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More useful: https://www.topten.eu/private/products/refrigerators https://www.topten.eu/private/products/freezers But we probably don't have a clue how they translate in practice: https://omattos.com/2021/11/11/appliancegate-the-energy-efficiency-fraud.html How does the "0.3 kWh/day" Samsung unit manage it?

No 1, the immersion heater. Put the 3kW element back. Fit a PV diverter, These send excess power to the immersion heater and by pulsing the power ensure the power sent to the immersion heater exactly equals the surplus that would otherwise be exported . The tumble dryer. Good for getting a heat pump model. Now modify your usage. A TD does NOT need to "dry" the clothes. We use it sparingly for "fluffing" the things like socks and towels. A short time in the TD then finish the drying on the airer (or outside in summer) is all that is needed to ensure fluffy towels. The rest of self use is shift the use of the big appliances to the middle of the day, on a timer if you are not in. The other thing I do is have the timer for the ASHP set to start DHW heating at 11AM. By then there should be reasonable PV generation so some or possibly all it is using will be from the PV. Fit an export meter (if you don't have a smart meter) so you can see how much you are exporting to see how well you are doing. I am only exporting typically 100kWh per year.

Are we talking lime or cement for the repairs? If it was mine I would slate pack the horizontal cracks, check to see if the LH side has foundations 50mm wide with a pick or wrecking bar half way along the bottom brick. Then fix SS expanded metal lathing, infill holes with lime mortar first, double nail the expanded metal at 300c/c and lime render it.

As this was the external wall I’m presuming it’s still structural so pulling out and replacing is a lot of work. As it won’t be seen anyway rake out sections of mortar and repoint, ramming the mortar into the voids with a piece of wood or blunt chisel. The bars would do very little. After stabilising the rest of the wall you could chisel out around the pipes, pull them together, sleeve through the wall and then make good around them. Split a length of plastic pipe along its length and slide over the pipes to sleeve instead of disconnecting and passing through.

Gas use for the whole of April was just over 1m^3, so ~0.38kWh/day. Thus a 90% reduction in direct gas burn. Result. https://www.earth.org.uk/note-on-solar-DHW-for-16WW-UniQ-and-PV-diversion.html#2022-04-30 Rgds Damon

Feeling both silly and satisfied at the same time right now. I read the (bleep) manual before starting, setup the two levers on the drill and set to drilling 26 - 30 holes in concrete. 14 holes in, over two days, and a lot of aching joints and muscles last week, I started up again this morning before the rain comes. 2 more hours done and I think that lever is showing a drill, not a hammer. Flick. OMFG. 10 minutes later, 2 holes done. Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. The rain is now arrived, so waiting until tomorrow so as not to mix water and electricity. But now looking forward to the job 🙂🙂

We use a dc inverter motor dehumidifier to dry clothes. Runs on about 220w and can extract 25l a day in ideal conditions. Very efficient, when coupled with a pulley ceiling clothes maiden, it’s almost as good as the tumble drier but without the preferred fluffiness.

Plus another for commercial epcs.

There are 2 types of energy assessor: On construction. Primarily to show compliance with building regs so must be able to understand drawings, building regs, building technology and many pages of full sap documentation. Can offer lots of advice on energy efficiency, build efficiency, cost effectiveness etc, etc. As part of as built assessment the epc is done. Cost £100s per property. Domestic. Use rdsap and undertakes ‘survey’ of property. Lots of box ticking. Cost £35 per property, do 10 a day including travel??? Make your own mind up where the expertise is. For disclosure I’m ‘on construction’ but leaving as red tape, evidence gathering (photograph all parts of the build process please) will mean I’ll spend 90% of my time chasing information, that is probably not available, rather than doing assessments and advising clients

