Jeremy Harris

My limited experience of fixing a neighbours ET system (twice now) has been that the only problems seem to relate to over heating and the control system that is supposed to prevent that. It seems that if the risk of overheating could be removed, with no need for active intervention by the control system, then reliability would be enhanced a fair bit. Anecdotal, I know, but pretty much every problem I've ever heard of with solar thermal systems has been associated with the control system or overheating prevention system.

Apart from the fact that there are some people that will just bodge anything together, I believe that another reason is that it's just so damned hard for a lot of people to find out how to DIY something safely. There's loads of information around on stuff like plumbing, but there's a really strange attitude amongst some when it comes to electrical installation work. Sure the best answer is always to get a competent and suitably qualified electrician to do the work, but if someone can't afford that, then the next best thing is to make sure that all the information needed to be able to do a safe DIY job is readily available. Yes, this means that often an installation won't be 100% tested as it should be, as the test gear needed is beyond the means of many DIY'ers on a budget, but it's really not hard to just do a fairly straightforward job, like running power to a shed, safely, if the information on how to do it is made readily available. I know this probably pisses off some in the trade, but my view has always been that if someone can't afford an electrician then they are probably just going to DIY the job anyway. Better that someone intent on DIY has access to information to do a reasonable job, than have the situation we have now where some people do crap work out of ignorance. It also seems that it's not just DIY'ers that are doing some really dodgy electrical installation work. YouTube is littered with videos by competent electricians highlighting really dodgy stuff that has been done by incompetent members of one or other of the Part P cartels. What really gets my goat is that after getting a degree I had to sit CEI Part 2 in order to join the IEE (as it was back in 1975). Now someone that's done a 5 week Part P course can be a "competent" person and IET member, yet they may well not know their arse from their elbow. How any short course can produce someone of equal competence to someone that's served their time I just don't know.

You will need to step the 2" BSPM outlet down to within the range of MDPE connectors. The biggest female 32mm MDPE fitting is 1" BSPF, so one way to do it would be to use a 2" to 1 1/2" BSPF reducing socket, then a 1 1/2" to 1" BSPM reducing nipple, then a 32mm MDPE to 1" BSPF female adapter. The polyprop adapters are here: https://www.pipestock.com/mdpe/pp-threaded-fittings

I've long felt that the wiring regs should be freely available, in the same way as the building regs are. We have the incredibly daft situation (in England and Wales) where Part P is freely available (here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/441872/BR_PDF_AD_P_2013.pdf ) and yet BS7671 is not, it costs an arm and a leg to buy. This is plainly ludicrous, as Part P is pretty meaningless in places unless the reader has a copy of BS7671 to hand.

Yes, it's copyright, but there is a fair dealing provision, and that provision allows for sections to be copied where such copying may inform and educate, amongst other reasons. I see no problem with this, it should be actively encouraged, as the very last thing we need is more secrecy and control around safe practice. We have enough of that from the dubious Part P cartels trying to profit from giving an illusion of safety. If anyone wants chapter and verse on what is allowable under fair dealing, then this is from the government website: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/exceptions-to-copyright And, just to be 100% clear, as an IET member I have paid for copies of 7671, the OSG etc, so whenever I've quoted excerpts from those documents I've done so from documents I have purchased, not "ripped off from dodgy PDF" stuff.

It's truly self-clean. At our old house I had to attack the shower screen every week with de-scaling stuff, squeegees, etc, and even then it looked pretty cloudy a day or two later, ever when running a squeegee over it after every shower. Here in the new house the self-cleaning glass just stays clean. All we ever do is occasionally point the hand-held shower head over it to wash off any soap or shampoo splashes. We have a squeegee to hand in the shower, but haven't yet felt the need to use it.

I did fit a bit of ply and the wiring in above the ceiling so that we could retrofit a recirculating hood, but we've decided we just don't need one. The kitchen stays steam-free and cooking smells don't seem to either linger or escape from the kitchen, so I think we'll just stick with the MVHR extract. Cleaning the terminals is really easy, as they just pop out and and can be put in the dishwasher.

No, and so far we've not had a problem, the terminal that tends to get the dirtiest is the extract on the shower room, which for some reason always seems to attract fluff (I blame the obsession with fluffy towels...). Mind you, we rarely fry anything, so we're far from being a worst case when it comes to likely muck in the kitchen extract. Also, because the extract terminal is near the corner of the kitchen, a couple of metres or so away from the hob, any grease that does get airborne most probably condenses out long before it reaches it.

