Leaderboard

We're off grid now in a caravan on our plot and will remain so when the house is built. Our connection was going to cost £20k and more and it just seemed more interesting to go off-grid plus I have a strong aversion to overhead cables (just don't like the look of them, they chop the sky up). We have a measly 1000W of P.V., a 600w wind turbine and a 48V, 460amp/hr battery bank. Once the garage is finished we'll fit our currently ground-mounted PV to the roof and expand the array to 3kW. Our house is small and uncomplicated and we don't (and won't) have a 200 inch TV, we currently run a brilliant A+++ rated fridge that uses 65kWh a year. Jeremy is right about PV in winter. Last November/December was very, very dark. Some record for lack of sunlight was broken at a weather station near here and one day we only generated a ridiculous 35w/hr. We got to the point where we had to borrow a genny to avoid battery damage and considered getting either a genny or a wind turbine with the turbine winning. Once the turbine was installed we were fine, winter weather is rarely dull AND calm. Whilst turbines need a good site (ours is OK, not perfect) and don't do much in lighter winds they do provide 24 hours a day of juice when the wind is blowing and that makes up for a lot. Our turbine has been shut down for weeks now - we don't need the power and we have slight issues making the solar reg and diversion controller play well together - but it was a good buy and certainly preferable (for us) to a generator. I'll be interested to see where battery tech goes in the next few years. Something better that our flooded cells is likely to come along and if it doesn't I'm likely to look for a better solution. It's a minor but regular pain in the arse maintaining them.

Is the wall strong enough to withstand the water presure? I am not doubting your bricklaying, it looks very good, but fill that with water and you have an outward pressure on the wall, and cement is not very good in tension. For that reason alone I would be loking at a fibreglass pond liner cast in place, if nothing else to add to the strength of the wall.

That one may have been Metro Fixings. Tradefixdirect were also good. An additional complication for me is delivery costs- many suppliers offer apparently great prices until you get to the checkout and find they want £30 to send you a tenner's worth of penny washers...

I'm no DIY expert but I did my own MVHR first fix install using BPC sourced materials - BPC are keenly priced and as there was some uncertainty on exactly where the distribution boxes would go, they sent additional steel and plastic ducting - in the end I used all 350m of flexi and just a few metres of the steel. Got it all in (just) ahead of electrical and plumbing first fix - some tight squeezes, especially where the ducts come together but it's pretty doable.

Around 35 years ago, some bright spark decided that anyone involved in defence research at the sharp end should have a month attached to a front line unit, complete with a temporary commission into your equivalent service rank. This was not popular with front line units, who really didn't want to have to baby sit someone useless (from their perspective). I was attached to 826 Naval Air Squadron, RNAS Culdrose, as a newbie Sub Lieutenant, supposedly straight from Dartmouth. On my first day, I pitched up to the morning brief and there was an announcement that four junior officers were booked for Aircrew Escape, Survival, and Evasion training starting that day, and transport was awaiting to take us to Lympstone Barracks, where instructors from 42 Commando were to give us three days training followed by a two day escape and evasion exercise, where we were dropped in pairs, with nothing but an aircrew coverall, basic kit that would be in the pockets of your survival life jacket, plus a live rabbit, with orders not to kill it in the first 24 hours. We were blindfolded, dropped somewhere on Dartmoor, and told we had a four hour start on the "enemy" (members of 42 Commando) who were trying to catch us before we reached a declared safe objective. If we got caught before the 48 hours were up we were taken back to Lympstone. It was pouring with rain, our bivvy leaked, the bloody rabbits crapped everywhere, we were both soaked to the skin and actually relieved when we were captured at around 4 am, some 15 hours after being dropped off. The relief did not last long. We were chucked face down in the back of a 4 tonner, wrists and ankles cable tied. When we got to the barracks, we were put in individual white-tiled cells, with bright lights and very loud music, on constantly. We were made to strip and stand on the tips of our toes, with our fingertips on the wall, and hosed down with cold water. We were constantly questioned, and for the first few hours managed to just stick to name, rank and number. After around 10 to 12 hours or so of this, the four of us that had been captured were marched into a room, still naked, and ordered to attention. A WRAC officer walked in, swagger stick under her arm, peak of her cap pulled down over her eyes. She walked along in front of us, quietly giving us abuse. She got to me and poked my "meat and two veg" with the end of her stick, saying "call yourself a man with equipment like that?". At this point I lost it, yelling that I was a civvy, that I wasn't in the bloody RN and they could let me go right now. One of the blokes handed the WRAC officer a bit of paper. She shoved it under my nose, pointing out that I'd signed up, and that I was under military law, as Sub Lieutenant J S Harris RN, whether I liked it or not.......................

Are you still aiming at off-grid for electricity? Just in case ;)