Jeremy Harris

I agree, and have been watching the prices of battery systems closely over the past year or two. We export a heck of a lot of energy, more than the 50% assumed export we get paid for, even with me charging my car up during the day. Like @ProDave, though, I can't make the sums add up yet - the capital cost would exceed the benefit, even without accounting for having all that capital tied up in a depreciating asset. I approached the back up power desire from a different angle, and have a battery pack that runs our router, VDSL modem, switch and a RPi used as a file server, with some spare battery capacity (right now I can run this lot for at least 24 hours without power, perhaps a bit longer). That gives us internet connectivity with things like tablets and laptops if the power goes off, which is useful. This wasn't that costly to build, probably under £100 all in, and will probably last around 8 to 10 years I think. I have been thinking about backup power for the house, but can't really justify the cost of a small generator just for the odd occasion when we might need it. At the rate that battery technology seems to be improving, and prices dropping, I have a feeling that battery storage may well be viable within the next couple of years. With respect to battery life, then I checked the lithium battery pack capacity that's in my car a couple of weeks ago, and can't measure any change from when it was new (it's now a bit over 4 years old). That seems to indicate that battery life has improved a fair bit, as a few years ago the lithium battery packs I was using in my electric bikes had very noticeably lost capacity after three years. It wouldn't surprise me to find that 15 years is now closer to the nominal 80% capacity remaining cut off than the 8 to 10 years that has been commonly quoted. My car gets cycled a lot, too, it gets fully charged and discharged twice a day for five days a week, once a day on Saturday, plus the odd charge/discharge cycle on a Sunday, so it's probably done well over 2,000 full cycles by now, plus tens of thousands of lower capacity change cycles when it's running hybrid mode.

Not a problem, really, at worst you might have to up the size of the cooker cable, but it's peanuts in terms of relative cost. At a guess I'd say that the total run from our CU to the hob in the island must be around 10 to 12m or so, although the ovens come off that run a few metres before that. Electric showers are often a fair way from the CU, and they draw far more power than a cooker. It's just a matter of sizing the cable in accordance with the regs, allowing for the volt drop and things like whether or not the cable run is partially, or wholly, within insulation and how it's fitted (there are different rating factors for clipped direct, run in conduit, through insulation etc).

That's right, I just gave our installer the design EPC together with the FSAP file, plus the letter from the DNO (SSE are both our DNO and supplier) saying they were OK with an up to 10 kWp PV system under G59. The installer registered the system without any problems, other than the query about the G59 consent, which came back to me because I was the one who asked the DNO for it. The only reason I'd asked the DNO for the G59 consent was because I wanted to be confident that we could fit more than 16 A per phase, as we had the option of having a 3 phase supply installed. As we were in the process of having the supply connected at the time I went out for PV quotes I needed to make sure that we had a suitable supply installed beforehand. Also. all the PV installers we were getting quotes from needed to know whether or not the supply was single or three phase, as we wanted to get as much PV in the roof as we could physically fit.

Most solicitors won't have read all the specific case law around this. There are many cases, and each has refined and clarified the law with regard to when a building becomes a hereditament. When I faced bullying from our council, after they had sent a snooper to break into our secure site, ignore the safety and keep out notices and then been pretty threatening in accusing me of avoiding the payment of Council Tax, I fought back with the law. For me it wasn't hard at the point they decided to write and threaten me, as we genuinely didn't have a water supply to the house. Once I found the specific case law that made it clear that not having a potable water supply to the house meant that it could not be classed as a hereditament, I just quoted that to the lady at the council and suggested that she consult the council's legal department. I offered to allow them to access the house to prove there was no water supply, but the daft woman just said she'd check with Wessex Water. I almost gave things away by laughing at that point, as we have a borehole for water, not a mains connection. I did leave a coil of left over 25mm MDPE out the front for a while, that looked as if it could be waiting to connected to the (non-existent) water main in the lane, just to keep the snoopers happy, but because I had control as to when the borehole was officially commissioned, I very deliberately delayed getting the Environmental Health water test done (I did a private one to make sure the water was safe) because the council had my back up, so I chose to delay paying them. I'd not have done this if they'd been reasonable, rather than threatening, when they first contacted me.

The legal precedents are in the links given earlier. There have been a lot of cases where people have challenged the way councils try and abuse the law to get people to pay council tax.

