Jeremy Harris

I didn't know that, thanks. I need to see if I can have a set of plates made up without the bloody EU flag I agree the law is a joke. I usually have two sets of plates, one with my personal reg on, plus the ones with the original reg (now the "shadow" reg) that the car will be sold with (even if new they do this). Over the years I've had the personal plate I've realised that the "shadow plate" remains the same - vehicles with personal plates have two registration numbers, in effect. I keep the "shadow plates" as when I trade the car in, or sell it, the "shadow registration" will end up being re-issued by DVLC to the car, so this saves the hassle (and cost) of having another set of plates made up. The embuggerance this nonsense with having two registrations for the same vehicle causes is a nuisance, as manufacturer recalls are always against the "shadow plate", not the one on the car, but with my name and address (no idea how that works). This means that when I take the car in for a recall (this has happened to me three times now, over the past ten years or so), I end up in an argument with the dealer, because they refuse to accept that the recall letter I have applies to a car with a different registration number. On the plus side, it does mean I never have to change the registration on either of my trailers...........

Here's that link to HOT2000: https://www.nrcan.gc.ca/energy/efficiency/housing/home-improvements/17725

That's pretty amazing. Might be an idea to give the firm a free plug (mods permitting) as good service deserves a reward. Out of interest, how did they get around the legal stuff, copy of the V5, driving licence, etc? Last time I had a trailer plate made up it was a right faff, with them scanning in documents and getting some sort of approval from the DfT .

Ever thought about just trying the free demo version? It's a good way to get to grips with the way PHPP works, without spending anything. Edited to add: Sorry, we cross posted. PM me for the older, (2007) non-crippled, demo version. I can email it to you, but last time I tried to attach it here there were some problems, I think. It's also worth looking at the model that the Canadian government publish as a free download, HOT2000. I played around with it and thought it was pretty good. Easier to use than PHPP, and there are reasonably good instructions available. I don't have a link to it here on this machine, but probably do on the machine at home, so if you're interested I could have a look and post it up here.

As a guide to survey prices, we paid £450 + VAT for a boundary survey, plus confirmation of the height and position of a dozen marker posts over a big power cable. The surveyor was on site for around one and half hours in total, and was based around 30 minutes drive away. The price was reduced because I supplied an OS base map and survey in DXF format that I'd already bought a licence for. My guess is that the survey would have been around £500 +VAT had I not had the base data that he could use, as he'd have had to pass on the cost of the OS fees and would have had the extra hassle of downloading an cropping the OS grid square file (I'd already done that in AutoCad for him). These prices were from 2013, so are a bit out of date now.

If it's in Lidl can you get a feel of it to see how heavy and well-made it seems? The really crappy basin mixer that I fitted to our old bathroom basin fell apart after just a couple of years, and although it didn't come from Screwfix (it was from Victoria Plumb) I'm sure it was Chinese junk - not made of proper brass as it corroded and fell apart internally. The replacement I bought from ebay, of all places, turned out to be around twice the weight, and I'm guessing that's largely down to it being made from decent brass. It's far better quality, and is showing no signs of giving any trouble.

One of the power supplies that I took the cover off to check had some input side suppression that could possibly have created enough earth leakage to cause an RCD to trip at switch on. Most have a combination of a delta wired three capacitor arrangement, together with a common mode inductor on the L and N. The two capacitors wired from L to E and N to E could possibly cause enough leakage to trip a sensitive RCD. If this is the cause, then it may well be down to these capacitors not discharging at the same rate when the power is turned off, so when it turns back on one still has a fair bit of charge. This could then be sensed by the RCD as a momentary mismatch between the L and N current, causing it to trip. This would explain why when you wait a few minutes before turning it on again it's OK. This would be enough time for all the capacitors to discharge.

We don't do this, really because my other half doesn't like driving very long distances, plus we both like to have a proper break for a meal and hot drink on a very long trip. It's worth noting that the proposed sales restriction is not forcing a situation where only electric cars can be sold, it's just restricting the market for new models released after the proposed date to those with ultra low emissions. If a petrol or diesel engine can be developed that meets the proposed ULEV limit then it can still be sold after this date.

