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We have been obsessed with CO2 reduction for some time, and not been watching fundamentals. Closed all our coalmines, closed all our coal power stations (though one still burns wood and thankfully a couple have not been decommissioned so can be re started and still used) We are building wind farms as fast as we can but we all know they need wind, that does not always blow. This created the "dash for gas" as burning gas to produce electricity is a little less harmful than burning coal. Great. Except we don't have enough of our own gas. No problem, we live in a global economy now, we can buy anything from anywhere, why bother going to all the trouble of producing something ourselves when someone else will make it or produce it and sell it to us. Oh look those Ruskies have a lot of cheap gas and they are even building a nice big pipeline to deliver it. What could possibly go wrong with such a global trading situation? Oops. Someone forgot to think about "Energy security" let alone security of anything else we import, like food, certain high tech products like microchips, even steel and other raw materials. Oops indeed there are very few things now that Europe is self sufficient in, let alone the little old UK. Now our government is talking about drilling for more gas in the North Sea. About time but will take some years to come on stream. Lets hope the environmentalists don't stop that as we are really stuffed if they do. Re the forecast power cuts. They will be a nuisance. I don't see they will actually save very much power for the average domestic user. We might get a few hours power cut, they don't predict how often, but apart from not being able to watch the telly and the lights will go out, that is about all it will save in terms of power. The fridge will warm up a little and use the same electricity when it comes back on to cool down again. Heating with an ASHP, the house might cool down slightly, but hardly measurable, and the ASHP will fire up again later if it needs to when the power comes back. If there is really more demand than supply, you have to remove demand, which really means industry, which means not making things that take a lot of power to make. I know, lets just buy those things from abroad instead..............

I mixed 8m3 for our garage floor in a 300l tractor mixer. I was loading the gravel with a digger mind you, but it was still total suffering. It allowed me to move my premade floor shutter and do one "square" per day but the difference in mixes and joints are apparent. I wouldn't consider it for your purpose. It's impossible to achieve the consistency of delivered concrete self mixing and the price I paid for cement alone was more than the cost of delivered readymix. Something like the below would work. Is there any point more than 5.5m away from where the truck could reverse to?

Is this your DPC course? If so then it'll need to be a single pour. Just get a mini mix in and a have a couple a couple extra guys with barrows and you'll have the job done in less than hour. Hand mixing that amount on your own is a very, very long and tough day, two realistically. And it'll work out more expensive than the ready mix. Factor in the time you'll have to spend getting the cement etc ordered/bought. You're only at the start do the job, you'll soon realise that your own time is precious, don't waste it trting to save a few pennies. And, you just end up physically exhausted doing too much manual jobs!!! Most I've mixed with a belle mini in a single session is 0.5m3. it's a lot of shovelling.

I read my dumb meters once a week and log the readings on a spreadsheet. I am managing to reduce year on year consumption every month.

And wired in so the the house disconnected from the local grid. I think there is quite a bit of post purchase justification when it comes to batteries. They do not make sense at any level at the moment.

All the talk of batteries in the preceding posts makes me wonder how many people here have off-grid capable inverters to go with them? Hands up please!

A big rump of the population (me included) don't want to play the silly variable priced electricity game and have to choose each day what time to turn the oven on. That is in part why a lot of us are resisting having a smart meter for as long as possible.

You won’t get 90° elbows to get that close - and anything that has liquids passing down it needs to be 45° or 22.5° where possible. Don’t forget most soil brackets stand off about 35-40mm and when you try and work in corners you need to leave space to get the fixings in ..!! Saddles are sometimes easier to use than the fixings that have the captive screw/bolt and a single stem, Tesla’s are even easier as you can put the studs and the inner part on the wall and then move in and out to suit.

It’s exactly what will happen like panic buying fuel which we know people will do.

