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Hi it’s been a while since my last post, so a happy new year to you all and I hope your all well. I’m going to put some flooring down in my dads bathroom ,first of all was going to use some form of click lvt nd seem to of swung towards glue down lvt some form of tile shape. So my first question is does anyone know or have bought recently some Hanson sp101, only seen some online and seems quite expensive . regards James

You know what I said out loud when I read your reply ? “ (expletive deleted)ing (expletive deleted) (expletive deleted) bastard mofo (expletive deleted) “

Thanks for all the responses thus far. So it seems my heat loss calculations seem pretty bad at 11.3kW, these were done by an MCS company and it did seem a little high. Our new extensions fabric will be double block wall with 120mm cavity fill with PIR boards, 40mm EWI, existing walls are double brick with 70mm cavity, which will be blown with EPS beads and then 60mm EWI applied. All windows, skylights will be triple glazed. Ground floor will be screed throughout with 150mm PIR insulation below and 150mm PIR insulation in the roof envelope. I'm not sure what else I could do to lower the heat loss, or have the company simply calculated this wrong or provided enough margin on their design?

Tape them up and all is well!

The normal run of things You charge on cheap rate, battery depletion starts on expensive tariff. As PV generates it go to charge battery first, then when full, any excess not be used by house, goes to export. Any variation from this is robbing Peter to pay Paul.

I laughed but then felt a pang of guilt that @Pocster is always at the arse end of jokes. I'm not even sure I get the joke as I've read a lot of the threads on here and don't feel I've read about what must be a hell of a story. 🙃

Yes if you have an EV and heat pump as mentioned. I switch between these two tariffs twice a year and it's within 24 hours now, often same day.

This is for bearings but probably a step earlier.

That depends in the inverter generally. A way to definitely achieve this no matter what inverter, is to have separate inverters for PV and battery, the battery one connecting to the main CU and it's CT sense coil clipped to the CU feed. Any PV then connecting via an inverter to a henley block before this main CU. We have a sunsynk; this is a hybrid inverter, and defintely cannot do as you wish if it has both batt and PV connected to it. The software it comes with is designed for sunny places with a grid with frequent power cuts; so it is designed to always first charge the battery, then export. Other hybrid inverters may by default allow PV export first.

Electricity is like water, so flows around any system, so you'd have to somehow separate the house from the PV. I'm sure someone will be along soon with an answer to that. But why don't you simply wire things up normally, so the house will use whatever is available from the batteries or the PV, or the grid. Then set things up, so that you dump what's left in the batteries at the end of the day before the cheap rate - this gets you the 15p export and if you've had any excess PV during the day, over and above house use, then you'll have had 15p for that. Then in the cheap rate simply fill you boots (batteries) before you start the cycle again. This is what we do and it's sort of self regulating. Your only issue is working out when to start dumping (exporting) the excess from the batteries to the grid if you start too early then you'll be using the grid before the cheap rate for the house and if you start too late then you'll be missing out on your 15ps worth of export. We worked out roughly how much time it took to dump 1% of the batteries to the grid. IIRC it was about 2.5 minutes. So we have an algorithm that starts checking the SoC of the batteries at 8:30 and checks every 2.5 minutes. When the SoC is larger than the amount of time left to discharge it, we start discharging and keep checking every 2.5 minutes until the start of the cheap rate. We very rarely use any standard rate units and export the maximum we can. Also, it would it be worth getting on to the Intelligent OG which is 7.5p?

You can use airtight tape. Just cut it into lots of little strips.

You could substitute in some walk on glazing.

That's good to hear - thanks Simon.

Ran out of floor tiles ! apparently discontinued- can’t find anywhere ! (expletive deleted)

Lol. I did actually stick them in the kitchen oven pre zinc coat . Cautious of off gassing pre top coat and fearing the wrath of my family I just stuck them into a cardboard box with a small fan heater (closely supervised!!!!) for 15mins. Seemed to do the trick, they only need to be warm and dry.

No, not a bodge. I always have a pack with me when I install a boiler. Sometimes I use it, sometimes not. Just depends on the particular situation. Viessmann actually supply a grey flexible condensate pipe wtih their boilers and these have combined condensate and prv drain. I keep on coming across installers, including for heat pumps that still turn up their noses at anything other than copper, saying plastic/composite pipe is a bodge. But of course it depends on where and how - plastic/mlcp as a single run joint free through a house - yes please. Just like with these condensate packs with 3m of hose which can get you out of a lot of pinches. Just make sure you clip it properly.

yep, works flawlessly with my Google Home.

A flip side to the companies approach maybe that the guy that attended for the service is an employee with a set schedule of services to complete in the day with householders taking time off work to wait in for him to arrive. If he gets drawn into doing unscheduled work there's a fair chance he'd mis subsequent appointments and the company would have an unhappy customer or two??

I am renovating/redesigning our utility room and as part of this will need to be rerouting the condensate pipework for the boiler. It is currently piped with a couple of metres of 25mm rigid pipe with a few right-angle solvent-weld bends and terminates into an internal connection to one of the soil pipes. I am considering using flexible pipe for its replacement, such as that offered by McAlpine: Not only would this be quicker and easier for the immediate task in hand but would likely also give greater flexibility (no pun intended) for if/when we move (via replacement) the position of the boiler at a later date. The thought has crossed my mind though: is this sort of pipe something of a bodge, in perhaps the same way that flexible toilet connectors or other waste pipes are commonly considered to be and really only intended for 'problematic' installations (or indeed problematic tradesmen/DIYers!)? I would of course ensure it was well supported and run with a constantly downward trajectory but it's the corrugations and how this would cope with any sediment that might be emitted from the boiler over time that are of concern, along with whatever else I haven't thought of!

I'm looking to install batteries to charge on discounted off peak to then supply the house during peak time. We have significant PV that we get paid to export at 15p/unit. On our current Octopus Go tariff we could charge the battery at 8.5p/unit so it will help our £ROI if we can let all our PV go to export and run the house on off peak rates via the battery. I can't see a way to stop us using the PV when it's available so is there a way to force house loads to use the battery and not draw on the PV??

If the Go rate disappeared I assume I'd be able to jump onto the Cosy rate if that wasn't withdrawn as well??

As you have a pull handle externally, ask them to supply a day/night latch striker. This will allow you to use the little blue switch by moving it up or down to enable day/night mode. When in day mode, you can close the door behind you, but you can push it open without having to have the key with you all the time (i.e. going into the garden/bringing things into the house). It usually comes with a cable to connect to a switch (like a door entry buzzer switch) but you can remove that as it's not needed.

Understood. The square shoe isn't quite long enough and the round pipe misses slightly. If you can rotate the round one at any of the joints to be over the grille, that should sort it. For the square you need the tiniest length of pipe. Temporarily cut a detergent bottle to make a channel and slide it under, but leave the bottom on to make it flow the right way onto the grille.

I have now received a spec and pricing form my local supplier. This is my only price for the front entrance door so I have no other reference, yet.

That's true, if the available surplus remained static which don't beleive is the case. AFAIK there's still considerable wind power still to be installed to reduce the peak time reliance on gas. If that's the case then that wind power will need somewhere to go during off peak periods which could include any batteries I get:). Assuming I've not dropped a clanger in my calcs then what I have in mind will easily pay for itself in 3-4 years and it's a fair bet cheap TOU tariffs will last that long, if not much longer