Not an update, the wording of the original paper that was the cause of the media misreporting made it clear that the proposed new model sales restriction was only on conventional petrol and diesel engined cars. All alternative fuel vehicles, hybrids, non-conventional petrol and diesel engined cars, as well as electric cars, are not included in the proposed restriction, and never were.

I've just checked, and we paid £2,275 for the Bio Pure, with the pumped outlet and alarm system.

In my case the reasons were pretty much forced by my choice of career. When I joined the Scientific Civil Service, I effectively signed a contract with what was called a "mobility clause". Like most, I never gave it a second thought, as it hadn't actually been invoked since WWII, and was a hang-over from then. I happily worked at the same research establishment from 1976 until 1992, commuting by bike a fair bit of that time, when government cuts and privatisation meant that the establishment where I was working was going to close. I was given a choice, take up a post in South West Scotland, within 6 weeks, or be summarily dismissed for breach of contract, with no redundancy pay or compensation. Having around 17 years worth of non-transferable (at that time) pension rights, that would have been frozen from the date of dismissal, I had little choice but to move over 400 part of miles North. I stayed there for five years, with a 9 mile commute each way, which was OK. The main downside was that the job also meant working in London on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which meant driving to Glasgow (hour and a half), getting the shuttle to Heathrow (hour and a quarter), the tube into central London (40 minutes) and back again on those two days most weeks (so 16 to 17 hour days, twice a week). It also meant a lot of international travel, so I was away from home for around 8 to 10 weeks a year on average. In 1997, the same thing as before happened, the place was to be closed and again I had the choice, move or get sacked. I was asked to go and run two research establishments near/on the South Coast, one in Portsmouth, one near Chichester. That meant a fair bit of travel, but frankly I didn't have a lot of choice by then, as I was well over 40, had a lot invested in my pension (that still wasn't transferable at that time) so I had to put up with it. After two years, there was a decision made to privatise those two establishments, and I managed to escape privatisation by getting myself seconded to a management consultancy post for two years, working for the army (not fun.........). That meant a 60 mile each way commute, until after a year I got sick and tired of driving for an hour and a half morning and evening, and we decided to move to somewhere reasonably central to anywhere left that I might possibly get posted to (a bit of a guessing game). That's how we ended up in Wiltshire - because of the contraction in defence, most places I could possibly be sent to were within about 60 to 70 miles of Porton. The next post was split between Bristol (70 miles each way), Yeovilton, (50 miles each way) and Main Building, in London (an hour and a half on the train each way). The job after that was at the Royal College of Military Science, Shrivenham, so "only" a 40 mile each way commute, then, by pure luck, my final posting was a mile from where we lived, so I could cycle to work again! So, fate, and my desire to keep a decent pension, meant that my original plan to stay working at the same place, cycling to work much of the time, got trashed by circumstances outwith my control. I could have binned my pension and tried to find a job in Cornwall, but as @SteamyTea can confirm, finding decent jobs in that neck of the woods is not easy, and there were no opportunities at all for someone who had spent virtually all his career to date in flight test. The flip side of having spent a fair bit of my career commuting a fair distance to work is that I ended up being able to retire at 58 on a decent, index linked, pension and a lump sum that was more than enough to buy our plot. I reckon the sacrifice of commuting a fair distance to work for a few years was worth it, personally.

I reckon that a market will spring up, refurbishing EV batteries. EVs are mechanically a great deal simpler than conventional cars (which is one reason why some have a two year service interval) and so if they don't rust away, or suffer accident damage, the life of the vehicle itself could be pretty long. That life won't be blighted by things like emission law changes, either, as an old EV won't be any more polluting than a new one.

I know a chap that lives in Scotland and drives a Tesla Model S with a 90kWh battery and he regularly drives down to London in it. He reckons that he can do around 450 miles in a day, with a single 30 minute lunch and recharging break, and in his view that's more than enough driving for one day, anyway. His view is that there just isn't a range problem at all in reality, and like me is convinced that 99% of the people that think range is an issue just haven't bothered to look rationally at how they drive or how EV charging is so very different to fuelling a conventional car.

