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No one Tweeted them so I've done it . Restricted on characters so had to be content with the below. Any plans to remove the restriction whereby UniQs do not accept charge until they are more than 50% depleted? Those with a UniQ are seeing excess PV lost to the grid that they were expecting to top up their UniQ, resulting in hot water unexpectedly running out on occasion. Wait and see if they reply I guess.

I have a friend who did just that. Unfortunately he then put the template on the vinyl back, not the top. A beautifully cut piece of vinyl that fitted wonderfully, if you wanted to see the back not the pattern.

1 week off, draw breath and rest properly, then the final push before all the other stuff that needs doing next year.

Who knows but for the full feature set you probably need to fit a din rail timer to switch it off and on again each morning.

That'll do for now..

Bubbles is due to speed of expansion - if you use a gun, turn it down so you get a very slow bead with the trigger pulled tight and you’ll find it gives more foam to gas so the foam is more solid.

Time off is a dangerous thing....eating breakfast sitting in the sun streaming in through the windows this morning, counting our blessings and not the hole in the savings account, idly musing on the jobs still to complete to finish off here when up popped an e-mail ....it was for a barn to convert with fantastic views over fields and out to sea. It was in one of my all time favourite places in Wales too.......before we knew it we had pencil and paper out doing the sums! Get thee behind me I have to recover from the last 2 years here first!!!

+1 for Ubiquiti Unifi stuff, run CAT 6 cables back to a power over ethernet (PoE) switch in comms cabinet (no power cables needed) and you get a nice single WiFi zone which does seamless hand-off when a device roams. Plus the network management software is excellent (especially if you use Unifi PoE switch too). This is enterprise-level functionality at really good prices.

Only an English problem. If you built a roof properly, like we do in Scotland, with some form of sarking board, you would not be able to fall through it.

All the replies are slightly true but it all depends on what you are looking for in a batten a couple of years ago the standard was changed for battens and they had a new British standard number issued to make identifying them easier manufacturers started to put a dye in the preservative, however this didn’t stop ungraded battens getting dyed to make them look official if you want a batten that complies with the british standard you need to read the number on the side one of the reasons that they got a new British standard was worker safety, as roof trusses are now set at 600 centres this provides a large enough gap for a worker to fall through if the battens he was stood on failed, grading them and giving them a standard tried to prevent poor grade timber being used. As an employer who had a lad fall through a roof as a batten broke I looked into this a fair bit.

At least they have finally said something publicly. I can’t help thinking that it would have been better to have sent this explanation out with every unit categoried as a C, and their website needs to be updated accordingly.

@Ed Davies calculations above for PV panels made sense. Wholesale electricity costs do not vary that much globally. Generally electricity is made using globally available and priced generating equipment. The cost of fuel may vary, but again fossil fuels often have a global pricing structure. The retail price of electricity in China is around 8c per kWh compared to 13c in the US and 22c in the UK. Retail prices can be affected by distribution costs, government subsidies and taxes. https://www.statista.com/statistics/263492/electricity-prices-in-selected-countries/ This paper from the US Department of Energy references various studies that seem to suggest a 2-3 year payback for a PV system in terms of energy. https://www.nrel.gov/docs/fy04osti/35489.pdf As to wind turbines, Berkshire Hathaway opened Pacificorp, recently announced that due to improved efficiency of equipment they plan to "repower" their existing wind turbines, that I believe had been in use for less than 12 years as the efficiency of new equipment was so much higher that the investment would pay for itself. I would like to hope that people making billions of dollars of investment know a little bit about the expected return on the investment which would be considerably affected by the life expectancy and repair costs. http://www.pacificorp.com/es/energy-vision-2020.html You hear this kind of anti progress or renewables chat all the time, such as that electric cars use more energy in their production than they save, they don't. Or that the batteries only last a few miles, there are Teslas already with hundreds of thousands of miles on the clock. As with most cars something else will give out long before the motor/battery combination. There are places where EVs are barely cleaner than ICE cars depending on the local generating mix, but the good thing is that in general generating is getting less carbon intensive all the time. https://cleantechnica.com/2018/02/19/electric-car-well-to-wheel-emissions-myth/ Cement does produce a lot of CO2, but again you would have to look at this relative to its lifespan and the emissions of alternatives to see whether or not it is an environmentally friendly material. In general I think human ingenuity fixes these issues as it has in the past. I don't see us running out of resources.

Frankly I prefer plant on door stops, if the door is slightly warped or the frame not perfect, you can plant the door stops to match the door and i always glue them as well.

Frankly after two and a half years of building I am tired of 7 days a week plodding on with the same thing day after day (but overall I am very pleased). Went to a neighbours party tonight and was introduced as “the chap that built that wonderful brick house “ which was really nice to hear. I am looking forward to doing work in my workshop on my classic car and tractor, mechanics rather than building. Spring will see me landscaping and gardening which I look forward too.

Start looking at another in a different country... and you’re nuts ....! *and I don’t mean Wales or Scotland ...

Looking for the next project before you have finished the current one is the sign of a serial self builder. Help is available.

Details please! sounds interesting.....?

Sun amp and Ovo have just got a £1.6 million Government grant to develop the technology. Just found Some further info on the subject https://www.vcharge-energy.com/ Sunamp and Ovo have put out a joint statement https://www.ovoenergy.com/ovo-newsroom/press-releases/2018/december/cheaper-cleaner-smarter-ovo-and-sunamp-secure-funding-to-transform-how-we-heat-our-homes.html

And that quote gets "gobbledegook of 2018 award" Anyone care to have a guess at what it actually means?

Looks good! Are you painting the doors or leaving them natural?

