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I've DIY'd three charge point installations now, including building the charge points themselves. The OLEV grant only applies to "smart" charge point installations, and like all subsidies it seems that the installers are absorbing the grant money as a bit of additional profit. The grant is 75% of the installed cost up to a maximum grant of £500, and guess what? No installers claim less than the full £500... There are a few charge points around for ~£200 to £250 or so that work just fine. On top of that there will be the cost of a run of 6mm² cable (maybe 10mm² if it's a long distance), plus an enclosure with a Type A RCBO, a couple of henlys and lengths of tails cable. Not wise to connect a charge point to a spare way in an CU, IMHO, as it will draw 32 A for several hours on end, and things may get a bit warm in there. Another thing to consider is whether you want to install a tethered charge point or a non-tethered one. Tethered ones are easier to use, just unhook the cable and plug in, but they look a bit uglier, as there will be a few metres of hefty cable coiled up around the thing. A socketed unit means getting the lead out of the car every time you want to charge, and plugging it in both ends, but does tend to look a bit neater. Personally I'm not a fan of smart charge points, for a few reasons. Firstly, on a point of principle I object to data being collected about my car charging habits, for several reasons, not least of which being that a failure to charge for a few days would be a reliable indicator that I'm not at home. Secondly, users of various makes of smart chargers are reporting that, like pretty much all app controlled kit, reliability can be a bit flaky. Tales about of cars not charging as expected, charge rates being randomly reduced, user interfaces falling over and some charge points refusing to play nicely with some devices. The bottom line is that a charge point is just a switched power outlet, and doesn't need anything other than a means to turn it on and off. I prefer being able to do this easily and reliably with a switch, as it then needs no 'phone, internet connectivity, sanction by whatever authority controls the smart features, etc in order to work. I want to be sure that my car charges when I want it to, not when someone else decides I'm allowed to.

Our ground floor is largely open plan but with a separate snug. I knew i wanted this as a quiet escape from my kids so got mbc to build a separated twin stud on these walls that was filled with sound insulation and then double skinned both sides with sound bloc and habito and fitted a fd 60 heavy door. I am really pleased with the result, but has ended up being the room my kids watch movies and play Fornite with the surround sound turned right up and you can hardly hear it in the rest of the house.

what's a kindle?

What’s a fax machine?

Yep done a big extension with it and it was really good. Jointstik and filler take some getting used to, but once you’ve mastered using Fermacell it’s a really nice product. It is just very heavy..!!

oh, has anyone tried using fermacell and then not needing to plaster? would make up for the dif in price and save a very messy trade

I'm going to enjoy this soooooooooo bloody much .... wait for it ......wwwwaaaait .... Stop over thinking it ...... Yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss, Get in !

It depends how you will heat your home! Have a look at the specification for the product you are planning and you will see the difference in R value, it will probably be about 2.27m2K/W vs 3.18m2K/W.

Do not underestimate the cost of additional fixings as you’re going to need longer screws, potentially battens too as PB screws don’t come that long. Will probably take you about 15 years to pay that back... give or take a decade ..!

You are a highly paid IT consultant and I claim my £5. Either that or you've watched too much IT Crowd

Maybe worth seeing if they would accept enhanced smoke detectors (mains linked one in each room plus corridors)

Why not use Cat5E..?? 6/7 is overkill, unless you are planning on streaming 4K HD between devices and using high speed WiFi hubs... In a house, CAT5E will transfer close to 1gbps due to the distances involved anyway so why are you worrying ..? The end device connected by WiFi will always be the slowest link.

Think I'd turn it off for half an hour or more, if it faulted on the original 5 minute interlude it perhaps would benefit for longer

Check if they will let you put a 90mm MDPE in from the end of the drive to the house as a dry riser. Cheaper than sprinklers.

Fill it with expanding foam. Maybe put some tape on the window board to stop any overspill sticking to it. Neatly trim it back when dry and put the trim back.

Is that a little trim at bottom of window on the window board? If so I bet it is hiding a bloody great big hole at the bottom of the frame. You could remove the window board and refit with some thin celotex underneath and a the back edge. Or just put up some heavy curtains.

No it doesn't, but a condition of the OLEV grant is that you have to have a charge point installed that does have external data gathering and charge control capability, much like a smart meter. You can't get a grant-funded installation without this feature. My charge point has a (manually switchable) option to charge when there is excess PV available, but the rather limited J1772 signalling protocol used for both a safety interlock and signalling maximum available charge current is a restriction. The minimum charge current is 6 A (and most cars are very inefficient when charging at 6 A), so any PV system needs to be generating in excess of this before car charging can start. My implementation takes a pragmatic view that partial charging from excess PV is always beneficial if the cost of charging is lower than the off-peak rate. I used to adjust the charge current on the fly to allow for this, but that was flawed, because the car onboard charger was both slow to respond and had a fairly long latency (it didn't respond quickly to the control pilot increasing duty cycle to signal that more current was available). I've ended up with a fixed solar charge current setting of 12 A, together with a bit of code that keeps the car charging for as long as the cost is less than 8p/kWh. If the charge cost stays above 8p/kWh for 20 minutes, then the car stops charging until either the PV starts to generate more, or until the next off-peak time period.

