Jeremy Harris

Yes, it's a tariff on the wholesale cost of imported Chinese panels, so the impact on the end user will be a lot less, perhaps around 10% or so for an MCS installation. However, the removal of this tariff could bring down the cost of panels for those looking to install a DIY system by a fair bit more.

Solarworld have been in serious trouble for a fair time now, so this was pretty much inevitable. Given that the EU imposed hefty tariffs on Chinese PV panels, in order to help prop up German PV companies like Solarworld, you have to question whether interfering in a free market makes sense, when some countries are always going to have higher manufacturing costs, because of their labour rates. Perhaps we'll see the tariffs come off PV panels now. Could make a significant difference. I'm not sure what the current duty on Chinese panels is, but a while ago it was over 40%, I believe.

A useful tip is to remember that reducing the resistor value at the processor end can improve performance over long cables. I found that one of my DS18B20 sensors would very occasionally glitch, maybe once a week or so, for a single reading (they are all read every 6 minutes). Reducing the resistor from 4k7 to 3k3 fixed the problem. I believe you can go down to 2k2 on a 5V supply if you need to.

The 100mm of EPS insulation in my garage roof is just left over sheets from the foundation. Combined with 150mm of rockwool in the walls it seems to do a good job of keeping the garage warm in winter and cool in summer.

As the SAP rating can be whatever you want it to be, because, as a self-builder it's you that gives the assessor the data, then you can pretty much do what you want, as the only thing that's actually checked is the air test certificate! You can download FSAP from Stroma for free, fill in all the data, make sure you get whatever rating you want (not that I'm suggesting for one moment you might possibly put the wrong figures in, by accident.............) and then just send that lot of data off to the assessor. It's all a bit of nonsense, really, as short of someone deciding to come and do a fairly intrusive survey, to look at things like wall and roof insulation thickness and type, the only fairly obvious things that could be spotted are the glazing probable spec and the air test certificate. I strongly suspect that the big builders never do a survey of their as-built houses, as they are constructed, to make sure they get accurate data for the as-built SAP. They almost certainly just put some acceptable numbers in to get the certificate, and they don't need to air test the majority of the houses they build, either.

IIRC, taking our PV out of the SAP calculation reduced our EPC score by around 10 points. We would still have been in Band A, but wouldn't have had the silly rating that's over 100, so fairly pointless. On the subject of fuels, I have a feeling that the current iteration of SAP may be a little different to the version we used, and may well not have such a strong bias towards mains gas, as I think the emission factors were changed, as was the way PV contribution is calculated. I suspect it still errs on the side of giving a better result for mains gas, but then that's reasonable, as mains gas is generally the most efficient fuel for providing heating and hot water, and still beats the average performance for heat pumps, both in terms of cost and emissions, I believe.

The most ludicrous example of how daft SAP EPC ratings are in the real world was with a chap who was doing a new build next to some old stables. The house had a couple of large outbuildings, on which was fitted 50 kWp of PV. The EPC came out at A136! It's discussed in this thread on the AECB forum: http://www.aecb.net/forum/index.php/topic,5124.0.html with me being just a wee bit critical about the EPC and its fitness for purpose.

Sadly I've not got around to painting the garage yet. I got sidetracked into buying and then assembling a shed to take all the garden tools etc (a metal one - believe it or not it's held together with over 1500 screws, nuts and bolts................). I've got the loft hatch done, then added an electric hoist, with a lifting platform, so I could get stuff up there, then managed to do my back in a week or so ago, shifting some left over 8 x 4 sheets that I was cutting up to make shelves. The back's getting a bit better now, so with a bit of luck I'll have the garage cleared out and ready to paint sometime next week.

I never drink coffee, can't stand the stuff, but my other half has had one of those Nespresso machines for a few years. The machine doesn't take up much room, but we have an entire kitchen wall cabinet dedicated to nothing but capsules for the thing, various different ones, but I've no idea what they all are. They also produce a lot of waste, as well as costing far more than a cup of tea. The boiling water tap in the new house is solely so I can have a cup of tea when I want, without waiting for some bit of kit to do its water heating and gurgling business for ten minutes or so.