Have a cup of tea, and fit a flat roof instead.

Information overload Ian, hope you enjoy it?. I am just finishing the porch floor ready for Christmas but then again we are in and comfy, just don’t look out the window.

It's shown in this post: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/7405-sunamp-not-heating-the-water/?do=findComment&comment=127385 There's also a source for the neon I used in this post: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/7405-sunamp-not-heating-the-water/?do=findComment&comment=127404 I'll take a photo of the two energy meters later today and post it.

+1 to... Tan(angle) = rise/run or Angle = ArcTan(rise/run)

Did they consult you when they made the first ducks arse, Dave ? Seriously though, I may be on to something. ?

There looking into a slimline, DIN rail mounted one. I think I’ll start routinely fitting the kWh registers / meters that @JSHarris and @Barney12 have, as I’ve seen them in action at @Barney12‘s and they’re A1 for “customer confidence” measures. I shall also adopt the neon ‘heater on’ indicator as that’s a good reference between power being on, contactor being on and energy being consumed. If the indicator is on, but no energy is being consumed, then you know the immersion stat has popped or the immersion has failed. Cheap, simple and effective measures, and the meters will give you the “grin factor” as you’ll be able to quantify what the SA unit has ‘earned’ you in stores excess energy. The fog is lifting. ?

Completely agree with that last sentence, but the problem is that inefficient old housing stock is (largely) lived in by those with the least chance of improving them (I'm not talking about the Victorian mansions and 'chocolate box' cottages). Perhaps a way forward would be to allow certain energy efficiency improvements to be made by owners with a quid pro quo reduction in council tax payments (whatever is spent on, for example, improving insulation is deducted from your CT bill for that year).

Now living in a reasonably well insulated and airtight house that does not take much energy to keep it comfortable, I hark back to what I used to accept as "normal" Thinking in particular of the 1930's house I grew up in as a child, and then a bit later, a different 1930's house that I bought myself. Both were cold, draughty and damp, and both took a lot of heat input and even then, they were not always comfortable. There is no way I could contemplate going back to living in one of those, unless I had a sudden unexpected input of capital to either upgrade them or just pay the huge heating bills. But those, and Victorian and earlier must make up a huge percentage of the UK housing stock that simply waste vast quantities of heating fuel. You would think in the current era of recognising the need to reduce fuel usage, particularly fossil fuels, that these old poor houses would be in less demand. We even have an EPC system that (for all it's faults) will at least give you an idea of the running costs and you might think would make the older poorer houses less attractive. You might also think it would encourage all mass builders to produce good houses, all striving for an EPC rating of A. But neither of these seems true. People might only buy an A++ rated fridge, or an eficcient car, yet the largest purchase they make it seems "character" and "period" win over practicality. About the only place the EPC has had any effect is buy to let, where the very worst EPC ratings now cannot be let. I am sure this will change in time. Perhaps it is time to charge more council tax for properties with a poor EPC?

Or fit a time switch... (still working a treat on ours, we're getting pretty close to 100% utilisation of excess PV generation now).

Welcome to the forum. If you are planning to be in by Christmas you've left it a bit late :-)

12/12 would be 45°. 6/12 would be much shallower, 26.56…°.

That happens to work when rise = run. For any other angle it'll be, at best, only an approximation. tan(degrees) = Rise/Run. E.g., for a 6/12 roof that would say 22.5° but it'd actually be atan(6/12) = 26.56…°. >>> for r in range(24): print("%2d/12" % r, degrees(atan2(r, 12))) ... 0/12 0.0 1/12 4.763641690726178 2/12 9.462322208025617 3/12 14.036243467926479 4/12 18.43494882292201 5/12 22.619864948040426 6/12 26.56505117707799 7/12 30.256437163529263 8/12 33.690067525979785 9/12 36.86989764584402 10/12 39.80557109226519 11/12 42.510447078000844 12/12 45.0 13/12 47.290610042638534 14/12 49.398705354995535 15/12 51.34019174590991 16/12 53.13010235415598 17/12 54.78240703180729 18/12 56.309932474020215 19/12 57.724355685422374 20/12 59.03624346792648 21/12 60.25511870305778 22/12 61.38954033403479 23/12 62.447188423282206 So 15° is between 3/12 and 4/12 (actually 3.21539…/12).

(Rise / Run)*45 = degrees pitch or (pitch*12)/45 = rise for every 12”

Here you are, dad.

I would think that would be just your sips wall and roof panels and not a lot else, a 10x 15 house will cost you a lot more than that, you need to budget £1000 per m if you do it all yourself going upwards very quickly if you use a main contractor you can spend £2000 per m very easily

Welcome Welcome to sleepless nights Welcome to frustrating builders Welcome to "Christ that was close" Welcome to " How much? Do you think I'm stupid?" Welcome to "Darling, can we move that window 3mm to the left - no - right please?" Welcome to the doctoral thesis on Bathroom Tiling by @Onoff Welcome to one liners by @Nickfromwales Welcome to @Temp's caution Welcome to nerds R Us Welcome to obsession.

Related to that if you have a lot of 3 way switching. I used the Click Mode light switches, nice and cheap and good quality. But their "party trick" is the switch modules are interchangable, so it is easy for instance to create a 3 gang switch with say 2 intermediate and 1 two way switch.

Here’s my two side by side after @Nickfromwales and his faithful assistant Will finished their handiwork.

It is very easy, when living i n a part built house, to just grind to a halt, accept it as it is and not make much progress towards getting it finished. That is a constant issue for us as the next thing we really really need to do is doors, but I am not sure we can actually afford them yet, let alone a joiner to fit them. So I carry on doing stuff that needs doing that is cheap instead.