I've got a feeling that there's an element of pot luck in how your application gets treated. SSE were pretty helpful when it came to the PV installation; they didn't charge us for the G59 approval and seemed to be pretty efficient at getting the application registered. I can't say they were at all great at actually paying out though, I think it took around 9 months before we got the first payment out of them, as they kept saying that they were updating their systems and were having problems with FIT payments. They sorted it all in the end, though, and now payments arrive within a couple of weeks of me sending in the readings.

Who can forget the Goblin Teasmade? (no sniggering there in the back...)

All I can say is that SSE accepted our design EPC without question. They were even pretty helpful in getting our application registered as being "in the system" in order to fix the application date as far as the FIT was concerned. I remember having to do a bit of chasing around to pin a few things down, as our installer put in all the paperwork but for some reason there were a few details that weren't clear, particularly the prior approval I'd obtained from SSE for a G59 installation, but I can't remember there being any issue over using the design EPC.

I gave our installers the design EPC I used for the full plans building regs application and the FIT was registered with that, a long time before we had the as-built EPC. Didn't seem to cause a problem at all and meant we managed to just beat a significant drop in the FIT rate. We were getting FIT and export payments for around 18 months before we had a completion certificate.

They can only go back as far as the valuation date, I think, but I may be wrong. I doubt that it would be lawful to go back to a date before the completion date, as in the absence of a declaration that the building is habitable and a hereditament by the owner, or a dated completion notice, I don't think they would have any authority to try and just make up some earlier data to charge the tax from. If they try to do this, then they usually seem to provide evidence of occupation, or at least evidence of the readiness for occupation, most commonly in the form of photographs taken by council staff. There is mention of this tactic being used in the case law above, and certainly the council lady who broke into our site (with no PPE...) did take photos that the council were going to try to use to substantiate their claim, I believe.

The law allows you three months notice, so I'd argue that one straight away. It's quoted in one, perhaps both, of those links somewhere.

If you have MVHR then all the air in the house will be changed every two hours or so, and the incoming air will be filtered, so the house will generally be a lot less dusty than a conventional house anyway. The effect of MVHR on reducing the dust level in the house seems pretty dramatic to me, as I'm not one who's too fond of vacuum cleaning. The house seems to be largely dust free compared to our old house, so doesn't really need as much dust removal at all.

No, as completion in the sense of being a hereditament is not the same as completion in the sense of compliance with all building regulations. A Notice of Intended Completion can be issued by a rating authority which gives three months notice of their intention to declare the building as being completed, in terms of becoming an hereditament, and to avoid being valued for Council Tax after this three month notice period you would have to go to a tribunal and argue your case. The second case quoted in the link above, this one: http://www.bailii.org/uk/cases/UKUT/LC/2011/RA_63_2008_Dec.html has some useful examples from previous case law that you may use to argue a point at a tribunal. A lot hinges on judgement as to whether or not a specific building could be considered to be an hereditament or not, and the chances are that council officers may well not be well-versed in the law, and almost certainly seek to apply the law incorrectly (as they did with us initially). My experience was that when challenged, and presented with examples of case law that showed their assumptions were unlawful, the council just backed away as fast as they could. In fact they stopped contacting me and just requested that I inform them when I felt that the house complied with the legal definition of a rateable hereditament. I got the distinct impression that the council staff concerned felt way out of their depth in trying to counter my argument and decided that for a single dwelling it was a lot easier for them to just back off, rather than spend money on lawyers.

They can't. The judgement regarding a building not being a rateable hereditament, and so unable to be valued for Council Tax, is clear - if there's no potable water supply then the building is not a rateable hereditament. Here is a quote from an earlier post that has links to the case law:

Our timber frame came as a design, supply and installation package, complete with the passive slab foundation, so the whole lot was zero rated for VAT, including the frame design work and the structural engineer's sign off. Made life a lot easier!

We claimed for our electric roller door - I just provided some rough evidence (some printouts from two or three suppliers) that there were no 3m wide manually operated, insulated domestic garage doors available, and they didn't question it.

Yes, lack of a potable water supply definitely makes the house a non-rateable hereditament, there's case law that defines this. Not at all sure that not having the treatment plant connected would count, as there's nothing I can find about any cases where this has been used. It's tricky, as it all depends on the interpretation of the 1969 Rating Act, as updated and also clarified by case law. Fitness for habitation is not the legal criterion used, as such, the criterion is whether or not the building can be legitimately defined as a rateable hereditament, which is different. Lack of electricity, for example, doesn't make a building ineligible for Council Tax, nor does the lack of a kitchen. You may well have to talk directly to the VOA and see if they can advise, as they almost certainly know the law better than the council.