I agree, the Leaf is a bit ungainly looking, but it does drive well. I had one for an extended test drive (24 hours) and was impressed overall; the deal-breaker for me was the load space - nowhere near as big or versatile as the Prius. The Zoe is a problem because of the leased battery, which makes a second-hand one expensive, as although the car is relatively cheap second hand, the battery lease isn't, it's £70 a month, IIRC. The majority of older Zoe's will have leased batteries, I believe, as the option to buy the battery outright was only a recent change. I'd try and see if you can blag an extended drive of a Leaf, as I reckon it's probably the best small'ish electric car around, and a bit of a bargain second hand (although again look out for leased batteries - some early Leafs were supplied with them instead of batteries that were an outright purchase). The Volkswagen e-up is OK, but it seems a bit small, and few have been sold here, hence the reason there aren't many around second hand. That's one reason there are a lot more Leafs around; they've sold pretty well here over the past few years.

I've never run out of battery charge in over three years of driving. The pattern of "refuelling" is very different, and means a change in thinking. Weekdays I charge twice a day, overnight at home, during the day away. Weekends the car stays on charge at home unless we're going somewhere. I've never felt the need to charge at a filling station. When on holiday I've always been able to charge somewhere, it's never been a problem. The only issue is the occasional long journey. If your driving pattern involves driving hundreds of miles a day, then current electric technology doesn't cut it. However, for the vast majority of people, something like 90% or more of their driving is within the range of even some of the lowest range electric cars. The problem is one of people getting their heads around the idea of changing the whole way they use and "fuel" cars. I happen to think it's a hell of a lot more convenient to just open the charge door and plug the cable almost every time I get out of the car, than it is to faff around at a garage, filling the thing with petrol, queuing to pay, etc.

The charge characteristics with time for most batteries are pretty non-linear with battery state of charge (SOC). I can't get near the battery pack on mine to log anything - it's protected within a sealed, ventilated, case, with all sorts of safety interlocks to prevent access, but the car does provide some data, and logs lifetime data for things like charge and discharge kWh, as well as display the charge rate in kW whilst it's charging. It seems that around the first two thirds of the battery charge period is at close to the charger maximum power, with very little variation. After this time the charge power starts to drop, so that by the last ten minutes or so it may well only be a hundred watts or so. The final charge stage is the one that balances out the charge between all the cells, and is primarily there to ensure that the full usable capacity is available and that the battery pack as a whole has a long life. This means that a battery pack that is nearly discharged can accept a greater charge in a given time than a battery pack that is only partly discharged, and the simplest way to look at it is probably in terms of range available for a given charge time. Tesla used to quote "200 miles per hour" for their supercharger (it's faster now, I believe). However, lots of users have reported getting closer to "300 miles per hour", presumably because they started charging with a lower battery SOC. When it comes to battery temperature, then there is built-in cooling to EV batteries. Tesla (and some others) use a liquid cooling system, my battery pack is air-cooled, using cabin air. The battery pack cooling system is silent, and only runs when the battery needs cooling, but there is no indication at all from the driver's seat that the cooling system is running. Someone sat in the right rear seat might be able to put their hand over the intake grill and feel it (the intake grill is in the trim next to that seat), but I've never heard anyone comment on it. I suspect that the cooling system may only run rarely, if at all, given the relatively low power that the Plug-in Prius pulls from the battery (only around 60kW maximum).

Expensive! They are between £2k and £4k, depending on capacity. However, these are a niche market product at the moment, aimed at the caravan market, where a near-silent generator is worth paying a premium for. They aren't a volume production product, and I strongly suspect that the technology could be value-engineered a fair bit. There are fuel cells in the pipeline that will run on petrol, too, meaning such units would work with existing filling station infrastructure. However, assuming they can be made for a much cheaper price, with a higher capacity, then they could form the basis of a built-in slow battery charging system. They are clean, the emissions from the current ones is mainly deionised water.