We've moved in and loving it!! Old house, adjacent, completed sale yesterday so can now pay off the build debt. Getting used to running ASHP and MVHR but no heating needed so far. Here's some pics

There's another sliding patio door around the front. That one is usually the main way in and out. The double one just gets thrown open in the summer to make the room feel more connected with the garden. The idea was to make an indoor/outdoor area that I could use to loiter in front of the computer stuff (i.e. WFH) and which doubles-up as a music/cinema room in the evenings. I basically 'go to work' in this building and by having it separate to the house, create a better work/life balance. Frankly it's totally transformed my life for the better. It may only be a few steps away from the house but it works brilliantly to draw a line between different activities.

Different DNOs have different rules. Since electricity was de-nationalised it can be a bit of a free for all. The DNOs use subbies, good and bad. Many don't even use numbered seals with the pliers allocated to a particular authorised person. If "you"were to do it make sure you have no loads on the cu when you pull it. Be aware, in fact be very aware, that if you touch those metal bits inside the the now open fuse carrier there is nothing between that and the substation. Aka you're a goner. In fact I would remove the fuse from the carrier temporarily and push the carrier back in. I believe it was me that coined the practice as having been done by "Amelie The Seal Fairy". Hypothetically, what "you" want is: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/WYREC2S.html? (A three phase version is available). + Probably some extra tails too.

If the water running down your legs and feet wasn't at least 27oC I'd bet you would leap out cursing about having an unexpectedly cold shower. 😃

Scroll down to Lambourne House. My parents looked at buying the place in early 1983. They viewed it a few times. Never saw Michael's wife there, they thought it strange as they knew her. http://truecrimeinvestigators.co.uk/monika-zumsteg/

Anyone seen the Jeffrey Dahmer series on Netflix. Now there’s a man who could have done with a chest freezer.

I have to agree with this. Trouble is there are too many conservationists and not enough environmentalists advising the government. Imagine the NHS stopping vaccinations, but allowing everyone to have cosmetic surgery.

Yes is is surprising how light and strong "caravan" furniture can be. I think "stressed skin" is the design principle.

No government body dare talk about the elephant in the room. just what do do about all the lousy leaky houses in the UK, how to upgrade or replace them, and who will pay? Easier to bang on about wrong door colour.

It depends on what you consider "that bad" It's 12 times worse than our house's wall. Its like me swapping my 55mpg Skoda Octavia for a 4.6mpg family car, if such a thing even exists. Even a 1600hp Bugatti Chiron manages double that.

I couldn’t possibly comment.

Good luck, I guess the 3 certainties (death, tax, nurses) should actually be four - water will always find a way in.

Yes and no, they signed off our variation of conditions but have not yet approved our surface drainage plan, they have given a date of 22nd November. There was something they put on our case showing our dwelling was neutral so hopefully that will also apply to the surface water.

At least you’re laughing!!

Yes, as you use the space and vacuum etc. you will see the carpet taper down towards the LVT anyway. When first laid you will notice the height difference but that will soon change. if you want it less noticeable, get the carpet fitter to taper the underlay or leave it slightly short of the LVT to taper the carpet level

More fun having the frozen head giving you a Glaswegian kiss you when you get the pop tarts out for breakfast.

Have a chat with the lads at Eastern Concrete, I had their 24m boom pump for my slab, I’m sure they’ll pop over and survey your site. They have pumps up to 39m You’ll need at least 15m3 for your walls

Chest freezers are also much more useful for storing cadavers.

I started my system 9 years ago when the only usable option for a battery system was off grid, so that's what I have. Saving money and arbitraging grid power were not my motivations and it was very much not economically worthwhile. The irony is that if rates go up next April as they are predicted to rise it will turn out to be almost economically neutral.

Pricing that rises with consumption is probably good way to deal with the issue of the current high prices in order to not penalise the poor too much. Have subsidised low prices for the first 5kWhr,say, a day then increase the rate as usage increases and use the higher users to subsidise lower users. It may result in lower consumption overall too. Switching off power on a rolling basis has the advantage that it is actually possible and can be done in a reasonably fair way, to make sure the pain is shared out over most of the population. Time of use variable charging is not practical for most consumers at the moment.