Perhaps worth a call to the helpline and making note of what they say so that you can quote it with the reclaim. I suspect that they may allow it, based on my experience with the boiling water tap, as it seems the principle they apply is that if one element of an integrated gizmo is eligible, the whole of it becomes eligible. The only issue may be if the hob has a recirculating extract or vents to outside, perhaps. If externally vented then it probably counts as being a kitchen extractor, as required by building regs, and so eligible, if it's a recirculating unit then perhaps it isn't!

Thanks for that, I was clearly mistaken, but it was a fair time ago and I must have phoned the helpline half a dozen times to try and clarify what was and wasn't reclaimable! FWIW, we decided to buy two cordless Dysons, one for upstairs, one for downstairs, as it was both a great deal cheaper than a built in vacuum and a heck of a lot less hassle to use. We stayed in a holiday let with a built in vacuum and it was that which convinced us that they were a pain. The long length of hose that you have to drag around is more hassle than the lead on an ordinary corded vacuum cleaner. The only thing we liked about the built in system was the neat little plinth fitted "dustpan" slot in the kitchen, that you could flip open and just brush things into.

Whether you can or cannot unplug it doesn't seem to matter. For example, you can't reclaim the VAT on a fitted dishwasher, oven, hob, microwave, fridge, freezer or whatever, as despite being built-in to the kitchen units, HMRC still classify them as appliances. I'm certain that central vacuum systems fall into the same category, and may even have a note somewhere about them, as we were initially planning to fit one, and I'm pretty sure it was one of the things I checked with the HMRC VAT helpline at the time.

I think the Aga (and other combined cooker/heating/hot water devices) are classified as being primarily for heating/hot water, hence the reason for them being in the list of things that you can get VAT back on, or have zero rated if supplied and installed. Central vacuum systems aren't eligible for reclaim, or zero rating if supplied and installed, as they are classified as appliances. It really is damned tricky determining if you can get the VAT back on something, or have it supplied and installed without VAT, as even the HMRC aren't always on the ball with what does or does not attract VAT. A good example is our boiling water tap. HMRC advised that I couldn't reclaim the VAT, then when I asked them how I was going to split out the VAT from the boiling water part of the kitchen tap (it's a single integrated hot/cold/boiling water tap) they then agreed that as it was integral with a tap that would normally be eligible for VAT reclaim, I could reclaim the VAT on the whole thing.

The VAT rules are a bit of a minefield, especially as there are so many apparent anomalies. For example, anyone who provides a design, supply and install/manage service can zero rate the whole invoice, even though it contains elements that would normally attract VAT (the design part). It also gets interesting when it comes to things like the kitchen, where you can reclaim the VAT on the units, work surfaces, sink, taps etc, but you can't reclaim the VAT on any fitted appliances. Some of the other things you can't reclaim VAT on, or ask a supplier to zero rate, are scaffolding, skips, portaloo hire (or purchase), any professional fees (so architects, structural engineers etc) or even things like fees paid to local authorities for things like highway excavation or road closure permits. You can get architects or structural engineers fees zero rated if they are included as a package of work that involves supplying and building work, though. For example, we had to pay VAT on the fees from the structural engineer that designed our retaining wall, but the fees for the structural engineer that signed off our foundation system and house frame were zero rated, as they were included in the construction contract.

Welcome. Unfortunately you cannot reclaim VAT on anything that doesn't get incorporated into the house, as a general rule of thumb, and this includes all tools, machinery, plant etc.

Happened at the radar station at Saxa Vord years ago. There was no radome over the old early warning radar up there at the time, and the anemometer recorded some silly wind speed, well over 100mph, and then the screens in the bunker went dead. It was too windy to venture outside until the next morning, when there was no sign of the radar antenna or mast - it had been blown off the hill down onto the beach below. IIRC they had to hire in a Sky Crane helo to lift it off the beach. By the time I went up there to do some trials work they'd built a big "golf ball" radome on the hill, but even then it was tough going transferring to and from the Landrover to the radome door - they used to have to tie the Landrover down and there was a crawl rope that you grabbed hold on so you could cross the gap between the door and the Landrover on your knees, hanging on to the rope.

By all means choose to use any product like this, but I'd like to stress that there really is no need to use any different products from normal if you have a treatment plant. In fact, one of the key things to keep the plant working is to feed it with anything that need oxygenating, as the very worst thing for them is to run with just water in them. Unlike a septic tank, which will thrive on an oxygen free, low nutrient content, a treatment plant needs stuff to keep the aerobic bacteria fed. They will happily feed on detergents, soaps, etc, as well as human waste.