Most air to air A/C units are air source heat pumps... The permitted development doesn't mandate it has to be air to water, but the problem is it DOES mandate the unit is installed to provide "heating" only. https://www.planningportal.co.uk/info/200130/common_projects/27/heat_pumps/2 Leads to the question, does "heating purposes" include DHW? Either way, clearly A/C for cooling wouldn't qualify.

OTOH, having your charger track the spare output from your PV panels would be nice (and doesn't need any connection external to your household).

So there is a useful message from this. If you get PP for a new build or extension, that removes your permitted development rights, that removal only takes effect when you start the development. So build all the outbuildings you want now, before you start, using the PD rights on the existing structure and you have neatly circumvented the removal of PD rights.

https://www.rubberroofs.co.uk/installation

Yes, Wago DIN rail connectors is the best I can think of, too, but I can't help feeling that for the number of connections involved there could be a neater and more economical solution.

We moved in this month last year - the build [TF] from ground being broken to moving took 9 months - the build route we opted for was builder and sub contractors - I swept up, made the tea and did the painting - internal and external. I like to think we have an upper end spec and all this came in at about £1800 - £1850 per sq metre. [Landscaping included] Take a look at my blog which details the build - which was a 165sq metre 1.5 storey TF house with natural stone external wall and stand alone oak frame carport.

There is good advice on this thread - mainly to take time and care yourself, but I do not think we have an expert on the forum. First thought: You need to understand what "Grade A" means. I am also no expert, but the LH sample is a "tangential" cut (ie around the log) and looks to be either heatwood or a smaller tree, and the RHS one is some form of "quarter" or "radial" cut (ie out from the centre. I do not think the RHS one is rubbish - just different, through certainly faster grown. You need to know that your whole batch is the same, or at least understand the variability. They will behave differently on the wall - the LHS one may "cup" one way or the other on the wall, due to the grain - even though it is heavier. And that needs to be taken into account when you install. See: https://www.archtoolbox.com/materials-systems/wood-plastic-composites/woodlumbercuts.html My suggestion is to take advice from someone who has done lots of cladding, and be clear about what you want, to choose someone either reputable or local (Vincent Timber?), and to place quality before price. But you need to be clear on your goal first, and understand the particular boarding you are using and that it will fit your requirement. If that requires a little more care/money or a specialist (eg if your architect or other has done lots of cladding projects) to help you, then imo it is worth doing for such a prominent visual feature. OTOH timber is a fascinating subject to learn about yourself. Ferdinand

Probably those Wago DIN rail mounted connectors (I think that would count as a bit more structured?) lighting will be driven from DMX dimmers and loxone relays, all on DIN rail; while it would be feasible to terminate the runs directly into them, it seems a lot neater to do via some kind of wiring block and I can see numerous benefits (not least in context of this thread, to allow easy future upgrades/changes)

Nothing needed, if it’s a strip trench it will be protected by the soil surrounding it, if a frost is coming a roll of hessian over the trench over night. If you are talking about a finished floor slab then that is different.

Boost fan for the old fireplace... Grandparents used to have a blower at the side of the chimney breast to get the fire going.

It's not a bad idea, most the runs from switches to the central electrical closet are very short so not that wasteful. What is this beast you speak of? KNX cable looks like it is rated to 300V but I don't think it would meet any kind of regs to use it to 240V live switching. LOL! OK I under-anticipated the cultural hatred of ring mains here. What I really meant to say was for the sockets, I personally don't care that much what layout is used, and especially not in the context of home automation future proofing. Basically I'm asking the contractor to put sockets in <long list of places> and leave them to it, as far as I can. My own thought process here is I want 4 double sockets in every room (more in kitchen) so running every socket on its own circuit seems totally overkill. Grouping them by room seems arbitrary to me and may create artificial restrictions on already tricky cable routing. Double guessing this doesn't seem a good use of my time given I actually don't care, I'll just let the contractor do their job and figure this out themselves. If it was a new build maybe I'd get more excited over this, but for a retrofit the sparky is going to have quite enough chasing out of walls to do as it is without my making arbitrary dictats over this. Only exception is some circuits (freezer, A/V comms gear, CCTV/alarm, suggestions on an envelope?) will be on standalone circuits, and perhaps with a nod to future proofing to add offgrid battery backup failover (not that I'm really very excited for that). Losing a whole floor of sockets (except critical circuits) when a phone charge goes Foobar? Yeah, I'm actually fine with that. If it means I notice and decommission said busted device sooner, so much the better. But my key point is whatever wiring layout is used for sockets, home automation needs are lowest on the priority list. (Vs lighting where it dominates). (And to be clear, I'm saying all of this in the spirit of explaining how I made my own trade-offs and decisions, not trying to tell others how they should make their own choices)

If I go out when it is cold, my face can glow red, same happens when it is hot. So I am a good, multi temperature emitter. For a few hundred quid I will come and stand in the corner of a room and warm the place up. For a few hundred more I can pretend to be a voice activated infotainment centre. Got to be a better bargain than @pocster walk in glazing.

