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Could you not use an immersion diverter, after all, a storage heater is just a series of immersion elements in stone/metal/concrete blocks

Dog proof and cheap can't really be said in the same breath, but it does depend on the dog...Rolls of chestnut paling might do the trick, or even a roll of chicken wire with intemittent 'knock in' posts would keep some dogs in but maybe not a determined escapee.

Think it really comes down to volumetric capacity. Smaller volume and you can add more insulation.

It is rather scary yes. I haven’t told my other half as she’s away (dad died unexpectedly) but I think it puts the knackers on our self-build as I dread to think what the kit price will increase by if they pass the cost on to me. Have a meeting with them tomorrow.

That's my hope as well. I'm on 18p per unit until next June. Jumping ship from Bulb to Octopus was a luckily decision.

I am a bit in that boat at the moment, having fixed for a year in February. So I will miss the fun of the 80% increase in October and whatever January brings. I hope the ensuing chaos and quite possibly civil unrest will mean by the time my fixed period ends at the end of February, "something" will have happened and I won't face trippling of fuel bills.

I agree with a lot of what you say, but it's only one piece of the puzzle. This is a self locking lollipop now...energy is smashing inflation, smashing consumers on everything, pay rises and striking feeding into it...inflation is well out of control...the BoE do the only thing they can which is smash interest rates up which feeds the beast- repossessions, bankruptcy, companies going bust, people.losing jobs....we are past the point now imo where looking at energy costs in isolation is going to do anything...it will barely move the needle

It is mental, I've just been looking at what I need to do for a completion certificate so I can getnoff this variable rate onto a fixed one before the BoE start hitting us with more rate rises. I honestly think that the vast majority of Joe public seem to be unaware of just how bad things are likely to get over the next 6 months - it's almost like folks see the dots in isolation but haven't got to the point yet where they join them up mentally and have that 'oh (expletive deleted)' moment....

It is worrying....this is playing on my mind a lot at the minute and I aint poor. I have doubled down on my gamble in not fixing - my provider wants 71p/kWh now so I am gambling on government intervention before we get to that craziness. I'm a bit glass half empty at the minute, I can only see this getting worse, companies going bust, companies passing rising energy costs to customers, prices getting higher, arsehole unions striking for pay rises, again the companies pass that wage increase onto the consumer, inflation keeps going nuts, BoE goes all in on rates to kill inflation, repossessions.....and so on and so on. If it carries on I may even find myself struggling to meet my outgoings - never thought I'd be even thinking that, let alone saying it. Bad times all round.

May I refer you to the parallel discussion 'how does your garden grow'?' you may be able to help on there.

Chicken wire would do the trick. We did consider just stapling some chicken wire to the existing fence, which might help keep it in tact for a few years more too!

Every hole in the joist hangers should have a nail in it.

You have been honest enough to admit your original motivation to self build was to make money. But now moving towards the excitement of self building a house better than you’d get from a developer. I was exactly the same as you. I thought I could build a great home and end up with money in bank. I realised I couldn’t and built a home that has made money , but perhaps 10%-15%, of cost to build all in. Certainly not 33%. If you want to make big money in this game you need to build small crap houses squeezed into a plot. Like what the big companies do. I am of firm belief that you shouldn’t self build to make money, but you shouldn’t self build to lose money. if you build to lose money your doing something stupid, if you build to make money you’re probably comprising somewhere. Bottom line is with self building you are normally enjoying your wealth by living in it, as opposed to looking at it on a bank balance. don’t forget with 10% ish inflation every £100k in the bank is worth 10% less than a year ago though. Self building, if you do it well, will make you richer, just in terms of lifestyle as opposed to monetary richness. Don't self build to try to make a lot of money / profit Do self build to build yourself a home that better than you get buy elsewhere would be my take on it.

A few years back I did a small experiment with my storage heaters. Rather than limit the temperature, I limited the power they could draw, by removing one, and then two, elements (4 in total). I then compared the house temperatures to letting it run unhindered. Cost less, but house was cooler. Then I put on extra timers to limit the E7 charging window to just 4 hours, and the last 4 hours of the E7 period. That was cheaper and hit my target temperature better. Have now limited it to 3 hours, so around 9 kWh a day maximum storage, rather than 21 kWh. Temperature variation is a bit greater, but I can live with that. If I had 'excess' power, I would definitely look at topping up the night stores more, and enjoy the extra warmth. I grew up in the tropics and don't take my jumper off till it is over 80°F. I am still wondering about the best way to control output from old storage heaters, box them in and control airflow from the base seems to be the obvious way to me. Keep us informed about how it goes, it is an interesting subject.

If it's within a shower enclosure I would remove the paint. You can use a wall paper steamer and scrapper for that.

@flyingfisherman On a similar journey. Finished self building in 2020 and for the last two summers I've been producing lots of compost. I started of with one large no dig bed this spring with some great results, I will add three more beds next year and more after that. This year I have incorporated biochar and seaweed to my compost production.

