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If it works for you then that's OK, but it's worth bearing in mind why smart meters are being rolled out and why the energy companies are spending millions on promoting them. Smart meters won't save consumers money in the long term, that's not why they are being rolled out at all. The problem that smaller energy companies, in particular, and the government regulator, who wishes to promote a more level playing field for energy supply, has is that energy is sold wholesale on a 30 minute spot market, with the price varying widely from hour to hour. It can even go negative at off peak times, so generators have to pay suppliers in order to take their energy, as well as rising to close to, or above, the retail price, so suppliers lose money selling it to customers. At the moment, suppliers take that market risk. They try to guess what the wholesale spot market will do over the next 12 months or so and then set their tariffs so that they can make a profit. Unfortunately, with such a volatile market, and one that's been made more volatile with the increase in variable generation capacity (wind and PV) and the decrease in steady generation capacity (mainly nuclear), small suppliers often aren't able to stay in the market (plenty of evidence for small suppliers going bust, seven collapsed in the UK last year alone). The big suppliers may well have enough reserves to weather a bad spell in the market, hence the concern over unfairness. So, all the suppliers have been lobbying hard for years to try and get rid of the risk they carry in this volatile market and place that risk on consumers. Nothing particularly wrong with that, except the best way to do it is to introduce a means of being able to adjust tariffs every 30 minutes, so they track the wholesale price and then persuade consumers that this is being done for their benefit. The suppliers then carry no risk, and can just charge the wholesale price, plus their operating cost, plus their profit. It's a guaranteed profit scheme for suppliers. The problem comes when consumers want to try and compare prices. The only way to do that is to compare the average price, however, that's not very representative. For example, those who have electric storage heating and live in a cold part of the UK are pretty much fixed as to when they need energy, they can't just turn off their heating if the price rises for an hour to around 30p/ kWh (which it is predicted to peak at when the fully agile market is established). Most consumers won't have any way of being able to accurately predict their energy bill from one month to the next, as they will only know the price for any 30 minute slot after the event, or very shortly before. Tariffs like Agile and Go are really aimed to get users to fit smart meters, with the incentive of a tariff that, right now, may look attractive. However, once everyone is locked in to smart metering, then it will be near-impossible to make a judgement as to which provider gives best value, as that is bound to depend on trying to compare 30 minute prices against an exact pattern of energy use over a year. The suppliers know this; the pricing model will be more complex that that used by mobile phone providers, and that complexity isn't likely to result in best value for the customer. The other problem with smart meters is related to data security. The data standards used are far from robust, and there are clearly some privacy concerns over that. For example, think how useful it could be if a household's energy consumption pattern changes, such that someone with ill intent could be fairly confident that the house was empty. That's a pretty trivial example, but it illustrates just one potential vulnerability in the data handling system for smart metering.

Close up results of first print. For scale its about 2" long. Pretty pleased with how it turned out. Surprised how much force it took to break off the chimney given that its got a hole down the middle.

We had a similar restriction and definitely broke it a fair few times, especially when MBC were on site, as they tended to work from dawn to dusk (and beyond at times). We did try to keep the noise down as best we could, and in reality there's very little possibility of nuisance once the house shell is up and weathertight, and most of the work has shifted to inside, anyway. My guess is that if you were using a digger or mixer outside the allotted hours then someone might well complain, but with luck no one will bother too much if you're just doing other work on site. The exception to that would be if a neighbour objected to the planning proposal and remains opposed, as by working outside the permitted hours it would hand them ammunition for a legitimate complaint. Having said that, what's the worst that can happen? The first breach would just be a warning from the local authority, and it would probably only be repeated breaches that would cause them to take action.

Its alive! Just. Having survived being powered up with a reverse polarity PSU (my fault) its printing it's first Benchy. Whole printer will need bolting down to something rigid because if the floor isn't dead flat the gap between head and bed isn't consistent. Should be able to sort that.

You own a plot of land that has planning permission but you've not submitted a commencement or indeed commenced with anything. Having planning permission does not obligate you to utilise it. Meanwhile you own a plot of land with boundaries that include hedges that continue to (over)grow. You can upkeep those hedges. If the hedges aren't protected you can even replace them (and yours clearly aren't protected because your planning permission shows them replaced with a fence). I think at the start of our builds we were all paranoid about how interested authorities were in such details but found reality to be surprisingly chilled and rational. Your greater concern should be neighbour relations regarding cutting out the hedges, regardless of WHEN you do it. There is (rightly) a lot of love for a well established hedge.

