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Stuck some of those felt lap vents in and after a very windy day recently it all seemed to dry out. Will keep an eye on it and check if it comes back when the frosty weather comes back, but so far so good! Thanks

These are about the only ones I can find for sale. http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/12V-bank-Nickel-Iron-NiFe-Battery-400ah-10-x-1-2V-cell-/292003393183?var=&hash=item43fcc22e9f:m:m3iaFCECxzgoMsUm4Ksm4bw That example is 10 400Ah cells so a total of 4.8KWh of storage. (Not sure what that translates to as actual usable storage) for about £2000 They list several packages of different sizes. Shame they are the wrong end of the country to me so no easy way to collect and avoid the high transport costs. The rest of the parts to make a DIY system are much cheaper, I would probably make my own charger, buy a couple of cheap Chinese grid tied inverters from ebay and control it all with an arduino. So given you might get say 3KWh of real usable storage, at a total price to build it of no more than £3000, that's £1000 per KWh of storage for a system that should last a lifetime with no battery replacement costs. Is it viable? Well say I could use all 3KWh every day (unlikely but it makes the maths simple) in a year, I would be able to use 1095KWh of otherwise "wasted" solar PV, lets round that down to 1000KWh per year. Assuming I pay 15p per KWh, that has the potential to save me £150 per year in electricity costs. So that is still going to take 20 years of use, to pay back it's capital costs. So it's marginal to say the least. But at least after it has paid for itself, the batteries would keep on going. What is the typical cost per KWh of storage, for the present commercial packaged offerings?

That seems to retail around the £120-130 mark. Tbh, for a bit more money I'd consider this one instead. I borrowed one of these off my mate when my Bosch was out of action and I thought, for the money, it was a very robust and versatile unit. The green Bosch stuff is the DIY range, with the blue being the proffesional range. Also, you may want to check out the Bosch equivalent to the Dewalt which is also around the £150 mark. If I had to choose, it would be the Bosch. I do a lot of tiling and stud work, so I went with this beauty Only downfall is it LOVES the batteries. A water level is good for when you don't have line of sight, but it doesn't have the cool red laser lines which make you think your in an illegal rave. ? Spend the other couple of tenners and go for a professional item.

or this?

any use?

Best (better?) practice would be to change the window when you do the insulation, and install it in the insulation layer.

A milestone for me. I finally fitted the trap and overflow to the bath. Followed @Nickfromwales instructions to the letter though my thought's on a "smear" of Sika I'm thinking differ. When I've done sinks in the past (and maybe one bath years ago?) the rubber has never really fitted the hole properly and it's looked naff with Boss white of whatever was avaialable. I ditched one washer as he said and loaded with Sika EBT. The top side has come out really well IMO. Removed the excess with a wet wipe which was another top tip and I didn't get that messy! The less visible areas.....? AND I didn't turn the trap as I did it all up!

As a tip, do as Peter suggests above and use the cheapest epoxy you can get - East Coast are often cheaper then CFS , but there is another place in Cornwall that's cheaper still - I used their stuff on my last boat build, Reactive Resins (here's a link - I have no connection with them other than as a customer: https://reactiveresins.com/epoxy-resins.html ) If you want dry sand (and as Peter says it does have to be really dry) then buy play pit sand from someone who keeps it stored inside. I've used it with epoxy to even up a workshop floor and it worked a treat. As another tip, play pit sand also works well with a cheap wet sandblaster, the type that's an attachment for a pressure washer, I've found. Finally, again no plug for profit, I can highly recommend the Reactive Resins floor coatings: https://reactiveresins.com/floor-coatings-screeds.html I used their epoxy floor paint and it was nice to use (no smell, water based) and very, very tough. It's what's going down in my new workshop, I'm not even going to think about using anything else. I would have reservations about their water-based two pack varnish, though, Synacryl. I used it on a boat and frankly it was crap, lasted less that a yeatr before it started peeling off badly.

If it is not high strength structural concrete you are looking for then using a 1:6 volume ratio of activated resin to kiln dried sand will work fine. Any GP resin will do and you can get it from CFS or East Coast Fibreglass. The sand has to be dry or it will clump and also cause the resin to set badly.

