
@bloor Thing I hate most about UK is complete inability to find trades. For a few years there we could get Polish workers-did our house in Harrow-who were normal but of course Britain had to be horrible to them and chase them off so now we are back to the local indolent incompetent jackoffs. We have a lot of work done, a continuous cycle living in a very old house, with friends in similar circumstances with whom we fight over the decent ones. There is always some bloody problem with the work.
Spoke to my heat pump point of contact. Very understanding and apologetic. Acknowledged the issues. Committed to fix. Asked for photos, sent. Took responsibility for another minor issue (a radiator that was meant to be upgraded but hadn’t been). I feel that my polite critique is being taken seriously and actioned immediately.
ALSO: THE HOT TAP HAD HOT WATER COMING OUT OF IT WHEN I TRIED IT.
@bloor nice to see a mention for Frank 🦜 hope he is coping with all the nonsense
Heat pump saga, day four.
They were meant to arrive at ten or ten thirty. Why not 8am given I have no fucking heating?
Then around the time they were supposed to be arriving a text from the point of contact saying the engineer is ill and can’t come this morning but maybe later or tomorrow.
We have hot water and can warm individual rooms so we will be ok, but I am still super dismayed frankly. I haven’t been rude or aggressive but I have made them aware I am deeply unhappy.
@bloor I've taken a look at mine, and the nut is partially showing in a similar way. I think the pipe comes pre-lagged for outdoor use. Not sure that makes much difference as the water will be moving at that point and uninsulated inside unit anyway.
The pipe that the hot water comes out the top of the tank had the nut uninsulated, and it was causing thermal siphoning. I've insulated it, which has slowed the cooling curve of the hot water. Internal insulation was last bit done.
@bloor If, as it seems, that cable linked the controls downstairs with the motorised valve, pump and cylinder stat upstairs then it is already isolated. The fused spur that's hanging off the wall in your other photo was the main feed for the boiler and controls. That's the isolation point.
The only cable you'd still need would be for a room thermostat but I'm guessing they're fitting a more modern temperature monitoring device.
@bloor with mine they bricked and fully filled the old flue hole, with 3 new appropriately sized holes for the pipes and electrics to the outside unit.
@bloor I'd need a minified tank which I think some installers might be able to do but octopus certainly wouldn't when I had them so a survey a while back
Either that or lose my wardrobe and part of my bedroom (current tank is in the bedroom bit it sits above the stairs so not fill height cupboard)
@Dragon @bloor
You can get tall skinny cylinders, the same brand as in bloor's photo but others too. If you get the tank upgraded first to something the right volume that's suitable then they should have no trouble fitting a heat pump.
You can even fit a horizontal cylinder in the loft if you have one.
@bloor The heating circuit is pressurised. That's why there's a filling loop on the side of the hot water cylinder.
@bloor Expansion vessel
for unvented primary loop that’s heating the water (otherwise it’d require a header tank).
@bloor when we had our tank replaced it came with a pressure vessel kit, despite the fact we were staying gravity fed. We just stored it for possible future use (though we have no mains water so have essentially no plans to pressurise!)
@bloor adding sensors later?
@an0key as in... openheatpumpmonitor? I think i'm going to just let them install it as is. Then if we feel we need to tinker with it; replace rads, change pipework, to increase efficiency mainly, before i do anything of this, i'll get an OHPM setup fitted.
@an0key This installer was not really familiar with OEM/OHPM. So I thought - just leave it to be a standard install .
@bloor ah
@an0key I think you really want the one that goes in line with the actual heating flow... rather than the kind you wrap around the pipe.
@bloor @an0key You might be able to get some useful data from the Samsung controller over Modbus. https://community.openenergymonitor.org/t/monitoring-your-samsung-ashp-controller/27638
@bloor When we had our heat pump fitted I was horrified by the crud the power flush removed from our system. Perhaps, it's why we're so pleased with the heat pump, house is warmer for less money. Hope you have the same experience.
@epistatacadam I've glanced at the tank under the powerflush machine, it's discoloured but not cruddy.
One thing that may be relevant is that this house has had a water softener for years and years, so at least I think that would help avoid calcium/scale crud buildup.