Ask yourself what they could do if you took the trees out now. I doubt there's anything anyone could do if you just took them down now, whereas you may well find that if you don't you'll end up with having to pay for a tree survey and have restrictions imposed that limit what you can do in future.

Wago do a fairly big range of surface mount brackets for holding most of their connector types, but the usual suspects don't seem to stock them for some reason. I made up a box with about a dozen of these brackets fixed in a line, when I was wiring up the water treatment plant shed. Made for a neat installation. The only place I found that stocked them was Farnell: https://uk.farnell.com/c/connectors/terminal-blocks-accessories/terminal-block-accessories?brand=wago&accessory-type=mounting-carrier

I made sure I felled the horse chestnuts that were going to be in the way before I submitted our planning application. They weren't protected by TPOs and although it caused a bit of minor annoyance with a couple of people at the time I remain convinced that taking pre-emptive action like this is the easiest way around what could end up being an expensive problem. In our case the planners did ask for a tree survey (there had been previous applications on the site and the trees were marked on the topographic survey) but withdrew that when I told them we'd felled the trees.

That's what I did, for the same reason. I also went for a single, double ducted, extract terminal in the kitchen, placed right in the corner opposite the door (the door is where replacement fresh air comes in from other rooms). The principle is to have as long an air path from the extract point to the fresh air supply point as possible, to allow for the maximum diffusion of fresh air across the room. The same principle applies to all MVHR room terminal locations, make the flow path as long as possible across each room.

Just read a post on another forum where a "smart" meter customer had their electricity supply remotely switched off for nine and a half hours by their supplier. The sequence of events was that the customer called the supplier to report that the meter in-house display was showing the wrong tariff, a different tariff to the one he had signed up to. The supplier said they would correct the display over the air. All seemed OK, until a few hours later when the power went off. The supplier called out the DNO, when the power outage was reported, and the DNO reported back that the supply to the meter was OK and that the meter had turned off the supply to the house. It turned out that someone at the supplier had sent the meter the wrong programming data when trying to reset the in-house display to show the correct tariff. What they did was change the meter so that it was programmed as a Pay As You Go credit meter, without telling the customer this is what they had done. When the period of grace allowed without credit ran out the meter disconnected the supply. Getting the supply back on took many 'phone calls and a long delay. No compensation was offered. Everything I've read about remote disconnection has stressed that the suppliers would not use this feature (it's built in to all "smart" meters). This case seems to prove that a supplier can disconnect a supply remotely without any checks, just by someone with a bit of finger trouble. That doesn't fill me with confidence.

Regarding timescales, our slab (RC35 IIRC) was supposed to be poured first thing, but (as often seems to be the case) the concrete trucks arrived hours later than promised. The result was that the slab got poured late in the morning. The guys didn't stop floating it until about 10 O'clock at night, as they had to wait for it to cure enough. This was compounded by the pour being during October, so the weather was a bit cool.

If going down the Go Pro route it's worth looking at the cheaper SJ Cam models: https://www.amazon.co.uk/SJCAM-Multi-function-Waterproof-Camcorder-wide-angle/dp/B01HXQ70K6 . They are pretty much the same sort of quality as the Go Pro, but a fair bit cheaper.

The loft ladder in my workshop is operated by an electric winch. The winch is fitted up near the ridge and is normally used for lifting stuff up there, but I can just release the bolts that lock the ladder, hook the winch to a wire loop that runs around the bottom of the ladder and is connected to the loft hatch, then operate the winch and it folds the ladder then lifts the ladder and the hatch up. The winch cuts off when the wire rope is tight, and the spring keeps the hatch tightly closed.

I couldn't agree more, but all the voting members were 1* military officers, from all three services. 1* is Brigadier General, Air Commodore, Commodore, so reasonably high up in the food chain.

