AliG

I have been reading a lot about this at work over the last couple of years. Electric motors are much better than combustion engines, as battery technology falls in prices, there should be a crossover point where electric vehicles are cheaper to make and run around 2025. As well as battery technology falling in price, on the other side emissions regulations keep getting stricter for combustion engines pushing their costs up. Once past this point, cars will naturally move to all being electric. Thus 2040 is not really pushing it. Due to the efficiency of electric motors versus combustion engines, even if power is generated by fossil fuels, there are still less emissions overall using electric vehicles and assuming a similar generation mix to what we have at present. In car combustion engines are extremely inefficient. I don't think national charging infrastructure presents much of a problem. There are already thousands of charging points, they should roll out alongside the uptake of electric cars. Even once all new cars sold are sold are electric it will take some time for all cars on the road to actually be electric. The main problem might be charging in urban areas. It is easy enough for suburban owners to plug in overnight on their drives. In urban areas, I suspect that the use of autonomous cars and Uber type services may make owning your own car pretty much redundant. I have seen a lot of commentary around this aspiration in the press. It has been along the lines of.. the electricity will run out, we will all be stranded etc. It has been very ill informed. Most of these problems are already minimal today and certainly I would expect to be solved by advances over the next 20 years.

I just went through the same exercise on my house, originally I was going to have south and west facing. Then when I thought about it, any panels not facing south are shaded by the actual house for a substantial portion of the day, thus although I might have got extra output late in the evening this was way more than offset by the fact that the west facing roof would not have received any sun until after 12. Depending on the shape of your roof, a south facing roof likely generates power for the majority of the time that an east or west facing roof will without being overshadowed for part of the day. I would then use a Earthwise Solic 200 or similar to divert excess generation to heat hot water.

I've been very quiet for the last couple of weeks. I've been busy at work, but the thing that has really hit me has been doing the electrical planning. I have spent more time of this than anything else in the house as I have specified sockets, lights etc, marked up drawings for where everything goes and so on. Finally this is pretty much done. I have this week off so was on site discussing progress. We are another 4 weeks behind, but it s looking good. They are working on the electrical first fix and have just started some of the plaster boarding. I am really pleased with how the roof tiles look, not having a ridge added a lot to the cost but it is such a nice finish and the tiles themselves have some nice variation.

It appears, reading the rules that vacancies sites are given a value as they could be rented out presumably for someone to camp on. The mistake seems to be pre splitting the sites. If you could argue that the value of a camp site was lower through evidence then you could maybe have them revalued down. Alternatively you could do something that renders them not useful as individual sites at the moment, for example turning them into some kind of communal space such as a picnic area until such time as you want to actually release them.

I knocked down a garage with two singles and replaced with a double door. Much easier to get in. Anything wide like an SUV or trailer is tough with a single door. Was the 3m width a typo? With 6.5m garage width I'd be going for a door between around 5.5m wide. Then positioning the cars should not be a problem. You can go up to 5.5x2.75m in a sectional door without issue. If you look at the Hormann brochure or others it gives you the possibilities. Larger doors might be more expensive special orders. I have a double and a single on the new place. I considered a side slider but it would take up too much room inside the garage. They are also considerably more expensive and there is less of a choice of manufacturers and suppliers. To give you an idea I had quotes for a 5x2.5m 2.5x2.5m Hormann sectional. Including electric operation and windows which add to the price. Fully fitted they were roughly £3600 and £2500, so that is a big saving on a double versus two single doors. A white door with no windows would prob be a few hundred cheaper.

I think so, I just read that they have now started to collect picture form the cameras to help teach the cars. People have seen massive spikes in the amount of data the cars are sending back.

Yes, the Celotex is floating on the water which gets squeezed out when you stand on it. I tend to think that it would just dry out eventually, just like my garage floor gets flooded and then dries over time, I just wanted to make sure there are not any permanent issues that I could be locking under the screed if it isn't perfectly dry when it is laid.

It is pretty much watertight now, but it wasn't until the end of last week. It was just bad luck that there was torrential rain in the last couple of days as they finished off.

