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Was having this conversation with someone I know yesterday. They are going to fort out a £1000ish on some 'smart' panel heaters. I showed them a A2AHP and the answer was. "but we want then radiators on the wall under the windows". Pointed out that the heat emitters, which don't look so dissimilar to what they wanted, can be fitted in the same place. There reply "we only need to get an electrician in, not a plumber". They also think that an oil filled electric radiator uses less energy as it stays warm after it is switched off. Why are people, who had the same school education as most of us, allowed to mingle in society and comment on things they know nothing about, and when challenged, get more stubborn.

Got a Brinno, set up from 8am to 4pm at five minute intervals. Batteries last a good month. Here's a typical recording... but I did discover that I'd left the protective film on the waterproof case, doh! So am expecting the latest output to be better. TLC00035_JUL22_ 27.mp4

In the spirit of @Jeremy Harris's heat loss spreadsheet, I made a spreadsheet to estimate solar heat gain through windows. It's a bit more complicated topic than straightforward heat loss, but I tried to make it as easy as feasible. To use the spreadsheet, divide the windows and rooflights you want to calculate into groups, where windows in the same group face the same direction and have the same g-value. The groups can be named whatever you want; the names will be used as labels later in the sheet. For each group, input the direction the windows face (in degrees, north is 0, south is 180) and their slope (90 is vertical, 0 is horizontal). Sum the areas of all windows in each group. Once the window groups have been defined and the relevant values specified, the sheet will calculate the inputs you need to use in PVGIS. Windows facing between east and west are fully supported, and for these the inputs to PVGIS are exactly the same as used to specify the window groups, except that the direction (azimuth) is -90 at east, 0 at south, and 90 at west. For windows facing slightly northeast or northwest, the PVGIS values for windows facing east or west are used, and the spreadsheet calculates two different estimates of correction factors in an attempt to give an upper and lower bound for the heat gain. Windows facing significantly northeast or northwest should be ignored, as the error in the estimates will be too high for them to be useful. For rooflights only directions between 90-270 (east to west) are supported as I didn't feel like figuring out a correction method for them. For each window group, input the given azimuth and slope in PVGIS, and go to the "Monthly in-plane irradiation for fixed angle" in the result visualisation. For each month, input these values in the correct field. This is a bit tedious, but making the data collection automatic would be a lot more complex. You can add a shading value (as a percentage between 0-100) to refine the results if you want, but it is not required. The shading value can be defined monthly for each window group, to better account for factors like overhang, deciduous trees, or external blinds. Getting useful numbers is left as an exercise for the user, so just leave the fields empty if in doubt. Once all inputs are given, the spreadsheet calculates two different estimates of solar heat gains in each month. If there is a difference between the estimates, the high estimate is extremely likely to be an overestimate, and can be used to approximate an upper bound of cooling needs. The low estimate should be more accurate for winter heating needs, but should still be taken with a grain of salt. If the estimates agree, you don't need to worry about any of this. Credit to @Adam2 for the original idea of using PVGIS. Any errors and mistakes are mine. Feedback appreciated. Solar heat gain calculator.ods

Yes. It was highly unpleasant episode (discussed at the time on here, I think). He was diagnosed with a serious illness - I want to say it was a brain tumour. They decided to move away from the rat race and cut their costs so they could work less and live a better life so he could reduce his stress levels. But then they mortgaged themselves to the hilt and beyond to build an insanely oversized and overspecced property that would leave them in massive debt for the rest of their lives. It was difficult viewing. They came across as perhaps living a bit of a fantasy world, maybe as a reaction to the stress of his near-death experience.

We've had one of these for at least a decade and never really used it that much in the past. However, over the last few months my wife has started experimenting with it, and we've had some really tasty meals. Most of the time it's just a matter of dumping all the ingredients in and coming back a few hours later. It's a massive time saver.

Wish I got mccloud to film me and my build . Plenty of content for many seasons .

