Leaderboard

I am not so sure. Say oil is available at 60p/litre. To just produce electricity from a diesel generator will probably have an efficiency of no more than 25%, and at small loads 10%. There are roughly 10 kWh in a litre of diesel, so somewhere between 2.5 kWh and 1 kWh of electricity, so at 60p/litre between 24p/kWh and 60p/kWh, with the vast majority being at the lower end (a few hundred watts). Different if you can get some thermal energy from it as well, and store electricity, but the capital cost becomes high.

His desired legacy is to recreate the territory of the USSR as a new Russian Empire (or Imperial Space if you prefer). His potential loss if he goes nuclear is Mother Russia, and especially the Western End of it, as a scorched, radioactive wasteland. I doubt he will do that, or others will let him do it. Personally I think the question is basically moot. There is no alternative other than fully to support Ukraine. Not supporting Ukraine is an invitation to Putin or his replacement to attempt to repeat the performance for Moldova, Baltic states, Scandinavia, Poland. Surely we have learnt that lesson after the previous performances in Chechnya and Georgia, and now Ukraine? If it doesn't stop, the alternative is that it will continue. The risk of escalation is a risk we do not have the alternative of not taking. It is a risk that has to be managed, as we will not get a better opportunity to stop Putin's create-more-failed-states games. If he knows he is not going to be stopped having sent his army to rape, and abuse, and destroy, and murder their way across Ukraine, and is allowed to get away with something, then why on earth *would* he stop? His worldview is the Stalinist one that human lives and peoples can be thrown away, destroyed or moved, as he wishes, for his convenience. Do we want to keep a prosperous, stable Europe? If we don't defend it, we will lose it. And do we want to support the development of democratic, free countries in the eastern half of Europe? We could lose that too. The long game is that Russia (or dis-integrated Russia) will become one of those free, democratic states. As an aside, I think that countries like Poland (which may become the leading land military in Europe) and the Scandi / Baltic State bloc, and in due course Ukraine, are working to put themselves in strong enough positions that Russia won't dare touch them for a century such is the bloody nose it would get. So perhaps any long term decision to compromise with Russia was already impossible anyway. For our comfort, Putin has been making these threats since the start, repeat and repeat and repeat. And done nothing. I suspect that he has been warned that if he goes nuclear NATO will intervene full bore, and he has zero chance in such a conflict. Ferdinand * I think one provocative though cynical question that I have heard asked is whether the USA is trying to 'help Ukraine win', or 'prevent Ukraine from losing' (as a way of weakening one of their two key global opponents). It's difficult to distinguish that from managing the potential for escalation that you wrote about. I don't think any other Western country thinks in those terms now on that scale, except maybe those that were rearming Russia before they woke up **, but the USA still deals in global level strategies. ** I don't want that distinction to be quite that clear - I think that the whole of the West (except countries bordering Russia such as Finland) was asleep for far too long, but some more than others.

