MikeSharp01

Welcome to the forum.

Yep - no need to worry about mains stuff provided you have proper leakage protection back at your fuse board, are respectful of the potential (pardon the pun) dangers and as long as you don't buy clone copies of SSRs (or if you do you know what you are doing) you have more than adequate protection and those ULN's will drive 8 SSRs all day but if you want really fast switching you may have trouble I think its a few nano seconds on / off.

Makes perfect sense but might not be an analog for open communications and I fully appreciate the challenges - but I cannot help thinking that there must be an answer.

I must have about a 1000 of them in my chips box! really useful little bugger. True / agree but there is something odd about an IOT that is really just an island of a few things. I guess its just about squeezing the security down into the things - but for another day.

Are you being allowed to run from the local main into the water meter yourself, this is usually a utility type job?

Can't help thinking that something like MQTT will be the core of IOT but will need to much more sophisticated and massively more secure, which I notice is already being addressed, but robust it isn't yet if you want 'things' on a global scale. We need to standardise, that much I know - Arduino is a standard and ridiculously cheap for what it is, the advent of Blocky for creating and modifying code (5 year olds can use it) means we can confidently develop stuff that won't require our eternal presence to keep it running. There are still some nuts to crack though and, you will have heard me banging on about meshes, these things still need work. On the controlling front I have a board, I made years ago, that allows me to opto isolate TTL inputs and outputs, 12 per board, using Darlington drivers on the outputs so I think I could get 200mA per channel at 24V - which was the control voltage I chose because we use it on all our commercial work but I like the little TTL driver chip and given you do get, from responsible manufacturers real products (unlike the ones shown in the video you posted @TerryE - even though very amusing), good isolation you can have your expensive PC / Tablet connected and not worry about it getting the full 240V, or worse, up its chuff! And that is just from one of them running the Immersion / Willis or whatever. I do have a concern about the heat output of SSR's for two reasons, and I had occasion to be somewhat upset by them the week before last as I have one on our pressurisation set in the loft here at millstone manor which, when the loft temperature reached 40+ the Δt took the thermal trip on the heatsink over its limit and we lost water pressure - 'Mike why is there no water coming out of my bath tap', trip needs a reset which I madly left in the loft! I have now copied it down into the main control panel and up-rated the trip from 55DegC to 65degC that should give me few years even with global warming as it is. Anyway my reasons..... Firstly is that the heat is energy consumption I don't want and the second is that the heat is also unwanted. Perhaps we should put the SSR's outside the thermal envelope but either way it is waste. Traditional relays are much less power hungry but cannot be switched in PWM type situations so its horses for courses. I suppose we could imagine, making any required adjustments to internals of the SSR so it could cope, a hybrid system of an SSR with a relay contact across it so you turn on the SSR, pull in the relay and turn off the SSR if you want PWM don't energise the relay if you only want continuous just use the relay. (Perhaps I have had too much beer!)

Hmmmm looks to me like the advice you are getting from the installers has conflated efficiency with complexity and although you can do most anything with the setup the things you really need to do are being compromised by having the bells and whistles plus, as you point out, the e versions don't use hot water to charge them so what's the point of the HT. It seems to me that you would best, as you say, to just use the ASHP for the UFH, you have a great mass of concrete, with a Willis or two in there if the ASHP goes down and then charge the sunamps on E7 / PV ( if allowed by their controllers) although I am not sure you need two of them.

Welcome to THE forum for self builders.

3.8T is a biggie- 1.5T is all you are going to need if that is too small then you probably need a 6 or 8T machine. You cannot move it yourself and the market for such size machines is largely commercial and not self builders.

How thick and what is the area of the concrete the UFH is heating up? As this will also need to be part of the bigger picture because of the decriment delay it introduces against the various energy inputs and outputs. Also have you factored in the potential ability of the ASHP to cool the slab in summer which might add value to it as an option.

Is there scope to create an aftermarket control board or is the software to control the thermal cycles a bit special.

My brother in law offered me this stuff but although he has loads of it I am not sure he has all the bits so I thought I would see if I can find a manual. Sadly my googling has failed me - so not sure what it is so thought I would seek the collective wisdom. It is like kwickstage but has square pockets. I am using Kwikstage on site but this looks like it will be ideal for internal works.

Hi and welcome. @newhome will be along with words and Music on the VAT rules which have some corners, as you have found, with keeping any of the old dwelling.

Yes the news item made me think as we moved some Kwikstage around on site to get the next wall up.

Again the Neff has no TT matches the oven perfectly it deals with the spin using a gadget in the roof and you can use metal utensils and pans in it quite happily. It's magic - did cost about 12 times the one I have on site which spins the plate and creates wonderfully hot ready meals on demand.

Our Neff has a STOP button!

Welcome to THE forum for self builders of all types.

I have experience of it and have to say very positive things. I think my chain saw is now 20 years old and I can still get any spares although I very rarely need any. IIRC is just a new plastic cover and rubbing strip for the chain since new.

That's Chrisp detailing @lizzie love the drips. What is the finish on the timber?

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.