I'm sure there are cases where they've engaged to work with a self-builder, filmed some or all of the build, and then not made an episode because they couldn't build a suitable narrative. Boring people building a nice enough house with no back-story, on time and on budget, doesn't really make for compelling TV. I remember that small house on Skye (I think it was), built by a local builder for two women. Unfortunately, while the house was nice enough, literally nothing went even slightly wrong. Everything was on time and on budget. They tried to manufacture an oo-er moment around the airtightness test ("the experienced builder has never had a house air-tested to such a tight standard before!!!"), but we came back from the break and it breezed through. Really dull TV.

I only watch it as a “do not do this”. I treat it as a comedy of errors, people with more money than sense (mostly).

I have to say I can't watch it any more. Having struggled to build and keep on budget, people pulling extra money (sometimes more than our total spend) out of their arse because "this space deserves it" is just annoying. I do know someone who had meetings with the production team a good few years back when they were building some of the first "eco" houses around here. It seems like they did not go ahead because plans, budgets and skill sets were all in place so there was unlikely to be any entertaining jeopardy for telly.

I’ve identified the problem. By accident. I thought it would make sense to switch the boiler off, just in case the call for heat at 6am to heat water might cause some issue with no water. I was too lazy to switch the boiler off directly, so went to the fuse board to switch it off from there. There I see the fuse labelled “priority demand valve” has been tripped. This is a valve to give the internal imist system priority over every other tap in the house. I switch the fuse back to the on position, and everything is working again. i report this to SWMBO, who responds: “oh yeah I forgot to tell you, when the fence was being installed this afternoon, they kept tripping a fuse with their power tools.” Bloody hell! I know we are bad at communicating, but this!!! So rather than get a plumber out, I need to speak to my electrician. Luckily he is coming in the morning.

And we're in. So much still to do, but we need to move on the "other place" before the market dies off.

Well done to you both. The main thing it to also enjoy the journey! I wonder though about the layout of the kitchen living area and lobby. They say first impressions count. The first thing you'll see (and your guests coming for the great grub) when you come into the room from the lobby will be the kitchen and your cooking innovation / what you are up to. Also I think that they will see not least the narrowish space between the peninsula unit and the hob.. it could look like you are going into a small flat? You want the wow factor when you come in and that is the open living space and being able to see the fire place. Where you have the stair invites the eye..so take as much advantage of that as you can. I would look to create the impression of open space as soon as you come in the front door.. then tease with the staircase.. what else is up stairs??.. just how big is this place? Also remember that at say xmas the house could be full..where is the oven and where is door to open? Will an open oven door further restrict the kitchen activity space and pedestrain route to the ground floor wc ? Check the building regs for Kitchen activity spaces / accessibilty at this stage.. better to do this now. I can see you have got someway with the screen concept.. keep going. Have another go at the kitchen and living space. Things to think about are.. yes you don't want the front door open and a huge draft coming into the room.. but you can have walls that don't go all the way to the ceiling. This also lets you shine diffuse light over the top of them while still cutting out the big drafts. This can work both ways.. the living space could be dark with diffuse light coming over the top from the "lobby". It also means you can have kitchen units hidden behind. Walls can be solid but split with glass, again with careful choice you can invite the eye to appreciate the whole room as one space while still achieving the practical side of things. Don't get too hung up on the tree at the moment at that distance.. unless it was particularly large. Very roughly tree roots extend about the same distance as their height. Have a look on google earth and see how high it may have been. Much will also depend on your soil (not the stuff you grow potaoes in but the stuff under the top soil) type. You can do quite a lot on you own at the moment. trees put down deep roots (structural roots) locally so they don't blow down in the wind. They also send out other roots to gather nutriants and water. Dig a few holes in the garden just with a spade and look at the soil.. ask.. does it look like a good medium where roots will grow? Also look at the ground levels.. ask where would this tree have found water.. on my site or somewhere else. Trees are not "daft" the roots grow where water and nutients are easily avaliable.. this lets them save their energy for propagating. In terms of your structure. You have a good amount of solid walls so achieving overall structural stability looks reasonable doable cheeply. You'll probably need a transfer beam where the ground floor steps out it may just work as a beam alone as you have some return walls to stabalise the rear elevation. You have shown a ridge beam..good idea.. stick with this for now.. you may want to split it into three. If you do you'll need to take some point load down roughly where the hinges to the door to the master bedroom are. With a bit of finesse on regigging the lobby you could make this easy to do without resorting to unnecessary structural beams and complexity. Again the ridge beam concept lets you use say a simple cut timber roof, simple connections leaving plenty depth for cheep but effective insulation.