THIS is the misconception. You are not looking at your "smart meter" you are looking at the In Home Display unit. That happens to be something you get with a smart meter, but that is not THE smart meter. You can have such a device with any meter. I bought one for about £5 to show instantaneous usage, but it turned out to be useless as the particular one I bought could not cope with solar PV and an excess PV dump controller. IF getting people into the habit of watching what the IHD says and reducing your usage was the goal, that could be achieved without forcing everyone to have a smart meter. Just supply an IHD to everyone but one better designed than the cheap one I bought that does not cope with bidirectional energy.

I can confirm that the 650g loaf of bread I just made has used about 0.8 kWh of energy to make 🙂.

Lack of wind or sun is not a problem, building thousands of windfarms and millions of PV modules is. But not as big a problem as many people think. We are not reinventing the wheel, it is purely a planning, connection and manufacturing problem.

My suspicion with the supposed power cuts is won’t some families simply cook earlier to avoid them ? . Charge the phone etc / EV earlier . Effectively cause a demand spike before the outage .

Same as the degrees ° is on an iPhone when you press and hold the zero … 😁

Has to be a pair of 135°/ 45° and properly supported

National grid do some reasonable forecasting, which includes worst case fuel shortages, hence the possibility of short rolling power cuts, which is an entirely rational, first world, course of action. The press get hold of it and report with the strong implication that rolling power cuts will happen, to suit their need for panic causing click bait. And, of course, we have had rolling power cuts before. My batteries are 32kWh, with another 12 kWh on the way.

Problem:- the speakers in our cinema room are not against a wall but sit in front of a 6m wide glazed sliding door unit. The central two sliders are the main way in and out of the building and up until now we've been regularly tripping over the speaker cables lying loose along the floor. Not any more! So I finally plucked up courage and attacked my aluminium framed sliders with a 20mm drill bit 😱 Having seen the profile of the aluminium extrusion when I visited the factory that produced them, it struck me that there was a continuous channel running the entire length. It's been playing on my mind ever since. I did toy with the idea of sticky-backed black trunking but it would have been just too vulnerable on the threshold area. So what if they cost a few thousand quid, it's only a few holes. I finally caved when I drilled the first (test) hole and checked I could pass a conduit draw tape the full length. The 20mm holes I've made also accept standard electrical box grommets and blanking plugs and was reassured by how well the blanking plug disguised the holes if I ever change my mind. Thought I'd share this hack in case it gives anyone else the courage to make use of their frames in a similar fashion. Not that anyone else would be daft enough to build a cinema room with fully glazed walls like this.

Festoon LED lights give a better light for working Draped around ceilings and walls They don’t leave you dazzled like some of the floodlights

It's the air source heat pump. There is a greater distance to the landing wall than the picture suggests and distance to it was OK'd by the installer.

@Andehh your airtightness is your friend here - and you need to do the test just after the windows go in and before they start on boarding out and covering all the holes up. You may even want to do 2 tests - you can rig your own blower door too using an old car fan or even hire a test rig and then go looking for all the gaps - easily spotted and you will pay dividends when the actual test is done with this approach. If you have a block skin inner you may also benefit from a parge coat of sand & cement or bonding applied with a broom to seal up all the gaps in blockwork. It’s a few hours job but not expensive and well worth the effort as finding the gaps will be nigh on impossible when you’ve got the boards up and skimmed

A good airtight test result will get you a much better score. Get the SAP person to re-run at an infiltration rate of 3. If you've been paying attention to quality and taking basic airtight measures, you'll get less than 2. Are the windows ordered/installed? They sound very poor performing. You'll notice that in summer and esp winter. Ours ranged from 0.5-0.9.

