SteamyTea

I would encourage suppliers to read these pages, it helps inform and educate, and maybe entertain.

You can search for the nearest gauging station (if your river is on it) here. https://nrfa.ceh.ac.uk/data/search

(had to look her up)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/property/luxury/10ft-wide-skinny-house-worth-27m-wins-planning-approval-london/ Seriously, what bother.

Did you keep the Durasol rep/trainers number? Get him in to rebuild it

What buildhub needs is a caravan, then when any of us with a bit of time to spare, can go and helps out. Think of it as 'disaster relief'.

Just a second though to possibly make your life easier. If your builder is being evasive, it could be because he don't want to be there. He may feel out of his depth but knows he cannot do the job to the standard expected. You will be doing him a favour getting shot of him.

You really have two issues to deal with here. 1) Sacking the current builder 2) Getting a replacemement If you do the second one first, then the first becomes easy. So just a matter of finding someone decent to help you out. Now as you are an ex academic, you probably know that out of any class of students, 1 or 2 are head and shoulders above the rest. So why not get in touch with your local FE college that runs building courses and ask if they know of anyone.

After a quick skim though, make that choice now, it will make the rest of the system fall into place. Then you can think about a couple of Sunamps for your DHW.

Nick told me how to sort it out on a mates boiler (over on the old forum), it made a significant difference to my friend. Now, statistics about energy, I am nearly wetting myself with excitement. My house is all electric, so easy to monitor. Here are a couple of energy density charts, one shows the probability at the 500W granulation, the other at the 25W granulation up to 500W (as that is where I use most energy. The time period if from 12/02/2017 to0 14/05/2017. The mean power draw is 409W, so an average of 9.8 kWh/day. Each 'bin' is up to the next graduation i.e. 0 is 0W to 500W, 2000 is 2000W up to 2500W.

This talk of usual journey distance is a bit of a nonsense when it comes to range anxiety. I could do 90% of my journeys on a gallon of diesel. It is the other 10% that I need the flexibility. When I travel up country to visit my mother 300 miles away, I do the journey in one stint. I leave early and have a simple 4 hour or so drive. No need to stop. Sometimes I pop into see some friends in Chipping Norton, adding a few miles to the journey and two trips via Oxford. I still don't have to 'fill up'. I really don't like driving, but breaking a journey I find even worse. I worked for Welcome Break as a contractor, though there is nothing wrong with their services, I am in now hurry to visit them, ever. I know a Tesla owner (the one that got hit), and he claims (via a third party) that he can get to Bristol on a single charge. Hell, I can get to London and back on a single tank. I think range is everything when it comes to cars (well apart from handling, grip, noise levels, acceptable performance (my old Suzuki Swift 3 pot was a great runner) and fuel economy). I had a motorbike that struggles to do 120 miles on a tank, it was hopeless for touring.

This is a fun map of the country: http://www.crashmap.co.uk/Search

I am always a bit intrigued by the recharging times claims i.e. 80% charge in 30 minutes. Is that 80% when the battery is effectively empty, or up to 80% of full capacity when only 50% of the charge has gone. @JSHarriscan you put a temp logger on your battery pack and see what temperature it reaches while it is being charged? Be interesting to know what is happening for different states of discharge. If there is a significant temperature rise, could that be used to demist/defrost the car in winter?

I have just had a quick look at Gridwatch to try and establish what is our normal range of generation. Over the last two years, we have had a demand range of between 2055 MWh and 165785 MWh, so 163730 MWh. The average is 32167 MWh So the capacity and distribution capability is already there, near enough (there is 5% spare capacity already). There will be many houses that are not capable of having a charging point at the moment, but if we are heading down the EV route (and I think we will and should), this is not a technical challenge, just a financial and timing one. Battery technology is the real killer at the moment. There will only be small increases in efficiency (because of physics). What will happen is that we will be able to charge them quicker without degrading them and they will get cheaper, while lasting longer. For every doubling in manufacturing capacity, prices drop about 20% (ish). So it will take ten years to go from £1000/kWh to £100/kWh. So no rush at the moment.

