Leaderboard

Mechanically, no, it hasnt changed much. Electronically, its a huge leap. Which has left a lot of them behind. And, to be completely honest, me to a certain extent. I ran an automotive workshop for 13 years. Even in that space of time, the developments were significant. Your traditional automotive technician are mostly just guessing at problems. Usually at the customers expense. You say its releatively easy with diagnostics. Well, it would be if you have a grasp of how the car works. But they invariably dont. A really easy example. Car wont start and run. Diagnostic says crank sensor. So they change the sensor. Oddly, that doesnt fix it. So then they say, it must be the ECU. If allowed, they change that too. Of course, it was just the wiring to the sensor. But they simply cant grasp that the ecu is looking for a signal. If the loop isnt completed it falls over. Because the diagnostic says sensor, they change it. Zero comprehension. I would say more than 75% of sensor faults, were not the sensors. MAF sensor faults. I reckon 99% are air leaks. Hole in the pipe. If i had a pound for every sensor changed in the UK in a year i would be a millionaire. Of course, there are people that do understand it. But you wont find them working in a cold draughty shed covered in oil and dirt. They will have a "proper" job. I did manage to employ someone who was good at this, but his mechanical skills were hopeless. Problem was, i just didnt, nor ever would have, enough of that type work to justify such a person. In reality, most of the garages locally, when faced with a problem they didnt understand would take it to the one bloke locally who did. The guy is a legend, and has no doubt forgotton more than ill ever know. The mass of equipment he has is something else too! But he is one guy. He cant do everything. The lack of any actual solution to dealing with it is one of the reasons we closed the business in the end. There just isnt the people out there that understand. Accepted that im in the south east, and that makes the situation worse. But thats where a lot of people live. I see ASHP and related as much the same. You have traditional plumbers, who all of a sudden now need to understand a whole new area/technology. There will be smart ones who can and want to learn, and do. They will be very succesful. But they will be a small percentage. Thats not going to be enough to install these systems at any meaningful scale. But they will still be installed. Badly. By people who dont understand. I dont suggest i have the answers. Just an observation.

Results for us as they come forward...(and not what I expected) Our Cool Energy inverTech Air Source Heat Pump CE-iVT9 4.3kW-9.5kW has been on standby only, for the last few weeks, and I have measured the power consumption. It appears to use about 0.1 kWh an hour. That's about 2.25kWh a day in 24 hours. We use a Solic 200 to direct our excess electricity produced by the PV to the hot water immersion. Whilst the Solic way of heat the hot water uses more energy, because it only runs using power we would otherwise give to the grid, its better for the bills to turn the ASHP off all together rather than use it to heat the hot water tank. You would think that with a high COP it would be better to use the ASHP but with the other things on in the home and the car being charged, you can never be sure your not buying all the power. Secondly I think the ASHP runs at a minimum of about 1.5kW when heating the water. The Solic can use any spare power from the PV: 10 to 3000 Watts. We could turn the ASHP off altogether and on only when we need hot water and I have decided this is a bit fiddly so won't do it. Another benefit is the fact that the hot water tank is set to 70C ( the ASHP will only do up to 60 and that is at its least efficient) and this lasts us at least 2 or 3 days before needing to be heated up again! ( We do have a super insulated tank) Days when it could be cloudy and we would have to pay for the power. ( We will turn it up higher in the winter and use it as a thermal store for night time warmth...) And finally I would rather wear out the £50 immersion than the £3180+VAT ASHP! Good luck with your project. M

Use it to switch a contactor

The backer will be ok But you will need to PU glue ALL edges and trim back the following day

It is on the wall! (expletive deleted) is it heavy. Once I've finished apologising to everyone for seriously losing my blob trying to get it on the wall I'll be hooking everything up over the weekend hopefully, will report back. In the interim I have got a Modbus connection with the inverter working. This feeds directly into home assistant. Hopefully the battery data will too. I'll also be hooking an Eastron SDM 230 meter up on Tuesday and using https://github.com/nmakel/solaredge_meterproxy to get the data into the inverter via the Wi-Fi, a pair of Raspberry Pi's and Modbus USB interfaces.

This suggests the AP transmitter power might be the issue... https://community.ui.com/questions/Connection-Problems-with-Amazon-Fire-TV-Stick/dd12a772-0d42-4761-9f10-ed73260015dc I have also heard of an issue where the Firestick has an issue if there is 5GHz networks around... https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2313785-amazon-firestick-will-no-longer-connect-to-unifi-access-points Are the 5GHz transmitters in the UDM and APs on by default? If not planning on using 5GHz you can probably turn off the 5GHz transmitter in the settings somewhere.

Says it's used for "exterior cladding" so all good imo:

It is not their job to deal with it. We have an elected government, who chooses a Chancellor, to do that job. Economists basically describe what is happening, and give viewpoints on possible courses of action, based on history and ideology.

Just make sure it says for exterior use. Don't forget anything outside will be rated for frost proof etc whereas stuff in a bathroom wouldn't need to be. For example: https://www.knauf.co.uk/store/aquapanel-cement-board-outdoor/c-23/p-555

Pre FiT days, the PV industry was asking for Net Metering. But in the best Labour Government fashion, we got a highly controlled and stupidly priced system. I think the real problem is that the DNOs modeling assumed much lower domestic uptake (systems were £20k for 4 kWp back then) and did not ask for better control/finance of the local grid.

Yep. It won’t get any cheaper if we wait.

IMHO I think personal debt is already out of control, caused by the reliance of never ending low interest rates and large borrowing giving rise to a false sense of security as to the future cost of servicing debt. People are already facing bank of England interest rates seven times more than it was this time last year. August 2021 = 0.25% August 2022 = 1.75%. and I do not expect it to go down any time soon.... Many governments have been "printing money" for a few years and propping up the economy when they should have corrected the problem by raising interest rates (including ours): Kicking the can down the road. This will all end it tears.

