Leaderboard

Bloody kitchen companies I detest them! ME: "Yes, I think we have a design and price I'm happy with" ME: "What are your payment terms" THEM: "100% with order" ME: "But I don't want it until August" THEM: "100% with order or we cant guarantee the price" ME: "No retention for fitting issues?" THEM: "No. 100% up front" ME: "Surely a reasonable deposit now (25%), 72.5% on factory build (10 weeks before delivery), 2.5% fitting retention would be reasonable" THEM: "No" ME: "Goodbye" Rant over!!

Most of the water runs of mine but depending on how many empty/near empty bottles are there it can still collect a fair amount of water. The rods might be a good solution.

Very nice that! I did wonder about that issue. First thought was to run the UFH up the wall and under the shelves. I didn't do that. I was half considering having the shelf on an angle so the water sheds of it's own accord and a level st/st mesh or basket or rods for the bottles to sit on.

Can you not Parge it with a slurry, this way if you want to plaster later it will already have a nice key.

Tanking and taping is a good fail safe, but then your discussing dealing with what happens to water that gets behind the tiles, rather than how to stop it GETTING behind the tiles. . When you tile around timber structures, such as these boxing ins, the grout cannot be relied upon as the final watertight seal. You must use a flexible sealant of some sort, even if it's just directly behind the tiles at the open edges / grout junctions, to prevent water getting behind the tiles. Capillary action will suck water in like a straw. When tanking, also consider the path that this trapped water will take. It cannot be allowed to get behind the plasterboard, it cannot get to any timber. Make sure you tank from head height all the way to the junction between the wall and floor. Then you need to make sure that any water that gets there, cannot sit there. Check out this thread about the wetroom in that pic as I go into great detail there. .

Same here. BC wanted to inspect and witness a pressure test on the drains before they were covered. When I called them to inspect the final 3 metre run when I connected the plant they were too busy. They were not the least bit interested in the discharge pipework.

There's no requirement that I can see for a commissioning certificate, and no process for generating one that I can find, either. Our building inspector only wanted to see that it was installed according to the MIs, and there was no bit of paper, he just came over to see the drain pressure test, which we did before fully burying the treatment plant.

@PeterW, it's an ARM chip so this shouldn't really be necessary if you are using it as a server, since the overall CPU utilisation will be well under 100% and the on-chip Graphics Processors (GPUs) will be idle. If you are concerned, then you can buy a passive component like this. I really don't think that you will need an active heat-sink unless you are making heavy use of the OpenGL libraries. (These are a standard API libraries used to access the functions provided in the hardware GPUs in a portable fashion; most 2D and 3D applications and OS functions will use these standard interfaces rather than get into proprietary Broadcom hardware internals).

Worms/can! Do you mean intumescent mastic? Go for one that says specifically for cables like Rockwool FIREPRO - that's water based. I'd always dubious of stuff from "the pound shop" with a never heard of make that stinks to high heaven to boot and gives you a cheap high. On the expanding foams, Soudafoam's FR deffo says for sealing of "cable" penetrations. Again a quality brand. EPS beads or sheets sandwiching cables is the nasty one for T&E, to do with it drawing out plasticizers and making the cable brittle as well as gooey. I guess the same but to a lesser extent with SWA. And don't forget if you seriously thermally insulate a cable over 0.5m with whatever, then you need to consider its current carrying capacity. If it is getting warm then it'll make it all the more likely to attack from some dubious "mastic". Check out Wiska One Gel silicone based mastic that goes in a standard gun. Comes in a tube and is one part unlike their Magic Gel. Bumpf says it makes a water, dirt and GAS so I'd assume "air" tight joint. RS do something similar under their own brand. Then there's the fire "putties". Tbh air tightness is something I'm not over familiar with. With intumescents its just fill the hole up and you'll know it'll expand if there's a fire. Never worried before whether its air leaky beforehand!

Yeah we planned to dig down on the front drive and get some hard standing down. IIRC the BM suggested type 1 to give a stable surface and then build up for the drive at a later date. Dumper is 2.5t but as you said, don't want to heap the concrete. I think the decision is made for me, and that's to use a pump. Last thing I need is for the pour days to go wrong...... Out of interest, I thought the footings pour should really be done in one go so there's no cold joins?