I'm pretty sure that assessors rarely, if ever, look at a build. The prices they charge just don't allow enough for a site visit. They rely wholly on the information that's given to them by the builder/architect/air test company, which does rather beg the question as to whether they are worth the paper they are written on.................. In essence it's a box-ticking exercise for all those builders who are only interested in getting an acceptable chit so they can sell their houses. I think the only people that probably care about being accurate and making sure the SAP results reflect reality are self-builders. The sad fact is that house buyers don't seem to give a damn about EPC certificate ratings, they are more interested in the price, the area and the kitchen and bathroom bling.

Me too! The reason I did the SAP calcs myself was primarily to make sure that they represented EXACTLY how the house was built, with no assumptions. My decision was as a direct result of Grand Designs, and a debate on another forum, which caused me to dig out the design SAP for a supposed "eco house". Rather shockingly, this new build "eco house", with loads of PV, solar thermal etc, had a SAP (2005) EPC rating of F, believe it or not! As it happens, the SAP worksheet was on line as well as the EPC, so it was easy to dig around in the numbers. It looked to me as if the assessor had never even looked at the plans and spec, let alone the way the house had actually been built. FWIW, I corrected the more glaring errors, using just the information from the TV programme, and came up with an EPC of G..............

I hate to say this, but I made a very, very big mistake in buying from Victoria Plumb a few years ago, when I gutted and refitted the bathroom in our old house. The totally crap quality wasn't immediately obvious, except with the acrylic shower bath, which I beefed up with loads of fibreglass and plywood before fitting, as it was obvious that the thing wasn't going to be stiff enough as it was. I also screwed treated timber battens to three walls, so one side and both ends of the bath were supported at the edge, as well as by the legs. Luckily the bath has been OK, but I've had to replace the thermostatic shower valve (leaked because the shit metal internal casting corroded), the bath and basin wastes (leaked because the crap plastic nuts they came with cracked and the threads corroded, despite never having been over-tightened) and the wash basin mixer tap (corroded shit metal again, with ordinary mild steel tap spindles, believe it or not!). I'm absolutely certain that Victoria Plumb import a lot of this complete crap from China. There is no way that either the thermostatic shower valve or the basin mixer tap were WRAS compliant, as they were very obviously made of non-WRAS compliant materials. How they get away with it I don't know, but they are competing at the very bottom of the price range, which may well be why corners are cut.

That would be for an RdSAP on an existing house, maybe for the purposes of sale or getting the FIT, rather than a full SAP, I'm sure, as I couldn't find any assessors that were under around £120 +VAT for a full, as-built, SAP and lodged EPC on a new build when I was looking around. I ended up doing the design and as-build SAP work myself, then paying £100 + VAT for an assessor to lodge the reports I'd produced using FSAP, after he'd added his name and number to them................

These are the French kits I posted about somewhere: https://www.chargeurplus.com/#a0453ab10a40aff38df319759ebab0b8

I'm pretty sure the pump should be zero rated, even if the concrete supply attracts VAT that can be reclaimed. From what I can see, VAT Notice 708 isn't specific about something like this, which doesn't help. What I found was that the VAT helpline was pretty good, it was only when you submit a claim that they change into petty bureaucrats...............

Loads of my receipts didn't have my full address on, many didn't have any address, some didn't even have my name on (mainly till receipts). In the end, none were rejected by HMRC. The two queries we had related to a bike shed that was shown on the plans, but which we didn't build (or claim for) and a problem with the kitchen supplier, who had included both VAT reclaimable items and one item that should have been zero rated on the same receipt (sorted eventually, but delayed the reclaim for a couple of months). None of the till receipts or receipts with no full address were questioned or refused.

I'm pretty sure that just pumping concrete into foundations is treated the same way as delivering it from a truck, so VAT is payable and then reclaimed at the end. The exception might be for a specialist service, such as filling, vibrating etc something like ICF, where the supplier was doing more than just supplying concrete to the location required.

