AliG

This morning I thought I could hear water running somewhere but didn’t investigate. Just went into the pool room to change the timer on the filters and found this- Should I get the original pipe? It is a Noken Smart Line cistern and I probably could get one in a week. Or could I just use any braided pipe that fits? Always been suspicious of these concealed cisterns built into the wall but this seems an easy enough fix. IMG_0280.MOV

The main issue is warming the house up. In a very well insulated house, it would warm up running water at 25C. Some people have had issues in near passive houses due to hot water tanks or the inability to run their UFH cold enough (most equipment was not made with this kind of flow temp in mind). You would maybe get away with it in a bathroom as the heat would dissipate into the rest of the house. I suspect that most people with tile warmers have a wooden subfloor so it won't store heat like UFH in screed would. By the time you have heated up a tile and screed floor it would continue to pump heat out into the house for hours. As you say it wouldn't really use much energy.

I can feel when the tiles aren't heated but it is not uncomfortable. If the floor wasn't heated in the winter you would really feel it, but in the summer it is just cooler, not really cold. We don't have any carpets, only tiles or wood. The upstairs tiles feel a little warmer I would say, so in particular I don't notice any issue at all in our en suite. I have never heard of anyone running the UFH just to have the floor feel warmer. I guess @markocosic is right in that it would use less energy, but it still seems wasteful. It would almost certainly warm the house up to a temperature that would feel uncomfortable 23+

Welcome. Are you sure you are an architect....where are the curved walls, overhangs and other expensive to build features!

OK, from Australia https://www.tedslightsandfans.net.au/collections/hpm-excel-life-range/products/copy-of-legrand-excel-life-16a-switched-mechanism?variant=33678590935180 Momentary switch https://www.tedslightsandfans.net.au/collections/hpm-excel-life-range/products/legrand-excel-life-1-gang-architrave-grid-and-plate-assembly-available-in-3-colours Black architrave plate, no screws, rounded corners Tedslightsandfans don't list shipping outside Australia. This company does https://www.mjselectricalsupplies.com.au They don't have all the Legramd products on their website, but they have the catalogue so I don't see why they couldn't order them The plate is EDA770/1GPL The switch is EM770XBL Hope this helps

So Click do a switch but the plate has screwholes https://www.click4electrics.co.uk/black-finish-c-328_743_754_755_759/click-grid-pro-gm2004bk-2-way-retractive-switch-module-black-p-7030 https://www.click4electrics.co.uk/deco-plus-black-nickel-minigrid-c-328_518_717_631/click-deco-plus-1-gang-architrave-plate-dpbn471bk-p-4121?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIu_iMiOvh9gIV84BQBh27CwrCEAQYASABEgIs7vD_BwE Varilight also do a matt black retractive switch but no architrave plate. https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/VLG102SRB.html?source=adwords&ad_position=&ad_id=415703895099&placement=&kw=&network=u&matchtype=&ad_type=&product_id=VLG102SRB&product_partition_id=940253954358&campaign=shopping_excluded&version=finalurl_v3&gclid=EAIaIQobChMInbLPpOzh9gIVmJftCh2fNAdSEAQYBiABEgLt7vD_BwE Other people also do momentary black matt grid switches. The real problem is a screwless architrave plate. No one seems to make one. But you could probably have one made.

I need to be a bit pedantic here - that is not a toggle switch. If that style of switch (rocker switch) is OK there are a few available. The problem then is getting a screwless plate to mount them in. You could buy the switch and have a plate made/3d printed. Rocker switch Toggle switch

Sorry, I realised I was ranting about the general questions I see re utility bills and not you specifically. In your case I’d try and estimate the amount of energy you expect to use from historic bills and what you know of your build and see if their estimate is correct.