@bloor the spark who did our install (Octopus) did some of the finest quality work I've ever seen by an electrician. The spacing on the clips holding the SWA cabling to the wall is so even it's almost a work of art.
@bloor that seems fairly well managed. When my heating pipes seized and I had to replace them all, it was a three week wait to get started and another four days of downtime after work started. This was mid december to early January 🫣! Electricity bill that year was interesting 🤣🤣🤣
@bloor one of the ways we justified our log burner to ourselves is that it allows coasting through these sort of situations a bit more comfortably. When we had to have boiler replaced at the beginning of December a couple of years ago it was definitely worth it :)
@bloor If you'd said in advance you were going with olive I'd probably have thought "erg, not for me"
But that rad looks really nice
@bloor Ha. I have a small UPS on the broadband link + router + APs (mainly because the previous model of CPE used to REALLY get grumpy if there was a < 20s blip and refuse to reconnect for hours), so laptop is fine but dock + monitors + switch under desk go off. There's a long delay before I realise I've disabled wifi on laptop as it's usually docked...
@bloor Due to maintenance works on roadside distribution our power was out, here, two weeks ago. I’d forgotten the works were planned, we were warned. Daughter was WFH, ‘catastrophe’ averted by my USB PD gear. Mac + connectivity via paired iPhone maintained all day.
I’ve seen similar on eBay for Milwalkee & Parkside 20V batteries.
This is a DeWalt DCB094 Type C battery charger & PD source.
@bloor Most radiator paint needs curing by heating.
Not sure how high, but a warning, when curing, it stinks!
It may be that it needs a higher temp to cure than an ASHP system will normally reach, or maybe it will take longer.
@bloor very nice 👌
@davep I haven't had functional heating in my lounge basically since moving in, due to a failed lockshield or TRV. And of course redecoration removed the rads altogether. It was handy to be able to paint them away from the room.
@bloor that looks annoyingly good! Like you've become some sort of grown-up or something :)
@srtcd424 And wait for it. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow, it will even... get slightly warm.
@bloor A few years ago I stayed in cottage with "central heating", but only fed off a back boiler on a wood burning stove. I was honestly quite surprised how much heat did transfer from rads that only felt lukewarm. We've just all been brainwashed by a hundred years of burning gas ..
@srtcd424 Yeah I think also "a little and always on" counteracts heat loss better than "BUST OF HOT HOT HEAT" ... cool cool cool fuck it's a bit cold now "ANOTHER BURST OF HOT HOT HEAT"
@bloor I spy an Orbital Fasteners sticker. Dealt with them for years, decent company 👍 Hopefully, a good sign that your fitters are using quality stuff!
@bloor curious how much vibration it translates into the house. We have two (slightly smaller!!) A/C units and having had them at about that height before they definitely transferred more noise into the house than they do in their new position at ground level.
Good having it raised up though, especially if you want to get bins or lawnmowers etc down that passageway.
@ret Yes that's the thought. We didn't really have anywhere optimal behind the house (just due to the widths of doors out the back, not a long enough bit of wall to accomodate it). And of course that also would have needed a massively long pipe run. A really nice way to do it would have been to put it the other side of the walkway, on some kind of foundation, with pipework trenched under. But, massive cost, hassle, and tree roots to contend with.
@ret The fan on this unit is huge and therefore, hopefully, slow. I think the manufacturer "officially supports" wall mounting, so I am hopeful we are okay.
@bloor hey - anything's better than this (now infamous in the YouTube installer scene)... exhibition.
@ret yeah I saw that. I’m seriously not sure it’s right or sensible to have that essentially “out in public” …
@ret@furry.engineer @bloor@bloor.tw Ah, glad I'm not the only one who thinks those look like a bin...
@bloor yes they’re big. Our Daikin unit is wall hung, not high up like yours, and this serves to make it seem even bigger. We do have an issue with vibration of the compressor being coupled to the building which can hopefully be resolved with vibration isolating pads
@Wifiwits ah interesting. We will watch out for that. Kemi's office is right on the other side of the wall, so I do hope it doesn't suffer the same issue.
@bloor our wall is single skin brick with timber framed internally and I think we’re hitting a resonant frequency of the building.