Curiously, as an ex-MoD boffin, SF generally do their own thing, and don't really put any significant pressure on defence research and development. They tend to be a bit maverick, and will go and buy their own kit, often without going through the normal procurement process, and sometimes that works well (for stuff like boots and small arms) sometimes it doesn't work at all well (like when buying helos). For example, I was being shown around the armoury at Donnington about 20 years ago, and spotted a couple of racks of AK-47s sitting in the workshop. They are pretty distinctive, as we don't have guns with wooden stocks. I asked why on earth we were servicing Kalashnikovs, to be told that it was an "under the counter" job from Hereford. Apparently these were special Kalshnikovs, accurate ones that actually shot in a straight line and didn't rattle like a tin full of old nails when you carried them. The reason I was told for SF having them was so that they didn't need to carry lots of ammunition. In pretty much any likely theatre of operation they could guarantee the enemy would be using AK-47s, so all they had to do was kill them and steal their ammo. It also used to be the case that in decision conferences (the method by which procurements are prioritised) SF always came top of the list, but that had started to change before I retired. One example I remember clearly was a 1* decision conference looking at future rotary wing requirements, where the starting point was that all SF procurements would get the highest score, and tasks viewed as non-essential got the lowest score. I was there as a non-voting observer (as I was buying helos and managing the Lynx fleet) and I clearly remember asking why military SAR was the lowest priority (the helos I was involved with didn't really have a Mil SAR role). There was a debate where one of the other 1*s present (a voting member) remarked that it cost around £2M to train a pilot, and perhaps almost as much for each crew member. When that was chucked into the equation Mil SAR went from being at the bottom of the list to up near the top, on the basis of value.

Ours isn't properly fixed, either, although I did stick some battens to the floor, lined up with the inside edge of the side panels. I stuck the battens down with a bit of silicone, and did the same on the inside face of the side panels where they are tight up against the battens. TBH I don't think anything was needed, as I doubt it would go anywhere if just left free standing.

We're on clay, too, and have a fairly high water table. The hole for our treatment plant filled with water overnight and had to be pumped out before we could install it. We bedded ours in concrete, to help hold it down, and after about 5 years it still seems fine.

We have a Bio Pure that drains into the stream across the lane from us. Seems to work very well, no smells, reliable, just need to factor in servicing the air pump every three or four years. We have a spare air pump (takes about ten minutes to swap them over) so can just swap them and then service the other one (takes an hour or so to fit a new diaphragm kit and clean the air filter). A servicing kit for the air pump is around £20 IIRC. The regs say that a treatment plant must not drain into a ditch that is dry for part of the year, but I'm pretty sure this doesn't really cause a problem in practice, and anyway the regs have said that about septic tanks for decades, so you're not changing anything for the worse. The effluent from a treatment plant is massively cleaner and less harmful than the effluent from a septic tank, as a septic tank doesn't treat the effluent and discharges stuff with a very high biological oxygen demand (which is what kills fish etc if the stuff get's into watercourses). As far as paperwork goes, as you're just replacing an existing installation with a newer and higher spec one, I'd have said that there shouldn't really be any issues. I'm not even sure that it needs to be notified to building control, as a "like for like" replacement that's a significant improvement to what you already have.

IIRC we had some lengthy discussions on waste water heat recovery a fair time ago, may have been on this forum's now-defunct predecessor though. Back then one key point discussed was compliance with the water regs, as they demand that there be an indicator space between the potable water side of the heat exchanger and the waste water side. This complicates the design and potentially reduces efficiency, but at that time it seemed that there were systems available that got around the water regs challenges. There's a bit of discussion in this thread from last year:

If used to preheat the cold water before it is heated to DHW temperatures, then yes, I'd say any recovered heat is useful.

FWIW, when we had our house valued the valuer knocked 5% off the assessed value because it was an "eco house" (I hate that term too, but am stuck with it). The logic he applied was that a well-insulated home that lacked normal central heating etc would put off some buyers, so decreasing the value.

Just read this in the news: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-48610977 Pretty damning. It looks like nearly two thirds of those using the Help to Buy scheme didn't need to in order to buy their first home and that 4% of those using the scheme had an income of over £100,000/ p.a. Doesn't really surprise me, as I've long suspected that Help to Buy was lobbied for by developers and the mass building industry, and was a thinly disguised subsidy to support house building companies. Meanwhile, in other news, the construction industry is way behind every other manufacturing industry: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/business-48340929/why-is-building-so-slow-and-expensive Could there be a link? Seems plausible. We know that the construction industry is pretty resistant to change, and not very efficient. Perhaps the lobby pushing for a subsidy in the form of Help to Buy were just trying to get government to pay for their own inefficiency.