Great line about the tipping moral dilemma. https://youtu.be/k7h6w52GQ6E

I keep reading people saying that they have changed to LED bulbs etc, insulated loft but bills have not fallen or gone up. It seems that the average person has no idea how their energy bill is even calculated. The right question would at least be how much energy do you use. I have helped out a couple of people who have posted about their electricity bills on a Facebook utility forum. I was horrified that they were using as much or more electricity than we are. Indeed it made me wonder how much overall energy demand in the country could be reduced by explaining to people how to minimise bills. Articles like this do not help in today's DM- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/money/bills/article-10640385/Vampire-electrical-appliances-sucking-cash-bank-account.html To suggest that not switching off phone chargers and leaving TVs on standby is a material proportion energy bills is nonsense. A phone charger doesn't even register when not charging a phone. It might use 0.1-0.2 watts in this scenario, or 1-2kWh a year (40p) TVs do not use the 4W quoted on standby, they would been breach of regulations. They use more like 0.5W. Maybe £1 a year, not the £10 quoted. Some things are correct. Sky boxes use quite a lot of energy for example and amps are very inefficient users of power. On the other hand a 3kW power shower used for 10 minutes a day would use 182kWh a year. Cut your shower time to 5 minutes (or don't turn it on for 5 minutes and do something else whilst it warms up) and save 91kWh. enough to run a phone charger for over 50 years. Running you dishwasher on the eco mode instead of the fast mode might save 0.5kWh. So that could be 150kWh a year. It soon mounts up. Like personal finance, maybe this is another thing to teach people at school.

No! Lol, to be blunt. The whole American tipping culture is not something to be encouraged in my opinion. It is a moral minefield and encourages people not to pay their staff properly. There are places who ask for a tip in the US now when you buy a bottle of water or pack of candy. I tip where I know that basically the staff aren't paid properly unless you tip, e.g. cruises and restaurants although frankly I would rather they put up prices and paid them. I did buy a load of chocolate and give out little parcels at Christmas to regulars like the Tesco guys who come every 5 days. I consider that more of a than you than a tip. Generally we average 1-2 deliveries a day. If someone was hanging around he probably just had a bit of time and fancied a chat. Most of them don't even have time to wait for you to answer the door. I worked in a supermarket for 5 years at school and university. Was as helpful as possible, got an award for it. Never once got or expected a tip. Just enjoyed doing my job properly and helping people.

That would work for a specific item. I would get things like, I like the look of this bathroom in Pinterest, can we do the same. I can't believe how many things people put on Pinterest with no information re the products. One of the points of the site is to sell products and services. Or it's an American design, so you need to buy the stuff from Home Depot etc.

I normally pride myself on being able to find pretty much anything on the internet. But this has to be one of the most specific requests I have ever seen. "Curved corners" particularly made me laugh. My wife would present me with things she saw online and ask to get them in the house. Nearly always they were from the USA and not available here. Often it was just a picture with no information. Sometimes you just have to say that it doesn't exist. It sounds like it is a one off switch that doesn't have to match anything else. What's wrong with the black nickel one? I found this one, but they don't do an architrave plate to put it into. https://www.elesi.com/soho-lighting-black-nickel-flat-plate-2-way-toggle-grid-switch-module-?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIlNCyj-Xb9gIVcBkGAB3qaQSpEAQYByABEgLYz_D_BwE If you don't need a toggle switch then there are plenty of options as above.

Sorry, I hadn't seen this before. Congratulations on your hard work. But are you actually planning to put a car in there? If it is just for storage then that's fine. A relatively modest VW Golf for example is 1800mm wide, but 2027 wide with the mirrors. A small SUV like a Tiguan is 2100mm with the mirrors. I used to have a door that was only maybe 100mm wider than my car at the mirrors and I had to get out of the car to line it up, I could only get out of the car as it was a double garage with two doors, so there was plenty of space once inside. Opening the doors inside the garage will be even more difficult, a three door car especially would be a nightmare. Be careful of this. If the floor runs down from the door, rain running down the door can run back into the garage. this happened in my last house. You can get a seal to put under the door and stop this, but ideally the floor should have a slight slope down towards the door.

