So glad you are happy with the house, I still love that corner in the living area by the two windows, and the floors look lovely
Thank you DCT. We are very happy with the floorboards and had a number of positive comments about them now. The fact that they are laid at an angle doesn't really stand out all that much and it certainly doesn't detract.
The hot water does stay 'hot', but it doesn't feel like it is at the temperature that is selected on the controller. While it may come out of the HWS at 48°C, by the time it reaches the Ensuite it seems it has lost some of its heat and is only maybe 42°C or something? Don't know, as I haven't measured the temperatures yet. But it certainly feels cooler than it should be.
We don't have the same problem in the kid's bathroom, which is right next to the HWS and we have to turn the controller down for their baths/showers.
The reason for that is most likely heat loss through the pipes into the roof cavity. The Ensuite is a fair distance away from the HWS, so the hot water has to travel quite far through the pipes and loses some of its heat along the way. This is a continuous process as well, so although the hot water keeps running, it also keeps losing heat along the way arriving a bit cooler than selected.
Does that mean the pipes are on the outside of the wall then? I would have thought they would be inside the frame.
Sorry, I might have been a bit unclear. The pipes are running inside the house. They go up to the roof inside the frame, then they run inside the roof cavity to where they need to go and then come down again inside the frame. Because the run through the roof is relatively long, I'm thinking that there is quite some potential for heat loss. The pipes are just plastic pipes, not very thick, so heat can be lost quite quickly. This could be minimised by putting an extra layer of insulation around the pipes (inside the roof). I'll have look into it to see if this is worthwhile or not.