Welcome. Where in the West Country are you Dee. I thought OnOff was becoming a plumber.

Just for some context: IEC 62196 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEC_62196 J1772 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAE_J1772 CHAdeMO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHAdeMO I am not a fan of EV's from a practical point of view, plug in hybrids are a much better solution. As an aside, a Tesla parked outside where I work got a parking 'bump', the kind of thing I would not even bother about (annoying as it would have been). Apparently the repair bill was several thousand pounds. Way out of proportion to the damage.

Lots of pictures of them: https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=electrical+meter+fires&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:unofficial&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjs9qfIzqnVAhXKD8AKHbCWDrIQ_AUICygC

Did the wind 'run down the motorway' by any chance. I went to do some work on the Reigate section of the M25, was a lovely day, except on where I was working, the wind was really strong. At one of the colleges I was at there was a tower block ( @JSHarris knows it). Between the hairdressing department, the science block and that tower, the wind blows at least twice the normal windspeed.

"The fact is, all Lancia's had problems"

Why I said a few years back about getting a more fuel efficient car is the easy, cheap and quick way to reduce your emissions footprint. The German's are a canny lot. They are getting a converted Merc B made in China, it has the longest range of any electric car yet (still not enough for me to visit my Mother). https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new-cars/mercedes-b-class-based-denza-400-has-249-mile-electric-range I mentioned, about 7 years ago to a young lad I was working with that he would probably see the last new IC powered car in his lifetime. Personal transport is going to change a lot in the next 30 years. Self driving vehicles are going to be the real big one. I am looking forward to them as I dislike driving these days and would quite happily lay in the back of a car, after mainlining heroin, and getting to my destination to join my 80 year old friends in a nicely numbed state. Then we can all pogo to old Jam numbers. I don' think that creating a new floorpan for EVs is a real problem for the automotive manufacturers, they are always creating new platforms. 30 years or so ago we made tooling for the auto industry (the Discovery Mk1 roof trip and the Ford P100 pickp rear window trip are my handywork), we had a trip out to Rover and saw a man hitting a tool with a ball hammer. When I asked what he was doing I was told he was 'work hardening' it. Things have moved on a lot in that time.

My DHW costs are higher than my space heating costs. I too found the same thing. If I was willing to spend the money, I would be going for A2AHP for space heating the whole house (I tend to just heat the room I am in, but heating the whole house would be nice). DHW would be via PV and E7 into a Sunamp (that suits my lifestyle). My house is very small, and I live in a very warm part of the country.

Have you looked into Air to Air Heat Pumps. They have a good CoP, are cheap to buy and can often be self installed. On a more general note, the best heat pumps are water source ones, then ground source, then air. They all need to be seemingly oversized and run with the output temperature lower than the maximum. The downside of ASHP is 'frosting'. This is caused by a combination of air humidity, external temperature, desired temperature output and amount of time the unit is running. Space heating and domestic hot water should, if possible, be separated, they do different things, at different times and at different temperatures. When trying to decide on the best heating method, start with electrical resistance heating as this is generally considered the lowest capital cost but highest running cost. If, say an ASHP, comes out more expensive after 7 years, then it is not worth considering. You will need to have a good estimate of your thermal energy usage, but you need that anyway.

Better known as the University of Easy Access Re government backing of engineering. My view is that we have now just about created a good business environment to run an engineering business (planing consent is always a problem) with a low labour cost base. The aerospace and armament industries are pretty 'high tech', as is the automotive industries. We have good software engineers too (I dislike the term software engineering). So probably what is really letting the side down is financing, and that may be because it is too easy for an individual to make good money in it. I have not read up about that £1/4 bn investment scheme, but I think it may be a competition that leads onto further funding (never a good idea). I also think that a lot of the science behind batteries has been done, not as if we are getting a new periodic table to play with, it is now really an engineering problem (I am discounting my 1000V tinfoil and tooth filling amalgam battery that is created when I eat a Quality Street that I have badly unwrapped).

It has started, the government choosing 'winners' again. http://www.cityam.com/268984/government-power-up-investment-into-battery-technology