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The DC array had me thinking..... bigger array and no need for any grid-tie and its constraints. Then I thought of keeping things all AC but splitting a bigger array up into 2 halves or 3 thirds and just having one as the generic ( no grief from DNO ) 3.96kW array, and the others as non grid tied PV > SA dedicated arrays. Then a third option came to my attention, the SolarEdge inverter, with export limitation. Whack the lot on the roof, grid tie, and the system restricts itself to 3.96kW export. The caveat is that the DNO are still as aware of this as they are of inverter driven Heatpumps ( still in the dark ages with both ), so they may ask for a witness session ( some charge for that ) to actually witness the unit actively limiting. Once satisfied, they sign you off and thats that. More to follow when I dig a bit deeper on that, but ill add to a relevant PV thread instead of cluttering this up.

Blockwork done for now, about a thousand in. All on hold for now until the steel posts come in and are fitted.

Prices are different down here, but probably higher than where you are. Here are some guide prices from down here: Brickies are between £150 and £180/day, excluding their labourer Electricians between £170 and £200/day, reasonable joiner is around £180 to £200/day Plumber at least £200/day, often way more; I've seen some close on £300/day Decorators around £150 to £160/day (just basic gloss and emulsion stuff) General builders vary a hell of a lot. I know a reasonably competent basic general builder who's around £160/day, but only really any good for basic stuff, and at the other end I know an outstandingly good chap that's £220 a day, but is worth every penny. Labourers vary a fair bit too. I can get young lads with strength and stamina but little knowledge for around £60/day (cash in hand) or pretty good, experienced labourers for between £80 and £110/day (the latter for a good worker who can be trusted to dig trenches to the correct spec, mix muck exactly how the brickie wants it, etc).

For those who may be trying to load shift their heat pumps to an off-peak tariff and may have not heard about Economy 10, this site might just be the place you want to go to check out just who can supply you and who has the best prices. The site is independantly run by Mark, who was frustrated when he moved into a new house, trying to find out just who did E10 and what prices they sold it for as none of the comparison sites list it. Most areas of the country have E10 times of - 00:00 to 05:00 then 13:00 to 16:00 and 20:00 to 22:00 (10 hours) I have been using this for some time with iSupply energy and currently pay 7.5pkWh off-peak. If i had an ASHP with a Cop of 3 then the running cost would be 2.5pkW thermal - less than 1/2 the cost of gas depending where you get it from. Having 3 periods during the day means that you can charge bi-modally and the thermal store can therefore be 50% smaller than if you were doing it with Economy 7. Just food for thought. KR AndyT

Our tiler did the wet-room floor tanking (Impey system) and first coat of wall tanking. I did the second cross coat of wall tanking. In another bathroom where we had a low profile shower tray, I did the pre tray install tanking (per @Nickfromwales 'bomb-proof method'), plumber installed the tray and and tiler did first coat of wall tanking, corner strips etc. As for the wet-room, I did the second layer of tanking ready for tiling the next day.

I fixed that for you ?

and that's as long as your heating engineer doesn't go, 'you're buying a what?', 'it works how?' 'phase what?' 'do you not just want a combi boiler?'

Flint work gettng there

So, my first post.. I'm trying to kill two birds with one stone at the moment. I used to be a CAD Draughtsman in manufacturing and I'm refreshing my skills so that I can possibly get some 'gig' freelance work online. I'm looking at building a large (9.5 x 5m) Summer House in my garden so I thought drawing it up would be a good idea; I'll have my plans building ready and at the same time I can get my CAD skills up to scratch. I would put my skill level at strong DIYer, we bought a 'do-er-upper' about 12 years ago and I've done just about everything on the house - new bathroom, kitchen, garden landscaping, large decking area, fencing, decorating etc. However, this is the biggest project I've taken on by far - I love a project!! I've got some more first draft drawing to do and then I'll have loads of questions I'm sure. I look forward to my time on here and hearing from you. Cheers Jim

That's a rather nasty threat to make. I'm not sure I would feel comfortable about dealing with someone threatening to walk off a job just because you don't agree to them ripping you off on another piece of work. He's not the only one who can review a working relationship.

I noticed the Economy 10 tariff mentioned elsewhere and thought it would be perfect for my needs if we went electric for a year, but as you correctly point out, it doesn't appear to be available in the land of the "Hot Press".

@JSHarris, seen the email to AB cc'd ET AT, AB is on holiday ATM so will (I guess) reply on his return.

By way of another comparison, we paid Scottish Water £1000 for the road crossing under a 3 metre wide single track road, so double that for a dual track road. That was to excavate a 900mm deep 300mm wide trench, lay their pipe in the bottom and put duct in for electricity and telecoms as they filled then make good. In our case no traffic management, just a heavy steel plate they could push over the trench when someone wanted to come past.

We recently [ past few weeks ago] contracted a local firm to do our road crossing - it was a single track road and he put in the mains water pipe and ducting for a BT line. The price charged also included taking the mains water into our plot, installing a boundary box and setting up a stop cock for the builders. All for a touch shy of £1k. This included the road closure permit. I would suggest you do ring round and get some other quotes for this particular aspect of your project.