@Wifiwits ah well this is double skin/brick - gap - breeze... and i think the gap may have some insulation filler stuff in it. maybe. We will see. I think my ploy now is just let them crack on unless I see something totally unpalatable and then do a phase of debugging/tweaking.
@bloor you have a unit small enough to mount on brackets?!
@ahnlak It's 12kW samsung I think. They are massive brackets.
@ahnlak I believe it has a mass of 140kg. Doesn't seem insane to mount that on some unistrut and big webbed cantilever brackets?
@bloor We're blessed with a lot of ground to sit that kind of gear on. The thought of our walls supporting that weight fills me with mild dread ;-)
@ahnlak @bloor It's more the vibrations through the struts into the house which worries me (one of the things putting me off getting aircon: the fact the noise of the kitchen fan can keep me awake 2 floors up due to autistic sensitivity - the thought of having a heat pump of any kind on a wall near the bedroom...)
@jfparis @ahnlak My sort of eventual "hopeful aim" is to have about eight Daikin aircon units in bedrooms and living/working rooms (which do heating too) and then also have the Samsung heatpump all collaboratively managed by HA. This is a 2-5 year aim.
Luckily even if the Samsung heatpump doesn't play nicely with HA directly, I know a man who makes non OEM aftermarket wifi interfaces for similar units, who might be persuaded to have a crack at a Shamsung to go alongside Faikin. /cc: @revk
@bloor @jfparis @ahnlak @revk The Samsung #SmartThings #homeassistant integration works well for white goods so am interested in seeing if you get #heatpump data:
https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/smartthings
It is cloud and not local, which is a bit crap but Samsung worked with the dev to fix authentication. The device class may be missing though.
PS My white goods are black. Modern life is odd (the colour was cheaper...)!
@bloor They did us the other way around. They did the internal bits first so we had the tank up and running on immersion for hot water before they did the outdoor unit.
But then we had a system boiler with the boiler and tank in one unit so 🤷🏻
@bloor with my heat pump install in June, day one was take the old combi boiler out and prepare a bunch of stuff including new electric board & HP base. Day 2 remove radiators that were changing start installing new pipework in boiler cupboard. Day 3 hang most of the radiators and complete hot water tank install so had water from hot tap again but cold. Heat pump on place and wired up. Day 4 start running the system. Day 5 tidy up and hand over. Had left heat pump running over night 4 flush.
@bloor Classic builders pipework, sprayed silver to hide the mess they made with the solder. They've plumbed in a manual bypass valve that constantly returns hot water back to the boiler, it should be automatic and only open when the motorised valves both close. If fact that boiler doesn't even need a bypass and pump overrun. They probably didn't read the instructions.
@geoffl @bloor I was literally just about to comment on those silver pipes. I've got the same in my airing cupboard (1994 build) and always wondered why they bothered paint them.
We also have the bypass valve, it's also not automatic.
Actually, Bloor, is your place a Barratt build? Your airing cupboard looks virtually identical to mine.
Introducing an unnecessary ID scheme that failed when Blair tried it and is unpopular with both the civil liberties left and the libertarian right seems like classic Starmer.
@nick Consultants and lobbyists? Seems like ID cards would be a great opportunity for Accenture to charge billions for a smallish database and a couple of mobile apps. Much like the way they’ve fallen hook line and sinker for all the Silicon Valley AI nonsense.
BRITS: This parliamentary petition is rapidly closing in on a million supporters. Please consider signing it:
"Do not introduce Digital ID cards
We demand that the UK Government immediately commits to not introducing a digital ID cards."
Holy shit—per the JSON data this petition only went up about an hour ago, and it's already over 750,000 subscribers!
Betcha it vanishes within 24 hours amidst fuzzy non-specific allegations about hacking and foreign state agencies rigging it. Because what else are they going to do about it—let it go to a parliamentary debate?
@cstross Kind of sad that people can’t be as motivated to protest really abominable injustices.
@Remittancegirl There's a Reason for British paranoia about ID cards. (My dad—who'd be 105 if he was still alive—showed me his once. He deeply resented it: it was always used as a tool of authoritarian control.)