I am suspicious that the supposed £35k price will not be a reality, or at least a practical reality. It may be that an absolutely base model car comes in at this price. They will be rear drive only to begin with, I personally would not like such a powerful rear wheel driven car as they are a nightmare on the odd occasion when it snows. I would think a more standard spec with metallic paint, leather seats and 4WD will come in at around £45k. One of the issues on the X/S is that some of the car's features do not work without ordering the autopilot system. All cars are built with autopilot hardware, it is the £5k to add enhanced autopilot and £3k to add full self driving (Although the functionality doesn't exist yet some people could pay for this and I suspect sell their car on before it ever works). I do not need autopilot on a car. I rarely drive out of town or long distances, so I thought I could keep the price down by avoiding this option. However, I do like automatic cruise control which is not a stand alone option and would require me spending £5k on enhanced autopilot. Having read the manual just now you seem to get automatic wipers and lights and standard cruise control as well as all the automatic braking features without enhanced autopilot. Although bizarrely they have not yet managed to implement automatic wipers on the new autopilot system so they don't currently work.

They were due to lay all my screed floors on Saturday. Due to torrential rain last week they could lay the upper floors, but the ground floor became flooded and water got under the insulation. They have lifted insulation and are trying to dry out the floor before coming back to screed it on Saturday. Does it have to be totally dry under the insulation/screed. or is a bit of water OK?

I had given up on the idea of getting a Model X, but they have just announced that they now have a folding second row seat. I could not bring myself to get a massive SUV that I couldn't for example put a 55 inch TV inside. The electric car may just have got closer. They have also made the X75D accelerate faster for the same money. I am holding off for the Model 3 pricing probably at the end of this month as they might have to change things. For example the £5k cost of the autopilot system might be too steep on a £35k car so they might have to cut some prices.

They second and first floor screed is in as is most of the UFH pipework. The ground floor would be in, but the torrential rain last week flooded the ground floor. We are letting it dry out with a plan to do the screed on Saturday. Any issues if it isn't totally dry when this is done as I am a little worried water will be left under the Celotex in some areas?

Thanks, so just a junction box for later connection. The garage is 8.6m wide so I think if I put it at the centre rear I could attach to 3 cars inside without too much bother. The cars are always in the garage so no need for outside connection, although there will be an outside socket as I guess eventually you might want to consider visitors needing to charge. Its not an issue at the moment, but this will have to be sorted with wide scale EV adoption. My parents are about to buy an apartment, I think they should be wiring up the parking spaces outside for charging, but of course it would be a massive hassle as they would have to be wired back to everyone's meter.

Resurrecting old thread. So I am just speccing the electrics for the house. I have not ordered an EV yet, although I expect to have either an EV or plug in hybrid next year. What should I have the electrician install in the garage. I have a 3 phase supply. Should I install a 3 phase 32amp socket? Can I then connect this to the correct charger when I get the car. Different cars have a variety of maximum charge rates including 16a, 32a, 16a 3 phase and 32a 3 phase. If I have a 32a 3 phase socket can I plug any lower rated portable charging cable into this with no issues or alternatively could I just wire a charging box into this once I know what kind of car I actually have? Alternatively I just install conduit from the CU to the garage and leave it, but it would likely be cheaper if I can do as much as possible now.

I looked at a plot of land where the neighbour's had to give approval for the plans. They said they would not approve anything that overlooked their house and garden. They sent me previous plans of a house they had approved with numerous windows overlooking their garden. Most people can't read plans. From the day my house was designed their were pillars in the hall holding up the cantilvered landing. I had discussed these with my wife and shown them to her. We were disappointed as we didn't want pillars. When the stair designer created a 3D model of the hall with pillars in it she lost it due to the unexpected pillars. The pillars are now gone. Most people can't read plans. Most people don't listen. Your wife is always right.

We've had I've lived here for 50 years, you shouldn't be changing things...As if you somehow start to own the whole area just by living there. Why does anyone need so many bathrooms/two kitchens/such a big house? The irony of old people/couples living in 4/5 bedroom houses complaining that my house is too big (Seems like it would be OK if it wasn't bigger than theirs). We'll see what they have to say when it is finished. No-one has had the nerve to say anything to my face. Instead they comment to the builders, my wife and bizarrely my 10 year old daughter at school as now that plans are available on line everyone seems to have had a good look at them and been talking about them. As noted the further away people live and the younger they are the more complimentary people are. My wife desperately wants to ape @Nickfromwales but I feel I have mellowed to the point that I would rather not get into pointless arguments. I just console myself with the thought that the whingers are so old they'll soon be dead. When their houses are sold on then my house will have always been there as far as the new people are concerned. I don't plan to ever say I've been here for x years... As others say, I really cannot understand the dislike for anything modern among many people in this country. Every piece of land had nothing on it at some time, was some moratorium created in the 1960s where nothing else can be built and everything has to look the same. I do like taking arguments to their extreme to show how stupid they are. Clearly if everything had to fit in with what has gone before we'd all have to live in caves or mud huts. I'm all for progress. I love a modern interesting house on Grand Designs and the like. I am also a fan of art deco which must have got people into a right tizzy when it started to go up.