I've just looked at our ground works breakdown of cost, at 2013 prices. We had two service trenches crossing single track lanes, one carrying a power cable the other carrying the effluent discharge from our treatment plant. The cost breakdown from our contractor's QS is: Effluent drain road crossing - Mill Lane Excavate trench across road. £216.00 Allow for reinstatement. £900.00 110mm effluent outlet pipe. £77.76 Pea gravel bed and surround to pipe. £117.29 Test foul drainage. £90.00 Electricity main road crossing - Mary Barter's Lane Excavate service trench 1000 deep in road. £252.00 Allow for reinstatement. £1,050.00 150mm rigi-duct. £67.79 Draw-cord. £7.14 On top of this I paid the council for a licence to dig across these two highways that cost around £500. That fee included the council coming out to inspect the road surface reinstatement standard late in the afternoon of the day the work was carried out. I'm not sure of the road widths, at a guess I'd say around 4 to 5m long trenches were dug across each.

So you asked him to quote for X and he was happy to do that and provided a price, now you've asked him to quote for Y and Z too and he's threatening to withdraw the quote for X unless you contract him for X, Y and Z? That sounds pretty poor to me. I have to say our groundwork contractor offered a reasonable price to start with but anytime we wanted something fractionally different the additional cost came in way above what we felt was reasonable when compared to the price of the original job. Almost like he felt he would use the opportunity to maximise his profit. And in the early days before we wised up he would 'suggest' things that could be done slightly differently but we soon noticed that he was changing a considerable amount extra for each of these little suggestions, some of which didn't amount to much, so we kept having to say, just get on with what you've been asked to do. On the odd occasion when we did want one of his suggestions we asked how much extra he would charge immediately and decided based on that whether we wanted it or not. Maybe the ground worker feels that he has underpriced the original quote? Did you have other quotes to compare it to?

You're a gent. I'll just finish dinner and I'll get on it! Going to take a while with these Lidl radiator rollers mind!

Yes, like Lancias, they had had their full lifespan before the monthly payments had finished.

Hourly rates here would be perhaps 15% below Jeremy’s quotes,depending on busyness, deals and whether the customer is a regular etc. Perhaps a plus or minus 10% tolerance on that. Less for cash in hand, of course. Ferdinand

As @JSHarris infers, there is a sweet spot for RHI... You have to hit a bare minimum to qualify for RHI, and then its at its maximum level for payment as it is supposed to supplement your heating costs to bring them in line with those of more efficient properties. In reality, you can get RHI at its maximum level, then install decent windows and loft insulation and basically take the money and run.... no-one ever checks !!

Depends on how much heating the house needs. For us, RHI would have paid a bit over £80 a year for 7 years. The additional cost of having an MCS approved ASHP install was around 25 times greater than this, so it would have cost a great deal more to have an MCS (and hence RHI) approved installation than we would ever have got back. The same is usually the case for any new build, even one just built to building regs, as the RHI scheme really only makes sense if the house has a high heating requirement, so mainly applies to older, less thermally efficient, homes.

Yes. Forever rubbing itself in circles.

Trying to get my head round all this. Now that Sunamp make a unit that will do DHW and UFH is there a need for an ASHP? I realise that the ASHP could provide a means of cooling a near Passive/Passive house and charging the Sunamp. I think I can cool my house quite considerably using the chimney effect and for when the sun is not shining how much will it cost to buy/install and maintain an ASHP and how much electricity could you buy with that amount to top up the Sunamp when the sun is not shining? I think as some are doing on here it may be a case of living in the house for a year and then deciding if we need an ASHP to supplement the Sunamp. I am waiting for a quote from Sunamp so hopefully it may become clearer then.?

Plenty of them surely? Surprised you didn’t find your bath and bog there

Because an ASHP could charge your PCM34 (DHW preheat) with 3/4 times less electricity than using the grid when the sun aint shining.

Blockwork

Black circles work same way as Asda and similar prices. Sometimes one is cheaper depending on make. I usually compare both because sometimes one of them will have an additional discount on 4 tyres.

Isn’t that the car with the wanky engine?

There is only one benefit to suppliers from fitting smart meters, and that is so that they can introduce flexible on-demand tariff changes, to remove the risk they carry at the moment from having to guess what the mean spot market wholesale cost will be for up to a year ahead when setting tariff rates. Right now the wholesale cost of electricity varies half hourly from a negative price per kWh in low demand, high generation, periods, to well over 20p/kWh during peak demand periods. The suppliers want to introduce variable tariffs to suppliers, using the smart meter and it's internal house display, to both set the meter tariff at any time and tell the customer what it is. This sounds reasonable until you look at how customers are going to be able to compare suppliers. With tariffs changing on the fly there will be no way to easily tell if one supplier is offering better value than any other.

