GSHP poorly sick
Discussion
Cogcog said:
Update; bodging the aerial wires may have blown the site Tv and Satellite switches, looking like an expensive bucket of earth for the contractor. Luckly the boss was driving the JCB at the time.
You genuinely couldn't make it up! Time for that liability insurance to cough up...
We have heat!
Final trench filled today, the system repressurised and recommissioned. Keeping a careful eye on the leccy but I am expecting a few heavy days while hundreds of litres of coolant are brought down in temperature.
Now they just need to build me a manifold chamber, level the site, deliver me back my top soil, fix the fence where they hit it with the JB+CB, replace the fence and gates they took down, repair the stone path and the paved driveway, turf it with 1300 sq meters of turf, rep;lace the shriubs they crushed and wash my fecking windows.
Final trench filled today, the system repressurised and recommissioned. Keeping a careful eye on the leccy but I am expecting a few heavy days while hundreds of litres of coolant are brought down in temperature.
Now they just need to build me a manifold chamber, level the site, deliver me back my top soil, fix the fence where they hit it with the JB+CB, replace the fence and gates they took down, repair the stone path and the paved driveway, turf it with 1300 sq meters of turf, rep;lace the shriubs they crushed and wash my fecking windows.
I've just discovered this topic. What a story! My new house is nearing completion. At the planning stage, I was very keen to install GSHP, but the builder was not impressed (it was outside his comfort zone). In the end, the site didn't allow for the ground arrays because of the number of trees, and the lack of open ground - you do need a big open area for these things.
Anyway, having read your story, I am quite happy to have connected the boiler to the mains gas supply. The construction industry seems to have a way to go before it has the skills to install such new-fangled things as heat pumps.
Anyway, having read your story, I am quite happy to have connected the boiler to the mains gas supply. The construction industry seems to have a way to go before it has the skills to install such new-fangled things as heat pumps.
Builders have offered to A) put in my new footpath and turf the lawn, or B) to seed a new lawn and do the patio and the footpath. Not all of it. they tell me as my old lawn was seeded they only need oput back a seeded lawn (albeit was was 2 year old).
As the digging out and the stone for the footpath and the patio are now in (which they will be paying for now anyway) I am minded to take option A and use the 15 sq meters of footpath stone on the 36 Sq meter patio, and stone the footpath. I hear the desperately want to push me to a seeded lawn as it saves them £4K.
The GSHP loop spec is fairly easy, as long as you follow it, which my original installers did not do. Mine are now trenched at 1.1m, in 4 trenches, laid on 100m of builders sand and covered in the same and then 200-300mm of soil free of rocks and debris, compacted and the backfilled in stages being compacted as you go. Minimum number of joints, pipes insulated where the flow and return come within a meter of each other. Not rocket science but it seems ground workers do whatever is easiest for them sometimes knowing their shoddy work will be under 1m of soil soon.
Edited by Cogcog on Thursday 8th March 13:53
Cogcog said:
FFS, they came to reinstall the pipe to the soak for the water from the main roof today, and guess what? There was no soak, just the pipe. They had to dig a soak at the far end of the garden (as most of the garden now has the slinky under it) and install a new soak.
Hats off to your builders groundworkers, they really were a class apart 
Cogcog said:
andy43 said:
Hats off to your builders groundworkers, they really were a class apart
So, what about all the other soaks?Seriously, if all the rainwater pipes terminate close to the building with no soakaway to prevent the ground being washed away or softened, it can't be good? I'm not a structural engineer, but having seen the mess a leaky soil pipe made to a 1930's semis foundations I'd be asking those cable-seeking digger people to keep digging.
eta - reread your post - sounds like there are pipes there to carry water well away from the building. But I'd be careful where you put the garden shed
andy43 said:
Google 'subsidence' and I reckon you'll find out - how far do the pipes run from the building?
Seriously, if all the rainwater pipes terminate close to the building with no soakaway to prevent the ground being washed away or softened, it can't be good? I'm not a structural engineer, but having seen the mess a leaky soil pipe made to a 1930's semis foundations I'd be asking those cable-seeking digger people to keep digging.
eta - reread your post - sounds like there are pipes there to carry water well away from the building. But I'd be careful where you put the garden shed
I am checking with the ground workers Monday as they did the soaks on the other side of the house. The site was basically bought from the administrators of developers who went bust and then the current ground workers completed the work, but the work on the one side of my house was already done.Seriously, if all the rainwater pipes terminate close to the building with no soakaway to prevent the ground being washed away or softened, it can't be good? I'm not a structural engineer, but having seen the mess a leaky soil pipe made to a 1930's semis foundations I'd be asking those cable-seeking digger people to keep digging.
eta - reread your post - sounds like there are pipes there to carry water well away from the building. But I'd be careful where you put the garden shed
Top soil is going back in today (Monday). Electricity use has fallen from £20 a day to about £8 but the weather is warm. I will carry on moinitoring it but at £8 a day the developers owe me £1200 in extra electricity use.
Edited by Cogcog on Monday 12th March 09:20
Update. Feck all has changed.
Turfers were due last week, didn't arrive as it turns out the warm weather has (suprisingly) made things grow and they have other more pressing jobs than laying £4k of turf.
Now trying tp push me back until after Easter. They tell me it will take 3 or 4 days to complete because they have to travel over 2 hours to get here and the blokes won't stay out overnight, so it is a 4 hour working day. I am sure if they throw £100 a head and a night on the beer in a hotel at them they would soon relent.
So annoying that they can basically find better things to do and all I can do about it is to chase the developers who are equally as useless as the landscapers.
Turfers were due last week, didn't arrive as it turns out the warm weather has (suprisingly) made things grow and they have other more pressing jobs than laying £4k of turf.
Now trying tp push me back until after Easter. They tell me it will take 3 or 4 days to complete because they have to travel over 2 hours to get here and the blokes won't stay out overnight, so it is a 4 hour working day. I am sure if they throw £100 a head and a night on the beer in a hotel at them they would soon relent.
So annoying that they can basically find better things to do and all I can do about it is to chase the developers who are equally as useless as the landscapers.
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