I've been interested in PV for a while but put off by the variance of estimated savings making it difficult to determine how useful it would be to my specific house. PVGIS is a fantastic tool, but how much of that generation could I actually use? "Around 50%" wasn't specific enough for me but fortunately, my smart meter was recently updated to connect to DCC, so it was time to go down that rabbit hole, results shared here to prompt debate and so others can point out errors and maybe explore a similar study on their own property. Firstly, hourly data for the proposed install location was downloaded from PVGIS and averaged over the 2005-2020 period available: https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/. This average was then dumped into an InfluxDB database Next, half-hourly consumption data from my smart meter is available via a DCC connected company, with 13 months of data available. There are a number available, I chose Bright as they have API support: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.hildebrand.brightionic. This data was pulled down with a python library into the InfluxDB database: https://github.com/cybermaggedon/pyglowmarkt. Note I had to pull 10000 minutes at a time as there seems to be a limit on request size. Now I have all the data, there's a few options on what to do with it. Firstly, Grafana was used to support detailed interrogation of the data as well as an in-built method for summing timeseries data. Below pictures are for a 3kW system mounted vertically on a ~SSE facing house wall: Annual utilised PV is just the min of usage/generation for each hour in the time series. The result is... disappointing, suggesting if I'd had this system installed over the last year I'd only have used 40% of the generated power. As with most houses, the culprit is significant evening usage - computers, TVs, dishwasher etc. I can shift some of the usage to mid day, but not enough to make a significant enough impact. Inspecting a random day (6th September) confirms an increase in PV size would not solve the problem either: Area on this graph is kWh so it's easy to see a lot of wasted generation mid day (between the blue and orange lines) followed by significant grid usage in the evening (between the green and blue lines). Note that electicity consumption is quite low as my heating and hot water is from mains gas. Ideally this excess could be dumped into a hot water tank but we have a combi boiler and I'm struggling to make the sums add up once you factor in even more initial investment for a tank etc. Therefore I'm ignoring offsetting gas consumption and purely looking at the significantly more expensive unit rate electricity consumption. That aim then brings us to battery storage. I couldn't find a way to simulate state in Grafana so used the InfluxDB Python bindings to set up a basic charge/discharge simulation across the year. It does not factor in battery efficiency due to me being lazy which will slightly skew figures. This simulation takes three parameters: PV system power in kW, battery capacity in kWh and the unit electricity rate to calculate savings. Hard to predict for a long term investment so I just used the current 27.09p/kWh rate. It's then possible to experiment with proposed systems: $ ./battery_sim 0 0 0.2709 0.00kWh utilised and 0.00kWh stored out of 0.00kWh generated. Total 0.00kWh (0%). From grid: 2280.95kWh. Annual Saving £0.00 $ ./battery_sim 2 0 0.2709 750.32kWh utilised and 0.00kWh stored out of 1424.67kWh generated. Total 750.32kWh (53%). From grid: 1530.63kWh. Annual Saving £203.26 $ ./battery_sim 3 0 0.2709 863.03kWh utilised and 0.00kWh stored out of 2137.00kWh generated. Total 863.03kWh (40%). From grid: 1417.92kWh. Annual Saving £233.79 $ ./battery_sim 3 5 0.2709 863.03kWh utilised and 998.04kWh stored out of 2137.00kWh generated. Total 1861.07kWh (87%). From grid: 419.89kWh. Annual Saving £504.16 $ ./battery_sim 4 5 0.2709 930.05kWh utilised and 1102.64kWh stored out of 2849.34kWh generated. Total 2032.69kWh (71%). From grid: 248.26kWh. Annual Saving £550.66 $ ./battery_sim 4 9.5 0.2709 930.05kWh utilised and 1151.73kWh stored out of 2849.34kWh generated. Total 2081.78kWh (73%). From grid: 199.17kWh. Annual Saving £563.96 $ ./battery_sim 5 9.5 0.2709 970.84kWh utilised and 1211.10kWh stored out of 3561.67kWh generated. Total 2181.94kWh (61%). From grid: 99.01kWh. Annual Saving £591.09 $ ./battery_sim 5 13.5 0.2709 970.84kWh utilised and 1221.01kWh stored out of 3561.67kWh generated. Total 2191.85kWh (62%). From grid: 89.10kWh. Annual Saving £593.77 $ ./battery_sim 7 13.5 0.2709 1018.43kWh utilised and 1268.62kWh stored out of 4986.34kWh generated. Total 2287.04kWh (46%). From grid: 0.00kWh. Annual Saving £619.56 Quite easy to spot the return on investment of the PV and battery capacity is tightly coupled, no point having loads of generation you can't store or massive storage with no excess generation. This is where I've stopped for now, it'd be trivial to go one step further and optimise the system for most cost-effective setup but that would need a cost function for £/kW solar and £/kWh storage (installed) that I haven't bothered to put together yet. Note that the upgrade to a Tesla Powerwall (13.5kWh) is very cost-ineffective, but could technically provide 100% of my usage with a 7kW solar array. The 5kWh battery with 3kW PV seems a sweet spot for me and uses 87% of the generated power but I'm unsure on the costs of such a system yet. To go ahead I'd prefer a maximum 10 year ROI which sets pretty tight budgets, ~£2k for a 2kW system with no battery or ~£5k for a 3kW PV 5kWh battery system. This obviously rules out MCS, but has anyone got close to this with self installation and connection by an electrician? Comments and questions welcome, does this line up with actual performance people have seen from their installs?

Wot @Kelvin said.

Economy of scale. That was for a one off they don’t normally build. What they didn’t tell us was how much the block of them cost per unit that Kevin showed. I also doubt it was way over the market value of the house.

Well! getting a human to visit was the answer, the openreach guy was a legend. Pulled the cable in and set up the router etc. when will these faceless organisations learn???