@cstross @Remittancegirl not just British. For a certain generation of people from the Netherlands, the request for "Papers please" is forever linked to the German occupation during WW2 ("Ausweis bitte").
That, and the fact that we had such excellent municipal records that the Nazis could easily round up all the Jews because it was recorded where they lived.
Sadly those memories seem to be fading 🙁
@cstross I maintain a complete archive of every UK parliament petition going back to 2008, and sadly no petition has ever lead to significant change even when they do end up being debated: https://github.com/jonty/uk_petitions_data
The "Revoke Article 50" petition is still the largest ever at 6.1m signatures. I really hope this doesn't end up being bigger.
@cstross as a German who is used to having an ID card (mandatory over here since what feels like forever) and is bemoaning the fact that digital citizen services are still in their infancy over here - ar you opposed to the ID card in general, the digital part of it, or the specific implementation, be it technical or organisational?
@jollyorc EVERY TIME the British government comes up with an ID card (or a proposal for one) it's a horribly intrusive authoritarian wet dream that has criminal penalties (including jail time) for not carrying it at all times and showing it immediately on demand by any official. Oh, and the users have to pay for them. This version also forces EVERYONE to own a government-approved smartphone and turns it into a hacking/ID theft target. What could possibly go wrong?
@cstross I was a little confused when I heard this proposal, don’t they already have a digital ID app I thought. Yes they do but only for non-citizen residents in the UK, which I was for about two decades. Almost 18 months ago I was informed I had (no option) to create a UKVI digital account to prove my right to work or rent in the UK, which obviously I did. I was uneasy about it but when you are a non-citizen in the UK you get used to being every politician’s whipping boy with constant threats to have whatever rights you have taken away if that will get a cheer on social media that day. I fairly soon after did get my UK citizenship and paper British passport; promptly deleted the UKVI prove-you-can-work app. What confuses me is that the government is saying this will change anything for non-citizens and how they prove their right to work — nope, the almost exact same system already exists for those folks and any abuse of that existing system will also exist in any renamed version of it, surely. This whole thing smells of performative politics.
After driving around for a month in "light" one pedal mode I've started to dislike it more and more and turned it off. There are times it's great, like if you are enjoying a few bends in a curvy road. However, it's just too much effort to drive smoothly at low speeds and it's really annoying at parking lot speeds. Sometimes I just want to coast.
Paddles to activate seem the way to go here.
@dan the auto regen on max is ace in the #e_niro like strong engine braking when “making progress”, but lightens up at lower speed or traffic. Won’t bring you to a stop so not one peddling but I like that it creeps like old autos when you lift off brakes. It has taken 10 months leaving it in that one setting so I acclimatise to it… But now I hate all the other modes. 🤷♂️
@nick @mikrotik what a coincidence that they just popped up here because of some not so great "mac telnet" (i have otherwise no criticism and love to hear about it industries flourishing in .eu) https://blog.benjojo.co.uk/post/ixp-bad-broadcast-packets-interesting @benjojo
I think using generative LLMs is a souless thing to do. Even with coding, especially with coding.
Soulless folks love to kill art. Don't let them kill your spark.
"Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what's inside you, to make your soul grow."
Kurt Vonnegut
Letter to Xavier High School
https://www.projectvanity.com/projectvanity/kurt-vonneguts-simple-exercise-on-becoming
I have a fervent belief that coding is art.
How you choose to solve a problem in a language that you choose to write in is art.
But there's also something artistic in maths , how we express a math problem, the proofs.
There's a reason why we look in awe at math majors who work on difficult advanced math problems.
There's beauty in any way we exercise our minds, how we discover knowledge and create with it.
LLMs rob us of that beauty. They rob us of a healthy environment as well.
there is no sharp line delineating the sciences (including math) and art. they are intertwined. art can't be created without the media that we create using science and science is artificially constrained if we exclude the possibility of art.
writing can be both technical and creative, such as in coding.
@paul_ipv6 I think one of my main issues with java is that it wasn't pretty code.
Whereas I love looking at @dentangle c code.
I like an elegant solution. 🤣
@colinstu @onepict @emilvolk in the same way that e.g. automotive CEOs view metalworking, as a cost to be minimised.