Hmmm. Who on earth designed these energy efficiency ratings? Fridges... (D) Liebherr 390 L for 98 kWh/yr @ £1079 https://ao.com/product/k4330-liebherr-comfort-fridge-white-73722-30.aspx (E) AEG - 404 L for 121 kWh/yr @ £700 https://ao.com/product/rkb638e2mw-aeg-fridge-white-76030-30.aspx Ok - seems legit - but then we get this... (E) Beko - 101 L for 137 kWh/yr @ £199 https://ao.com/product/ur4584w-beko-fridge-white-76186-30.aspx How is that even in the same league? Since when is 1/4 of the usable volume for the same energy consumption a sensible comparison? Freezers... (E) Liebherr 276L for 250 kWh/yr @ £1250 https://ao.com/product/agb728e2nw-aeg-upright-freezer-white-77126-34.aspx (E) AEG 280 L for 248 kWh/yr @ £760 https://ao.com/product/agb728e2nw-aeg-upright-freezer-white-77126-34.aspx Less difference when it comes to freezers it seems... (F) Beko 86 litre for 226 kWh/r @ £245 https://ao.com/product/uff584apw-beko-under-counter-freezer-white-26887-35.aspx Again LOL at the utter hopelessness of the "efficiency" ratings though at least this one scores an F rather than an E. Interestingly the "fat upright" white Beko freezer nails them all on "litres per kWh per year" beating even the freestanding chest freezers on this metric: (E) Beko 404 L for 290 kWh/yr @ £629 - but it's 70 cm wide and 75 cm deep https://ao.com/product/ffep3791w-beko-upright-freezer-white-78914-34.aspx Then fridge freezers... (D) Liebherr - 268/103 L for 203 kWh/yr @ £599 https://ao.com/product/cnd5703-liebherr-fridge-freezer-white-92694-28.aspx (E) AEG - 230/94 L for 248 kWh/yr @ £570 https://ao.com/product/rcb632e5mw-aeg-fridge-freezer-white-77129-28.aspx Ok - there's more in it again here - and a couple of absolutely spectacular ones from Samsung: (A) Samsung - 273/114 L for 108 kWh/yr @ £1350 https://ao.com/product/rl38a776asr-samsung-bespoke-fridge-freezer-stainless-steel-85149-28.aspx (C) Samsung - 276/144 L for 169 kWh/yr @ £729 https://ao.com/product/rb38t602cs9-samsung-rb7300t-fridge-freezer-silver-76991-28.aspx How are they managing that? Certainly the way to go if starting from scratch. I wonder if it's worth retiring an A+++ rated fridge freezer from 9 years ago? Not at all it seems. 221/91 L for 158 kWh/yr (if the tests are comparable) and £529 each still isn't terrible. I should check their real world consumption when I get roundtuit. https://www.appliancesdirect.co.uk/p/kg39eaw40g/siemens-kg39eaw40g-iq100-freestanding-fridge-freezer An experiment that's fun - try loading the fridge / freezer with water as they are emptied. Keeping an "I wonder what the load capacity of this shelf is" amount of bottled water in a fridge helps extend the cycle time and reduce start/stop losses I'm told.

Yes I am a firm believer that batteries don't yet make sense for a typical 3.68kW system where it is relatively easy to self use it all, but at 5kW that would surely make battery storage viable to power stuff after the sun has gone down. I set the ASHP to heat the DHW to 48 degrees late morning so if the sun still shines and nothing else is using the PV, the immersion can heat the water hotter (probably meaning no ASHP input required next day)

I've never seen a "proper" slowcooker with any kind of simmerstat or thermostat, they generally switch the elements between series and parallel to get different ratings? Multicookers a different kettle of kippers tho...

Not normal but could work, if the loft space is outside the heated environment, your heat loss could be large, even when very well insulated. Don't you have a cupboard or wardrobe you put the manifold in?

no that was just the stock design but my designer has altered it in the first one to simplify the design, this could easily be done on the mix one thanks

Getting there. The top courses on the right were completely loose, I just took them down, no tools needed. Now it seems I will have no choice but to take quite a bit of the wall down to be safe. My question is: how much can I leave? The reason is I want the right column next to the garage door to stay partially up so that we could attach some kind of a gate to it or at least lock a gate to the column once we remove the door. Will something like a stair step from say a 1.5m column height down to a meter or so for the rest of the wall be OK? Just to keep the column stable? Don't need the rear column.

Stainless steel helical bars. I've been warned-off galvanised when using lime for that reason. The only lime that Jewson and TP do is Hydrated Lime which would need to be mixed with cement which is what I am trying to avoid. "It is not suitable for use in mortars and renders without Portland cement as it is a non-hydraulic product". Think I may have found some lime mortar without a crazy delivery price which should be able to get here soon. Fingers crossed

Or polyurethane.

"The Federation of Master Builders (FMB) says that the government needs to pull its finger out and tell small builders what it expects from them." As if the government has the contact details for all the small builders. I think it's really for the FMB's to keep their members informed. On this one, the Government has done a reasonable job on publicising the coming changes. It's a shame the industry is, in general, reluctant to any such changes.

the regs at the point you apply in England and Wales

I have decided to let my conservatory go “uh natural” whatever I put on it disappears quite quickly.

