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Hilti gun. Maybe a bit of car body filler needed around New Year.

Following on from finishing our blockwork a few weeks ago, our brickie came back the next week and fitted the concrete cills. We then had a short wait before before our joiners could come back on site and fit the remaining Siberian larch cladding. Here are some photos. The next exterior job will be rendering, but with the winter weather it might be some time before this can be done. Our attention will now be concentrated on getting the house to 1st fix, fitting the insulation is the first job on the list.

The ones Bimble Solar are selling, used panels described as having damage to the backing sheet, though of the 25 only 3 show any signs of damage and it is very minor indeed. If I must use android if that is the only platform the "right" software is on then I will, but I am too much of a dinosaur and prefer my computers to have a decent size screen, a proper keyboard (not a touch screen thing that takes up half the already minute screen) and a proper mouse.

You might laugh @lizzie but hot glue is used routinely by the guys that do paintless dent repairs on cars- search for "glue pull". The glue is easily removed afterwards with a spray of alcohol before rolling it off in one piece. No harm is done to the finish.

Somebody I know (cough ) started their development by removing the old attached garage (which ran right up to boundary) so that foul runs could be made from the main sewer connection to the rear of the new development, constituting a start by BC. Also allowed temp connection to caravan. In the process the slab and 4ft thick founds needed removal which required a decent sized machine with pecker. Neighbour complained about vibration in their house (which also sat right at boundary) and later claimed that their chimney had been damaged, loosing pointing. Luckily a contractor (with all the necessary insurances) was used and when the neighbour complained, they were directed to the contractor for redress.

blob of hot glue?

A quick CAD model (cardboard aided design). An E/W split, with both halves tilted south a bit as well, viewed from the south. Might still achieve the objective of longer usable generation with the tilt hoping to improve winter performance. Anyone care to suggest how to model that on PVGIS?

i' glad this topic has been posted, i am (was) intending to only have ufh downstairs but this has got me thinking whether i should put in post heating in the bedrooms just in case. walls and roof to u value of 0.1 and a Zehnder Comfo Q350 R . i had already thought to put elec towel rads or ufh mats in the bathrooms to bring them up a bit, any thoughts? i reckon water post heaters https://www.paulheatrecovery.co.uk/components/post-heater/decentral-water-based-post-heater/ too much faff but these https://www.paulheatrecovery.co.uk/components/post-heater/de-central-electrical-post-heater/ would do. have and not need as opposed to need and not have, but will i need them as woud rather do without the extra cost?

Can't you CT1 a wreath to a spare bit of glass and just "get a man in" every year to swap the panels over?

You're right, @Barney12, it is a LONG way from being a usable all-electric solution as things stand; the Qontroller needs to be a lot more user-friendly and be able to deal with common usage scenarios without letting the Sunamp run out of charge. Our showers use pre-heated water, and run at about 10 litres/minute, so typically use around 2 kWh. One option I considered in order to force the Qontroller to accept charge after two showers was to turn off the preheat, as that would use more energy from the Sunamp and probably lower the state of charge below the ~50% charge acceptance threshold. However, whilst that might be fine in summer, in winter it would mean using more grid electricity, as pre-heat is provided from the ASHP, at around 1/3rd the cost of boosting the Sunamp from the grid. The way I have our system set up at the moment, including the modification I'm planning to add a time switch to reset the Qontroller, is this: Power to the Sunamp heating element is provided by the PV diverter (when there is excess PV generation) plus I have a time switch, in series with a boost enable switch, that bypasses the PV diverter. When the boost switch is on, the time switch supplies power to the Sunamp heater from 03:30 to 06:00 every morning, to ensure that there is enough charge in the Sunamp to supply morning showers (in theory the boost should ensure that there is at least 7.5 kWh of charge stored in the Sunamp, if it will accept it). After morning showers a second time switch, powering the always-on Qontroller supply, will turn the controller off for 1 minute and then back on again, so "resetting" it so that it is ready to accept charge whenever power becomes available via either the PV diverter or the boost timer. This means that the Sunamp "should" always be ready to accept charge after limited discharge, which "should" both maximise the utilisation of excess PV generation and ensure that it always accepts the top-up boost charge in the morning. Without "resetting" the Qontroller there is a risk that it could only have around 4.5 kWh of charge available for morning showers, barely enough to deal with all scenarios and leaving us without hot water for the rest of the day and evening, despite the unit having a nominal 9 kWh capacity. No, I'm not worried about causing damage, because I'm pretty certain that there is no way that the PCM can be damaged just by resetting the Qontroller. If it could, then the risk would be there if there was a power cut that did the same thing. I'm also pretty sure that the problem is wholly related to the way that the Qontroller tries to assess the state-of-charge of the heat cell. It seems that it can easily detect when it's fully charged, but struggles to be able to detect partially discharged states. I can understand why this may be, and suspect it's related to only being able to measure temperature at three vertical locations and then use that to try to guess how much of the PCM is solid and how much is liquid (which is effectively the state-of-charge). Resetting the controller puts it back to the cold start condition, where it uses the measured temperatures to determine whether to go into cold start mode, where it pulses the contactor on and off (to prevent local overheating of the PCM) or whether it goes into warm start mode, where it just switches the contactor on. The protection for the PCM is still there, as when it senses that the heat cell is fully charged it will still shut off OK. Good idea to split this out, IMHO. Not as far as I know. My unit is an eHW, and I believe the issue may impact any unit with the 2.8 kW electric heating element and the UniQ_SBC_01 Qontroller, but that is only my guess. It's not explicitly mentioned in the manual, or at least not very clearly. In the section for the eHW and UniQ_SBC_01 Qontroller there is reference to setting Option 1, which is defined as Option 1 ON = 90% discharge before the unit will accept any charge and Option 1 OFF = 50% discharge before the unit will accept any charge. One thing that occurred to me over the weekend is that if someone wanted to do as we did, and increase the storage capacity to deal with days without excess PV generation, then the better option would have been to buy multiple smaller units, perhaps. Might means some cunning plumbing to discharge them one at a time, but with a multi-output PV diverter such a system would then be better able to utilise all the available storage capacity. Having said that, adding a cheap time switch looks like it will do the job on a bigger unit, anyway.

