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There is a 100% sure fire method to not cut a finger off. Fit the grinder with the side mounted handle. One hand on the trigger one on the side handle, so two hands both in use out of the way. The thing that stops you cutting your self is focus and having your mind on the job. Thinking of bacon sandwiches or that bird that just walked past is likely to end up with a didget missing.

Interesting modelling study done here which nicely shows this - Passivhaus with a big PV array generating 11 MWh/year and consuming 4 MWh/year. With no battery they were predicting 2.2 MWh/year would come from PV. With a 5 kWh battery they were predicting 2.9 MWh/year would come from PV (700 kWh/year saving, worth about £70). With a 10 kWh battery they were predicting 3.1 MWh/year would come from PV (900 kWh/year saving, worth about £90). With a 40 kWh battery they were predicting 3.3 MWh/year would come from PV (1100 kWh/year saving, worth about £110). It's worth noting that they could probably have saved ~200 kWh/year by switching the dishwasher from cold fill to hot fill and another 150kWh/year by doing the same with the washing machine, as well as increasing the fraction PV directly used by both as hot water can be time shifted more easily. If you want to have a battery - say you have issues with the reliability of your electricity supply - then it really doesn't matter how much it is, you get nearly all the savings from a very small battery. The PV in that case (well, if it were possible to export it all - they had a severe export limit) would be worth ~£770, and at current prices the system would not have cost much more than a 13 kWh battery.

They do change the numbers a lot. Last summer the overnight rates were peanuts, and even negative on occasion but they have been relatively high over the last month or so apparently. You really need to work out costs for a year to get a proper view of how much money you can save.

On our project, the only people to provide dwg where the company who did the topographical survey and architectural technician who I specifically asked to provide dwgs (as he did the existing site drawings). I think they're mostly worried you'll steal their drawings and use them for other purposes, or that you might unintentionally change something and cock up the drawing leading to a build problem. However, if you really want dwg files, you can import pdfs created by cad software back into a cad programme and go from there. It's also sensible not to fully rely on drawing dimensions as many of the larger general arrangement drawings can be 1:50. Many suppliers won't accept drawing dimensions other than for quotation purposes and insist on as built dimensions for production. In my case, I can tell you that with this project, if I had gone with drawing dimensions, both my steel frame and glulam beams would have been wrong.The steel columns wouldn't have been high enough and glulam beams would'nt have reached the end walls of the house. That's some professionals for you....

Right, a big thankyou to all that have given advice, big thumbs up to ProDave and Onoff. I managed to isolate the fault by splitting the ring in to smaller sections and have bypassed this with a new length of twin and earth. After discussion with Onoff looks like I could have just left it as is and in essence used the split ring main as two radial circuits, but would have needed a few new MCB's so that the rating of the wire didn't exceed the rating of the existing MCB. Anyway, running the wire was a simpler solution in the end, so all working again now. Thanks everyone. To anyone in a similar situation and testing for a neutral/earth fault - remove both ends of a ring main from the MCB when testing the RCD...

This changes the balance significantly! Best of luck. As for green building. Minimise your energy demand. Build your house out of things that were recently plants. Heat it with renewable electricity. Use an insulated raft foundation like isoquick or kore. Minimum use of concrete and thermally excellent.

It is illegal to burn waste timber that has been treated.

If the heating isn't on, it's because the house is currently warm enough. If the house is warm enough, then the floors won't be cold! As a point of comparison, we have a 4 bedroom house just shy of 290m2, with passivhaus levels of insulation and airtightness, and MVHR. We have concrete floors throughout the ground floor, except for the TV room. The floor remains a pleasant continuous temperature no matter what the weather is like outside. As for running out of hot water, put in a big enough tank and you never will. If you run a lot of showers, I'd also suggest getting a waste water heat recovery unit. We only have a 250 litre unvented cylinder heated to 50 deg C by a 5kW ASHP, but we very rarely run out of hot water, even with two teenagers in the house. It happened for the first time in months the other day, when all four of us had showers in quick succession and one of the kids was in there singing away for god knows how long before we realised the water was still running!