If you are only looking to get an equivalent level of acoustic performance from the OSB, then look at getting a similar surface density from the liner board, below is a link to the surface density of many plasterboard sheets. If you are using standard 12.5mm Gyproc wallboard thats 8.0 kg/m2, the OSB / ply thickness should be matched to this surface density. OSB has a density of around 640 kg/m3, you will need min 13mm boards to give you a surface density of 8.3 kg/m2

Ring finals: more complex testing, fail dangerous, less flexible, just to save a roll of cable. They made sense in 1944 when the assumption was space heating would be from multiple direct electric heaters and copper was in short supply but do they in 2019 when the sockets in most rooms, except the kitchen, won't draw a total of more than a few amps? So, for lighting, what's the actual distribution panel? A cupboard full of Wago connectors or something a bit more structured?

That's pretty much my reason

You can add rapid hardener to your mix so the motar goes off but it is only good for temperatures around zero to -4. If it's going to drop to -10 overnight then you shouldn't really be building. Plus your talking near enough 1L of additive per bag of cement so it won't be cheap.

That is good, and is probably where I’d spend my money in a TF house.

Not quite. Expansion has often come up as a negative for GRP roofs. Not known it to be a problem, but then, there are big roofs and very big roofs. I think the main problem with GRP is that people think it is easy to do, and can be done by anyone. Because of that, we ended up with the Reliant Robbin (I used to employ some ex Reliant workers, they were useless). It is like plastering, anyone can learn to do it in a day, then you just get better over the years.

Another way to look at it is, if it was so great, we would all be using it.

We’ve just done similar for a large job but have simply run 3c+E to each regular switch. That allows you to break the switches live and / or send 230v to the lamp from a central home automation hub. With that discipline you can overlay HA onto the existing generic wiring at any location, and also revert back to the normal switch if the HA falls over. Requires a lot of flood wiring, some of which will be known redundant until converted / upgraded to HA, but very future proof. Running MAINS ( 230v ) GRADE Cat6 / HA specific cables you each light switch would be a good idea for ultimate future proofing. That can daisy-chain switch to switch like a ring main, starting and stopping at the HA hub, and doesn’t need to be lots of radial runs. Yuk. I only do radials now for anything that isn’t a kitchen / utility. Why would you want to lose an entire floor of sockets for a duff mobile charger? Bedrooms / living / dining / hall-stairs-landing / plant etc all on radials if I’m doing the job ?.

Here is part of an email I received a while back. Good morning FAR INFRA-RED HERRING I have decided that the phrase "far infrared" (FIR) will henceforth count as a trigger word for bogus energy-saving claims. First used in 1923, FIR is radiation with wavelengths between 10 and 1,000 microns, which (digging in physics books) corresponds to temperatures in the range 3 TO 290 degrees absolute. That's minus 270 to plus 17 Celsius. So when regular reader Will S. drew my attention to an electric radiant heater that claimed to use FIR I was intrigued, and looking more widely on the web I found the term used in relation to saunas and therapeutic clothing, suggesting that it is one of these legitimate scientific terms that has been co-opted for the promotion of snake-oil products. I have nothing against radiant heating in principle. Quite the contrary: for selective heating of spaces that are sparsely or intermittently occupied, or subject to high air throughput, it is likely to be more economical than warm air heating. But the case study that Will sent me was amusing. It concerned a hair salon whose gas-fired central heating system had been replaced with radiant panels. Fair enough, except that some of the panels took the form of heated mirrors. I don't know what the emissivity of a mirror is, but I'll wager it's closer to zero than one. The vendor may care to reflect on that."

I work in kitchens a lot, people spend way too much time and money on them. Stainless steel is the professionals' material of choice.

Planning Permission: You could pay the planners fee for pre-application advice, or hire a planning consultant, or both. The planners may ask for elevation drawings of what the outside would look like and possibly a site plan. Sometimes there are specific reasons why the planners aren't keen on creating additional dwellings, for example highways might have an issue if the only access is onto a dangerous bend in a road. In some areas they also have a policy against turning houses into flats and may see this as breaching that policy. Building Control: Any good builder, architect or plan drawer should be able to advise on the building regulations issues. This would include things like ensuring the internal layout meets fire regs, insulation etc. If you make a "Full Plans" application to building control then building control will tell you before you start work if the plans meet the building regs. If you make a cheaper "Building Notice" application they won't, and you may not find out what's needed until an inspection and a lot of the work has already been started. You also need to check there are no covenants in the title deeds that preclude building a separate dwelling on the land.