@themods: Is it worth splitting this discussion into a separate topic? We've gone from bulging Sunamps to under-performing Sunamps and makes it a bit cumbersome to go back 12pages to see the history of either issue. May also be easier for one of the Sunamp reps to read/respond as needed (make the most of this free R&D!!!)....no replacement for Andy T? Have Sunamp responded to this issue at all? I've skimmed through most of the responses on here and as far as I can ascertain it's only an issue with eHw units? Or is it more to do with the controller that comes with that one (UniQ_SBC_01)? In which case that would impact eHeat and eDual also.... My eDuals arrive in the New year, so not looking forward to having to spend time 'fixing' this issue from day 1. Are these eHW units also? Where in the manual does it state this 'shortcoming' as I've gone through it a few times and can't see any references (I have version 2.0 of the reference manual).

And probably a rule of thumb.

I would use these rails attached to a timber frame. Very good system and you can just get the rails and clamps you need, far easier than using unistrut or drilling pv frames. http://www.windandsun.co.uk/products/PV-Mounting-Structures/Schletter-Roof-Mounting#8435 I get stuff from wind and sun, very knowledgeable firm. I've no affiliation.

Another update, this time after a week of switching the unit off after morning showers, then back on again to "reset" it. At the moment I've just been doing this manually, with the main isolator switch, as I want to see whether it's worth wiring a time switch in series with the Qontroller supply or not. Not too much excess PV generation this week, but I believe there's a difference in utilisation. In summary, this week the Sunamp Qontroller has been set to what should have been the default setting, which is to enable recharge at ~50% discharge. After ~4 kWh worth of hot water was drawn off (except for two mornings where SWMBO was away, so only around 2 kWh were drawn off) I manually switched the whole unit off, waited around 30 seconds, then switched it back on again. For 6 days out of the 7 this triggered the unit to go into charge acceptance mode; on 1 day it was already in charge acceptance mode so I didn't bother to switch it off and then on again.: Excess PV energy generated = 12 kWh Excess PV generated energy used to charge Sunamp = 11 kWh Grid energy used to charge Sunamp = 16 kWh Total DHW energy used for the week = 27 Kwh, of which 11 kWh came from excess PV generation, which isn't bad for this time of the year, in my view. I'm inclined to view this as a big improvement, as it looks as if the Sunamp is now absorbing as much excess PV generation as possible. I think the 1 kWh disparity between the excess PV generation recorded and the Sunamp PV charge may well be just cumulative error, as the PV diverter is designed to always err on the side of caution, and has a small "leak" to the grid that ensures it never accidentally imports. Over a week I can easily see that this could account for 1 kWh going to the grid rather than the Sunamp. So, in summary, it looks as if setting the Qontroller so that Option 1 is OFF, plus ensuring that the Qontroller is powered off, then on again, each morning, ensures that it will accept as much excess PV generation as possible. Unless Sunamp come up with a fix for this issue quickly, then I'm just going to install a time switch to reset the Qontroller every day, as that seems to be the only way to make the unit function as intended. It's a bit of a bodge, but at least it will allow maximum self-consumption of PV generated energy.

Enjoy: https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/forums/woodburners-stoves.73/ Specifically: https://www.mig-welding.co.uk/forum/threads/waste-oil-heater.57695/

Hello all, I am currently renovating / building / rebuilding an 1850’s cottage. Converting part of the loft and a lot of maintenance work after years of neglect. so far it has been reroofed (not by me!) and had the chimney rebuilt. Tearing up floors and down walls all messy stuff and the large garden is a riot too!

I could lend you my old, and much tweaked, Airsporter. I know for sure that it has enough poke to take out street lights...

I have no desire to try and use a phone as a computer.

Can anyone remind where I can find the post discussing how many ducts to put in before pouring slab as I cannot find it. I have so far: Main electrical incoming supply Telecoms (Phone and Tv for exterior aerial) Power to garage Power to gates and possible camera/intercom (in separate duct) Exterior lights (may come from detached garage but I realise better control from house) Water Duct from plant room to kitchen island electric and water (internal duct) ASHP (water and power) Spare All these will basically come up in the plant room and some may never be used but better to have them in when we pour the slab. Any others that people have put in or wished they have put in or can point out the thread I cannot find.TIA