Sorry, Dave, have to disagree here. Remember when the sudden surge in natural gas prices occurred? Last year, well before the war. The same and worse for say building materials. And now it is partially self-sustaining as the rise in energy prices makes pretty much everything more expensive. Yes, we do hope that the interest rate rise plus "will do whatever it takes" stance of Central Banks can bring the inflation down, preventing the spiral - if moronic green policies are suspended. Look at what idiots across the world do: ignoring the lesson Sri-Lanka taught (and anyone who cared knew about it last year) they try to limit usage of fertilisers and take land out of agricultural use. Really hard not to suspect a conspiracy. Trudeau doesn't come up with ideas like this himself. https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/trudeau-pushes-ahead-on-fertilizer-reduction-as-provinces-and-farmers-cry-foul/ar-AAZSrBZ https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-62335287

The problem we have is the way Heb Homes works is you need to pay for 20% of the kit price to get the final building warrant drawings. Had I known this at the beginning I wouldn’t have gone with them. A year ago I didn’t know there was going to be a war of course. We could of course still pause but we talked that through this week. Therefore, we are going to battle through this and get the house built. We might gain by better availability of labour and materials. We’ll just have to suck up the extra cost. We are also using all our own cash so no mortgage so the quicker we build it the better.

I was told by materials engineer that it is best seal tubes. Any atmosphere (oxygen) inside the tube is used up and cause a small amount corrosion, once that process has happened the atmosphere is inert, so no further corrosion occurs. An open vent tube gets replenished with new oxygen so corrosion can continue.

There is no FIT anymore. If you have the space for more PV I’d say “go for it” regardless of what other decisions you make.

Thanks Joe, we have 3.99kw of PV, but cant install any more without risk of losing the FiT. Fitting a solar diverter + slightly over sized tank (300L) is on the cards to try and support the DHW.

I think it should have a small plastic screw in the top hole (ours does) which allows you to bleed / shut it as required.

That's an air valve. Keep it clear.

Bingo! Solar PV is live - fresh from a 4 day MCS course the two lads were on it and we were connected by1:30pm today 12x325w panels managed an output of 10.76kwh from then until the end of the day. Can't wait to see the stats over the coming weeks. @Ronski - will PM you details shortly. Ta

And it looks alright. Alt + 248 gives you a °

+1 An alternative is to prop the ledger up on some timbers against the wall and drill through it like that. You could pre-drill the ledger on the deck then just spot through when it's propped.

I can't speak of the technical programming of the heat pumps themselves, but I think there's a big difference between what should be done and what is done in the market. To design a heating system using a heatpump or a gas boiler is exactly the same process if you want a properly designed heating system. As follows: calculate heat loss calculate hot water demand calculate total heat demand size heat emitters based on design temperature drop of the system and flow/return temperatures select your heat emitters based on heat factor and pipework emissions (this also varies depending on radiator connections) calculate system flow rate including pressure drop and flow velocity size pipework and pump accordingly (with heatpumps this might include the buffer) The differences between your fossil fuel boiler and heatpump is largely the flow/return temps and temperature drop across the system (which can be managed using a buffer in heatpumps) and thus flow velocity and rate. Using this method it's a fairly simple process to future proof the heating system for upgrade to heatpump in the future. The problem as I see it is that most installers doing gas/oil, don't bother to do these calculations, using rules of thumb instead which can be totally random. But with these systems you can get away with it because you just chuck in a big engine. Not so with a heatpump. I reckon if we rejigged all the existing fossil fuel systems we'd manage to save well in excess of 15% of gas, if not a lot more and have decently heated houses. Talk in the industry appears to be edging towards hybrid heatpumps using small heatpumps added to existing fossil fuel boiler or new hybrid boilers as a transitional phase.

Generally right but I would take the board over the flanges to improve adhesion and reduce possibility of leaching or a potential crack line

That has nothing to do with taking the power away. Energy is always conserved, to if the PV module receives 1 unit of energy, converts that into 0.2 units of electrical energy, then only 0.8 units are passing though to raise the temperature of 'something else'. As you say, 'up north', and to be honest, down here in the far west, we are not bothered too much by excess temperatures. So it may be worth looking at your house design, and orientation to the sun, to work out if it is really the roof causing the problem or the gable ends i.e. if one faces SW and gets a good solar bashing in the afternoon.

We use a laser and put datum marks usually 1m above finished floor level around the buildings corners. . We then build the corners up to the desired height then run the walls in. You can get a bit of line sag on a long run so we usually tingle the line to a datum in the middle of a long run.

A better detail would be a ledger board bolted to the wall external walls and the hangers hung on this. Parge the wall behind it and then and then set a line with a laser. Use chemical anchors to secure threaded bars and bolt it home. Much easier to get airtight and level than hangers built in by the masons. The inner wall plate can be done last. Just get it close enough with the blocks and leave enough space for a wall plate + a morter bed. By varying the thickness of timber and mortar you'll be able to make up any height from about 40mm to 100mm.

Looks not bad to me...if I jave a spare 5 mins tomorrow I may just run it through mathcad. Its definitely a good analogy ?

I'm genuinely interested in how you did this calculation/ know this.

saw this article and wondered how many potential houses could be suffering similar issues if windows not fitted correctly. I appreciate its in America but could easily happen over here. https://www.greenbuildingadvisor.com/article/rotting-walls-in-a-sip-house?utm_source=Newsletter&utm_content=GBA+eLetter&utm_medium=Newsletter&oly_enc_id=6799F8366167I0Z

Goodness your busy! will do