So I am guessing this was labour only? If her builder agrees with you, she hasn't got a leg to stand on. Indeed if the builder employed you, it is none of her business. She could argue with hm and not pay him, but he has to pay you. Looks like a very nice neat job to me. My wife has considerable trouble imagining how things will look when done. We had a couple of instances where she thought the builders had installed different things to what she had ordered, they were correct. Thankfully we only had to repaint one room after we moved in where she didn't;t like the colour she had picked. But no retiling which I would have been quite upset about. I bet if the bathrooms were totally finished she would be happy and seeing them in a half done state doesn't help. My uncle used to be a bathroom fitter and got out of it because of this. He said you could do 10k of work then someone would find a single chipped tile and try not to pay you at all.

Norway has privatised Statoil, the state oil company. They have done a fantastic job of investing taxes and other levies raised from oil production. That is a different topic to the business of running energy companies. They are a small country with a lot of oil and gas, hence more money than they need to spend. Whether or not the UK could have done this in the past is a moot point now. As to Vattenfall, TBF I doubt it makes much difference whether electricity generators are state owned or privately owned as it is a very highly regulated industry with modest profit margins and returns. Hence my point that SSE was unfairly maligned, it is the oil and gas companies whose profits are soaring, not electricity generators. The history of government owned oil and gas E&P companies is generally very poor.

This is partly covered in the regs - An accessible shower room should be of a size that will accommodate either a level-access floor shower with a drained area of not less than 1.0m x 1.0m (or equivalent) or a 900mm x 900mm shower tray (or equivalent). The drained area of a level-access floor shower may overlap with activity or manoeuvring spaces where access to other sanitary facilities is not across the drained area. So the drained area of the shower can be in the activity space. I think I would read this as the activity space could be in the shower as there is room for this plus a 900x900 tray. However, another part of the regs supersedes this - except where reduced by projection of a wash hand basin, unobstructed access at least 800mm wide to each sanitary facility, So you could have what you show, but only if the entrance to the shower has to be at least 800mm wide. I don't think you can have an accessible shower with a 627mm wide entrance. It is also worth noting, in case this is the plan, that an accessible shower cannot be an en suite.