Yet there are still manufacturers who have panels made/beaten/shaped/polished by hand, which is an art form.
Mass production enables mobility. Hand production creates art.
And that's why really really beautiful cars are so ludicrously expensive... And why CEOs sell "exclusive" yet still mass produced cars at massive profit margins.
Capitalism, honestly 😞
@nick I've always been confused by that attitude. Especially with the developers I've known over the years.
They think differently and see the world in different ways so of course how they choose to find a solution is different.
How they feel about a problem matters as well, much like any piece of art.
@onepict I've always said programming is a highly creative activity. A lot of people have looked at me sideways for that, but it's true. There are a million ways to write code to do the same basic task, and the options grow with the complexity of the task. Maybe it's not full of color and sound that appeal directly to the senses, but that doesn't make it any less of a creative art.
@hosford42 one of the main proofs for me is watching someone having writer's block or feeling writer's block hit when you're trying to code.
Burnout is a creative symptom. Same with inspiration when you code. It's that creative impulse that must be nurtured.
@onepict @hosford42 as an erstwhile mathematician now herding bugs for a living I wholeheartedly agree that mathematics (my 1st career) and coding (my predominant and current career) are artistic endeavours.
You don't just look for the solution.. you strive to find the ELEGANT solution. The equation/code that not only succinctly solves the problem at hand but does so in a precise and agreeable manner that borders on beauty.
It's a hard task to explain beauty in the context of math/code to a layman (and heaven knows I've tried) .. I usually direct them to Eulers identity e^ipi + 1 = 0. Precious few get it.
@onepict
Definitely, but some programmers create beautiful masterpieces where you can easily understand the message the artist wanted to share, while others ... :D are like abstract art (you don't know where it begins, where it ends, and what in the world they were wanting to achieve!
On top of that if you stare long enough you start discovering lots of little bugs in the canvas :D :D :D
@hadon In the art world we have critics who are meant to critique and analyse to help us understand.
In programming the comments vary 🤣
But at least with floss there is an option to collaborate on the canvas 😏 or the documentation 😊
@onepict
Comments are fun to read, yes, like another piece of art, this time literature.. you either get a nice Novel, a short poem or a piece of comedy :D :D :D
Oh, and don't forget variable names...; sometimes they give you an insight into the creator's hobbies, fears, hopes :D :D :D
@neil I fully expect to be here - I'll be disappointed some others are still here.
“OpenAI admits AI hallucinations are mathematically inevitable, not just engineering flaws – Computerworld”
> OpenAI’s own advanced reasoning models actually hallucinated more frequently than simpler systems.
An observation I made in my book, even in the first edition two years ago, was that research gave us reason to believe that hallucinations got worse with increasing model size
So, y'know... I literally told you so
@neil It's becoming increasingly clear that corporate cyber security is a f**king mess, and it's getting worse.
thinking about plumbing the coffee machine again
@0x47df it needs plumbing?!
@bloor it doesn’t, it’s a £50 delonghi. maybe this is the coffee machine equivalent of fitting a ferrari air filter to a corsa
I just have had enough of the water being so horrible, and ended up with a small filter. And some hoses. And fittings. And a tee to borrow the washing machine’s connection point so the while setup is a bit more landlord friendly
to do this on my current coffee machine i think i will be needing a pressure reducer to not hurt the pump, and also a solenoid valve so i can turn the water on and off at the same time as the pump.
additional fun will be required to replace the drip tray, because the overpressure valve from the pump dumps to the tank. i need it to dump to a drip tray if the tank is going.
i don't feel like opening this machine up again though. it was horrible last time i tried to replace the steam valve.
but i also don't want to buy a nicer machine, because the ones ready for plumbing are too big, too expensive, and take too long to warm up. i am not a commercial operation. i just need coffy sometimes.
so i ponder smaller machines, and voiding their warranty to fit a solenoid valve and pressure reducer to these. some of them might have space to work with.
for now? maybe i will just place a filtered water tap somewhere.
it doesn't solve my machine dumping dirty water back into the tank, but it at least tackles the scale.
Another old friend let me know he and his partner are expecting a kid soon.
Meanwhile I'm figuring out what coating to apply to the sticks of the geodesic dome that I'll be installing over my hot tub.