I think there are a lot of options, once we get away from the mindset of only refuelling at filling stations. Fillings stations are just a consequence of petrol and diesel engines, and we don't have to stick to that model for other forms of motive power. With battery electric vehicles, the "little and often" recharging method looks pretty good for a lot of the time. Instead of always looking to charge to full capacity, charging just enough for the next journey is all that's really needed. Similarly, for a lot of normal driving there's no need to high capacity chargers, the majority of short journey energy needs could be met with a standard 7kW charger. Cars use an average of around 6 to 10kW per hour of normal driving, so a charger of this size would give a driving time that equals the charging time. Not many people drive for more than 8 hours a day, which leaves 16 hours of charging time. A battery capacity of around 80 to 100 kWh (allowing for losses) could meet the needs of most people, provided there are a lot of distributed charging points around.

This is a tiny one, intended for charging 12V batteries, but there are bigger models available.

When I was looking at buying a Nissan Leaf, around 3 years ago (I bought the Prius Plug-in instead) Nissan were offering two weeks free conventional car hire a year with every new Leaf. That would come close to meeting my needs, as almost all my driving is well within the modest range of the Leaf, and the free hire car would almost meet my occasional need for more range. It does seem a bit daft that over 90% of the time I'm driving around in a car that has around 75 times more range than I need. If there was a way to just "bolt on" additional range when I need it, then that would be ideal. Some people have made DIY charging trailers to do just this, but one option might be a large battery pack trailer that can be hired only when needed, perhaps with a built in fuel cell generator to slowly charge it. Fuel cell generators are around now and being sold for use with caravans and motor homes, the snag is that they are only fairly low power, but that wouldn't matter for a slow rate charger.

Windows seem to cause more problems for many self-builders than any other single item, and Internorm are no worse than anyone else. As @Barney12 says, the problem is with their suppliers, mainly. We had a tough job getting our local Internorm supplier to quote, and when they did they got the spec wrong (twice). Mind you, that same supplier is also a building company, and they were absolutely hopeless at getting us a quote; so much so that we just gave up on them, even though they were local to us.

At the most around 10% more generating power than we have now, apparently, if every UK car was electric. That's assuming smart charging, where the majority of cars are charged when there is excess grid capacity available. On average, private cars in the UK spend around 95% of their time parked, apparently. That seems about right, as I spend around an hour driving every weekday, perhaps another hour driving over an average weekend (excluding holidays). So, for around 48 weeks of the year my car is parked up, next to a charge point, for around 162 hours out of 168 hours, so it's parked for around 96% of the time normally. Nissan have come up with a solution for on-street charging that seems neat. Combining limited (Level 4) self-driving ability, with wireless charging (and they have this working now, as a demonstrator) the idea is that some parking spaces in every residential road with on-street parking will have charging coils. These cost around the same to install as the sensor coils for traffic lights, apparently. Overnight, cars will driver themselves around to the nearest vacant parking space with a wireless charger, charge until they are full, then drive themselves back again. By morning, all will all be parked up, charged, ready for use by their owners

I can dig out the invoice tomorrow, but have a feeling it was around £300 or so more than the base unit, but we bought ours over three years ago now.

I suspect that, given the high likelihood that any new build will have mainly low energy lighting, lighting circuits never get close to their derated max current. After all, even a 6A rated 1mm2 lighting radial will be OK for around 1.4kW. If all the lights in our kitchen/diner were run from a single radial, and all were on at the same time, then the power would be around 80W. In reality that's three separately controlled sets of lights, with the most powerful group being about 30W.

Used some Tapco slates when I ran out of IcoSlate when doing the roof on the water treatment plant shed. They look very, very similar to the IkoSlates, same colour, same size, almost identical, except that the Tapcos have a very slightly more matt finish, verses the slightly satin finish of the IkoSlates. As far as the material goes there doesn't seem to be anything to choose between either of them, so I'd go for whichever you can get at the best price, as I doubt you'd notice any difference between the two, unless looking at them from a couple of feet away.