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It's not the concrete strength I was remarking on it was the shrinkage and cracking. Anyway it's done now, time will tell if it becomes a serviceability issue. You're right in that it's ok to be sceptical at times on BH, there is no benefit to new members for example if we don't put forward different views. For me I expect folk to call me out if they feel I'm barking up the wrong tree. It's healthy to do so. But there is a caveat here. Some of the eco stuff and arguments are not adult and I have a limit on my time to address some of the nonsense promoted.

You are right in that a low offer can get folks back up. In some ways if you have a plot with fab views, location etc you know has sat for a long time then there is probably challenges associated with it. This sounds counter intuitive. But in some cases it can also work if you make a high, but broadly caveat initial offer This indicates you are serious about it and have already done you research "as a lay person". The seller can see you have spent some cash to date. The objective is to get them engaged and then lead them towards what is the true value of the plot. That could be to do with services, potential land contamination etc. The benefit of doing it this way is that once engaged you educate the seller to the point where they realise that they are not selling a Rolls Royce but a potential pup and might think, hey I'll just get rid of it as the purchaser (you) has explained the true value, the risk you are willing to take on. The selling agent will also see your argument and might say.. this is the best offer you are going to get. @Square Feet "The plot is owned by a limited company so I was able to find the owner's details including age and address. " As an off the wall thought. There may be a significant tax implication to the seller. But you'll only find that out and if you help them mitigate by getting them to the table.

@MikeSharp01 Interesting stuff.. Yes it can be, if you have the will to live. I think pragmatism should prevail here and, at times I'll just need to contradict myself! for the common good. What I was referring to was what happens in the walls of the house. To explain this in lay terms and to use a qualitative example. If you have good double glazing and say overnight the house is sitting inside at 18 deg C and the temperature outside drops to 10 deg C. The outside pane of glass may end up at 6.00 am in the morning at about 11- 12 deg. Now suddenly a warm moist weather front of air blows in. You can often see condensation on the outside of the glass. This happens quite a lot in Scotland for example. If you have rubbish glazing then the outer pane will be much warmer as it gets heated from the 18 deg C air inside the house and thus you are less likely to observe this. Now if you can see that then you might ask.. well are the walls that we can't see inside doing the same. That is in summary what I referred to as reverse condensation. But this thread is not really about that. It's to do with condensation inside the house when you cool it on hot days. The fundamental questions are: 1/ How cool do you want your house on a hot day and what am I prepared to pay for that? 2/ Am I going to do something that could compromise the design of the house. This could be by causing condensation to occur in a place where it can't be easily vented out and thus promote things to rot / corrode. We spend loads of time on BH detailing air tightness and so on.. but we are always thinking (so far until say this thread) from the inside out. 3/ Am I able to accept some cooling say from my Air source heat Pump (ASHP) and treat this as a bit of free lunch. It won't be perfect but it's a good pragmatic trade off. Now for me, take any underfloor heating / ASHP or similar combination. My immediate approach is to ask, can we keep it simple, cheep to maintain and by default retain value in your house. @JohnMo sums it up for me here with practical elegance. Aren't you going down a rabbit hole of complexity for complex sake. Heat pumps like simple open flow systems, if you involve UFH you are limited to 14 to 16 Deg flow temp (depends on location), no dew point management specifically needed. Size any fan coils to operate at that flow temp. Otherwise your into electronic mixers etc. In summary there is no perfect answer. The systems are generally set up to heat the house, but can cool to some extent. But for a bit of pragmatism lets look at what could go wrong if you get condensation on the heating pipes in cooling mode. 1/ If you lag the pipes then water gas will still get in and condense. If running for a long time with adverse humidity then water will collect and run out the gaps in the insulation. Now if that happens over a ceiling it will cause staining. 2/ Much depends on how you use and respect the house. If you are boiling up pasta big time or drying washing inside then that is an issue. The building regs are set up for this, but.. 3/ We need to consider the frequency of occurrence. It's ok if from time to time you get a bit of condensation, so long as you get rid of it quickly enough then the risk of harm is low. We will quite happily take a couple of buckets of water and wash floors! That will change the humidity rapidly.

No worries. I'm at the very early 'back of an envelope' stage of my design, so anything you can offer is really helpful. I had reckoned on 11x7m internal so it's very pleasing to see that's exactly what yours seems to be.

They will help immensely by stabilizing voltage. Especially important with PV and heat pumps.

Those were my drawings for planning. A bit basic. A later more professional set were drawn later for the building warrant but I can't find them at the moment.

You can use cavity closers there are ones keyed to accept wet plaster https://www.coversmerchants.co.uk/dacatie-tf-multicloser-cavity-closer-100-150-x-2400mm

@ProDave Brilliant, thank you. I will study them and let you know if I have any questions. Really appreciate it.

These are early drawings, a few things changed along the way but can't find final versions.

But batteries at the substation won't help with the last mile of transmission. Pretty much by definition they are at thr junction between the low (relative to grid voltages! 😁) 240v system and the higher transmission voltages. If DNO's wanted to reduce the peak loading on their local network and avoid having to upgrade - then that might be an incentive for them to put batteries in customer's houses. But I'm not sure shirt term peak loads are that much of an issue for DNOs because of diversity. Their problem might be the sustained medium loads that never used to exist eg heat pumps and car chargers. That said, if you have an electrically heated street or estate, it would have been the case it would be sized for a sustained storage heater load overnight from everyone. So 4 or 5kw per house overnight. If you swap that out for heatpumps your load drops to maybe half or even 1/3 continuous. Which leaves the rest availible for charging cars overnight.