put one of these heat recovery units under the bath, cheap and easy SAP points, save you money as well. https://recoupwwhrs.co.uk/products/easyfit/

That’s the same type of bath we are looking to install in a few years I have the same worries and plan to fit one of these https://shellystore.co.uk/product/shelly-flood/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMItpf89O2E-wIVW-3tCh05jgcsEAQYASABEgI24fD_BwE under the bath, battery will last a year so any leak will materialise before the battery runs out. £25 gives peace of mind and saves long term decor damage

@Gus Potter It sounds like we’ve got pretty much what you plan on doing. Flexiwaste as described by @ProDave. Our bath sits on tiles and I was equally concerned about leaks. Sure enough one manifested itself after the first filling, evident by water on the tiles around the base of the bath. Despite the weight of the bath (220kg iirc) it was easy enough to lift one end and put blocks of wood underneath then lift the other end to do the same - rinse and repeat until it’s high enough to get to the plumbing. Turns out it wasn’t my plumbing that was at fault but the click clack waste fitted by the supplier that was leaking. I removed and refitted that properly and it’s been fine ever since 👍

This sort of bath is normally connected with a flexi waste pipe. You stand the bath on blocks a few inches above the floor, connect the flexi waste then remove the blocks and sit the bath on the floor. Use a top access click clack waste fitting.

Just a bit more to add to Gus' excellent explanation. There is nothing magic about 450mm depth, probably originally foot and a half, but it is a good guide to how deep frost will go in the uk. Frost and freezing causes changes to the ground as explained. If you were in an area that gets especially cold or for long periods then the frost can creep deeper. My own house was built from timber in the 1920s. It has 2 bricks above dpc, then 2 below on 150 concrete. So not remotely 450mm. The house moves up and down seasonally, mostly through clay shrinkage, causing doors to stick. But it is still standing, even the brick chimneys. I have often designed buildings with 450 or 500 deep edge strips where they are not structural. It works nicely with 2 blocks, and keeps the strip and internal slab safe from frost. Hence also 450 or so depth for water pipes.

Something not quite right there. I'm working from home full time, everything is electric, including waste treatment plant and we have the ASHP heating the main zone room temp to 22/23°C We are using on average 13kWh.

Any chance of sleeving that COLD valve handle with some blue heatshrink? I won't be able to sleep. 😉

Personally but not based on science I would say ventilation first, lots of logs stored in woodlands have a sheet of corrugated iron on top but open on all sides.

I ran a kitchen company for 20 years. Bespoke high end, and seriously expensive. Range from £35 to £200K. The truth is that all kitchens are not made the same. My ironmongery was Hettich or blum. Some companies use cheap far eastern copy ironmongery. Don't expect it to last for 20 years. It won't. Mfc board (which cheaper kitchens are made of) also varies in quality. Egger make decent quality Mfc. There is a lot of shite Mfc used within the kitchen industry thats full of aggregate and iron filings. When you are looking around ask them who manufacturers the boards that the kitchen carcasses are made of. If they can't tell you, then the cabinets are either shite, of the knob you are chatting to was selling double glazing last week. Moving on. Kitchen fitters. Most top end good kitchen fitters are not carpenters. They are kitchen fitters, and that is all they do. The lower end companies sub out the fitting to all sorts of tossers who should not be let near a kitchen fitting job. Bear in mind that 20 years ago i used to pay each of my fitters £1000 per 5 day week. Be very wary of people who tell you they will fit it for £700 quid gov. Don't get me wrong, a lot of people can make a fair hash of fitting a kitchen. However having a kitchen fitted that you want to last 20 years will, in my opinion require the skills of a proper kitchen fitter with the skills and equipment to know where kitchens are normally put undre stress etc, in order to do a proper quality job. Sorry, i can't give you any advice on laminate worktops, as i never used them. The likes of Wrens worktops are shite, and will not last 20 years. Be aware that if you step up to a composite top, you again need to be aware that the quality varies between manufacturers.