Jump to content

All Activity

This stream auto-updates

  1. Yesterday
  2. That's what I expected. But this was less technical. They broke a slat from a pallet and marked 40mm and 50mm on it.. min and max depth. That seemed to work as there was about 1/4 m3 waste. But as for waste. I was optimistic that there wouldn't be much insulation wastage and that was the case. I didn't deduct for stud wall areas, did add 2 sheets for mistakes or lack of care, and had 3 sheets surplus. It will ho in walls. BUT what cutting waste there is, is very bulky, perhaps 5 x by volume, maybe more. And the packaging waste is dreadful too, with cardboard snd cling wrap and eps spacers. Moral... allow a skip cost simply for the insulation and ufh. Being petty and mean... (cost conscious and efficient) I found that the cling wrapping compresses dramatically when rolled up and squeezed into bags. Ie I took it out of the skip and compressed it. Pipe offcuts take lots of space too. And the eps packing baulks look useful so are set aside. Saved £150 or more in an hour.... I care much more than they do. Stop press.... I'm told pir will rise in price by 10% then another 18%. So I guess eps and plastic pipes will do too.
  3. Floor plans, elevations and sections. Relevant construction details. Relevant materials specifications. Location map.
  4. Hi I am about engage a private building control company for my building control full plans sign off. i just want to make sure I have all the Documents they may request. -block plan -full scaled floor drawings, include cavity/insulation/ventilation info and steel and lintel info also windows. - detailed foundation and drainage drawings include foundation depths, block and beam info. -first floor joist drawings (provided by timber company L) -roof plan and timber joist drawings (provided by timber company) include weight bearing calculations etc - desktop ground survey report - SAP calculation report is there anything I’m missing here? im demolishing a bungalow (only built in 1992) and replacing with a house in largely the same foot print but extending on both sides. will I need anything else to get the building control sign off?
  5. The big brands offering things like this cost a more than that. If the regs say that to legally sell this product it 'MUST' ensure that the pins are not live unless a mains signal has been seen within the last 20ms then either the product complies and is safe (ie, wont kill anyone even if they touch live pins) or it doesn't comply and is therefore defective. That should be the end of it. Really not sure what you are getting at here. The number of things that have to happen to produce mains output from a solar panel these days is huge. The computers involved in generating the waveforms are far far more powerful than desktop computers from the early/mid 2000s. It's not a case that the waveform will be produced unless blocked by a safety system, it's more that the system can't produce a waveform unless a long list of conditions are met. This is technical but heres a reference design from TI for a microinverter. Not suggesting you take anything from it other than it's not a simple system that will just continue working in a fault condition (the document doesn't touch on the safety side unfortunately). https://www.ti.com/lit/ug/tiduf63a/tiduf63a.pdf?ts=1774517354380 The MCU (brain) they use to do the control is this : https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/tms320f280039c.pdf?ts=1774508361987 Again not really an accessible document, but you'll note that it supports various functional safety standards. Those are some pretty rigorous standards and if you design a product to meet them then you can make guarantees about the behavior. ie, make it fail safe. Edit: I'm not saying this is currently part of the regs for this, seems a little OTT for the situation, but it's certainly something that could be added to regs if a need is identified.
  6. are there only two lives going into that box?
  7. But it absolutely *will* detect this. And event if it somehow doesn't, remember that inverters are a. current sources and b. have hard voltage limits. Remove the load by unplugging and the current will immediately drop to zero and the voltage rise to beyond the limit voltage. Redundancy...
  8. That's non setting electrical putty https://www.google.com/aclk?sa=L&ai=DChsSEwjV_aGfyr6TAxXzjFAGHbGsIjYYACICCAEQAxoCZGc&co=1&ase=2&gclid=CjwKCAjwspPOBhB9EiwATFbi5BkanPos5dLixv0wSp1V_3WAHOacGQ1jnwucOEUEE5d2-PmOgYSP0RoCFW8QAvD_BwE&cce=2&category=acrcp_v1_32&sig=AOD64_1l9R1G1FCGLV_DOlYmv6FsI1sd3g&ctype=5&q=&nis=4&ved=2ahUKEwja35Wfyr6TAxWeQUEAHfLbLX0Q9aACKAB6BAgFEB4&adurl=
  9. I dont suppose said installer has had the FENSA certification withdrawn?
  10. Of course the regs dont allow for live pins. Thats my point. However, things go wrong, especially electronics. Yes it "should" cut of the power if it doesnt see "mains power". Should is doing a lot of heavy lifting on a device thats likely sub £200. Comparing it to an RCD isnt really relevant. The idea of the RCD is that its a back up for when something else has already gone (badly) wrong. Theres no circumstance in which live conductors are available to touch under UK regs. With a plug in panel, if it doesnt detect the mains power has gone, the pins are live. Single point of failure. Going to a situation of single point of failure is a significant step backwards. The results of which, as ive already said, are forseeable.
  11. Yes, of course theres a cost to mothballing it. You could convert it. No idea how practical that is? My point is, we dont know whats coming. WW3 is certainly a possibility. Something bad but short of that too. Imagine our supply of gas is heavily restricted due to war, and we face a postion of blackouts due to lack of generation capacity. Would you sit there and say, no, i wont use a coal powered plant out of principle, or would you recommision it, having retained it? Theres only one answer to that that makes any sense. We dont NEED to blow it up, as we have done with previous ones. To do so is utter stupidity. As it was previously.
  12. Seems unlikely our stocks are dwindling as we are not using it or mining it. That statement is illogical You last paragraph is irrelevant to the post.
  13. This is the big thing. Rather than plow money into fossil fuels, plow the same money into renewables - build more. Over capacity is a good thing. It provides more security, more days when all demand can be renewable and the inevitable periods when it is sunny and windy, we wil find ways to use that...
