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To all you wonderful beautiful intelligent patient kind supportive blokes... I thank you! (Sorry for the rubbish photo)

you have made such a nice job of that i recon you could turn your hand to almost anything....... have you considered fitting bathrooms?

So I'm after de-rusting a few bits and pieces and decided to knock up an electrolysis tank from, as ever, scrap! A 20L oil drum, one of those which had the lid semi bonded on, BFO screwdriver soon sorted that. A sheet of some obscure plastic, quite soft to the point you can centre mark with a ball point: A quick compass: Some scribing: And some jigsawing and drilling: Some scrap M10 black bolts that I'll never used for anything else: And we have the start of a big anode that should allow 360o working around the piece to be de-rusted: Some random scrap T&E: The stripped cable clamped to the bolts. Do it tight enough and the wire pushes into the plastic. A couple of hex extenders and studs. I'll add a timber cross piece to suspend the rusty item from, probably on a chain so I can adjust the height: A broken bucket for safety. should keep some of the rain off and not contain the gas coming off: I'll try and finish it off, add the washing soda and fire it up later. Yes, I know most just use a big bit of plate as the anode or old brake discs (just skipped 4 ) but their's aren't pretty! (Was thinking to make it look like a little garden well complete with roof and winch...)

@readiescards daft question perhaps but have you checked that your hygrometer is working okay?

Have you read through this? this is the summary of another much longer thread about CDM 2015. If that's the kind of thing you are interested in it might be a good place to get involved. Ed

Yep - all comes through the flush plate :-)

Brilliant well done. Now you are ready to contemplate a full self build with as many dormers as the planners will allow.

Can't take all the credit..... Husband was the brains of the operation! @PeterW.... Enjoyed it but not sure I would tackle another one.... But now I'm a world authority.... ?

That's a job you can justifiably be proud of. Well done. Is it finished inside as well?

Looks really good @Dee..!! I've got 3 that need doing - how are you fixed ..??

Very impressive work, Dee, it would put a fair few "professionals" to shame.

And they said it couldnt be done Ive seen "roofers" who can't turn out work of that standard, looks great ? ??

Woohoo hey! When and where is the party? Ferdinand

I've had a set of LiFePO4 cells in my electric motorcycle for several years now, and am about to swap them out for new cells, as they have lost a fair bit of capacity. The problem I've found is that all lithium chemistry cells degrade with age to some degree, with the older LiFEPO4 chemistry cells losing a 2% - 3% percent or more per calendar year of useful capacity. The majority of cell development investment has been in different lithium chemistries, much of it coming from the Tesla/Panasonic partnership, I believe. The cycle life of LiFePO4 was claimed to be very good when I bought them, but it is extremely dependent on depth of discharge for each cycle. Running the cells down to 80% SOC gives around 1000 to 2000 cycles, whereas only running them down to 50% SOC increases this to well over 10,000 cycles, for example. In practice, ten years is about the maximum usable life of LiFePO4 I reckon, when combining the loss of capacity from age and the loss of capacity from cycling. The cells in my motorcycle have managed a bit over 7 years, and are now at around 60% of their original capacity. I'm not replacing them with LiFePO4, mainly because of the impact of the additional weight and size, but also because LiCoO2 cells are now safer than they were and have a longer calendar life, and it seems that calendar life is at least as significant as cycle life in this application. When managed carefully, with attention paid to maintaining SOC between about 30% and 95% all the time, then the newer LiCoO2 cells have a cycle life that is as good as LiFePO4, plus they have a calendar life that's around 50% longer. I've a set of older LiCoO2 cells in an electric bicycle that are also around 7 years old, and they are still at around 90% capacity (but they haven't been cycled that much, maybe 600 to 800 shallow cycles). NiFe cell efficiency depends very much on the usage pattern, but I used them for around 20 years or so, running high speed cameras. In practice they managed around 80% to 85% when managed properly, and that was with cells that were manufactured before I was born - they were around 30 years old when we rescued them from some old ground power units. They were still at full capacity when we stopped using them, and by then they were over 50 years old. I'm not convinced that round-trip efficiency is that big an issue for home storage, as the losses only really kick in when the cells are given a full charge to 100% SOC. If charged to 95% SOC the round trip efficiency is as good as lead acid, but charging them in this way does mean using cell-level battery management, as is the case for all lithium chemistry cells, if they are to have a long life. The main problems with NiFe is the relatively large voltage change between fully charged and fully discharged, which isn't really an issue with modern control systems, and the strong alkali electrolyte, which can be a bit unpleasant to work with.

That is quite interesting. £20 per sqm for 6" insulated panels, even at weights of perhaps 200kg+ each. Assuming you can move them and handle them could be a good idea. Put it on a suitable support and just cut off the lengths you need for your next building with the mother of all circular saws. What would you cut these with? Adding it up, the SiPs for the 8x12 I discuss above, leaving the gap for the door, are £940 at £20 per sqm. = Perimeter is 12ft + 8ft + 8ft + 7ft (5ft door gap) Plus 12ft length for roof + 12ft for Floor All x 8ft = (35 + 24) x 8 = 590 sqft = 59 sqm ==> £1180 for the panels before any wastage etc and wooden framework required etc. It is true that the panels are better, but the price just for the raw secondhand panels is the same as the whole kit. Very tempted by one of those kits. Look to be incredibly tightly priced. Ferdinand

I'm managing to keep the build ever so slowly moving forwards so a new entry in my blog at the usual address www.willowburn.net Look for the entry "Air tightness detail upstairs" which not surprising is lots of photos or air tightness membrane and tape. Lots of tape. I can't believe how much air tightness tape this house is consuming. Fortunately I found another few rolls going cheap on ebay. Also before I could do the membrane upstairs I had to lay the proper chipboard flooring in all but the bathrooms (separate more complicated issue as those will be wet rooms)

Should be having our Sageglass commissioned within the next few weeks so will finally find out whether it will control the solar gain as effectively as it 'says on the tin'.