MikeSharp01

Same story here - clay and ending up in ditch. Its just about making the case.

Having the receivers close to the switch is a pain as you need access to them for maintenance. We need to find more Joules from our key presses so we can use greater power and send more intelligent messages.

Did you use their receivers or build your own using the chip set - can't recall which that is but I think I recall it being available. Or have I confused them with the MK version which I know is using a commercially available chip set.

Yes but if all the people in your district zap a couple of dozen then pretty soon those bats will be going hungry and taking a big picture look at things we could all forget going electric as each of us only contributes a tiny fraction of the total emissions. Every thing is connected to everything else - in the case of insects its the food chain. I only wish I could live what I preach!

Should we not just leave them be (not bee) as we are already getting a serious drop in insect numbers. Other than wasps and mosquito's I don't think we have any bugs that harm us do we, although global warming is bringing them closer.

Well I was not able to see a thermometer today as I was stuck / enjoying the school of engineering's graduation ceremony in Rochester Cathedral watching and clapping our students up the chancel. About 50 academics and 200 student's all wearing full academic paraphinalia in 37 deg heat! I had my deodorant in overdrive but even then when I finally got to take mine off after two hours what with the the drinks and photos my shirt was ringing still at least the headgear kept the sun off.

Thinking like Mr Bean I would go to a local battlefield and find a cannon ball that is just a running fit in the undamaged end. Then arrange a device to fire the ball down the pipe this will then force the dent out in one pass and you might like to point the pipe at some unwanted items and sort them out at the same time.

Several points. 1. You need to fence the site. 2. Put up a standard warning sign. 3. Setup a portaloo or make alternative arrangements local to the site. 4. First aid kit. 5. Get site insurance 6. Get enough hard hats / safety shoes and hi viz vests for your team and insist contractors comply- the standard warning sign refers.

We used micro screw piles to strengthen existing walls for our extension they have worked brilliantly for the last 17 years the new walls, which are brick / block needed 3m deep foundations! So I would look hard at screw pilling.

Sorry I was not clear - you will need to update your planning I just meant that they won't refuse if the reasons are structural and the overall envelope is the same in the end. I do reiterate the VAT issue. It if is a rework then VAT is payable unless you stay within the rules of how much can remain, which isn't much!

Welcome to THE forum for self builders. Looks like an amazing project. Building on top can be more of a problem than knocking down. If the foundation's are no good nobody will stop you creating proper ones and its easier to claim the VAT back if you start from scratch although you can keep a proportion of the old build and still claim the VAT but this needs care.

Great news you are almost 'off grid' but I suppose we should also look at the capital cost for a comparison with on grid. I think you have talked about payback times before.

Is that imported or a mix of home grown and imported KWh?

PS you can of course pay to have them re-routed.

Sadly IIRC you have no rights unless the poles are on your land or there is danger from the cable. The statutory undertakers can hang wires where they like as long as there is no danger from them. If the poles are on your land you are in a very strong position as you can revoke the wayleaves or use the wayleave as a negotiating point but I guess you don't have time for that.

Generally building control should deal with this. They will either tell you what to remove and then how deep your foundation's will need to be or just tell you how deep they need to be based on the trees. We have an oak about 10m from the house which is protected- the bc man came to site and worked with the ground worker asking them to keep digging down until he saw no more roots in the walls of the trench. We then had to fill 25m of 3m deep trench with concrete but we have had no problems in 15 years.

Got an update on this one. Set my local expert the task of looking into the matter and, it seems that there may be no equity release / lifetime mortgage companies prepared to deal with non traditional construction out there. Although not exhaustive it seems that the risk appetites of these companies is so low that they won't touch them.

A recirculation system is a massive waste of energy in a home when you will only draw HW a few times a day. For the rest of the day you will be keeping the pipes warm, and associated spaces, for no reason. In a hotel such systems work well as HW is in constant demand and pipe runs are long so delays getting to HW are not acceptable but in houses these runs can be short. I suppose you could mitigate the waste issue by just running the system at high demand periods, as in early morning / bed time or whenever else you bathe.

Oooo er- what is the diameter of the trunk and how tall (long now) is it?

Not quite the case as a brise soleil works by cutting higher summer suns and does not so much interfere with low winter suns.

They usually supply and connect the meter and an isolator switch and your electrician can then connect to the other side of the isolator. If they don't have an isolator switch, I would be surprise if they didn't, you can get them at most electrical wholesalers and the like but you want them to fit it. Just check that the white box has a wooden back plate in it and let the power company do their thing.

It is a salutary read - sadly put out of lots of peoples reach by the price £80 ish, but a great borrow!

Even more if you have a shower one supposes.

Yep - I saw that but was not brave enough to mention it, but I now have my tin hat by my side - just in case.

I did a week long course on all three in 1981 (at South Thames College as was and I guess you can imagine where we went each evening, given that Young's brewery was 25 yards away!) I thought the MiG was most versatile and TiG the hardest to get remotely right but I still have my aluminium TiG project from the course. So although I enjoyed the TiG I would say MiG is a great starting place. I have done very little welding since.