The analysis of energy prices is both right and wrong. Forgetting the specific price quoted, whether it should be £2000 or £3000. The price of producing energy has not increased much since a year ago, there may be some input price increases, wage rises and so on, maybe 5-10% increase in costs. Thus it might be argued that profits in the entire energy ecosystem have increased by the increase in price. This is roughly and theoretically true. However, the vast majority of these extra profits would have accrued to the owners of the oil and gas that are considered to be in short supply now and not to poor old SSE. The chosen representation is strange and doesn't make this very clear. You then get onto the issue of should the price have increased to increase the profits of energy companies. This is where the analysis is wrong. Over time, commodities are roughly priced at the marginal cost of new production, assuming that demand is increasing. So if the all in cost of new oil production is $70 a barrel then oil should average around this price as this is what is needed to encourage new investment to increase supply with growing demand. However demand for oil and gas does not always grow in a nice steady way and recent events show that supply is also not stable. So if demand fails as it did with COVID in 2020 then it the price falls to take out the highest cost producers until it reaches the point where supply from lower cost producers meets the new lower level of demand. Also if demand is falling such that new production does not need to be incentivised then the price can be below the level required to invest in new production. Due to this the price of oil can and has fallen to $40 when demand has weakened. On the other hand, if supply comes out of the market or demand grows faster than expected then you need the price to rise to incentivise new supply. If you thought that all Russian supply of oil was coming out of the market not only would you need the price to rise to cover the cost of new production, and the newest production is always likely to be less efficient and higher costs as people will use lower cost sources first. In the case of a supply shock that we are looking at today it is even worse. There is no short term way to increase supply to offset possible Russian supply losses. So prices increase not just to encourage new supply, but they must increase enough to destroy demand as supply and demand must ultimately be equal (ex inventory changes). The oil and gas price in the last couple of years was depressed by COVID and low demand so analysis comparing today to recent history will probably show unfair figures. Two years ago the price would not have covered investment in new capacity. I have not spent much time on the recent specifics, but considering rising input prices for still and so on, I would guess that the equilibrium price of oil to grow supply at around 1% a year in line with recent demand growth is around $80 a barrel. Prices above and below this are due to short term issues. The energy business is not a great business and over recent years (until this recent situation) has been one of the poorer investments in the stock market. Demand growth is modest and slowing and returns on capital employed are poor. Inherently there is little IP and selling something where you cannot make more but instead have to go look for more requires very high levels of investment. They are not minting money like people think they are. The absurdly profitable businesses in the world today are tech businesses such as Apple, Microsoft and Google or Visa and Mastercard which are absurdly profitable. As people don't directly pay these companies they don't notice this. I do worry about speculation in commodity markets. In general speculators are looking at the info available and trying to decide what the future situation will be. If Russian oil supply drops then there will be a shortage of oil so prices will have to rise. They forecast this kind of thing and prices get there faster than they might have. But this really just gets us to the same end point faster. Still their profits come basically out of the pockets of consumers and they don't provide much of a useful function, I would limit it. As to windfall taxe, I would in general be opposed, but in this extreme case I think they are probably fair. The cost of wind, nuclear etc have not increased, but they get to price by the marginal supply cost and make more money. However, people might remember Octopus Agile paying people to use electricity in 2020, were the people clamouring for a windfall tax today, clamouring for a tax on consumers who were getting cheap energy at the expense of providers who were losing money. Does it not cut both ways? I think it normally does cut both ways and come out in the wash. The difference here is that we have had a tail event where we could possibly lose an enormous amount of capacity to produce gas especially and oil and some companies are benefitting from this through sheer luck of being in the right place at the right time. There is no possible offsetting negative scenario where lots of gas and oil could be conjured up from nowhere collapsing the price. Even COVID was not that bad. As to nationalising everything, that is just crazy. The countries with nationalised energy companies generally are inefficient at both producing and finding energy and have unreliable supply. Energy companies are not the super profitable great investments that the media wants people to think they are. They have been some of the worst investments of the last twenty years, Nor can governments conjure up money and solutions from nowhere. It is still our money. In an ideal world you could cut out profits and have a lower cost of capital if governments ran everything. But people seem totally willing to ignore that time and time and time and time again this has been tried and failed. Look at how much it costs SpaceX to launch a rocket versus NASA, it is not just communist countries that prove this, even the USA. I am not saying capitalism is perfect, but with the correct checks and balances it generally works. We might need a bit of a check for the current situation.

Can we maybe try and keep the thread on the topic of energy prices and not COVID restrictions etc. I’m sure there are plenty of other threads to argue about those things in.

In designing an experiment like this, you have to be careful of unintended consequences. I could fire up all the ovens for a couple of hours or a fan heater as it would make all the electricity I normally use free. It could be quite difficult to double our usage in a two hour period without wasting energy. But the incentive exists to do exactly that so it would not be representative for actual use of someone paying.

Showing the extremely fluid nature of the situation, the natural gas price in the UK has fallen 30% today and is back to £3.50. Much more bearable. Oil is down over 10%. Either markets consider the banning of Russian oil to be the worst things get, or maybe they think this is what brings Russia round as they will quickly run out of money. Somewhat dangerous reading the papers as they love making things sound worse than they are. The Daily Mail has been saying for days that we have £2 petrol. The current average price is £1.58.

I think LPG is around 70p now.

Gas price hit £8 at one point today. It has settled back to £6. That would be over 20p/kWh!

I use almost all the electricity I generate. So 3500kWh a year at around 30p on the upcoming fix/Octopus.

You are still talking 12 months plus. So better, but not going to help in the immediate future. This also explains why gas prices have gone up way less in the US. The real problem is Europe and it takes even longer to add transport capacity than production. You will hear a lot more calls for a Russian oil and gas ban from the US than Europe as they can be self sufficient. With a few years we could pretty much wean ourselves off of Russian gas. The stock price of Vestas, the largest maker of wind turbines, went up 30% in two days last week The problem is the economic damage this could do over the next 12 months. Plans in place for zero carbon had us moving this direction over the next 10-20 years. China is the wildcard in this. Much as they have sided with Russia in general, I am sure they see this as bad for business. Needless wars may not upset them, but they don't want an energy driven recession any more than anyone else.