Well, the air-test was performed this afternoon and we achieved 0.27 air-changes per hour. BOOM!

I thought 2.5 metres only applied if it goes right up to the boundary. If it's 1 metre or more away then the height is 3 metres eaves height. Even my static caravan just squeaks in under that (I left exactly 1 metre between the 'van and the boundary fence)

Hi John, no, we've went ahead with our electricians ideas and ideas we've picked up from website such as Pinterest and Houzz. We have a friend who's an interior designer who's helping with tiles, kitchen, furniture etc she also is giving input into design. I don't want blinding lights when the switch is flicked so using a lot of 5amp switches as above comments and using different circuits for differnet lights which will hopefully work. we are still at first fix so it'll be a few weeks yet before we know the outcome.

Yes I took Technical Drawing O level in the 60's, those were the days, also took Statistics which was a separate subject back then.

There is a bit here about making Draftsight portable: http://portableapps.com/node/28290

I have a Solidworks licence and spent a week on holiday, with a printed copy of the manual, learning how to drive it (it was OK, we were staying at a friends place in the South of France and all my other half wanted to do was laze around by the pool............). After a week I was pretty competent with it, but the concepts were a bit strange, coming from a conventional technical drawing tool like AutoCad to Solidworks. I think if you've never used CAD, and have no conventional drawing board experience (and back when I was at school in the 60's we still had Technical Drawing as an O level, which I took) then learning Solidworks, or the pretty similar Rhinoceros, is fairly easy. As always, it's the change from engrained ways of working to something very different that I found challenging. What did really impress me was CATIA. I managed a programme where the product was entirely modelled in CATIA and it's incredibly impressive. What was even more impressive was finding out that the thing could spit out data to allow animations and videos of the final product. I hate to think what CATIA must cost, but then the programme cost at the time was just under £1.4bn..............

Only if they're actually finished! /me runs

I decided to make this one a bit higher so it missed the direct flow of water. All the tiles and trims were set into clear CT1 and pushed n until it oozed out of the grout lines / gaps etc. I wiped that excess off with wipes, making sure none was left flush with the surface of the tiles / trims, and left it to cure. I then gunned a colour matched silicone onto the remaining gaps. You could lay that on its back, fill it with water and it wouldnt lose a drop. .