To each their own, I suppose.
But the notion that I thought my life was "maximally different" to that of others when I was young is still being challenged. The gap probably actually gets wider and wider as we all get older.
I don't feel sad or happy about it. Just interested. It's notable.
As Modest Mouse once said, "We all float on."
@bloor I'm convinced some of us are more use to society as crazy uncles/aunts :) In all seriousness, someone your siblings'/friends' kids can get a different perspective from, etc.
I never thought I would ever have children. I have a son who has just started University this week. Yep, empty next syndrome is here in force.
I was late starting, and there is a very good reason why parenting is best done while you are young, and not getting older.
I would suggest to anyone that if you have any intentions of being a parent that earlier in life is better than later 😉
@simonzerafa I never really have had intentions of being a parent and still don't.
@bloor @simonzerafa Neither did I, and somehow I suddenly found myself with two. Skipping the gruelling baby/toddler years was probably a good thing.
@bloor It's interesting, isn't it, when events or news or even just idle thoughts make you stop to consider the series of coincidences and decisions that's got you to where you are right now.
Sometimes I wonder how many "Sliding Doors" moments I've had. Impossible to know for sure. But kinda fun to mull over every now and then.
@gilester45 I am not sure there really are sliding door moments, per se. Either there are none, or they are continual; never ending life as continual sliding doors moments.
Seems a bit simplistic. What if they lose the whip, or resign and become an independent?
Or what if an independent joins a party? Or starts their own party?
Well done Channel 4. Now do Farage..
"More than 100 of Donald Trump’s inaccurate statements are to be dissected by Channel 4 to coincide with his state visit, in what it described as “the longest uninterrupted reel of untruths, falsehoods and distortions ever broadcast on television”.
Will #TheMet be arresting hundreds of violent thugs at a far right march, with speakers calling for overthrow of democracy?
Or is it just pensioners with placards protesting #genocide that they are willing to lock up?
What has #KierStarner to say? Oh, nothing.
Just seen the news and am holding my head in my hands. Who'd have known this country had 100,000 people willing to stand up and boast about how pig thick and cretinous they are.
Protesters have attacked police officers, says The Met
Police officers have been attacked by protesters at anti-immigration activist Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ event in central London. Scotland Yard said on X: “Officers were attacked with projectiles and have had to use force to avoid their cordon being breached.”
Is this two-tier policing?
The Metropolitan Police have decided not to use real-time facial recognition technology on today's 'Unite The Kingdom' Rightest march in London....
So, the Q.s here are: will they be using the tech retrospectively on the marchers?
Are they concerned the live-tech will be swamped by the number it would pick up?
Do they regard a march organised by Tommy Robinson (Stephen Yaxley-Lennon_ as less dangerous than other marches?
Am I being thick? #uspol
So Trump deported a few hundred South Koreans that were there to train US workers in a new factory set up.
Surely that means they were not even immigrants - let alone illegal immigrants? I assume they were only there on a contract to train people - not planning to more to US. And surely they would not be in any way illegal in doing so?
Or did the company not have the appropriate paperwork for them working in the US?
Maybe I am missing something.
Being cynical, I assume that (a) they were the wrong colour and/or (b) the company did not pay protection money to Trump.
@revk that, and i think a lot of americans can't even fathom that people might not want to move to the US at all (legally or illegally), which makes every visitor a potential illegal immigrant. I speak from experience.
@jelte I never understood, when in long queues in to US, how it is one process - queuing up at a passport check desk - for someone going on holiday and someone trying to immigrate. There were people with all their immigration papers at the desks taking forever, obviously.
Surely someone going on holiday, with booked accommodation, and booked return flights, etc, should have a fast track!
@revk According to both left and right-leaning media it was mainly the method by which they had entered and/or remained in the US. Some were undocumented, some had visas that had expired or visa waivers that didn't allow them to work.
Trump asked the South Koreans to stay after discussing (i.e. making a deal) with South Korea but South Korea insisted on them returning home. He has since said that he welcomes foreign companies and workers if they use official channels to enter the US.
boosted@revk According to South Korean news media there's a loophole in temporary Visa documents for South Korea citizens in the USA.