Not really. If you look at the temperature the floor needs to be to deliver the heat required to the room in the depths of winter it will probably be no higher than around 24 to 25 deg C even in a house just built to building regs energy requirements. Our floor by the French windows can easily reach 35 deg C on a warm sunny day, so way hotter than any UFH will ever get. I think there's a load of tosh going around about UFH causing damage, as how many UFH systems run the floor surface at anything like the temperature it would get to when exposed to hot sun in summer? At our present house, the laminate flooring just inside the south-facing back door gets hot enough to singe your feet if we leave the back door open. I've never measured it, but would guess that it's way over 45 deg C.

I had a couple of areas of my bathroom floor slab to repair. A "slot" I rough cut in the slab when I was going to spin the bath through 180deg needed squaring off and then where I knocked out to run the afterthought feeds to the towel rad. Right or wrong I used neat SBR in 4:1mix and it's gone off very "resinous". Not subject to foot traffic but seems super tough:

I have never mixed epoxy mortar but over the past few years I have ordered resins and various other items from CFS Fibreglass. The guys who work there will give you all the info you need regarding your question about epoxy mortar. They have a big website with lots of products and are generally quite well priced. At present if you also go to the Facebook page of the company they have a 10% code for all purchases.....just got the email today. Bye

No. Power is delightful so absolute power is absolutely delightful. Copyright LJK Setright. THat double capital ( <<--- example) is Apple's fault. The very occasional lack of correction is my laziness. F

@hmpmarketing, this also has the advantage that the neighbour did this from the planners PoV so its outside your control Check with your BInsp that the neighbour has offered to remove the tree and grind out the stump and see if he will give you a concession on this in this light.

Thanks. I did not realise there was already a vibrant range of off-the-peg products on the market, with a [new-to-me] name of parcel drop box. I am impressed by the systems for posting and allowing the parcel to fall gently. I wonder how a box of wine would fare? Maybe not relevant since nobody has offered to send me one since my mother died last year At present I share the view of many that an open place is adequate, and the standing instruction to various delivery companies is to leave in the log shed at my present abode, tho' one 3 letter company usually declines to comply and leaves in the jcb parked at the cattle barns 1 km from home. However my new home is in the village, has no obvious alternative place to leave parcels, and I should like to make a provision whilst I am building the 'perfect' house. I don't really want a 'secure' metal box outside for aesthetic reasons. There is an ideal built in cupboard opportunity adjacent to the front door, wide and deep enough to contain a wine box should my fortune change. I shall just put a yale-type lock on, with instruction on the door for parcel deliverer to release the latch before closing. If it is a huge success, and I feel the need for more sophisticated control via I-phone from the poolside in the south of France, I can always upgrade the lock to something else.

I used a membrane underneath the plasterboard which gets bonded to the blockwork using a special glue. The other areas are the doors and windows. Then it's all the penetrating services that need sealed round. http://www.cleanenergyireland.ie/air-tightness/ Good video of the membrane and window tape here. I bought all my stuff from these guys as well.

If you had any idea how many of your typos I quietly sort out on a daily basis...

Is this basically a difference between air tight and vapour tight style question? If so: http://www.ecohome.net/guide/difference-between-air-barriers-vapour-barriers

now, the other aspect is, what is your deterioration yield of your PV panels and efficiency of the inverter going to be after 20 years? its definitely going to be a lot less than 20% and 80% respectively.

