SteamyTea

I feel a case of Boolean is called for. "Doctor, Doctor, we have a case of dysentery on the ward" "Make a change for Chablis"

That is a different conversation I think, as in my experience of builders, is that everything comes as a surprise to them.

You can start a conversational or statement sentence with 'Or'. Or maybe not. I am an observer that that will dish out advice, without taking any personal risk at all.

I find the trouble with most workplace psychology, and sociology in general, is that people expect a binary result. I think a lot of this is down to our 'Hollywood' culture in the arts. We see films and TV shows that create a very complex situation and the hero, against all odds, solves it. Life is just not like that. Knowing when to walk away is possibly a more important lesson to learn. The other things that struck me, apart from you self builders are all bonkers, is why we get hung up on small detail. Small things don't have to be right first time. I painted my bathroom green, was so vile, I repainted it the next week. So maybe get a cheap kitchen worktop first, then, if the kitchen layout is not to your liking, shuffle the base units about. I saw a very interesting documentary about the first moon landings. The main thing that I remember was the design/thought process of the Saturn 5. They made the big decision first i.e. how to get into earth orbit. They the rest tended to fall into place. Not perfect, but did the job several times.

Seems a good thing to try out first. Someone, and I think it may have been @joe90, fitted some pipes with a venturi on the top of them to draw out damp. That seemed to be a good idea.

Some of you may remember Ben, over at the other place. His project went totally pear shaped and he was looking to pull out. http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=8401 In hindsight, there was probably a lot that 'the community' could have done to help, even if just meeting him for a cuppa. He did have the balls to put up his problems, which was a good thing I think. I still wonder what happened to him.

Basic economics. It is the manufacturers job to maximise profit, the consumers job to minimise it. These are really basic bits of kit, a food blender is more complicated. It is easy to get sucked in to a few 'special' features. Mine has a power setting (hardly ever use it), a temperature setting (use it all the time) and a timer (very useful).

To reduce condensation by ventilation quickly and, initially, cheaply, could you not stick a fan in the underfloor void?

A reluctant oven can contact JustEat to get you a pizza. Can't do that on a gas on.

Try this app and see what it shows. https://opensignal.com/ Several years ago I read in my weekly comic about some rural Indians that cobbled together a couple of old satellite dishes and wifi transceivers. They used them for line of sight communication. Seem to remember that they could cover a distance of 30 km. Anyone tried this?

I pulled my old one apart (was a £20 one from Maplins). There really is not much to them. A bit of copper wire in a coil, and temperature sensor, some magic circuitry on a tiny board and, on the one I had, two push buttons and a variable resistor.

Have you looked at crowdsourcing, not the same, but some guy was trying to raise money for this: https://www.gofundme.com/9wvxt9-replacement-window

I think the latest about CCleaner shows just how insecure our systems are.

I made large 'sausage rolls' of insulation from weed control barrier stuffed with mineral wool. Stapled these to the roof rafters leaving a ventilation gap. Works well. Has the advantage that you get a bit of gentle warning before you crack your head on a timber.

I think part of the security problem is 'cloud storage'. I have a Kindle, I like it, can read books and watch movies on it. And it only cost 40 quid. I had an encrypted file which I wanted to read, so popped it onto the kindle, unencrypted it, read it, closed it down and deleted it. I thought that was the end of it. Imagine my surprise when I was browsing my file system and noticed that the file was still there. I think what happened was that it copied the file to the built in cloud storage from the Kindle, and I only deleted the local copy. Also we may have trouble with OSs. The open source people always claim that anyone is free to look at the source code, but I doubt if there is a person on earth that could actually do that and find anything sneaky hidden in there. Maybe a team of highly skilled software people might be able to. So we rely on trust a great deal. It may be time to start using less software and more hardware, at the expense of less convenience and versatility.

So true.

I would think it is all down to the air movement around them. If there is virtually no movement, then even will a low condensation risk, there is still the possibility that rotting of some sort could take place. Though it may just be a method to add value to a tried and tested product.

Ian Have you considered a holiday. Maybe a week in the sun, or God forbid, Canada, may help.

That is really down to just collecting data. But I think that simply extending the extremes of a model would be good enough.

I would think that a temporal statistical model would do that. Just run the above model though the different temperature and humidity conditions for an area, then weight those results to local weather data.

Sell your current place, cash is king in this world.

Why not DIY SIPs. Basically just a couple of sheets of OSB, a sheet of Celeotex or similar, some posts in the right place and a pot of glue. Knock them up in a garage, tow to site, nail together and then clad in tin.

Just been brought to my notice over at the other place that there is a Part R of the building regs about communication cabling. https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/517789/BR__PDF_AD__R__2016.pdf

Is the comparison between space probes and mobiles really relevant. They are designed to do different things, in different ways and in different places. I still have a working scientific calculator from 1979.

Do you have a couple of temperature and RH sensors rigged up to a logger. Then you can see what is really happening