I went out to a number of mvhr suppliers and they mostly wanted to sell a ducting system that would have created an installation nightmare...impossibility actually....given the specifics of my house construction. ADM Systems however quickly identified the snags and solutions putting me on the right track. I then paid a £300 design fee which is refundable against a final order. I don't consider that ADM have been any more expensive overall for this approach. I do think that the other quotes I received were worthless due to the unworkability of their proposals. My system is not yet running so I cant reach any final conclusions.

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Do not do this, this is hazardous to birds and will no doubt result in birds getting trapped and die (which would be illegal and cruel). I don't get why people cannot make space for wildlife in their lives... the amount of hedging and habitat we are losing is terrifying. Personally I'm putting back in as much hedging as my site will support along with a pond.

You can estimate the cost at any time but you will never truly know the cost until it's been built. Or at least, that's my experience. We knew what our budget was at the outset and told the architect this at the beginning. It's hard to get firm ideas of how much things will cost until you have a set of plans because it's really difficult to get quotes without them from suppliers - they need dimensions to provide anything meaningful. I understand how frustrating/worrying it can be to not know full costs at the outset but you really need your design first and then go through an incremental process of tweaking things throughout the process, both design and build, to fit your budget. Having some flexibility on costs built in to that process helps enormously.

Have a look at my blog @DonGillies Our self built is stick built. A couple of experienced joiners can knock together timber frame panels very quickly. - cost wise I checked kit houses prices for a similar size and it was a cheaper. - I didn't really want to buy an off-peg design and I would have imagined it would have been expensive for it to be design and cut by a manufacturer as presumably they work on economies of scale. - I could review the timber we used - It allowed flexibility to make any final changes as the kit was going up - No risk of foundations and kit being out of sync - The big one for me. Timber frame kit is paid in advance, Stick building with timber you are paying for the materials in arrears. - Not a huge one but I would prefer to give money to local tradesmen in my community rather than a kit manufacturer for the same end product. We have a room in roof design, so ordered prefabrication attic trusses, I think this is one area we wouldn't change. As this would have not been cost effective. In terms of plant hire we hired a telehandler for two weeks (£650), used for offloading trusses, lifting ridge beams and attic trusses.

Material cost is one thing, labour another... If you know the weight of the part then material cost is easy to estimate. The slicer software Cura told me the boat/Benchy weighs 14 grams and used about 4.8m of filament. A 1Kg reel of 1.75mm diameter PLA or ABS filament is around £16-£18 from Amazon and is roughly 330m long. So the material cost was about £18*14/1000=25p or £18*4.8/330 = 25p. So even something 10 or 20 times the weight wouldn't be expensive in material. As for labour.. Cura predicted it would take about 2.5 hours to print Benchy and it actually took just over 3 hours. So if you had to pay someone to supervise the machine it would dominate the cost. It's why I don't fancy offering to print 50 clips for Peter, it could be 150 hours of time on my machine. I imagine the online places also get sent a lot of designs that don't print very well because they haven't been designed to be 3D printed. For example while you can print in mid air (overhang) there are limits or it sags. Typically you might have to add printed supports but again the slicer software can add these and you have to cut them off afterwards. The cost and times above could be higher/longer if you wanted to print 100% solid objects. Most people print hollow parts with a honeycomb inside. The slicer program does all that for you as well. You specify how thick you want the walls and what percentage of infill you want and it does the rest. I printed the boat above with 1.6mm walls and a 20% infill and it feels quite strong but I guess something like a part for a cordless tool might need a higher infill %.

Yes it does need a smart meter, which seems to be a good idea anyway (?) I've heard that about their comms before. I haven't received any 'love and peace' that I've noticed though. However, I do think they're quite open about their tariffs. I asked for evidence of the agile rate from the last 12 months in my part of the country and they send me a huge spreadsheet really quickly with all the information I needed to figure out what my local averages would have been. So I was quite pleased with that. Plus I like how flexible it is so you can switch back to regular tariff if you want to. I'm not sure how many other energy providers offer this.