I worked with NiFe cells for years, ex-WWII era aircraft starting batteries, from ground start trollies. Nice to be able to mention them - mention them over on another forum and you get thrown off pretty quickly, as I found! The life of NiFe cells is phenomenal. I was working with very much abused cells that were, at best, made some time in the 1950's. They were still going strong in the early 90's, when we stopped using them and hadn't lost any capacity at all in that time, as far as we could tell. The downsides are that they take up a lot of space for a given energy capacity, as their energy density is poor. They have a relatively wide voltage change (in percentage terms) from fully charged to fully discharged. They use a strong alkali as the electrolyte, that is not pleasant to handle. The big advantage if that they would undoubtedly last a lifetime, perhaps with one washout after 30 years or so and a refill with fresh electrolyte. That means that the battery replacement cost can be, to all intents and purposes, removed from the balance sheet, as it's very unlikely that anyone would live long enough for the batteries to reach end-of life. They used to be quite cheap, when Edison were still making them, with the NiFe brand name, but I believe Exide bought the rights and stopped production, most probably because the last thing a battery manufacturer wants to produce are batteries that never need replacing! There are some manufactures in China making them, plus a firm in North America (can't recall whether they are in the Northern US or Canada). They are relatively easy to DIY, and there are some that have made their own cells and they work as well as the purchased ones. If anyone has source of the old telephone exchange glass accumulator cases then they form an ideal case for making NiFe cells. As Dave says, the killer with any battery off-grid system is the cell replacement cost. They all cost more per kWh than mains electricity, with the possible exception of NiFe cells, but they aren't that easy to get hold of.

Have you not just thought about finding out what a reasonable cost of the extra foundation work is, knock off the price of felling it and grinding out the root ball and offering your neighbour that as a lump sum plus you carrying the cost of removal for his agreement to let you remove it? There's nothing like a bit a cash to encourage cooperation.

I had this same issue at the last minute. SE decided that with clay soil and large trees close by (5m+ away) I need "heave" protection. I had never heard of it. We put 90mm Cordex boards under the slab. This cost an extra £23 per sq metre of ground area. I don't know if he also changed the strip foundation depth, some areas may have got a little deeper. I guess you can compare costs versus a block/beam floor. I wouldn't want to mess around with foundations without getting an SE involved. Better safe than sorry. However, if the BCO signs off on it I could see why the cost might seem high for piece of mind.

No probs. Pm to follow.

No - trees are referenced for up to 3 years assuming they are "known about"... I've got both the LABC tech note and the NHBC one and both refer to compressible foam or a source of a heave protection down the inside of any foundation below 1.2m. I don't see how your BCO can ignore that as it has the potential to cause movement and it's against most of the guidance I've seen. You can use EPS40 as the foam - not expensive and easily installed but it needs doing before the founds are poured. I would also ask the BCO for his foundation design in writing - if he is private than god forbid if something goes wrong you have some sort of recourse..!

The best GD of all time for me is Ben Law's woodland house .... Beautiful house, ridiculous budget and proof you can build something if you put your mind to it ..!

Can I raise a dissenting POV? Surely there are two different answers here: What's the best way if you are a professional and need to do this on a routine basis? What's the best way if you are a self builder and only doing it once? In the first case, you really need a tool which is accurate and quick; no doubt about that. In the second case you only need to be accurate, but is it really worth spending an extra £100 or so to save yourself an hour's fiddling around getting it right? I think not, but then again I am not cash rich at the moment. Though if you haven't any accurate laser level, then ~ £100 seems a reasonable price. What you need at a minimum is a way of establishing a set of datums, one per room that establish a common level throughout the house, and preferably each near the door connecting to the common hall / access. There are loads of ways to do this. The water level works really well (I did a blog post about this). So does a Dumpy if you have one, or any kind of calibrated laser level. If you are using levels then IMO it is important to chain from room to room at the doorways. If you want to double check then back chain from the extreme back to your primary reference. This will throw any systematic errors in your level. Do this a fixed amount above FFL and mark each datum well so they don't get lost in subsequent building works (e.g. screw or bond a bit of wood to the wall and cut a notch in it and mark it with a sharpie.) Then if you do need to redo any room you only need to measure down the fixed amount from the datum to reset the level in that room and you can be confident that it will still be correct. And then you need to establish reference levels around each room, and here pretty much any type of calibrated laser level will do the job. The expensive ones will only save you 10 mins extra setup per room. And I wouldn't worry too much about a few mm systematic error across the chain, because if you think that the builders or you will end up laying the FFL exactly to that level then you are mistaken. Even if they use a decent self levelling cement to finish off each room, do you think that they are going to use the exact amount of cement to hit the level? They make it up, pour it in and give it a float and leave it to find its level, and if they are good then you'll still end up using the door thresh or carpet bar to hide the hopefully few mm offset between rooms. In my current house some of our "level" floor slabs are about 1cm out across the room.