Quick fag packet and I think you will struggle with that. The one you want to put in place from the animation I reckon will end up as a 457x152, and at around 64kg/m that is a half tonne steel. It will also protrude significantly into the room below as your new flat roof will preclude lifting it upward. The remaining steels will be a mix of 356 or 406 depth, again making it all very deep and very heavy to maneuver - there is about 5 tonnes of steel in that design. I would consider a pillar / column inserted where the 4 steels come together - it will reduce the sizes substantially and also make it comparatively easier to manage the insertions. .

Just done that Jilly 15mins ago. He drew up the drawbridge on any work bar putting in the drain around ("doing this foc" & this is decent of him). BCO visiting today, who I'll ask what best/ simplest way to remedy this trench -and- the inside exposed area: my builder drew up drawbridge on this too.. suggesting either mesh/ render or block it.. IE up to me/ he'll not be doing it included with the build. In my book its an area he exposed so he shouldn't he patch up I asked? he laughed at this.. "oh no, no", in his book we didn't agree to any inside work on the lower room he said. No point me getting firm on this, when he's said he'll put a drain in foc.. or he'll just U-turn on it. I suggested if he could skim 100mm off the drive area (he agreed before.. but now seems reticent) then maybe could he at least just lay a base for sleepers? "no need, just dry stone wall it with the stuff (slate) we've removed". I said but this would take me months. He laughed. We agreed, at least, to pick up this conversation later "see what BCO says".. "let's get the build done 1st". So we're good. But I'm worried about the additional costs of 1) the trench 'retain wall', 2) the exposed area to cover, 3) a 5m fence that needs replacing the hedge they (& scaffolders) had to destroy/ remove to get access. I guess it could be worse. And is this sort of add-on costs 'par for course' of such a build?

Depends on the filter medium. Some is just the same stuff all the way through. Others use a courser filter first, then progressively finer. The only time a single medium filter may cause a problem is if it has a supporting cage and different seals in one side.

The real problem here is that the methodology for determining cylinder heat loss uses a tapping cycle that is nothing like real-world use, if the cylinder is kept hot most of the time. As an example, I bought a 260 litre thermal store that had a stated heat loss of 1.8 kWh/24 hours. In reality, when run at 65°C, the measured heat loss was over 3.5 kWh/24 hours. That was with a double thickness sprayed foam insulation layer that I'd asked the manufacturer to add, which should have reduced the spec figure of 1.8 kWh/24 hours a bit. The heat loss was so great that our services room reached temperatures of around 40°C, and the inside face of the door leading to it cracked quite badly. I added an extra layer of insulation, by making up an octagonal box of PIR foam, which was foamed to the tank, with all the joints taped, and that reduced the loss to around 2.5 kWh/24 hours, but it still didn't meet the spec. Reducing the temperature to 55°C reduced the loss to around the spec figure. I can say from experience of having both a very well insulated thermal store and a Sunamp in the same location, doing the same job, that the real world heat losses from the Sunamp are far lower than those from the thermal store. The 9 - 10 kWh Sunamp UniQ we have has a stated heat loss of 0.738 kWh/24 hours, so less than 1/3rd of the measured heat loss we had from the "super insulated" thermal store, accepting that, at 210 litres equivalent capacity, it's a bit smaller. I doubt that any 210 litre UVC has a real world heat loss much below 1.5 kWh/24 hours, though, which still makes the Sunamp twice as efficient.

it was the successor to the clay tablet, don't you read history?

You lot have no real idea what holiday driving is like.

I've switched back on but there's still no change with the control pad display and it's not talking to the main unit. I will call the manufacturer tomorrow and see if they can help.

The 70 mm is just down to the specific make I have found, most are 75mm i would like to go down to a 25mm batten but a lot of downlights need s deeper batten. It is like black magic I really hate all the bloody figures, I’m just trying to build a nice house. I might just say fook it and stick a woodburner in ??

Or you could use these: https://www.comms-express.com/products/rj45-utp-2-piece-cat6-plug/ There RJ45 connectors that can go on to UPT / solidcore cable. Haven't used them myself on solid core, but have used the standard ones alot to make my own patch cables, not to difficult to do. This way you have the option of fitting a patch cable and wall plates in places where its necessary or terminate straight in to a RJ45 for a camera Edit: I think thoes connectors are actually for patch cable not solid core....currently cant find the solid core variant.

With my glazing you now get a free naked photo of me - top that ! ?