For dishwashers it's pretty simple - they've only got a single inlet, but most (not all) will take water at up to 60°C. I switched from cold to hot fill at a previous house where we had a pretty rubbish Smeg dishwasher picked up off Gumtree and it was a revelation - cleaning was vastly better and it ran through cycles much faster. Typically they use about 10 litres per wash for the more efficient ones - about a bucket of water - and if your plumbing takes anything like that before it runs warm you've got a problem. Any cold slug isn't a big deal - essentially they fill up with the required amount of water, and then the electrical heater kicks in to warm it to the temperature required by the cycle (which is why hot fill runs faster). I just teed it off the kitchen sink and didn't worry about it after that. Hot fill washing machines is rather more controversial - it only works if you supply both hot and cold fill to the machine, and there is only one manufacturer I'm aware of who does them (Ebac). I'm not convinced that they're particularly valuable, especially as washes are getting colder over time, but £100 extra for 150 kWh/year is a better deal than £7k extra for 1000 kWh/year: not that either is good or you could keep a straight face describing them as an investment, but the washing machine is significantly less bad. There's an additional problem - the battery controllers out there are the moment are pretty dumb, and don't really connect to what the grid actually wants. If you've got PV at home batteries will try to charge off it rather than export, even if there is a lot of demand during the day with the gas plants working hard but they're expecting a storm with loads of wind to hit that night and drive spot rates negative. Hot water storage makes sense with a very large cylinder, and I'd also argue for a very well insulated house a thermostat which turns up and down in response to electricity prices makes sense too. Well insulated houses - particularly ones with cellulose insulation - seem to have a time constant in the region of 24 hours, and that effectively allows you to use the house itself for a lot of thermal storage. The problem is that for a bigger system you're going to be MCS registered so can be paid for what you export. That means you're only saving the difference between the export rate (5p or so) and the ~15p you're paying, for the 20% or so of your total consumption that your battery can provide - overnight loads in summer, basically. It really doesn't add up to much money. The only way I can almost make it work is the Octopus/Tesla tariff, if you don't have a Tesla car. No standing charge and net metering with any deficit or surplus valued at 11 p/kWh. If you've got a very big PV system and are exporting most of it, the difference between 5p and 11p/kWh might hit the £500/year or so at which you can just about justify a Powerwall. It's worth noting the batteries in that scheme are managed remotely, so will form the sort of virtual power plant required to make batteries actually useful, as per @SteamyTea's comment above. That's reliant on a particular tariff being available for the next decade or more though...

Let me fix that for you we are were not on bad terms ?

They always go on about a call out charge if it’s your fault, must tell you ten times in each attempted engineer call out, never turn up when booked, tried to get a line moved to allow extension to carry on. in the end, I bought the jelly crimps, crimping tool and moved the cable myself, I gave myself a good discount? and did a better job than these clowns who also tell you they aren’t insured to go up lofts, under floors to run cables and just want to clip cables along skirting boards...

We have very similar wall build up & had 150mm EWI We made plywood boxes to line the rough openings & project into EWI layer about 70mm For the larger windows we screwed a block of compacfoam to the external wall to add additional support, but not sure it was neccessary.. plywood boxes themselves were very ridged once screwed & foamed in. Additional benefit of air tightness taping being really straightforward

Remember to put the wagos inside an enclosure/box

2 of the Wagos with 3 terminals. Don't connect the earth if there is none on the transformers. Blues on one Wago, browns in the other.

I have tidied up my first window brick aperture, the new £6 Erbauer disk works like a dream, it slices through the irregular brick overhanging in the cavity like butter. I will keep the more expensive Marcrist disk in reserve for a more demanding future job. Getting right into the upper corner of the window opening next to the lintel is still not possible with the 4" grinder, that looks like a job for a multi tool.

Not any more, they've changed their validation requirements on having that note on (although some local authorities need an argument to accept it!)

Yes, very true. When we dismantled our old bungalow we disposed of the bathroom and kitchen fittings, bricks, concrete blocks, floorboards and studwork on Freecycle and Freegle. We never used a skip at all.

