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https://www.aer.gov.au/news/articles/news-releases/aer-releases-final-default-market-offer-2026-27 If renewables are going to make the grid more expensive how come they are making it cheaper on Australia? The combined range of price changes (flat rate and time of use) are: New South Wales: Residential -3.4% to -7.7%, Small business -9.0% to -20.9% South East Queensland: Residential -7.2% to -10.7%, Small business -10.4% to -14.0% South Australia: Residential -1.1% to +1.4%, Small business -6.8% to -12.1% AER Chair Clare Savage said.. “The reductions compared to last year reflect easing costs across most components of the DMO, particularly in wholesale energy, where we’ve seen lower electricity contract prices, reduced spot price volatility, and increased output from wind and battery generation during evening peaks.” “Despite uncertainty created by conflict in the Middle East, wholesale energy costs have not increased.” Of course australia did see diesel almost double before falling back to (currently) about 25% more than pre war levels which is painful - but underscores the advantage of switching transport away from fossil fuels.

In real life don't put your toilet that close to the wall, next time you're sat on your throne enjoying a quiet moment of reflection pay attention to how much space you actually need at the side.

I see this point come up alot, but wouldn't it only apply if the person overloaded the circuit to begin with? If you have a standard ring on a 32a breaker they can run several appliances together, say 3, up to the 32a limit, but the typical 2.5mm cables are only rated for 20a and the whole concept relies on both ends of the ring taking the load so no one part ever sees more than 20a. A person could run more than 32a of load if the additional current was provided by the solar but as long as the wiring run from the solar to the load wasn't exceeding 20a it would be fine. So a tumble dryer plugged into the same double socket as the solar would be fine. The problem might occur if the loads and sources were too far apart or unbalanced but that is a statistical risk the ring main system accepts anyway.

there are premade rubber cable entry "patches" for cable and pipe entry.

Great words, but probably your last ones............. If we don't hear from you ever again, it's been emotional. Social media is mostly folk living a plastic life, presented by liars or paid influencers who consume gullible folk to perpetuate their 'success'. Or 'tossers' as I call them.

Praise those big arsed ladies who can't fit into pentagon showers. That's the danger of your missus being an Instagram obsessive. These fancy things look good on paper but not in reality.

Yay! Now I can say I hate the pentagon shaped pile-o-shart. Looking waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay better, praise the fictional person in the sky.

First thing I do is set out with a laser, and advise the client if a few coats of SLC would be preferable. Some say yes, get it level not just flat, others just say "do your best".................... Done a good few with polished porcelain, and I get those like a mirror, but that takes prob twice the time / effort / cost if they want the 'front page of the magazine kitchen'.

Maybe he's used to this standard of levelling. It doesn't really matter of the floor slopes evenly. It's about 13m long So that's 25 ÷ 13000 Doesn't sound so bad that way. Apparently I'm unusual in thinking that accuracy is possible and should be standard.

I may have said this already,: it's simple to lay a small electric mesh before the tiles . Warmup. Then this can be on a switch , but better is a timer. 30C I'd say is ok though, and there are bath mats.

Update to this. The missus tried a pentagon shower in the nearest bathroom store, hated it, even though she was insistent on it in theory. Back to the drawing board, so I'm looking at a 1000x800 rectangle Mira now, seems decent? Sick of my life with this, at least Sunderland got into Europe. (Door opening the wrong direction for some reason in the image below)

Thanks for the replies, sorry slow to get back, yes i will and have used mechanical fixings in conjunction with spray foam, i find the foam great on uneven stone. In terms of whether its a good idea to put insulated pb onto stone, im still not sure and have spent a long time thinking about it, but i wasnt sure about the whole lime render thing either. I wont be doing large areas mostly just window reveals. On a side note does dot n dabed normal plasterboard need mechical fixings too.?

That's nuffin @Russell griffiths - A hamster ate my underpants

I did try to say! 🙄 No, not the way I discussed above - for single cables, much tougher for multiple. Just cut a square of EPDM (0.7mm) punch a hole just smaller than the diameter of the cable (or its smallest dimension for the flat stuff - invention of the devil) then just pull the cable through the hole and tape the square of EPDM to the airtight layer

Yeah - it definitely doesn't run backwards or have the heat/cold kwh registers that some models have so agree it can give instantaneous output and possibly if I understood modbus or whatever could give telemetry but I don't and suspect it would need extra modules to do so?

Wastage costs an absolute fortune. 10% often gets added as default, and trades are very happy to not use offcuts or measure (plan) in advance. Materials are typically 40% of a project. So imagine a 500k project x 0.4 x 0.1. That is 20k of wasted material. It then goes in the skips, typically thrown in loose , costing £4k? The only argument some will understand is: if this was your project, how much waste would there be? With your skills, let's work together on this. That timber will be a noggin. It remains much stronger than it looks. For its' like, I may have to collect/denail/ clean and carry indoors myself and instruct firmly. Really bad bits will become raised beds or nature piles.

Probably a daft question but is there a need to use ventilated fibre cement tiles in places on a pitched roof if when using a breather membrane. I suspect not but thought about belt and braces option. My current roof has old bitumen felt under fibre cement tiles, is ventilated at eaves and has a few ventilated fibre cement slates in places for airflow. Thing is old roofer actually cut through the felt just under ventilated slates and this is allowing water ingress in places. Also is there a need to leave an air gap between insulation and breather membrane when using an air and vapour open memnrane?

I hate wasting, in actual fact I'm a bit of a hoarder. Would definitely make use of the timber in some meaningful way, maybe to use as noggin between adjacent floor joists etc.

Agree with @BotusBuild. Aco drain will work well here. Hopefully there is somewhere you could connect it to at the end.

Couple that to heat pump monitor, that will add an electric meter, a few bits and bobs, and you get full monitoring. We have the same heat meter. 4th or 5th push of the button also gives you kW as an instantaneous reading. You have dT available to read. Will give stuff like this, it's ace for understanding what really happening.

Not a lot of software on our heat meter, it is a Danfoss Sonometer 1100, it has a screen you cycle through that gives you live readings for flow and return temp and volume and a calculated heat transferred in kwh measured since the unit was new, nothing else.

Before you fix this, can you address the issue of the water running onto the path at the top, some kind of redirection. Maybe consider some Arco drain to redirect the wall to the far side of the path or a soakaway or drain. I would be looking to power clean the cracked area before applying anything. Whatever you apply will need a stable clean surface. There are various rubber or bitumen based sealants that may work. The ultimate fix is to relay the concrete path and introduce some diagonal grooves in the surface that direct the water away from the building and down the path. Bad text diagram following - connect the diagonal together for continuous grooves. |\ \ \ \ \| |\ \ \ \ \| |\ \ \ \ \| |\ \ \ \ \| |\ \ \ \ \| Or, more simply, have the path relaid with a slope away from building wall

Just reread this. Not sure your expectations will match reality with wet UFH. So to throw a spanner in the works. Modern well insulated houses don't have warm floors with wet UFH, the UFH flow temps are just too low. You max flow temp is likely to sub 30 degs at the coldest outside temperature, and that doesn't give a warm floor. You won't have cold floors either, but the floor really will not be noticeable warm. Typically floor surface temps are 1 to 3 degs warmer than air temp depending on heat losses.

I did try to say! 🙄 Sensible sparky the one I work with, and he is hot on the solar and ev cabling and derating even for less than 400mm.

Image of failed edge where I have hammered off some of the concrete and bits of rubber type mastic.