That's strange, as we had no problem with all-timber construction, and around here there are lots of all-timber houses, some that are a couple of hundred years old or more, and no one seems to have a problem getting a mortgage on them. I know for sure that the Ecology Building Society have no problem at all with all-timber, or timber with cement board cladding, and two other lenders we asked had no problem either (I think one was the Leeds, but can't be 100% sure). Even our pretty useless bank were OK with lending on an all-timber house (not that we used them or would recommend them in any way, shape or form).

If you wanted thinner verticals than rendered block, then you could make up custom moulds from shuttering ply and cast reinforced concrete panels. With a bit of care you might well end up with a good enough finish to just paint. Many years ago I knew a bloke that made concrete staircases, at Devoran, in Cornwall. They used plate glass moulds to make stair treads that were as smooth as polished marble, very impressive to see, and showed how versatile concrete can be, given a bit of imagination. Concrete is a cheap way to do stuff like this, all the work is in making the moulds, which could be quite time consuming. You can fix concrete panels together by just drilling them and using something like inset anchor bolts, then filling over the bolt head recesses before the final finish.

A friend made a kitchen many years ago using brick, with timber doors and a timber worktop. Not to hard to build, and if you wanted a look like the one pictures then you could do something similar with rendered/plastered block, I should think. At the caving club I used to be a member of we cast very large work surfaces from concrete, just making up in-situ shuttering. Not too hard to do, there was more work making the shuttering than casting the concrete. It did suffer badly from staining, though, so the top and edges were eventually clad with stainless steel.

We have blown insulation. 300mm in the walls, 400mm in the roof. The blowing method is very well controlled, with pressure sensing, remote control, etc, and has all the required approvals. I think there are significant risks in blowing into small cavities, like the typical 50mm of an old cavity wall, and the sensor-type machines won't even work reliably on such a small cavity, which is another indication that they may be problematic. When you get to 150mm + wide cavities there is pretty much zero risk of voids or exclusions. The insulation behaves like a very free flowing fluid (think fluidised bed, as it's the same principle) and will, without any doubt whatsoever, produce a better job, in terms of insulation integrity, than rigid or rockwool batts fitted as the walls are built. I watched our insulation being blown in, and saw first hand exactly how it flows, and how much of an overkill the manufacturers minimum fill hole spacing is - the stuff flows easily for around three times the fill hole spacing. In our roof, the fill was visible up the pitch, as the internal Intello membrane is translucent. If there was anywhere where voids were more likely it was the roof, as it was filled in bays, with only limited crossflow though the small thermal break gaps. The blown insulation was absolutely solid, right up to the ridge, with no trace of any voids. It's blown in with such pressure that even now, three years later, the exposed areas of the filled membrane still feel strongly under pressure. So, to sum up, I'd say that it is probably one of the best ways of insulating a decent sized cavity. It's a very well-controlled and measured process, there is no "guestimating" at all and there is no "woeful inadequacy" whatsoever. There is simply no comparison between the type of equipment and fill system used for a wide cavity new build and some of the cowboys that have been doing shoddy jobs with poor equipment in the retrofit market.

Is it worth looking at a 200mm cavity to get a better insulation level? The beads are pretty cheap, most of the cost is in blowing them in with PVA, I think, and a 200mm cavity doesn't cost any more to build than a 155mm cavity. The payback time for the small extra cost would probably be pretty reasonable, too. 0.18 W/m2.K isn't really great, and a little better would ensure you meet the SAP requirements with a small performance buffer in the event that some other aspect of the as-built construction doesn't quite meet the as-designed assumptions.

Often the Chinese stuff, as in the pic in the example here: doesn't even pretend to use the correct CE mark, in that pic they've just used the letters CE in a normal typeface, so the item has never been properly designed, tested or approved.

Yes they do. The Ethernet plug on the adapter/injector only has a four core cable, so there are no connections to the Gigabit pins. It's only the Ethernet sockets that use all 8 pins, 4 for data and 4 for power, so you could use these safely on a Gigabit switch or router (accepting that you're only going to be able to run at 10/100).

Good call!