There's no Visa allowing people to enter the USA with a temporary work permit.
Skilled professionals training local employees so far have entered with a travel Visa and this practice has been tolerated for years. Until now, apparently.
The shiny new Lenovo Legion laptop arrived, so I set up the essential work apps in Windows (mainly AutoCAD). I wanted to give running primarily in Linux a go, but have wasted 2 hours trying to make my second monitor work and have failed.
Things evidently haven't improved since I bought the Macbook in 2012 because my left mouse button stopped working when I plugged in my headset. 😞
@neil it's already £100
Why on earth does it need to be more! At least they say you can set your own limit. I wish I could now, I'd make it £20
@Tattooed_Mummy @neil for some reason with at least 1 major bank setting the limit lower than the default also sets the limit for mobile payments to that
@Tattooed_Mummy @neil Indeed but with at least one bank if you set a lower contactless limit than the default £100 it also applies that limit to Google wallet. Etc 🙃
If you don't want a limit on mobile wallet payments you have to leave the contactless limit on the default setting
@Tattooed_Mummy @neil I guess maybe you could use a virtual card for mobile as it looks like those have separate limit controls to the main card
We are getting a heat pump later this month, replacing an old dying, leaking gas boiler.
Hivemind! Predict the outcome :
| Literally fine, works amazing: | 26 |
| Minor issues that get resolved: | 52 |
| Catastrophic, end up returning to gas boiler: | 0 |
Closed
@bloor upgrading rads and piping too?
@ret one needed replacement, two were marginal, we will see and replace later if needed. Not replacing pipework.
@bloor I'd take a fair bet on the installers looking at the plan, looking at your floor and doing it differently 8)
And the weather compensation curve will be wrong, because it's 99% magic.
@bloor heat pumps aren't particularly new. They're all over the place industrially. My experience with industrial air handling units and plenums (steam fed) are that if wet air gets in and filters aren't changed then you're asking for a short life.
Bottom line is like lots of things, you get what you pay for.
@nick our most expensive day of gas cost us almost £17 in one day earlier this year. My hope is that it is not /too much/ worse than that.
@nick so that represented 270 ish kWh of gas. Factoring in a pessimistic cop of 3, and factoring in the higher unit cost of electricity, I’m slightly worse off but only slightly.
@penguin42 @bloor @nick move some of the green/social tariffs from elec to gas, tax gas a bit and use it to subsidise elec. With prices as they are, a heat pump does not feel like a clear financial win, given the upfront cost.
@steve @penguin42 @nick I am under no illusions that it won’t save me very much money right now ongoing, if any at all. However: once I get solar and batteries, then it really@really makes sense.
@bloor @penguin42 @nick yes, that makes sense. But from a policy point of getting the country off gas, I think the financials need to be much clearer.
@nick @bloor
And balance all rads/towel rails to hit suitable return water temperature. The biggest waste of energy on wet systems is returning hot water back to the boiler/heat pump because ofvexcessive flow rates. Decorators, diy and builders always mess it up. Plumbers sometimes aren't much better.
@bloor Voted option 1 as I will be getting one too and hope your good luck will rub off on me. Not sure what kind of mysticism this is 😂
@bloor Awesome! Would love to have done that when we moved. Annoyingly 10yo boiler completely died weeks after moving in, so had to replace the boiler in anger in mid December rather than researching ASHP. Got another 4 years or so before justifying boiler retirement.
Would like to get rid of gas piping buried in floor/walls as there were 2 gas fires (decommissioned) and the massive meter unit which takes out almost a full kitchen cupboard.
Looking forward to your updates (and metrics) 😁
Today's trip was to Hurst Castle - a 19th Century fort built around a 16th Century fort.
Well worth visiting and if Mother Nature has her way (having been given a helping hand by us), it won't be around for much longer.
I saw something disturbing this morning.
One of my clients showed me an email. They use Gmail for their emails (on their own domain) and download them locally.
The email officially came from their company president, giving the purchasing department orders to immediately pay an invoice of around €20,000 to a new supplier in the UK. It included all the details and had the invoice attached as a PDF.