Its unlikely a 6kw inverter will be manufacturer limited to 16 amps so youll need to submit a G99 application and get approval before connection to the grid.

You could run you piping to the rads and use two close coupled tees on the return line to supply the UFH. So the return water out of the rads if no UFH is on would flow direct back to the UFH. If UFH is on, water would be borrowed from the return via the first tee, then after flowing through the UFH would return to the radiator return via the second tee. Using the close couple tee there is hydraulic separation, between to boiler pump and the ufh pump. You will need to find the min flow rate and system capacity for heat pump and make sure the system is big enough and there is enough flow Run the whole lot as a single zone, will keep the system from short cycling.

And make sure it's on a full mortar bed. If he's not used primer, he might be laying on dabs.

very likely IMO. I'm sorry but he should re lay them. He should have done his research before laying them. Its a well known method in the industry.

DIY is no problem. That's a big chunk of money. My DIY 4.5pkW cost £4800 (no batteries). That was £4200 for the panels, cables, optimisers, inverter (solaredge), GSE in roof tray kit and £800 for the sparks to connect the two string cables to the inverter and consumer unit and commission. I installed the trays and panels myself, connected the panels to the optimisers and main string cables. It's literally fool proof plugging together.

Your assessor is correct. I just checked with the Stroma SAP software. If you use the PCDB entry the SAP result is not effected by the MCS tick box. If you use the default SAP values for a generic ASHP, then the MSC tick box does improve the values. Back when I originally played about with the software, I just used the generic ASHP entry, this is because the software lists the PCDB category as "boiler", which confused me at the time.

Also worth looking at some of the 2 pack fillers from Ronseal and the like - a quick smear over any cut surface then sanding leaves it square and clean for paint and also stops water ingress

Budget: 835k. Build cost 2.2m. Plot 935k. Eventual sale price in 2019: 2.75m. Now estimated value by Zoopla at +1.4m over that. Bit of a bloodbath, and a rather tragic story. GD overreach. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/property/article-6959659/Grand-Designs-Isle-Wight-modern-house-price-cut-1M.html (TBF, that is about the same amount of cash that the Wagatha Christie libel case has cost, and not much more than the leader of Unite threw away going for Labour MP Anna Turley.)

Because I don’t think a customer is prepared to wait a few hours for their dinner to cook 🤷‍♂️

I'm feeling picked on here. A modern kettle *still* requires several espressos' worth of water to cover the bottom. And no one has mentioned hard water, which causes an old kettle to take longer to boil. There's quite a funny desperate essay on Huff Post explaining why it is being misrepresented: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/boris-johnson-offers-cost-of-living-crisis-advice_uk_6310ad54e4b0dc23bbef84de Boris's problem is that he has always had a mistress to make the tea. Mrs Boris' problem is that after some time on the words-and-waffle lecture circuit, and the mush-for-brains Yankee-Doodle celeb circuit (see Harry and Meghan), he will be able to afford a whole quiverful of alternative blondes. Slow Cooker: Check. Excellent. Air Fryer: not yet Worktop Pizza oven: Yep. Excellent for everything from sausage rolls to home made dough balls. (*) F * Recipe: Make dough. Cut into 12 gram balls. East with home made garlic butter (**). ** Recipe: Melt butter in pan. Add a lorra lorra garlic. Allow 15 minutes to steep. Put in small ramekin dishes. Put in fridge.

I love my air fryer, I use it for just about anything small that would normally go in oven. Great for jacket potatoes, fat free chips (potato or sweet potato) even done small crumbles in it.