Agile requires a Smart meter, and as long as you can deal with the high peak time tariff by load shifting then it can work OK. Octopus Go is similar, but offers a really low off-peak rate of around 5p/ kWh, but only for four hours in the middle of the night. Go also needs a Smart meter. We were with Octopus at the last house for a time, as they took over from Iresa. TBH, their hippy style of communication got up my nose, as I didn't appreciated being addressed by only my first name or having every communication from them signed off "Love and Peace".

No problem - about £14.5k and I only needed a reduced dig of 800mm to get the desired finished floor level. The piles were over an area of about 200 sq m, including an attached garage and were done in a week. It was the right choice for me as a deeper reduced dig would have been crippling in muckaway costs - no one wants free clay and there's no way we could have lost that much on the site.

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General pottering around tasks are fine, but noisy power tools outside are a no-no. Inside works are OK but if you are using a multi tool for extended periods make sure the windows are closed (and wear ear protection).

Urr....how did it turn out? Right....well, it's not all done yet (I'm doing an" @Onoff") . I've had to tackle other jobs in tandem to get other trades lined up. So all pipes are in, but not connected yet to my central manifold. However, have a few tips: - 4 hands are easier than two. I used my ufh pipe coiler which helped when I was on my own. - make sure all exposed nails/screws are removed! ( I spotted a few errant ones in the floor boarding, luckily none were close to the pipework!) - label all the pipes as you go. Even though I did this, I double checked by placing my son in the loft and then me blowing through each pipe to confirm each hot/cold pipe was correctly labelled. Had to correct a few this way! - Better to cut too long than too short! - Get some decent pipe cutters that CUT properly. My cheapo UFH cutters weren't up to the job, and I need to get some decent Rothenberger ones and recut. - shop around for the pipework and peripherals. Most of mine I got from fleabay. And if you plan to get manifolds, they can be £££

I looked into this for a long time before opting for a passive slab, and frankly most of what you've written is complete tosh, with no evidence to support it. In fact the opposite is true; there is a lot of evidence that EPS in wet ground doesn't absorb any water after several decades. Apart from this, a passive slab has a drainage layer underneath, so that the EPS doesn't even sit in water at all, even on wet ground (bear in mind that the base of the EPS is close to ground level anyway). I don't know where you get the idea that countries like Germany (which have been using EPS raft systems for basement foundations for over 40 years now) have permafrost, or that even the populated areas of Scandinavian countries have permafrost (they don't). I'm wholly unaware of any controversy in Ireland either, and I have been following the use of passive slab foundation systems for around 7 or 8 years now. Finally, a passive slab isn't that costly when compared with a traditional foundation. The excavation requirement is a lot less (we excavated 200mm deep over 85m² for the sub-base) and the labour is less (two blokes laid ours from start to finish in four days). Add in that the UFH can be simply tied to the steel fabric before the pour (included in the four days it took to lay our complete foundation slab) and there can be significant overall cost savings. Like any foundation system, it does depend very much on the underlying ground as to whether it is cost-effective and efficient, but for us it was actually the cheapest foundation option, when everything was accounted for.

It's made from tinfoil and toffee wrappers.. avoid ! Fitted one of these and it is very impressive in terms of thickness and finish.

Viking house were pushing a system called FreshR, making all sorts of claims about its efficiency, a while ago. Not heard much about it recently though.

@Sue B We went with an MBC passive slab on 1m-1.8m of Made Ground on top of sand, and we learnt the hard way... if you have Made Ground you must either remove it or pile around it, even with a passive slab going on top. Terrified of the expense of mini-piles, we opted to remove circa 700 TONNES of Made Ground, which we were lucky we could dump into our [lower] garden. We then replaced the land with MOT Hardcore Type 1. In all it cost around £9k in hardcore plus say £2k labour. When the Building Inspector came, he delayed the foundations install by a week whilst we commissioned a Plate Test (£300+vat) to determine the absolute force of the Hardcore, which thankfully was fine. But I'd get this done asap if I was doing it again, and I wouldn't wait to be told by MBC as their engineer (Hilliard Tanner) waited until the run up to Christmas to advise us to get this done for a January install. I'm sorry this doesn't help with the water table question - I expect a drainage engineer could advise better on this..? @vivienz Can I ask how much the mini-piles ended up being? Ballpark figures. I still don't know if we made the right decision removing the Made Ground in favour of mini piles.