  14. Sure, but that is a separate issue. We as a country need to start actually fixing the issues rather than trying to work around them by banning things outright. (Which still doesn't solve the problem because people will still get and use them anyway). Other countries manage this much better than we do. I haven't read the regs but I very much doubt that the regs allow for a plug to become live without an active current for anything more than a fraction of a second (and only then if there was a signal immediately prior that disappeared - eg power cut or socket pulled from wall). Either case I don't see how you could be in that situation while at the same time holding the plug. Others have raised the possibility of two systems plugged in sensing the other as 'mains' and hence continuing to work. I don't know how possible this is for systems designed with the current regs but it's certainly something that I think can be designed out and even in this situation the live pins will be actively buried in the socket, not in human contact. Electronic inverters can assess the mains waveforms thousands of times a second and with each sample detect a wide range of issues so any of these safety issues should be addressable if they havent already been (I suspect they already have been). Edit to add: A standard RCD cuts the current within 30ms of a leak to earth being detected. This is deemed sufficient to save someones life who touches live conductors. An inverter should be able to switch off much quicker than this if it detects any unusual conditions. It would be relatively unimpactful to efficiency to set the cut off conditions much tighter than RCDs as a cut off for a couple of cycles would not be noticed by anyone using the system (given the system should only ever operate when the mains is live).
  15. I know all that. My point was the statement you suggested was taking the piss, was in fact entirely correct. It wasnt a suggestion it was in any way desirable.
  16. There is some logic to this position especially if the plant has life left in it. There would be cost associated with the moth balling. I did wonder if they could be retro fitted to burn plastic waste granules. We (as is oft pointed out) still need plastic made from oil. Recycling seems to be rather hit and miss for various reasons. Why not collect the plastic from things we need plastic for eg some food packaging, medical devices, machine parts etc. Process them into fuel pellets for stock piling at Drax, Radcliffe etc. These might run a few days ie weeks a year as backup for low wind, low solar periods or extreme demand. They would be hellishly expensive and rather high carbon but if it's 10 days a year and the rest of the time it's cheap, ckwan renewables.... Thats OK.
  17. Sorry this is just wrong and getting boring. How are the plugs live, the output from the solar is zero without a mains input, so how do you have live pins? Or are people falling over and burying there heads in the pins?
  18. Not really. Thats what trading standards used to do. They just dont do it any more. You could prosecute everyone doing it quite easily as the internet tells you who they are. And we should. Interestingly, the DVSA enforcement team do exactly that with non compliant automotive products. And have taken people like euro car parts to task. So it can be done. Its never been easier to identify those not complying. As i said, i think in the other thread, i bought a transformer, from Amazon that has exposed 240v terminals. I didnt know that until i got it out of the box. And i do know what im looking at. Personally, i find that completely unacceptable.
  19. So no acid rain, the most polluting form of electric, yes it great. By the time you opened the coal mines to feed one coal power station and build the power station, you could have built 3x the capacity in wind - Scotland did.
  20. Uk sellers are indeed liable, but the reality is, there is no enfocement of regulation, and how succesful do you think you will be sueing Amazon? In reality they are not liable. That is a real problem that needs addressing. But wont be. Given that we dont, what is the point of having any regulations? Ill disagree on your last paragraph. People will die. Even using proper stuff, because, stuff goes wrong. A fundamental principle of our regs is that plugs are never live, only recessed pins can be live. This product turns that principle on its head.
  21. The tech is reliable sure. Security and abundance.... Not so much. As discussed ad nauseam the UK reserves are dwindling and the nature of the oil and gas industry means almost no nation can be secure against external supply shocks. The US is the largest producer and a major net exporter and *still* energy prices are rising. Interestingly, the two European nations who have seen the least disruption to electric prices are France (nukes) and (drumroll) Spain (renewables and some nukes. They are seeing rises of petrol/diesel/gas/heating oil etc because you car/boiler still needs to use the specific molecules it was designed for but the electric bits of their economy are plugging along with less disruption.
  22. What have I told you about drinking during the day?
  23. Sorry you can't build the rules around the idiots that will ignore them anyway. And just circumvent what rules are there anyway. The only way to that is shutdown the internet and tax all products that come via mail from overseas with a huge surcharge, to make it not cost effective. That's not happening is it
  24. Because we are led by morons. You might not want to use it, but why not leave it there for a while. No one can know the future troubles we may have.
  25. I've zero idea of what I'm looking at. Is the cable regular twin and earth (T&E), as it appears to me to be so. If it is, then it's a dangerous install. This needs to be in "containment", so as @Mr Punter suggests it needs conduit or trunking. Even if this is temporary it is dogshit on toast, and the bread was out of date.
  26. In what way? It IS reliable (as decades of use proves) , it IS secure (because its here) and it IS plentiful. (we have heaps of it) Thats not to say it doesnt have plenty of downsides, but those three specifically are true. And plenty of countries including germany are still using it.
  1. Load more activity
×
×
  • Create New...