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Not asked her how she is getting on with it since she has got back. Seems like an excuse to go around

Swindon is essentially a permanent trade exhibition and the stands are unmanned. You can go to open days etc. We went and met some suppliers there on a normal day when it is just the unmanned stands. We arranged meetings with some specific people in advance. When you go in you can get a scanner as you do in supermarkets for shopping. Each stand has a bar code and if you scan that then they will send you information...I scanned masses of stuff, my postman was loaded down with brochures and samples coming for weeks. There are permanent displays of all sorts, brick walls roofing bits you name it.... Potton also have a house there to walk around too. It is the Marie Celeste if you turn up without any pre arranged contacts but even so it is a good place to look at products and collect info.....we saw our sunpipes there on an unmanned stand and ended up buying them. You can touch and feel products etc without any pressure, there is just no-one to talk at the time, you have to do that as a follow up so its different to a show. TBH I think 2 days at the NEC is a very long time. I would save your hotel bill. I live about half an hour away from NEC so go to all sorts there and most are good value if you can get cheap or free tickets. Parking is about £12 on site or you can park off site somewhere and get the bus but if you don't know the area I would pay the £12. I usually pay to park on site even though I know my way around its just quicker and easier. With most of the popular shows I think it is best to get there for opening time get in and get around early, if you can make your plan in advance of which things you want to look you will get to see more because by lunchtime the place is so packed you can hardly get near stands to talk to suppliers. Some of the the theatre talks are useful and if nothing else are a place to sit down. If you can take your own packed lunch and drinks you will save yourself a fortune on the day and ages standing in line waiting. Enjoy it.

Your garden building isn't built yet is it? Couldn't you "just" raise that?

Yes, get the design and budget sorted. Get plenty of quotes. If within budget, refine, finalise and go ahead, if not, revise spec.

Here you go. Sorry about the poor picture I just could not get the lighting right.

Yes but if you read the post it’s not one room - it’s really three rooms opened out into one large area, and therefore the lighting needs to adapt to each of these three uses - kitchen/dining/lounge. What I have done with automation is actually the opposite of your photo - that is the solution with lots of light switches on the wall. What I have is more akin to having no wing mirrors, but a single reversing camera capable of looking at any of the space behind.

@lizzie We had Self Build Zone site insurance which cost us a fortune. We didn't need site insurance towards the end of the build and we got an unoccupied buildings and contents policy. We did this through Sennocke who are behind Self Build Zone and we were told that policy could be converted to standard buildings and contents cover. We found Sennocke very helpful, we dealt with Jenny Burr on 01732742102

@recoveringacademicThis makes life v easy! Much appreciated for the offer but I think I owe more folk on here than deserve. Keep her and crack her open when the beams are in!

+1 to ‘simplification’ being the key aspect. As as an aside: I had a neigbour visit my build on Monday and she said “your light switches are funny”, to which I replied “they are part of an automation system which allows me to control what each switch does”. She looked perplexed and then said “but if they’re computerised how will they work when there is no power?”

In my view the benefit of home automation is to simplify and automate - not just to be able to do the action on a mobile phone. I think I ve said before - I have home automation and I ve used it to make my life simpler - example, my kitchen/dining room/lounge which is open plan has 12 different lights or groups of lights - it differs in want I on depending upon what the room is being used for. I certainly don’t want 12 light switches on my wall and don’t want to waste 5 minutes remembering what each one does whilst I try to change the lights. Instead I have one switch and four pre-programmes moods - this is nt complication, this is simplification. I m also sure someone in Russia could probably hack in and switch my lights off when I m eating my tea but I ll assume that I m not particularly high up there current list of targets.

right...... Hopefully these are visible when I hit submit reply. Ignore the various pipes coming off the fittings - its under test (6 bar and no leaks so far). Counter battened ready for led spot lights (didn't want to mess around with the vapour barrier) - got plenty of ceiling height. Any constructive comments gratefully received! PS translation available for those of you who notice the Welsh scribbles.....

What is the difference between remembering to turn everything off before you go to work or away, and rememberer to turn everything off via your smart phone, when you go to work or away. And what happens when you forget your smart phone, or change it and the app is not supported. I think this is the real problem with home automation, it is overly complicated and expensive for little return. And that is before you take into account all the security issues.

Ebico Night Owl; I have known about Ebico Zero for a bit and for those who dont use alot of gas have a nil standing charge, great for those who still want to cook on gas but nothing else. Now they have introduced the "Night Owl" tariff for economy 7 users for 0pkWh - yes its free! Well nothing's for free - there is a standing charge, its fixed for 12 months pay by DD, you need a Smart Meter operating in credit mode, or an Economy 7 Credit Meter. And there is a fair use being 60% of your bill in off-peak hours. All that said you could get all your heating and hot water for free, especially if you were time shifting a heat pump and storing the heat generated for use on demand during on-peak times, but remember the size of the storage you will need is twice the size of something working with E10 Ok, so I can hear the cogs going round, so please go and check out if it might be something for you? https://ebico.org.uk/energy-plans/ebico-night-owl/ Now I am not sure about those of us who have E10 meters so I may have to do a bit of research. Octopus Tracker; For those of you who might be into Demand Side Management of their energy then the next offering is VERY interesting! Claimed as Britain's first tariff to truly follow the wholesale price of energy! Every day, they update the price of your energy based on an independently published wholesale market price, so just like shares the price can go up as well as down. However this means they could pay you to take energy! So with an email IFTTT app to link to your Sonoff WiFi switch link you might be able to automatically take advantage, and charge your electric car, store energy for your heating and hot water and use these on demand at other times. Please go to http://octopus.energy/tracker?r=mhIlS to check out if this might be able to help you save money on your energy bills You can also register your interest at the same point. Kind regards AndyT

I agree, but the return on investment, taking into account the battery life, still doesn't quite make purely financial sense. One issue is really the whole life cost of battery systems, and this seems to mainly be driven by the relatively short (in house lifetime terms) battery life. Flow batteries seem to offer a probable solution to the whole life cost problem, but they are a long way from being a viable market-ready product, it seems. Getting batteries that have a calendar life out to 20 to 30 years would be a good goal, as then that fits with the sort of life that people might expect for major household fitted systems (tanks, boilers etc). We're some way from that at the moment, with even the best lithium cells still having an age-related degradation of a couple of percent or more per year. They are getting better, and are probably now just edging ahead of lead-acid in terms of age-related degradation, so there's clearly still room for improvement. Cycle life isn't so much of an issue, as this is highly non-linear with regard to depth of charge/discharge, so can be managed by just limiting the state-of-charge (SOC) range over which the cells operate. It's pretty easy to get well over 10,000 to 15,000 useful cycles out of present day batteries with proper SOC monitoring, so it seem clear that it's age related degradation that is the present limiting factor.

Do all you can to connect to the sewerage. A Saniflow is going to cost a good few hundred so spend that on digging up a trench instead. Saniflows are the work of the devil, so avoid one wherever even slightly possible.

Here goes - I have had to publish them separately as opposed to an entire work book - Hope people find them useful. I no longer have the source document and please remember, these lists have been "tuned" to our particular build so some things may not apply universally and or are missing. PW. Brick layers.pdf Carpentry.pdf Electrican.pdf Groundworks.pdf Landscaper.pdf Misc.pdf Plasterer.pdf Plumber.pdf Prelims.pdf Roofer.pdf

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