Turned out it came out without any drama. Job done.... hopefully. Just running it back up to temp now.

I use a fair bit of resin, usually just buying the cheapest. I have the resin gun which is a bit wider and heavier duty than a standard skeleton (silicone) gun. If you don’t have a resin gun make sure the tube of resin you buy fits a normal skeleton gun. Also make sure the drilled hole has been dusted out, either by a resin bicycle type pump to blow the dust out of by a vacuum cleaner with a bit of 6mm tube botched on to the end of the hose with duct tape, and when you start to use it the first 3 or 4 inches of resin is not used as it won’t be mixed, there is a distinct colour change when the mixed stuff comes out. For 6mm screwed rod I would be drilling a 7 to 8mm hole. Fantastic stuff.

You are unlikely to sever a finger with a 4" grinder. A tendon, maybe. Eye protection is at least as important, Sometimes bits of blade can flick up into the eyes.

I'd say upside down, the first lip should divert the water around the lip for the vented part. Also I presume that is the fixing hole at the bottom.

Have you looked into the cost of batteries and the associated hardware, and done the sums based on how much energy you can realistically buffer? I'd be really surprised if there's a net financial benefit to a battery system in a low-energy house over, say, a 10 year period. Even with PV, the problem remains: over winter, you don't generate much energy, so your batteries will be underused. Over summer, there's often so much insolation that you don't have a hope of using it all, so your batteries will be full early in the day and you still end up exporting. Shoulder months can be better, but even then it's hard to model day-to-day activities unless you have a good handle on how energy is used (or will be used) in the new house. I don't know whether these very cheap overnight tariffs from, eg, Octopus change the numbers much, but I personally think there are a lot of numbers to be crunched before making decisions like these.

Yes indeed I abandoned my first trial when I noticed the reduced ragged edge to the cutting disk.

I don’t really know the details. I’m sure if he could avoided it he would have .

Hi @JamesP Yeah, maybe longer term I think certification might easily claw its fee back in added value, especially if climate change really starts to show its claws and building standards are forcefully raised by the government. Although, that said, if house performance was properly monitored (temps, energy demands, etc.) that would surely be sufficient evidence for a potential buyer. And your realised DHW and heating requirement matches our modelled values quite closely, which is good confirmation (we're 233m2).

I echo all the good advice above, avoid 'greenwash' and the implication that a low energy house (I'd like to ban the word 'eco' - a Grand Designs disease) imposes a lifestyle on the occupants. MVHR is a good example - provides energy efficient ventilation to your otherwise airtight home by harvesting the heat that would otherwise leave with the stale air being extracted. Some people extrapolate this to 'you can't open a window in summer'. Of course you can, winter too if you like. Our slider was open for hours yesterday as the dog pinged in and out. Invest in good fabric design and attention to detail when building. Treat the house as a system, not a set of unconnected functions (e.g. heating, DHW supply, ventilation etc.). Pay as much attention to summer overheating as you do to winter cold. You can spend money on capturing waste heat from your shower, use rain water to flush the loos and even try and recycle your grey water but you quickly enter the world of diminishing returns where you spend much more than you will ever recover in benefit.

I got my roof from Catnic (same as Tata) and the first/starter panel arrives cut to size and you only cut the last panel.

They will give the same cost to run but cost of immersion and Willis is as cheap as chips, no idea of electric boiler costs to instal. Once the infrastructure is in you can always change the heat source at a later date .

