I am converting our house into 2 flats and intend living in the ground floor one. Currectly I have a new oil sealed boiler for rads and a HW tank upstairs. After the conversion I shall not be able to have a cold water tank in the loft nor a HW tank upstairs so I am considering installining a mains pressure heat bank system (Torrent, Gledhill or Pandora??) in a ground floor cupboard and dispensing with both the hot and cold tanks.
Has anyone any advice or personal experience on these systems and which ones are worth looking at etc. The flat has a bathroom with bath and elec shower, 2 ensuites both with electric showers and a bot water supply to tthe kitchen. The showers will stay so the actual hot water requirement is quite limitted. I am also interested in the likely hot water flow rate (the CW pressure is good)
You are going mains pressure downstairs, and what upstairs? Tank in loft still? Are you renting the flat above or selling it?
- It may be worth getting large mains supply pipe run back to the street.
- Make sure the water mains, well "all" services", water, gas and electricity, enter each property directly, and not via the downstairs flat.
- Have two stopcocks in the road outside. Having a water meter for each may mean the cost is very low for this.
- The Torrent is good.
- The Pandora is good too and gives higher flowrates and no overflow pipe to outside.
- avoid electric showers. like the plague
- put high density rockwool bats between the floors to suppress sound. Also place hardboard over upstairs floors to prevent sounds via cracks. Silicon seal all around upstairs skirtings/floor. If you don't do it now you will regret it, it also keeps your heat inside your flat too.
- insulate under your floorboards, if you have them
- make sure the common areas around the building are defined in any lease.
- make sure the lease states no car parking in the front garden (if one there)
- if splitting the garden make sure it is well defined in any lease.
- make sure the lease states that both are responsible for the main structure of the building.
- make sure the lease states no one can deviate from styles of windows, colour scheme etc. They may paint their windows green. I know of one instances of that when some loony Irishman moved in and painted everything green in his part of the house, in mock tudor style of house. It took a lot of legal work to get him to paint it the right colours.
- make sure it states that all exterior paintwork is repaints at least every
5 years.
- make sure the lease gives responsibility to ownership of the main stack. If it is holed in upstairs flat will both have to pay? Best have that underground is both and each flat pays when problems inside their own flat.
All the above is from experience and experience of others I know, who did or did not do the above, but realised they should have.
As far as - "put high density rockwool bats between the floors to suppress sound. Also place hardboard over upstairs floors to prevent sounds via cracks. Silicon seal all around upstairs skirtings/floor."
- I was going to use a 10mm system 10 sound proofing underlay as I understand the the council also uses this product to keep down impact sound. Airbourne sound does not seem to be too much a of a problem.
Upstairs is not a problem as that is on Economy7 and has a CW tank i the loft. Downstairs I have an oil boiler and an overflow pipe would not present any problem with a Torrent as it is on an outside wall, so I still do not rreally know which one to go for (or if there is any other choice)
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