During the week your away training, a couple of brickies will have the walls upto the 1st lift

I'm starting to think about the wiring for my extension. I'll be chasing the wiring into the wall, obviously, and fitting nice deep backboxes wherever I can. I'm wondering if it's worth fitting double-width back-boxes for light-switches, even ones which are perhaps just 1 or 2 gang, to allow for future swapping of a dumb switch for something smart. (I'll be pulling neutrals to each switch location anyway) I've not considered any particular products yet, though the ecosystem will most likely be Home Assistant as I'd like to keep control/processing local. Initially things will be wired 'dumb' with conventional switches, with the intention of gradually swapping in controls and devices as budget allow.. Am I other-thinking things?

See a lot of people running 3 core and earth to lights from switch position too. allows a permanent feed and a switched feed at the light position, so along with the neutral at the switch you have covered mains power automation. 35mm deep boxes all the way….

Installed volume is the static volume of the whole installation including the meter. Domestic is max pipe diameter of 35mm and max volume of 0.035m3 above this the gas engineer needs to be Commercial. If your buried pipe is PE then assuming a 32mm diameter pipe you would ideally be looking at 28mm copper as 22mm copper brings the installation close to max permissible pressure loss even without many fittings or bends. In my calc I assumed 4 elbows and a single exiting Tee for the PE but none for the copper at 22mm and this came in at 0.93mbar. With 28mm copper (no fittings) the calc was 0.66mbar which gives room for a few fittings in the copper pipework. Looking at your photos I can see that you've got a 6m3/h meter which looks like u6/g4 type so approximate installed volume of gas is 0.22m3 based on the pipe lengths you've given me, assuming 32mm PE and 28mm copper. On this basis and assumptions it looks like you should be fine for supplying both boilers with sufficient gas. I only have PE SDR11 32mm figures to hand, not anything for 40mm which you'd need to check with whoever installed the buried pipe if you can. I think 40mm PE pipework could tip the installation into needing a commercial gas safe engineer to do the installation and commissioning of your new boiler.

My pump operator placed all the concrete to within 50mm of level, just me with a rake, no need for lots of people , the pump does all the work. If you have a laser its dead easy to get it accurate. Up to you whether you step the footings or just spend more on concrete.

Yes A week is not a lot of time to grasp the basics Ive two brothers that come and help me out Tuesday and Wednesday each week The bricklayer is 67 and his hod carrier is 73 Neither need the money But they get more done than the guys in there 20s

https://www.mathsisfun.com/geometry/ellipse-perimeter.html

I'd agree. Brickies work so, so much faster than a "good amature". It's one of those trades (like plastering) that's not worth taking up yourself unless it's a small amount or you have a LOT of time. Brickies work in squads with the guys doing the laying having a constant supply of ready-mix mortar and bricks stacked at their sides, and not having to clean up. If you do the brick work all on your own, you spend half the day moving stuff around, mixing, and cleaning, rather than laying. I'm doing all the little garden walls and stuff in our place, I started the block work for the retaining walls, then calculated out how long it would take me at my pace... Two months of evenings and weekends. Two brickies would have it done in 4 days. That's the first job once our mortgage corms through.

It might take a week to learn the basics but years to become proficient. Might be worth it if you have many small jobs to do like on a refurb. Not worth trying to build a house unless you are doing it full time over several years.

Yes, just use the edge of a trowel or scraper the etch the wall to give a good key for the adhesive. You want to make a X or diamond pattern across the whole wall, and remove any areas of flaky paint. Go good and deep.

Probably not I’m reasonably experienced and built the foundations and the garage on the last and while I’ve done quite a bit of brick and block work on this one It’s not cost effective and painfully slow

There is a review ongoing to try to fix these issues, it is due out in October. Not great and maybe they could have focused more on the short term issues as this appears to be a longer term review looking at the next 40 years. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1098100/review-electricity-market-arrangements.pdf The government was aware of these issues, in a generating market designed for variable cost fossil fuels, fixed cost renewables were not being treated correctly. From reading this they seem to have moved to a contract for differences system for renewables where they pay back to the system when prices are high and get paid extra when prices are low, reflecting that they are a fixed cost asset. However, most renewables are not under this system currently (see page 43) and see prices driven by the wholesale market. As renewable capacity has to increase roughly 10 fold then eventually 90%+ of renewable capacity will be on largely fixed price contracts not impacted by gas prices. The trouble is of course that this will take a long time and we have a problem today. I agree with @andyscotlandwe could retroactively impose a price cap for renewables in wholesale markets. Trouble is that this would be a breach of contract and end up in court and the UK does rightly frown on this kind of thing. Spain did this previously and wiped out renewable energy companies. A lot of this discussion focuses on electricity. Gas of course is simply dominated by the gas price and most people in the UK use gas to heat their homes. It looks like the gas unit price is going to double and the electricity unit price increase 83% in October, standing charges are only going up modestly this time. So high gas users (me) are looking at big increases. In the long run the expectation is that gas boilers are replaced with ASHPs and electricity forms an ever increasing proportion of the UK domestic energy mix, but today most of people's energy comes in the form of direct gas and we have to buy the gas.

I advertised mine on gumtree, and the buyer organised a proper transport firm to come and collect it. All I had to do was get it off the stands and disconnect the services so it was ready to collect. Make sure to state buyer arranges transport.

Kitten Reunites With Mama Cat After Harrowing 40 Hours In Drainpipe On second thoughts, I bet you hate cats.

Electric fence 🙂

Yep, 6" long, green and spotty!

If I never see it again it’ll be a day too soon 😂