Not sure how to accurately convey the actual feelings I have about this. I'm not grumbling, or annoyed about it - but It's not such a simple matter as that. Anyone at any age can drop dead at any moment but anyone under 35 might be able to expect another 35 years without being too wishful. Your assumption that you’d not worry about any ROI time knowing your time is limited could do with being upgraded to include the life expectancy. That's all I'm pointing out really.

I've seen the pre-combi tank recommended on here but don't really have a handle on installation costs. Can anyone who has done it give a ballpark figure? Because mains gas is still relatively cheap (ironically) it only saves about £90/year on the 3kW system. Add in annual maintenance of UVC and the ROI seems big, but I'm making unfounded assumptions and should price it up instead.

I just want to leave something where people think, Christ, some thought went into that.

I use Birtley. I get a ridiculous sounding discount from them but I can't see that anyone in their right mind pays the list price. Do you have a buildbase near you ?

What I tend to do is line it with black plastic, drill some 50mm holes in the wood, puncture the plastic lining in the middle of this hole, put a piece of old crock over the hole to stop soil escaping, this keeps the water away from the wood as much as possible. Another choice of wood is from old pallets, not sure what “breed” the wood is but lasts ages outside and great for making compost heaps.

Tanalised sawn timber, 4x1 or 6x1. I have made quiet a few similar, should last 10years (if lined properly).

Don't tell them that hospital have them. I think it is about time that everyone realised that power is not delivered from just one source. All countries need a mix of sources, it is just the fraction of each that seems to be misunderstood. I can play with figures and create a number of different scenarios to achieve the same end i.e. adequate power 99.9% of the time. I could show prices and delivery based on historic data (it's all there for anyone to look at). I could even throw in environmental issues. But it will make not one jot of difference to most people as they take no interest in it, and even less willing to learn about it. The best thing would be to let the National Grid sort out the size and location of generation installations (they know how to manage what they have incredibly well), then invite tenders from the generation companies. So planning rules will have to be overturned, but it is about time individuals realised they don't, through a fluke of wealth and location, have the right to deny others what they can easily afford. To show, in an odd way how fickle people are, the tourist figures for August came out yesterday. Allowing for rounding, Cornwall had 1 million less visitor trips. So about 20% down. Cornwall has not changed, except we had very little rain this summer, prices have not changed much, no travel restrictions and the people down here still hate the Emmets. Where did they all go, abroad or stayed at home?

Interesting article (not read or understood it all) I also read that the EU recognised existing corruption in the Ukraine when considering their EU membership. However I believe the ownership of the land relating to foreign companies is a lesser evil than invasion and destruction by Putin.

Look into humidity controlled MEV and dMEV. Basically the trickle vent will open and close as required and the fans like wise. Overall a lower running cost compared to MVHR, no filters, and good energy conservation. Some bedtime reading. Atamate_SDAR+Paper+2019+(1).pdf

It was away for 2- 3 weeks with what turned out to be a loose connector causing arcing and the overcurrent on the compressor (?). I had looked at the compressor connections and couldn’t see this, but to be fair I hadn’t pulled it apart for fear of voiding warranties. It’s a shame that it couldn’t have been diagnosed on site as it would have saved everyone time and hassle, but it was picked up, fixed and returned to me so no complaints there. I think this is the issue for them that they’re selling like hotcakes (and seems like a genuinely good product) but don’t have the staff coverage to get out and support self installers. I suspect if I’d had it installed for me I’d have been referred to my installer at the outset. I don’t know how many official installers they have but I did ask if one was available before sending the HP back to Grimsby. It’s back in and running happily since. I guess when the temperature drops and it actually gets some real use we’ll see how it goes. Overall still positive about the units and their addition to my home.

Plasterboard saw. Cut it big and rough then just foam around.

Re SD vs HD lintels, I was advised by Catnic (who will produce a schedule FOC if you send your drawings) that SD is suitable for brick & HD is required for stone due to the extra weight load - but you should check with your architect/SE as there may be other factors e.g. span length. My facing walls were designed as mainly brick with some stone panels in between the GF & FF windows but in the end I went 100% brick to save on labour & materials cost.