Thanks all, good starting advice. I’m looking at SIP’s for the build, and very much passivhaus standards in terms of being “green” rather than just fitting LED lighting and water saving appliances! I think I’ve already decided that given the spec of the house I’m hoping to achieve, GSHP would be a waste of initial outlay, (but can you really not plant a bush or tree above the pipes??) I’m hoping I can be convinced that ASHP can do what I want efficiently. I understand the convenience and minimal cost of it but I really don’t want to install gas. It’s one service I wouldn’t need to pay for install, the government are scrapping it from new builds in that not too far future, and I’d like our energy to be from renewables. I plan on solar PV on the roof and already use a supplier that is 100% renewables. Yes my gas is currently carbon offset but if I can ditch it’s use altogether, then that’s better for me. My current cottage is tiny (not sure exactly of the top of my head), and it suits me (despite having to keep a lot of my tools and equipment in a storage unit miles away) but it’s not how I would like to being up my children if I can afford not to. I’ve got each of the rooms down to what I think is the smallest they can be comfortably, I don’t see the point in self building if I’m going to compromise to such an extent where I cramp things in and force the kids to share rooms growing up. I may as well buy something already built and save myself the hassle and work! Although, if when I get to the point of showing my drawings to an architect he can show me a way of shuffling to save space then I would of course be open to it. We need a workshop as we often work from home (one of us will be full time once we have children) so included in my estimate of size is a garage and a workshop along with a disabled accessible guest room with en-suite for the MIL who may well become a permanent resident. I guess my point is, I’m building for the future and don’t wish to grow out of the house, I plan on building green also in the sense of sourcing locally, choosing materials wisely etc to minimise impact there. Does anyone have a good source of information on the different types of foundations? I know the plot etc will affect what can be used but I’d like to understand all the different options.

Had plenty of rain so far since starting but not sailed of down the Tamar yet

Hi Have done the first pour today and all went well and no blowouts so happy days ? Must say a big thanks to Dennis from Insul Hub for all the help. Sleepless night before hand and concrete came late as a brake down at plant but all done and cleaned up by 2pm.

And if it is a functional alarm, and properly installed, removing the screw will open the tamper contact and will result in alarm going off even if the alarm isn’t set. you may need engineer code to carry out a reset, user code nit having the appropriate permission to do so.

You set the roof out so you end up with an even cut at both ends, then you cut the first sheet longways and re bend the upstand, do the rest of the roof and if you lucky when you get to the far end you have the same size cut, cut this and again re fold the edge.

As @Iceverge says, I have a reasonably large stone clad "cottage style" build to passive standards. As I said recently to @shuff27 when showing him the build, I can't think of any things that I'd tweak if we were doing this over let alone fundamentally change. Have a look at my blog.

The cost of cleaning up a leak can be pretty expensive so double bunded makes sense to me. Near neighbour had a tank leak and the oil went into the gravel surrounding their drains.

Welcome. I keep directing people to this but have a look at the Green building store denby dale passivhaus you tube video's. In my opinion 30-40m2 per person is generous living space. With cleverly placed windows it will feel much larger. @TerryE has a good setup for what you're after. A traditional looking house build to modern standards. Timber frame is only one way to skin the cat though. Be careful of all the greenwash out there. An very large poorly built house with a high heating demand and a few bolt on "eco" bits and pieces will do more harm to the environment than a conservatively proportioned smaller dwelling built properly to the building regulations.

I did hours and hours of sums and spreadsheets on this one. The best year round solution I could come up with was build a passive house. (square and simple with no conventional heating system worked out cheaper than a building regs house). Note mains gas isn’t an option for us. Provide space heating using an air to air heat pump. Heat DHW via night rate electricity. Install 4kw pv to help DHW in summer. It was a pretty close run thing with omitting the PV and using an ASHP for space heating and DHW but the initial capital cost was conservatively €4000 higher. The break even point was 20 years when the ASHP became cheaper (using an optimistic COP of 3 for DHW and heating). Even after 25 years the ASHP was only in the lead by €800. That was assuming it ran flawlessly for all that time and I ignored the extra cost of interest on the €4k. Note the sums would sway drastically towards the ASHP if we had a conventional heat demand. We went with the former as a plan. At the moment we have a 2kw resistive heater in the hall(€35) providing space heating (€2.56/day for 20deg everywhere) and a 300l direct UVC providing hot water ( Using about €1 per day for 2 showers and a bath). We haven’t installed the a2a unit yet or the PV. I’m going to monitor the first year and see how we get on in actual usage before redoing my sums. I have a sneaking suspicion that we’ll never install anymore heating but we probably will put in PV.

Welcome. Get a good book about physics. The two main areas are material properties and thermodynamics. Both only require basic arithmetic, so no need for a maths book.

