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>>> you send the neighbours round to isolate the leaking component If I sent my neighbours round, they'd probably set fire to the place .

Did you see what the dew point was at your location? We have been running at 16C with one artificial 'fan coil' and only had condensation on the rad in the bathroom after showers, others are bone dry, not a sign of any dampness let alone dripping, despite the dew point sometimes spiking up to 19 and averaging about 16. What is harder to work out is if we are getting any significant cooling, we are getting major cycling and only using about 0.5kw so perhaps up to about 2-3kw of cooling but no whether that would give an appreciable cooling effect?

Hi Folks, I am tiling on a 75mm screed with underfloor heating from an ASHP. I have large windows in my kitchen / sitting / diner (high solar gain). My tiler is going to use a decoupling mat, and tells me that he has never had a problem when using decoupling mats, and that expansion joints are not required. Do you think expansion joints are needed as well as decoupling mats? Or is that overkill? thanks Arenite

I'm not 100% what you mean by capping on the top edge but in my case there was no top edge. The EWI was taken up to the eaves which had enough overhang to still project beyond the edge of the EWI. I fitted new soffit up to the face of the rendered EWI. On the gables we re-roofed (this was planned anyway, not just for the EWI) and extended the overhang with an additional rafter outside the EWI edge. this allowed the slaes to overhang the EWI with a bargeboard fixed to the outboard rafter.

What I notice with UFH cooling, it knocks of that uncomfortable couple of degrees at the high end, AND the house actually feels cooler than the gauge would imply. But importantly the recovery time to more normal feeling temperatures is way quicker in the evening.

Where does the condensation come from? If it is airtight and is dry, then it shouldn't be an issue. Building inspectors like standard methods but I'm thinking you are simply doing maintenance.

It would be maybe 3.5 metres total width, perhaps 4 metres max. Height approx 2.7 maybe

7 metres?

This is clutching at straws a bit. In the actual report they call out that renewables have lowered the daytime price putting downward pressure on the cap and the quote was from the regulator itself so one would assume they are aware of the context. But if we wear our steixlty logical hat - whilst we cannot say that a rise in renewables certainly lowers prices we can say that a rise in renewables does not invariably lead to a rise in prices. In fairness they do also say that the loss of revenue for thermal plants during the daylight hours means the costs have to be put into the price of thermal power when it is needed pushing that bit up. They also note that a drop in the Lng prices in late 2025 helped lower wholesale costs, though that has now been reversed. They say that grid scale battery systems are starting to mitigate those fluctuations by providing a customer during daylight to recharge and providing cheaper than thermal power on the evenings further displacing thermal power. Bear in mind the displacement of thermal power during the day doesn't markedly increace the fixed (capital, depreciation etc) costs of thermal power it just concentrates them into a smaller output. So the overall cost of having a thermal plant on the grid is roughly the same regardless of it running or not, so it's not true to say the intermittency makes it more expensive (beyond some increace in maintance and fuel burns for start/stop running) overall. If it costs you £100m + fuel to keep a plant up and ready it is still cheaper to run it once and get low cost elec the rest of the time than to run it 365 days a year. Again, the report explicitly calls out the rise in the price of coal and gas on the international market as historical upward cost pressures and not the increace in renewable generation. Despite being a big exporter of coal and gas the thermal plants have to compete with international buyers so when coal jumps up the cost per Mwh from an Australian coal plant burning Australian coal also jumps up. There will be inevitable challanges and it will not be easy. But we need to get away from the narrative that there is a sensible choice between doing it and just staying as we are and lowering prices by drilling.

My understanding was that the high voltages are occurring away from the sub stations and out on the local network. Imagine you and your neighbour were both fed of a single extension cable plugged into the substation down the road. If you both export 5kw each, during the day the total is 10kw down a little B&Q extension cable. And if you both consume 5kw each that 10kw has to flow back up the cable. Putting a battery to absorb that at the substation wouldn't help the poor extension cable. 10kw would have to flow down during the day, and 10kw back at night. But if you both had battery packs capable of absorbing the power during the day and giving it back at night, the cable would see 0kw - essentially you'd be off grid.

Backed it off to 16c for a couple of days. I can now say that even though it only resulted in a few degrees reduction it is noticeable and welcome.

Whilst solar has obvious advantages in Australia, the UK generates more from renewables (125Twh vs 100Twh) and Australia has a lot more distance for grid infrastructure.

nah, you'll be reet.

That only affects the generation times and instantaneous power per unit area i.e. takes up a little less land.

By being able to absorb energy when the local voltage is high and distribute it when the voltage is low. It is what already happens, just that there would be a more centrally controlled system rather than many distributed systems. They can also help with local resistance (which is around 4 ohm I think). There is also phase balancing and sine wave conditioning which they play a part in.

Yeah that's a thought. It might be better for them in stage payments or something. I will bear in mind. I'm off to camp out in the agent's office today till I get to speak to someone who isn't going to file my enquiry under WPB (waste paper basket). Warning - classist statement incoming - I find that a lot of these rural land agent/estate agent offices are staffed by privileged middle-class offspring who just coast through life and do very little actual work whilst having lots of jolly chats with their chums in the farming/landed gentry community. Get wee Shanna fae Bathgate in there and she'd have the lot sold by the afternoon 😂

Having just read the advice on DIY resin bound, i cannot imagine that anyone has achieved a satisfactory result without the use of a specialist forced mixer. Who has attempted it and more importantly got a good result without one. And what did you use if so?

A bit more done. The last of the outer frame is now up. And a trial fit to make sure it fits under.

Could it be that Australia has more sun and therefore each system produces more energy per year than say, a UK one, and therefore the outlay produces more income?

Thank you very much for the replies. You're right @JohnMo - I'm worried that moisture will get trapped between two vcls if I just replace the foil backed plasterboard. This isn't how a warm roof would normally be done. But bizarrely, it doesn't seem to have caused issues (that I can see) over the decades. Conversely, if I DON'T reinstall the foil backed plasterboard, then that too could cause issues because the insulation shrinkage might have caused cold spots for condensation on the plywood, and perhaps the bitumen layer has cracked over 3 decades? Damned if I do and damned if I don't. In terms of the insulation level, I think adding 25mm might make a thermal difference if the old insulation has shrunk? Thank you for the suggestions @saveasteading - is there no danger of condensation with creating a hybrid roof, though?

We have radiators, and when we tried using the ASHP for cooling, if we ran it at 18oC condensation dripped off the radiators so we don't use our ASHP for that.

Ditto. In May, we paid more for the standing charge and VAT than the electricity we used.

One of my design points is minimum wasted space on corridors. I think I achieved that with just the downstairs hall and upstairs landing as non productive space. Related to that is my combined Utility room and WC downstairs as I could not find a more efficient way to do that. The double doors from the 2 main living spaces to the hall allow the ground floor to be opened up as one for much of the time.

Not sure that the PVC will take the weight of the glass....

If someone is having an opening as large as 7m by 2.7m, I can't really fathom why they would WANT PVC rather than aluminium.