Our architect had a build cost worked out right from the get go, don’t know if it’s different elsewhere but he needed to do this as the building warrant cost is calculated on the cost of the build, so he could give us a ballpark figure as soon as he had the initial drawings done, before it went into planning and I have to say he wasn’t a million miles away other than us upgrading things.The SE was engaged right away so that we could apply for building warrant as soon as planning was passed and he would have everything ready.as for a QS our son in law is one but we never felt the need for his services as we were quite happy working things out ourselves with a bit of input from builders and we don’t have anything left over other than plumbing materials as we left it to the plumber to calculate and he was an ass where calculations were concerned!

https://www.diy-kitchens.com/products/appliances/all-sinks/lago-2-double-bowl-undermount-sink/in-lag340_340/wp2087324/#.XFBLidugKUk at £140 plus VAT.

There are several single room MVHR units available that might be worth considering, but care is needed to ensure that building regs can be complied with, especially with regard to the ventilation rate for the WC and shower room. The inability to comply with building regs was the thing that stopped me from exploring the use of a very neat wall-mounted MVHR solution. It may have been OK in other countries but couldn't be made to comply here. However, it should be fairly simple to install a small MVHR with extracts from the shower and WC and fresh air feeds into the working area without too much trouble. If you're going to be using this area for long periods every day then it makes sense to try and make the environment in there as pleasant as possible, plus there should be a useful saving in heating cost.

blauberg do a de centralised system which will be easy to fit https://www.ecoenvelope.co.uk/ look under mvhr and see the blauberg system there

I was always lousy at spelling, Now corrected.

As an idea as to the benefit of MVHR, here are a couple of plots of the heat loss rate from our house, the first with MVHR, the second without: The plots show the heat loss from the house versus the difference in temperature between indoors and outdoors. With MVHR the total heat loss rate for 20 deg C indoors and 0 deg C outdoors is about 1,200 Watts. Without MVHR, and assuming the same level of ventilation with trickle vents and extractor fans, the total heat loss rate for the same conditions is just over 2,000 Watts. The MVHR reduces the heating requirement under these conditions by around 40%, a very worthwhile saving off the heating bill.

from section 6 of BBA cert, '1.24 m2·K·W–1 R value for SuperFoil SF19 (41.9 mm thick) with no air gaps either side ' wiith air gaps the thermal resistance will vary with orientation, as suggested here https://www.roofingsuperstore.co.uk/product/superfoil-sf19-multi-layer-foil-insulation-15m-x-10m-roll-15m2-1.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIs5GD97OR4AIV6Z3tCh16IQxeEAQYAyABEgJHufD_BwE although I do not know where the R values come from

Depends very much on the UFH flow temperature and the surface temperature of the floor. For example, our UFH flow temperature is typically around 25 to 26 deg C and the floor surface temperature never goes over about 23 deg C, and those temperatures wouldn't be unusual for a non-UFH floor in warm weather in summer, so whether the UFH is on or not doesn't really matter at all as far as stuff like this goes. I'm pretty sure the manufacturers of flooring products in general are hyper-sensitive about UFH because of the way older systems in poorly insulated houses had to run at higher temperatures, but even then I'm far from convinced that UFH is a particular problem. We had an area of floor in our old house (which had radiators, not UFH) that used to get up to ~30 deg C or more when the sun was shining on it, which is a fair bit hotter than any UFH would heat the floor surface to (30 deg C is over 110 W/m² for a 21 deg C room temperature, way higher than UFH systems normally run at).

No you are fine to put the heating on The problems we have is empty cold buildings goin from 10 to 25 Once the tiles are laid and grouted For 24 hour Put the heating on set at 16 max Then add a degree per week

That's a child, not a "blending thing" you nutter! It's an odd thing to have on a cylinder though, I agree.

That looks like the same manifold I used in my first house, so once you unscrew the grey / black adaptor it should leave the correct fitting for eurocone fittings Roughly £2 each on ebay depending who you buy from and what quantity.

The temperature of the air from MVHR supplied to the living areas of the house is lower than the room temperature so it won't feel like warm air coming out of the vent, but it will be warmer than air directly from outside. The only way for the supply air to have a higher temperature is to use a MVHR post heater of some sort.