@AndyT, I may be better asking this directly of Sunamp, but I was one of the very early adopters, and have one of the very first Sunamp PVs. Part of the deal was that Sunamp wanted to have the option to examine the cells/heat exchangers after a time to see if using softened water had any impact; they were going to send me two replacement cells so I could swap them over and send the old cells back for examination. I've had an ongoing problem with sporadic over-temperature trips on the resettable thermal trip on the heater block (my unit has the very early firmware that I believe doesn't have a run-on period to reduce heat-soak) and I've already had to replace the thermal trip in an attempt to cure the problem (it hasn't fixed it - it still trips once every couple of months or so). It seems that the newer unit has completely removed these issues, and as I have been contemplating getting some add-on cells to increase the capacity of our Sunamp PV, I'm wondering if it might be worth changing it for a new unit?

Well that's the approach I have gone for in my non-passive, but well insulated renovation/extensions. I was going to go for an ASHP to cover me for the winter demands when my 3.8KWh PV is 'down', but now I have gone for two UniQ eDual cells (24KWh) to provide me with DHW and space heating (UFH). This will mean I am totally reliant on electric (and may go for Economy 7 meterage but didn't want to be forced to adopt a smart meter). I want to see how the house performs this winter and then adapt things next year if required. I may also opt for non-gridded solar PV installation later on.

So you mean you’re not a cat with many identities? I am disappointed ... ?

Great thread, thanks everyone for all the contributions. ln my own installation I’m going for a Sunamp for my DHW, if I coupled this to the PV array described by Nick (above), why, in a well insulated house, do I need a ASHP?

Why are you not paying the architect, you said he had done 2 designs and wants some money, what is the problem has he not done what he was contracted to do, was it an agreement that you don’t pay until planning is obtained. I wouldnt avoid him, you may find yourself on the wrong end of a solicitors letter.

£1 from Poundland

We have a very simalar chimney and will instal a wood burner We build in a liner kit and don’t intend using a flexible pipe The chimney kit was designed through our local plumbers merchants Bends etc and cost about £400 The only thing that BC insisted on was that it was built in small stages and back filled around the liner with a 7-1 sharp sand mix to allow expanding and contracting Perfectly smooth joints and loads of photos

Q: "Who should do the wet room tanking?" A in my case: SWMBO. Or in our case Wetroom × 3 ? I am quite a good carpenter (by hobby and anal attention) so I fitted all our formers. And did the plumbing. Our tiler was excellent, but he only did the tiling. So I offer an alternative opinion to Ferdinand, but the main thing is that whoever you get to do it doesn't cut any corners and gets all of the details right. I personally trusted Jan to do a pukka job here more than an unknown tradesman. This isn't something that you can fix up or correct later: if the tanking is compromised then you are in real trouble and are in for major rework.

I thank you

All moot if you choose a "bathroom fitter" as they ( as I do ) do the lot from start to finish. If separate trades then deffo the tilers job. Plus, if there's any extended time between one and t'other you'll not want the tanking getting scuffed and dusty in between.

Ditto - I've just completed the tanking, need to choose tiles now so I can move on to the next stage.

Agreed early days and it took us 6.5 years of R&D before Mk1. we are now at Mk.3 - so I agree with trying to keep powder dry in the early stages. Things are about to get "very " exciting and hence why I am staying on past retirement age to enjoy it!

The plumber and tiler are one and the same where I am! He's a bit slow, some might use the term glacial even.

Always the tiler

The fault codes are below so by swapping the wires the fault has moved to the other string. Is that not what was supposed to happen.

My plumber fitted the former and tiler did the tanking

+1. Our tiler did ours. Given the state of my plumbing disasters I feel lucky to have dodged a bullet there.

@nod has it. It is not about who does it; it is about making sure that an experienced person does. You want a working wet room not a learning experience. As to how you check that ... did you for example talk to previous customers who you can call back to ask about ishoos 2 years later? In all likelihood it will be OK. Could you start a conversation about how he has done it before, in your concern to find the right kit?

When I was a small boy, the house we lived in at the time had a large brick built air raid shelter in the garden. It was dug into the steep hill at the back of the garden, so was almost completely underground, except for part of one wall at the front, with a sort of labyrinth entrance (presumably to limit shrapnel getting inside). We lived around 1/4 mile away from the Martin Baker factory, which I would guess is why the shelter was built - Martin Baker may well have been a target during the war. A friend and I found the wreckage of a crashed aircraft buried in the woods nearby, and managed to dig up an old gun and loads of ammunition (around .303 calibre). the brickwork in the exposed wall of the old shelter wasn't in great condition, and we managed to make a small hole at a mortar joint, just big enough to stick one of the rounds in. The game was to stick a live round in the hole, then chuck rocks at it until we made it go off, with the bullet ricocheting around the inside of the shelter. Needless to say, the loud bangs attracted attention and we both got marched off to see the village policeman, and hand over all the ammunition we'd collected......

yes, he priced back in January for doing all the groundworks (drainage, driveway, patio, foundation, UFH screed) and the superstructure block work and granite. last week we asked to change the Riven slabs to granite and the addition of the road crossing for the services as in January we didn't know where the services were.

Not actually bought from WREN as they refused to even quote based on plans. 'Let us know when you are in and we will come and quote 'dear'' (They didn't actually say dear it was the tone of voice.) Crossed them straight off my list.