Build for less on eBay are pretty good I think they are part of TP As TP tend to deliver for them at a fraction of the merchant price

Spot on! For me good design starts with the structural fabric. Then what and how is the house to be used for, is resale value important, or do you want a forever house that you can adapt not just in terms of layout but to make it easy for you to change things as fashions and your taste changes over time. Structurally, if this is your forever home the medium / high end design takes into acount your future needs and what we don't know we don't know to some extent. The way to deal with this is to not push everything to the max in terms of structural design.. I'm not saying you over size everything.. you just make sure that you build in enough say sideways sway resistance to a building to let you take out some walls later and not put lots of point loads down onto a pad foundation that is just hanging in there. You can identify parts of the structure that are getting pushed, some founds may settle / shrink but still stay within the movement limit and be fine SE wise. But all that movement ends up somewhere and will manifest in your finishes, could be cracking, sticky doors / windows etc. Things you can do for example are if you have a bit open plan space is to incorporate shaddow gaps / reveals. This lets you redecorate small panels of wall in a room without doing the whole room, thus quickly over a weekend you can reinvigorate a space without having to change the whole space. That is designing for your own living not what a developer thinks you need.. medium / high end? If you design the fabric of the building to last and move less than say a "major developer house" then you can probably work it so that you can afford "high end" stuff at a medium end price and it will last, still function and look good. Unfortunately as Jilly alludes to, if you have no style then you need to do a bit of work on this aspect, it is a learnt skill to some extent so worth putting in the effort. This way you can get a lot more for less, it just takes time.

Yes, they hold up a warm flat roof of about 1 meter. There's a hidden steel box section on top of the gallows running the full length along the front.

Unless the roof has a breathable membrane between rafters and battens, but somehow I suspect we are talking about an older, bitumen based roofing felt here. Out of interest what alternatives to ridge venting are there?

There should be a box with up and down arrows to open and close the window. If it is a smoke vent it should be electrically actuated. Maybe using this to move it would fix it. What kind of noise are we talking about?

I think a bill frozen at a typical £2,500 might still do that. But I'd be more attracted to say freezing the price for the first 2000 kWh of elec, and 10000 kWh of gas. Plus some targeted funding for some groups. Should be implementable easily, and politically snip off both a big chunk of the cost and the 'helping rich people' jibe. And will incentivise reductions.

I cobbled together a logger using an old CurrentCost monitor and a raspberry pi. Then analysed the data in a spreadsheet. Also put this together to make a logger. https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/blogs/entry/946-the-energy-meter-experiment/

The final step is an email to the Openreach or BT CEO depending on who you have the order with, philip.jansen@bt.com clive.selley@openreach.co.uk It won't be read by either but there are interventions teams it gets diverted to who should resolve the problem. The same team sorted out my first ever ADSL installation which got into a loop with the ISP and BT both saying the other was at fault with no data flow but all green lights. The fault was with BT but it took the interventions team to work that out and then get it fixed.

Very difficult No vans no trailers Even attached a car 5 bags of rubble per year The here to help guys search for anything that isn’t household and don’t help Covid Obviously When my brother in-law died We cleared his garage They wouldn’t let us tip a 5 kg bag of dried up artex Classed as building waste It’s not surprising there’s so much fly tipping

The average daily mileage is steadily falling and is now something like 20 miles a day. Most cars spend the majority of their time parked up. I live very rurally and our EV spends most of its outside the house. The issue is this new world of EVs, V2G, ASHP, flow rates, PV and battery storage, when best to consume electricity etc is far too complicated for your average punter to understand nor actually care about. Look at the complex discussions that happen on here about the most efficient way to run all of this. That’s the real barrier to adoption for a lot of this plus the cost of it all. Meanwhile typical housing stock is poorly insulated and badly built.

We could charge, by the kg, for domestic waste collection. A basic allowance if say 7 kg a week, then a £ for every extra kg. If the price is low enough, it should not increase fly tipping. A small token charge should be enough to change people's minds. Packaging, in itself, is a good thing. How many unpackaged TVs would need to be made and shipped to get just one, undamaged one, in a house. Trouble with packaging is the mishmash of materials and lack of recycling facilities.

Good. Now can we get back to talking about video games with pussies? Oh wait, that was in another thread...

I must fit some sort of active shutter to an extractor fan in our downstairs loo. I was puzzling over a uniform layer of dark grey dust on the lid of the toilet cistern when it dawned on me that the day before I'd been in the garden sanding a painted picnic table!

I saw a nice load of what looked liked timber trellis fly tipped the other day. I was thinking, they'll be wishing they'd kept that to burn soon!