Closer look and that definitely looks like a reducer - you would need to take the grey ring assembly off to replace with a Eurocone leaving the brass insert in the manifold. Other option if it is 15mm is to create a series of 15mm tails and use 15/16mm converters which are only £2.50 on eBay.

That's a Polypipe manifold with 15mm pushfits and some kind of reducer pushed in (10 or 12mm JG?) I presume you've used 16mm pipe? I'm not sure, but i don't think the Polypipe connector comes off leaving a Eurocone. I could be wrong tho, it's worth a try.

Conversely... The TF companies are generally happy to do one-offs. All that we approached were. The economy of scale is in the purchase of timber and the utilisation of the manufacturing line. Todays automated lines are driven by a cad file, the operator is just placing occasional parts and inspecting. Our kit cost included all insulation, airtightness materials, and PB, as well as cranage and erection. Payments are phased, and (eg) ours were 30% deposit, 10% on completion of manufacture but before delivery, 45% on erection, and the final 15% will be on completion of the insulation works. Our kit manufacturer is local (~ 50mi) and both they and the erection subcontractor skilled locals.

I think your pipe is 16mm? Quick check on fleebay, guy selling 10 for £25. You might get cheaper. Maybe not all is lost.

Here is what to look for when buying a stainless sink. You will find that most of the cheap sinks are magnetic which means poor quality stainless.The mirror finishes should be avoided as they scratch easily. The better quality sinks only have one tap hole and need to be ordered either LH or RH drainer. https://www.thisoldhouse.com/ideas/5-tips-shopping-stainless-steel-sink

A miracle...? ? They are called eurocone adapters and get them here But at nearly £5 each, you may be best just binning the manifold and getting a new one.

Ive never been so excited about another mans bathroom before....

I would love to have that but just can’t get it in the plan. A precious version had our kitchen at one end of the house purely to allow this type of larder arrangement. Maybe i’ll give it another go. I was always very jealous of MILs larder that had an 8inch window frame, no glazing but a wire mesh in the larder. It was lovely and cool.

On the contrary Jack it's honesty I'm after! I'll have a re-think!

Not building related as such but there are a number of tech folk on here who may wish to refresh their skills (or people who might want to learn). Udemy are running a few free online courses currently. They seem to be rolling out different ones daily so best to sign up asap to get the course for free as I imagine they will be time limited offers. I'm not recommending them as I haven't looked at any of them yet but might be worth signing up while they are free if any grab your interest. If I find any others later I will add them to this post. The Complete HTML 5 Course - use code FREEHTML5 Photoshop CC for Beginners with CC 2019 Updates - Use code FREEFORFRIENDS2018 Scrum Certification Prep +Scrum Master+ Agile Scrum Training - Use code PWRSCRMFREE Data Analysis with Pandas and Python - Use code APRILMAGIC Excel VBA Programming - The Complete Guide - Use code GAUNTLET SQL Masterclass: SQL for Data Analytics - Use code SQLMASTERCLASS Total Beginners' Guide: How to use an Android Smartphone - no code needed Microsoft Excel Masterclass: Complete and Concise - Use code HAPPYNEWYEAR The Complete Front-End Web Development Course! - Use code FBFREE18 The Complete C Programming Tutorial - Use code ALLFREEE

Probably like chicken ...

I have a portal frame building with concealed gutters . having had this for 30 years here are my exploits of the year If gutter or down pipe gets blocked --where is the overflow going to go? my gutter was made from galv steel --not my spec ,but what they did . a perfect cold bridge which after 10 years rotted through --and probably from underside as it is sitting on a galv beam . so It must be grp or something plastic to my mind It must be sat on insulation if any part of it is exposed to heat from house or condensation will be a problem even zinc will corrode over time if not a clear air flow on underside .same goes zinc roofs must be air flow on underside .not sat on osb more down pipes than you think you need would be my suggestion + how you going to get at this gutter to clean it out -- mesh on top will not stop build up of fine sludge over time . the solution for my building was to remake the 8" x 8" gutter by lining it with 3 layers of grp condensation problem never cured ,but as i don,t heat that area much now and have tried to seal it off --its not a great problem