*high quality, family-friendly content

Yes we watch it for the entertainment value rather house building value. Like when Top Gear stopped being a car programme. I do have some admiration for some of the crazy houses that get built though. The couple that built the whole place out of concrete, the house by the Thames with the floating foundation, the house built into a cave etc. My two rectangles joined together is really boring by comparison 😂

We use https://www.teknos.com/en-GB/industrial-coatings/industries/building-exteriors/windows-and-doors/teknos-clean-kit/ but a bit of elbow grease and a gentle scrub and washing up liquid will also do the job, it will work on the glass as well but first we will take a good quality Stanley blade and carefully scrape of the silicone. Trust me, it happens every day, it's easier to clean it off once it's cured.

Well done. Everyone moves in with a list of things they need to do/want to do but can't afford the time/money to do them.

Some of the numbers that get bandied around on Grand Designs (both the estimates at the start and the answer to "so how much did it actually cost?" at the end) are insane. There was that one on the Isle of Wight where they budgeted something like £800k for an absolutely massive 6-bedroom house. The estimate included a pool, a ground source heat pump, Swiss (I think) 3G windows, and extensive stone cladding (plus that other odd hand-made cladding that took forever to make and install). They admitted to an actual cost of over £2m.

Basically yes, but that's the logic they are using. Somewhat not in touch with reality. But the butler makes the tea, so why would they know any different.

By 'modern', you mean the kind that most of us have bought for the last 25 years.

Reading the thread that mentioned "Which". An old kettle had the element exposed to the water, so you had to put a minimum amount of water into the kettle. Modern kettles have the elements away from the water so you have no minimum water level. So based on only putting the minimum water in the kettle, and comparing an old design to new kettle, the new kettle will use less kWh per year, as it is required to boil less water. So is more efficient in it use of energy. Not much use for most people as they just fill the kettle up, then boil it, same amount of water for 1 cup or 6 cups of tea.

The kettle thing. Have you seen this? That idiotic statement by BOZO about buy a new kettle shows 2 major flaws: 1: It seems to imply that buying a more modern kettle will be "more efficient". WRONG. A resistance heating element delivers 100% of the power consumed into what it is heating. You cannot get a kettle that heats the same amount of water but uses less electricity to do so. I have lost count of how many time people have asked me to change electric panel heaters for "more eficcient" ones. I am far too honest and tell them it is not possible rather than take their money and smirk. 2: If he thinks changing your kettle and saving £10 per year is going to make one jot of noticable difference to your £2000 or more heating bill then it shows just how out of touch he is with the problem facing people.

Will the engineer sign-off on MCS for the ASHP install? I don’t know if it is of any significance, but the SAP calculation for an ASHP is different if it is not an MCS compliant install. I can’t remember how many points it knocks off. *(Edit) If the characteristics of an ASHP are in the SAP product database, these efficiency values will be used. https://www.ncm-pcdb.org.uk/sap/searchpod.jsp?id=17

All explained here https://www.saniflo.co.uk/installing-a-toilet/68-saniaccess-3.html The only bit we might dispute is "quiet technology" Top Tip: Don't use the basement WC for a No 2. Use a different bathroom with a conventional gravity flow WC waste. You will thank me for this advice if the saniflow ever needs dismantling for maintenance.

I've sprayed a little, but as an easy but slightly more costly option there are outfits like WoodByPost that sell edged sheeting that mean you can make your own stuff. Here's our utility room, all our own sizes and a fraction of the cost of bespoke.

Then just buy a scraper and crack on.

Don't count on spending that £5k from the BUS. An ASHP install that would cost £6,000 will magically cost £11,000 under the bus ("there is so much paperwork don't you know"). I am buying the ASHP myself and will use a local air-conditioning engineer to install, 1- or 2-days work max. No BUS for me.

You can do without or purchase a professional certificate at half the price Or purchase one retrospective should you decide to sell As I’ve said on numerous occasions No such thing as a forever home

Settlement The lintels are purely decretive

I use Styropz for vertically every job Good price good to use Or aqua cement board LW1 for the EWI seems quite pricey But you don’t need a base coat 5 mil coat then fibre mesh Two hours later a second coat of LW1 (10 mil) Ive applied many thousands of m2s and never had an issue Bombproof Drop me a message if you need any other help or advise

lets not forget electric cars and vehicle to grid, big capacity batteries. The ability to time shift demand to only every pay cheap rate is a massive money saver. 95+% of my bill is charged at 9.52p kw/h. I'm sure there is the possibility to arbitrage this with the octopus tariff which pays you to export.