Could an unintended consequence of the lack of joined up thinking here not be that if a smoke vent system was fitted it would actually have drawn in smoke and flames from the fire outside the building and made things worse. I am no expert on these things but presumably it would have been designed on the basis that any fire is contained to one flat and the smoke in the rest of the building has to be removed. For a larger fire could the large amounts of air that this kind of system could be moving actually start to fuel and spread the fire? The lack of focus on evidence for how to stop this happening again and the involvement of politics is saddening. Last night on Question Time someone was adamant that the cause of the fire was austerity. This makes no sense as if they had not spent £10m cladding the building then this would not have happened. We should await the report but it seems that the devastating loss of life was caused by a number of failings and the general lack of care and incompetence that is seen time and time again. There are calls to rehouse everyone in similarly clad buildings. This is not really practical. I believe that as a stop gap measure if simply all alarms were checked to make sure that they work, the advice was changed to make sure people leave the building was evacuated as quickly as possible and we ensured that fire escapes were kept clear then we would have mitigated most of the risk and this would give time for the more long term solution of replacing the cladding. There are calls to fit sprinklers in all tall buildings, it is not clear that would have helped here or is practical. I am concerned that it is a call for the most expensive, complicated solution so that then the government can be blamed for not doing it.

Does seem a bit odd, so the invoices are not for work done, but for stuff the builders is ordering for upcoming work? If they are for work done, but the builder needs this cash for upcoming materials then it should be fine as your friend is paying in arrears. In this case I try to pay quickly to help the builder's cashflow. If the payments are in advance then there are maybe two choices (assuming that he would rather not change builder during the project) Either keep the payments small and frequent so he never has too much cash at risk. Or perhaps he could pay the builders merchant direct so that the materials would belong to him and not the builder in the event of a problem although everyone would have to agree to this.

That's a very nice looking house.

My suspicion having read the various reports available and also having spoken to an architect friend is that class 0 fire resistance is not properly understood. The impression I get is that people believe that if they install something that is class 0 then they have met the appropriate standards. Now the fact that class 0 materials are not marketed as fire resistant and these appear to be different more expensive materials should perhaps ring alarm bells. Reading the Probyn Miers report it seems clear that EPS based cladding was known to not be fire resistant but they wanted further study on other materials and this never seems to have happened.

I have read somewhere today that over one million buildings globally may have similar cladding. Certainly you see it often on offices, hotels, hospital etc as well as residential blocks. I have read through the thread to try and clarify if there is actually a regulation in place that might have stopped this or if the regulations were not followed and I am still not sure. Is the use of fire stops in such a cladding system considered good practice or is there a regulation that would enforce it? Similarly is the use of non combustible material recommended or is there a regulation to enforce it? I note someone said that this is the regulation Scotland for high rises. Sadly I think that if we look at the body of safety regulations we have we would probably find that many of them were only introduced after the loss of life and few have been proactively introduced without bad things happening to highlight the issue. One thing I do not understand is why the building did not seem to have a connected fire alarm system. Unlike sprinklers this would be a relatively easy and cheap installation. When we had our kitchen updated recently which required a building warrant due to some structural work we had to upgrade the whole alarm system in the house to connect the smoke and heat detectors to it. This was not the rule when the house was built but BC insisted that we had to meet current standards after the work was done. Why would this not apply here?

Saw it too. Amazing thing to do taking on 4 disabled kids.

Basically yes, the SE wanted to use this method. The conductivity of the 365mm block is 0.26 so the block on its own would have a U-value of 0.71. You could use 365mm blocks with EWI/IWI I guess. I didn't really look into it, with hindsight I think I might have been better using full fill bead insulation than PIR. I am using insulated plasterboard on the inside now which I was not before and this would have achieved an acceptable U-value. I was not sure how BC would see full fill insulation. Theoretically it is fine where I am but they might have worried about water ingress. One reason for choosing Porotherm is it does not need perpend vents which I find unsightly. I think in reality it proved much slower to use than advertised and may not have offered that much benefit over other kinds of blocks despite being more expensive, but it is hard to compare as you cannot know how your job would have gone with another method.

I didn't say it works well!

I disagree with the whole England imposes its will on Scotland thing. I could say Glasgow will vote one way and Edinburgh another or Newcastle and Surrey, or indeed just me and someone else. That's how democracy works.