Right For a simple, and basic temperature logger the DS18B20 is pretty good. You have to set the RPi up to accept the 1Wire protocol, which is done though the raspi-config screen. The General Purpose In Out (GPIO) defaults to GPIO4 (this can be changed with a bit of trickery). One thing that the RPi lacks is a real time clock (RTC). I bought some cheap ones a few years back but they never worked reliably, so have ordered some new ones (still waiting for them). Hopefully this will sort the problem. If the RPi is on a network, it just gets the time from a Network Time Protocol server (NTP). This can cause a few problems on a reboot as it has not always updated. The code in Python is simple, I can post some up, but there are many websites that have examples. Just recently I have tried to put a bit of error correction in, but have hit a snag. If there is an error, it stops logging. So I shall go back to post processing the data (if you now what you are looking for, error are easy to spot). Or I can learn now to allow it to recheck say 10 times (2 seconds), then carry on. A few months back I found a bit of free FTP space and played about uploading data to that, it worked well (until I hit my upload limit). I used a bit of simple shell (sh) script. I have also looked into using email, and splitting large data files into daily files. This is a bit 'work in progress' as there are some quirks between different versions of Raspbian OSs and getting a reliable connection (more of that later). But it does give one the opportunity to upload from a remote location via a cheap old mobile phone. As data compression is easy to do from a sh script, any old 3G connection is perfectly adequate. I have only scratched the surface of shell scripts, but they seem a very powerful tool to use. Many of the commands can be used within Python, but as I am not a programmer and have little interest in programming, I like to use simple scripts that I can understand (and write/modify), and then just get them to do their thing when needed. My CurrentCost data logger seems very reliable these days, unlike the copy I got from the internet. It takes a few minutes to set up initially, but then just chugs along writing to a comma separated file (.csv). Once you have data in that format, you can do just about anything with it. Other project I am currently working on are using DHT22 temperature and relative humidity sensors. These are a bit harder to set up as they need a separate GPIO pin for each sensor, and they do not connect easily to the RPi. To get around this I just download some C (a programming language) from AdaFruit, follow the instructions and eventually get it working. word of caution though, don't by the much cheaper DHT11s, they have limited temperature range and are not that accurate, pay the extra for the DHT22s (think I pay less than £2.50 for them, will need to check). I have also made a bit of Python script that senses when a switch is open or closed and puts a time stamp against it. This is so I can sense, via cheap 240V relay (still waiting for it to turn up) wired in parallel to a load, when that load is on or off. This is for a heat meter for a solar thermal system, but could also be used monitor just about any load, as long as wired correctly and safely. This is cheaper than buying in a flow meter, but I have an idea on how to make on of those. At the moment I only log data, I don't use it to control anything (not really interested in that side of things too much). I have got LEDs flashing for a laugh as an alarm, easy step from there to getting something fully controlled. I bought a PiFace, which is a board that fits onto the GPIO pins and has 240V/5A relays on it. But never got around to using it. Something for a rainy day. Now problems I have had. Well one major one that I cannot fathom out. With the old Raspbian OS Wheezy, setting up a static IP address for both the local area network (LAN) and the wireless network (WLAN) was easy, just edit one file. Since I bought a Raspberry Pi Zero (a cut down RPi, but just as good as my Model A), I decided to use the later OS, Jessie. There is two versions of this, one with a graphic user interface (GUI), and one without. As the RPi Zero (RPiZ) is really used with a screen and keyboard, I decided to use Jessie Light (the non GUI version). This has made it impossible, for me, to set up a reliable wireless connection. It works fine on the USB to LAN adapter, but changes the IP address every now and again, which means I loose connectivity. To get around this, just this week I have set up one of my old Model As with the GUI version of Jessie, connected via the main screen to my wireless network, and it seems to be working fine with the static IP I put in. I have searched though the files that seems to be associated with the networking (think there is 4 of them), but can see no mention of the static IP address I typed in. But for the last few days it has been working reliably. A mystery to me. There are a few projects I would like to try out, one it to make a reliable, but cheap, wireless energy monitor. This can be either via a clamp on meter (plenty accurate enough for most things) or a sensor to read the flashing LED on the meter. If CurrentCost where still in business, I would just buy their kit, but they seem to have gone (annoying that they sold a million plus units to the energy companies, who then gave them away to customers, who never used them, there must be half a million of these boxed and unused). There are cheap transmitters/receivers for the RPi, just a matter of fitting a sensor to them, finding out a way to transmit the data and then read it (bit beyond me to be honest). But all the 'bits' are cheap, so can't be that hard. Maybe even 'reverse engineer' a CurrentCost one. I also have an analogue to digital board (ADC) that I have only used once, there is a fair bit of scope for sensing there, and they are cheap. I have a £100 LabJack, which is a great bit of kit for playing with, and works very well with the RPi. But it is really only for lab use, not a practical, or cheap thing to use for everyday monitoring. Right it is late, I need some sleep.

Today I used the left over foam for: * making a box around the generator earthing rod - prior to the garage concrete floor pour * making a box to prevent the Icynene spray foam going where the LPG boiler flue will go * sittng on it to eating my lunch off * stacking tons of bits - ready for when I come up with the brainwave what to do with this stuff I also tried setting fire to it: https://goo.gl/photos/ruuUZczYPTikMfsi7 Was quite impressed how it withstood a gas torch - not particularly recommended though as certainly some fumes were given off

A quick summary of going off grid : its expensive! Suddenly the power consumption of everything matters and it seems to cost a lot to have the low power option - I'm just hoping the thousand pound dishwasher automatically stacks itself as well as using little power!

I think there has been one recorded incident of someone being directly hit by a fragment of comet/meteorite in my lifetime (as opposed to secondary damage). So that is 1/(55 x 5bn) 3.6 x 10-12 chance. I suspect that lead poisoning from a soldered joint is a lot higher. Car driving is a lot more dangerous, even on lead free fuel.