The worrying part is that the style and tone of the writing were exactly like their president's. However, the sender's address, while using the correct name, was a generic Gmail account. This immediately raised a red flag for the purchasing department, and they didn't fall for it. It was also easy for them to check because the president was in their office at that very moment.
Looking at the sender's address, it would have been simple for anyone to figure out what was happening, but many people don't.
The accuracy with which they (likely using an LLM) recreated the president's writing style is truly concerning.
@stefano That's only dangerous if a potential victim has 20k spare change laying around 😆
@ricardo unfortunately, amounts like those are in their budgets, so they could pay them
@stefano All jokes aside, wouldn’t a proper accounting department question an unscheduled or unbudgeted expense just because the invoice says "pay now", specially without any warning? 🤔
I wonder how the scammers get samples of the president's emails to use?
@nlarson830 The president is active as he's talking at conferences, etc. I've tested and the LLMs are aware of this person and his style.
@nick no, they have strict procedures for this. But another company I know fell in the trap (anyway, I'm not surprised)
@stefano I'm frustrated because a solution to this problem exists for decades - its name is #PGP. Also it has it's disadvantages, problems and is of course not bullet proof, I wonder why nobody was able to design a GUI that is usable for most users with a few hours of training. You only need to understand 5 % of PGP to be able to use it.
I think convenience and lack of interest (until it's too late) are the main obstacles.
LLM adds a whole new dimension to this sort of thing. I'll watch out for this in my own little world.
@stefano I’ve heard that they also do this through phone call, using AI mimicking voices.
@stefano This is true. Quite popular fraud scheme in my country (and actually post-Soviet space). So they collect enough samples of your voice to train AI, and then call your relatives asking to transfer money somewhere ASAP. That's one of the schemes.
@stefano As embarrassing as it may be, I once was scammed by someone pretending to be the owner of the company where I worked. I lost approximately $1,000
However, I did learn my lesson and checking the email address of any suspicious email is the first thing I do now
@gabe_saltar don't be embarrassed. In 2004 or 2005, I was scammed on ebay, too. I lost 1700 euros
@stefano Damn! That sucks!
@gabe_saltar it does. I felt stupid. Then I was angry, because it wasn't easy to spot. They stole the login credentials of a legit shop and changed the IBAN. PayPal or other similar tools weren't available. It came out that more than 15 people were scammed, all around Europe. We got in touch with one another and we all went to the police but they couldn't find the money. There's been some money transfer from the original country (Germany) to another, non European country and then...everything lost.
@stefano WOW! In my case the person pretended to be my boss, and asked me to send him money in for apple gift cards... It sounded suspicious as hell, but I felt for it because I was new in the company. It was second week at the job and I didn't know anyone in the company well enough to make the correct judgement call.
I found the whole thing to be embarrassing because my major is in Cyber Security. To say I felt stupid, would be understatement of the year
😬
@gabe_saltar bad things can happen to all of us. But life goes on, and we lean the lesson 😉
Replacing Sky / Virgin media with a Freeview recorder. Looking good so far, it integrates well with all the catch-up setvices, and a software update just added YouTube. #manhattant4r #cordcutting #freeview
Hmmm, I wonder, I wonder, why my Wireguard tunnel suddenly stopped working (on UDP/51820) after I redirected all packets coming in via UDP between 10000 and 65535 to my VoIP server at the firewall. A true mystery I totally haven't spent 15 minutes figuring out... 
@snep I did that once, but for Nintendo Switch. Lots of thinking ensued
(also their port usage policy is utter garbage, "just give us everything")
@forst Ohh yeahhh, they _do_ do that, don't they? "Oh, just port-forward any UDP port to your Switch, what could go wrong?"
I wonder what their recommended solution would be for households with two Switches 🤔
@snep Portforward to both, duuuh /j
@forst "Mom said it's *my* turn on the entire UDP port range today!!"
"Ivan replied that code is either correct or incorrect; there’s no subjective determination of whether it’s high or low… if a coder writes code poorly, the program simply won’t run"
If an engineer ever says that to you, run the fuck away.
The fact it runs doesn't mean it's:
- right
- secure
- maintainable
- efficient
or can handle anything except the single case you've tried.
Every time you scratch the surface of a vibe coder, you'll find delusionally low standards.