UK rule G98/99 etc, expressly forbid a grid connected inverter from operating in Island mode. Type approval testing ensures manufactures comply. I tested mine (Growatt) with a generator and house disconnected from grid and even with generator running (correct volts/hertz) the PV supplied no power to the house.

A wet thumb in the air can be better than some of the so called companies with experts.

not just imagination but perhaps, with a few exceptions, also: moral fibre / creativity / intellectual capacity / any interest in or empathy with the people they are supposed to be serving / leadership skills / negotiation skills / emotional intelligence / persuasion capabilities / sense of economic reality / ability to share and adhere to the truth - shall I go on?

I will counter the above with my positive results with a modern well insulated house and an ASHP. The annual electricity used by the ASHP to heat the house is £400 at todays high electricity price, but it would not be a lot cheaper if we had mains gas available (we don't) Factor in the gas standing charge and they would be about the same. Fuel costs of all types is rising quickly, so the best thing you can do whatever heat source you choose is insulate the building to death and make it air tight with an MVHR ventilation system. And install wet under floor heating so if you do choose a gas boiler now, you can easily swap to an ASHP at a later date. AS much PV as your roof will take or as much as your DNO will allow. Then having an ASHP makes it easier to self use more of the PV you generate. If you do choose gas, choose a system boiler with an unvented hot water tank. That will allow you to dump surplus PV not being used to hot water. The very worst thing you could choose is a combi boiler.

The Norwegian state owns 67% of Equinor which used to be Statoil. The state derives its revenue from the oil industry in part through taxation, in part through the state's direct financial interest arrangements and of course dividend. The organisational design is evidently not your typical plc and actually confirms that the company is essentially owned by the state. Yup, the oil and gas companies are definitely coining it in but SSE's Q3 trading statement was hardly gloomy. In fact they're so positive about trading that adjusted earnings per share is now up to at least 90p from 83p. It looks like they're going to be fairly generous with dividend payments too at 81p plus RPI. Not too shabby given the current market. In September reported Earnings per share were up 65% mainly as a result of market volatility. More interestingly the SSE interim results of 30 September 2021 state that while renewable profits were down, this: I also don't think it was intended to malign SSE as such, it was simply that the data used for calculation was from published SSE figures which are broadly representiative of the market. If that is indeed the case, then having it under national public control and ownership makes more financial sense. If margins and returns are indeed tight then investment typically suffers (as we know) and value is extracted for the benefit of shareholders, and surprisingly, a huge buildup of corporate debt. Just look at the debt held by SSE, yet still paying generous dividends. SSE debt in 2021 was over £9.5billion pounds and if I've got it right the servicing of this debt costs about £200 million, operating profit of £376m And that is the pattern what we have seen develop over the last 10-20 years in many large companies, so it does make a difference. It's a pattern of corporate behaviour that doesn't belong anywhere near energy generation as it's unsustainable.

Just as an aside, the electric panel heater company Fishcher Future Heat are due in court soon on a charge of fraud by claiming their panel heaters are cheaper to run. I await the outcome of that case

And there's even talk amonst conservative members that they want him back after comparing the alternatives. 🙄 He'll be talking about airfryers next

I rubbed a bottle I found and a Genie came out and offered me 3 wishes. 1st wish: a penny more than I can spend; granted. 2nd wish: to build a 5 mile high wall around Wales; granted. 3rd wish: asked the genie if the wall was watertight, told yes. Fill it with water then.

I think there are simpler solutions. Wales. Yes wales. Remember the film "Escape from New York" ?. We section off Wales with a big wall ( Welsh hate the English anyway ) so I can't see any objections to that. We then stick loads of on shore wind turbines all over Wales. In England we build loads of nuclear power plants ( yes, yes ; I know the radioactive by product is a problem ). The radioactive waste we dump in wales. If this solution causes any Welsh people discomfort ( and I fully appreciate it might ) ; we do it along the Scottish boarder instead. SIMPLES!