As the title says @ProDave Do you have a floorplan for your house that you could share? I am looking to build a 150sqm, 1.5 storey house in Scotland so it seemed an obvious choice to have a peek at what you have built. I tried to look it up on your blog but it said the earlier posts weren't available. Asking in here rather than private message so that we can all see - feel free to message me if you don't want it out in public. Cheers

It may be a cheap way to reinforce the network. The biggest losses are the local substation and 'last mile' of cabling. The DNOs have to supply a reliable service.

i'd have thought start with a list of the objectives that you are actually trying to achieve. What is the goal of this security system ? We appear to live in a world where the police are more interested in responding to thought crime accusations than actual break ins. The prisons are full and so there is limited interest in punishing offenders. Security systems are typically about monitoring and response, but don't necessarily substitute for high levels of physical security measures. There are a plethora of DIY solutions around. If really going the professional route then an overall assessment from a security professional might be better than just selecting an alarm vendor.

'specially in 4k

That may be a technically and economically better solution, but it may be difficult to create the incentives for that to happen. The hardware needs to go into the substation area, which is owned and operated by thr DNO, who has no interest in the consumer or the wholesale market. The energy Co doesn't have access to that facility. Putting the batteries at the consumer's end is, whilst less economic, much easier - especially if it's just shipping a box to the consumer who plugs it in and connects it to WiFi.

Oh ! Those kind of videos ! Yes they take lots of storage 😉

I need a little more than 4TB. I've currently got 4 x 8TB external drives full, plus 2 x 4TB full, plus 2 x 2TB mini externals full (a third one just failed on me and won't mount any more). I think I've got another 6TB drive floating about too.They all need quite a bit of consolidation as 3 of the drives are backups from previous Macs, the rest are windows. I wanted to put together a proper home NAS, but prices are just scaling so badly for this, I really should have done it 18months ago when I first had the idea. Now I have 3TB on my local machine and only 197gb of storage capacity left. Why the space? I have my fingers in multiple pots and have lots of video stored, some that need to be edited and rendered, but then I end up increasing the space I need to store the rendered content. So, I was planning on at least an extra 10TB at the very minimum, probably more for proper safe backup storage. YSWIM? I was thinking about your project when watching this video by Braxman, maybe not massively interesting for you but maybe others. He has a video on setting up Openclaw locally on an old laptop and since I have an old gaming laptop I've just installed Linux on I wondered whether I should have a play:

Thinking 'aloud' really. Keep it simple. 1 the pir is still there. It may have shrunk and left odd gaps between boards, but that should be a small proportion, so leave it 2. Insert pir between joists but only 50mm boards. This thickness gives you control in cutting and inserting. It's easy to cut 50mm by handsaw or jigsaw. That should squeeze in reasonably accurately but there will be gaps. These gaps, however are closed spaces so have some insulation value. 3. Then Insert rockwool 50mm or more to the full depth. Use batts and they will cut easily and also squeeze in tight. 4. no need for foil backing.. it only makes any difference when facing an air gap. Vcl then plasterboard. I can't See any condensation issues with that but await comments. This all assumes that the lead is sound.

I have a Texecom Premier system, professionally installed, and honestly I can't recommend it. It's hugely antiquated. I posted a short-list of my grumbles with it on the Loxone mailing list 5 years ago -I'll copy below for posterity... The key question is do you need a "Graded" alarm system? this is never financially worth it for "insurance premium savings", the monitor/support contract costs more than the savings. It's really only worth it if you have high value items that the insurer refuses to cover without a graded alarm. Or, you just want the highest level of system for peace of mind. A graded alarm allows for automatic police notification. I found that a waste of time, as the ARC would call me and my 2 other keyholders before doing police callout, and if anyone answers they would basically just say "your alarm is going off" and hang up, no information on what cause or support in figuring out if it's a false alarm. Which was oh so helpful when I was camping on a mountain in another country... So I've now terminated that contract and do my own self-monitored alarm (via Loxone, and a network of mutually supporting neighbours) which is cheaper and far stronger protection. If you DO need a graded alarm, I keep hearing AJAX.systems is the much more modern system, and uses cameras for much stronger confirmed alarms. (Texecom has a camera offering now but honestly I wouldn't touch it given my experiences) Still looking for some first-hand feedback from someone that's lived with AJAX for a few years and see if it lives up to the marketing.

True

I recently bought a 4TB external tiny SSD for about 300 quid. Its fantastic. But yes! to go local with say min 96gb is either an m3 at an inflated price off ebay or a rtx6000 pc at 10K just for the card!!. I do chuckle now I have 256GB

If I'd done no research and just listened to 90% of my installers, we'd have ended up with worse outcomes in just about every area of our build. I think it makes good sense to get an understanding of anything technical before taking advice from someone whose job involves maximising profit from you.

Yip, yip - we would get a professional to do the hard work for us. However, i always like to have a good basic knowledge of what to ask for, so we don't end up over/under spec-ing the system

As long as you can show its high temp rated plastic, you can avoid copper. Most modern plastics are suitable, but you need to confirm. 35 & 42mm copper pipe and fittings are hideously expensive.

You have to be careful with hybrid roofs. Otherwise you end up with condensation issues, as you seem to be aware of. Suspect you already have issues, you have a vapour barrier at plasterboard and above it with bitumen vcl. So any humidity that finds it's way in the roof structure is stuck there. My thoughts are adding 25 or 50mm just isn't worth the effort. If you concerned with shrinkage get a thermal camera and see if you have issues. May need a coke night to see so you have a thermal gradient between inside and outside.