No, but I do live on my own, but 5 adults in neighbours house and they seem clean and tidy. If I needed more hot water, I could fit a larger cylinder, cheaper than a new boiler. Read my rely about the flow rate, it is enough to run two showers as it is, easy to fit another pump to run more, but I would be running out rooms to fit showers into. How well does a combi boiler work in a power cut. At least I have some stored hot water, definitely good for 2 days, probably 3. The flow rate of most, cheap, combi boilers is pretty pitiful. Had one in my old house and it took 15 minutes to fill the bath. This is pretty pointless really, you do not understand, and cannot be bothered to learn the differences in the technology, you just have a very backwards view on heat pumps. You assume they are low powered, only low temperature, are super expensive to buy and install, while any gas combi boiler has infinite capabilities, gives 100% reliable service, costs the same as a week in a Travel Lodge (do they use combi boilers in hotels?) and produce less pollution. I am not going to change your mind, but I will pick you up every time you say 'they don't work' or similar, as that is just nonsense, and I have no tolerance of people that talk nonsense.

if I understand from your photo, water is flowing into your garden from the uphill side ? French drain along boundry with perf pipe and pipe it away downhill. Add latrerals to it from the garden as well if it hangs wet. The question is where you pipe it to. Old houses pipe it into the sewer but this is frowned upon now. Where does your roof drain to ?

Dig a couple of holes, one inside your boundary and another where the trench might go. If they fill with water, a soak away won’t work use it for a pond or bog garden. If it is just your garden holding water, you might be able to drain it. Trial holes about 2ft deep can be dug by hand and should give some idea what’s going on under ground.

If this is a high water table, not much you can do. If this is water running down the hill, construct a berm around the perimiter of the garden to divert it around your land.

Hello Eckybloke. You may not be able to do this and it may not suit you if you have young kids. Looks like your ground water flow is towards your garden. What about a small pond on your side of the fence. Make it two different depths, 1.2 - 1.5 m in one spot, 0.3m shelving to zero at the other. This leaves a bit unfrozen at depth but allows frogs and small birds to enter and bathe in the shallow water. Ask you neighbour if you can chuck the soil over the fence to create a planting bund and put some good looking but low growing trees on top of the bund to give you colour all year round, some shelter for the birds at high level and hedgehogs etc at the base. Often you'll find the pond stays partly filled all year round, great for the wildlife, you could even plant some sloe bushes on the bund and make gin. If you have a friendly neighbour then they may well be fine with this type of proposal. Sometimes it's about working with the ground water rather than trying to fight it. It will take less than a day to make the hole with a jcb which can hopefully reach over the fence too. Then you can play for months setting up the pond planting and watching the wildlife discover your garden. It may become stagnent if you over feed it but you can aerate it with small air pump.

Pretty much, i used white cement and lime instead of dye. Also i cast it in situ so i had to polish the top afterwards. Came out ok but definately not perfect. Looks pretty good though.

I made some concrete worktops for the kitchen and utility, 40mm depth, two with under mount sink. Kitchen sink worktop is 3.6m, utility 2.4m and the island 1.2m x2m with hob. Major challenge was the weight but they are in. Tiles are temporary. I had a quote for 5.4K so thought I would give it a go.

It's perhaps worth having a read of the Kore foundations paper that Hilliard Tanner (an SE who's a bit of a passive slab expert) wrote: KORE-Passive-Slab-Design-Guide.pdf

Well I ended up with wood! If I thought that this would be my forever home I would have gone all out for the composite but I can’t say it will be so for a fifth of the price wood it was and it’s pretty smart looking

I'm sure everybody has come across this before! Caution it has expletives might not have copied well for that reason ? angry ANGRY BT customer! Very Funny! - YouTube

BT has gone to the dogs (since I left 18 years ago ?).

Pity Wago don't do these: [US$1.26 55% OFF]LT-933 Compact Wiring Cable Connector Push-in Conductor Splitter Terminal LED Strip from Lights & Lighting on banggood https://banggood.app.link/WjLrXtmGkeb