Well everyone, it's in, it's level and it's solid as a rock! Thanks to @Nickfromwales and @Temp for their advice, I couldn't be more grateful!

you take the furniture/rugs and paraphernalia in the existing house and transfer it into the new house, rearrange to suit. hate waste

Ughhhhh. I hated this job so much, I came to love it. Strange, but true. Two chippies helped me on our build for a short period: one sloppy as hell, 'tother, well, finicky is an understatement. Each had a different approach to the same issue. They only worked for a day or two, the cladding took me a full month (on and off) 2mm should be achievable quite easily: and less than that with a bit of care. For me the key thing is - while working on your own - it takes time. Soooooo much longer than working with someone who can share the job. And by that I don't mean a willing but disinterested / clueless / completely unskilled / person. I'm trying not to say - partner. (She won't read this, I hope) I found that battens need to be held by the head of the screw: not the whole of the (in our case) concrete screw. So the batten needed to be pre-drilled. That means that you can vary the tension by a mil or less quite easily - and fookitrightup if you don't predrill the hole. Because when you come to fit the counter-batten, the process of backing off a screw on an under-batten which has not had a pre-drilled hole, it pulls a large section of the batten one way or the other. Cross-making. One of our walls, in profile, bears more than a passing resemblance to a propeller. Excellent training for battening. I ended up making my own shims (modelled on trouser shims) . Thats when I learned (from the fastidious chippy) you can use multiple layers of DPM to get the battens lined up to within half a mil... He was on day rate. I feel almost nostalgic about it now @Dreadnaught: if you weren't so far away, I'd come and help ya......

Mortar has almost zero tensile strength. For more precise removal, use the SDS to drill a couple of holes side-by-side in the mortar course you want to yield, and bang a 25mm chisel in; a few sideways taps will loosen the brick. For rough removal a sharp bang with 3 kg sledge hammer works wonders though you will lose some bricks, so if you want to reuse them just work steadily breaking the mortar courses. What size digger needs to go through; just once or daily? I'd leave the brickwork to the RH side of the window alone if possible and remove the house side. If you do go the right try to keep 2-3 bricks intact on the turn, otherwise you could loose the end wall.

Just 'learning on the job' with my Mother. It is really difficult to know what to do, a walk in shower, with a level floor (wet room) is necessary, them may sure it is large enough for a seat, controls are reachable from that seat. Lavatories need to be higher, and if doorways can be wider, or at least a 'straight line' into and out of them, that helps. Remote control light switches, but make sure you can override them manually and you have plenty of pre-programed controllers. An oven with a drop down door, an induction hob (as it is not very hot) after use, taps that are easy to use, without looking like industrial ones. And a very good chair. One thing I have found is that old ladies can be quite determined and are happy to get on with it, it an amazing manner. Considering my Mother was sent home from hospital 'to dies within a week to 10 days' after a couple of strokes and a hip replacement, 5 months on, she is trotting about and starting to look after herself again. Just this morning, as I took her a mug of tea, she said that she had to get up during the night to wee. I said that is a victory, not a hindrance. She agreed.

This 1956 paper is easier reading. It explains why we don't use lightening to charge the national grid. The Electrification of Individual Cloud Droplets.pdf

Got to love the Journo that wrote that piece... Pedants hat on: Zero (Amps) times tens of thousands (Volts) equals zero (power). Very useful. In fact, there is some current just not very much. In the order of a few microamps. Maybe a milliwatt on a good day. Not to say that a static shock isn't potentially painful... When I was at my first job with the MOD I'd just fixed a load of component drawers to a brick wall in my lab. This was over a long lino-topped workbench and I'd let the brick dust from the fixing holes I'd drilled drop down onto the bench top. Being the clever ideas man that I still am, I pinched the caretakers hoover and lifted it onto the bench, climbed up and began hoovering. It worked like a charm until I got to the bit under a steel gantry just above my head. The first I knew of it my hair started to rise up then suddenly SNACK! As if the shock wasn't painful enough I recoiled and smacked by head on the steel. The Triboelectric effect taking place between the lino and hoover's rotating bristles taught me a lesson I'll never forget - leave the cleaning-up to others.

Yes @SteamyTeaall the ratings in the EU and UK just got reset so that A means 'best' again (rather than A++++++++++++++++). Rgds Damon

Says the man with water that is softer than a babies bum to start with. So really it's move to the Scottish highlands, build a house, install some PV, design and build a diverter - then fluff any amount of towels for a short time - but only when the sun shines... Sorry I guess you already did😁.

Watch it Boris the centimetre police will be along shortly with a fixed penalty notice and the mods will have set up an inquiry.

I saw this discussed somewhere else and a figure of 50W per square metre when it is raining. Solar panels will give more than that, and I am sure the sun shines more than it rains, even in Scotland.