MikeSharp01

Many thanks for the offer but he tells me he has the gear and will run the tests on Friday.

How can starting soon ever actually result in starting? "Tomorrow and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace" In writing these few, now famous, words it is well known that the bard was having a bathroom installed - one of the first in England, as it was known at the time, by an infamous mate with whom he was having an Onoff relationship because the pace was lente and the confabulartio between them, in the form of sonnets sent by post horses, helpful, exciting, inspiring and supportive just grew and grew.... but, inter alia, no bathroom was forthcoming. Mox, Mox.

Use an IR beam set at hight above cats/ other animals it detects people as well as cars.

Ah - the brother in law. Ok will await his test.

Is THIS the perfect test device for my new earth rod driven in today? It's the trip device in the old house. Although it has a weakness, it basically protects nothing much, the trip is based on leakage to the earth wire and the test button does not work of you remove the earth and behave very carefully. I connected it to the new earth rod and it works perfectly so the new rod must be working at a basic level. No certificate though! Won't UKPN have a test device I can blag a test from / with?

Yes - luckily we are on clay, I will drive the rods tomorrow in readiness for Friday.

Makes perfect sense but I am now a little more confused than I was when I started this topic - drawing the threads together: @ProDave said: "There is nothing wrong with you connecting your own earth rod to the main earth terminal to supliment a PME earth" Also the consensus appears to be that the local earth rod required for Caravans, metal cased plant etc is just to protect the 'local' users from a Neutral fault on the DNO network as it ensures that there is an earth connection beyond the DNO network in which the fault can occur. @JSHarris said - in terms: that the the RCD that protects his Commando socket will trip if there is an in-balance in the L / N beyond the device and I think he implied that this would happen even if the earth were not connected as it is one of the 'any arrangement's and makes sense because the earth is not part of the in-balance. So it seems to me that: In drawing up the 'regs' diagram for a site supply the powers that be have erred on the side of safety by drawing a break between the incoming DNO earth and the site supply earth, connection via an earth rod, so as to ensure that an earth rod is provided and not ignored because 'the (PME) TN-C-S earth did the job'. If it looks like double bubble someone will cut back and use the TN-C-S earth thus rendering the thing dangerous. Any earth rods you have can be connected together across the 'property'. This means that: In our case we have the garden room, about 45m from the electric incomer and fed with a 3 core cable (16mm2). The Garden room also has a local earth rod which I will now be connecting to the earth cable exported down the garden - it was going to be isolated TT as Jeremy's workshop. For the GR the exported erath becomes the backup earth, protected from a rising voltage by the other local earth rod at the utilities centre end. Our earth rod local to the utilities centre, where the incomer is, will be connected to the earth connection provided by the DNO, assuming they supply one. That way I will have three earth connections any one of which should keep the place safe if the RCDs are out of the loop (pardon the pun).

I guess this is the reason the earth is separated in the regs but is it the confusion over 'site' as in caravan 'site' or building 'site'. I have no caravan, it is all fixed buildings but it is a building site although one building - the garden room, is in place. For caravans, neatly insulated from ground by rubber tyres, I also guess the DNO don't want to be responsible for how far their earth can get above ground potential depending upon distance to a good earth in their system. Does that make sense?

Thanks chaps - Looks like all will be well. I have asked for a PME supply and the surveyor for UKPN was OK with that so I assume they will give me that. Roll on Friday!

The electric company (UKPN) are due to come and move our meter and install a new supply on Friday. I am installing a local earth rod - not quite sure why though, see image below. As things stand we have an overhead supply from a pole on our land. It is a TT supply to the old house, we have an earth rod providing the earth local to the old meter position. The other houses on the pole seem to have an earth provided by rather poorly connected earth rod at the base of the pole. When they come on Friday I think I am expecting them to provide a PME (TN-C-S) supply, just like our neighbours, which uses the earth rod at the base of our pole. Are they allowed to give new properties (this is a knock down and start again project) TT supplies? Given the regs I have decided to provide a commando socket to power up stuff outside (it is not designated as a site supply), although might be used on the site if it power cannot be derived from the garden room external sockets (which itself will be supplied by the distribution panel). The earth rods, ours and the UKPN one will be within 2m of one another. My question / puzzlement / what am I missing is / are: Given the proximity and cable run between the the two earth rods why should the two earths NOT be connected together in the distribution panel. I did doodle a resistor network to try and get my head around this and am not sure I can see an issue - but it maybe just circumstances.

Hi and welcome to THE forum. Love the design, no gutters and jet black - just like ours. Looking forward to hearing more. +1 on what is with the bunk room....

Yes will PM you with his details, he is based in Mid Kent.

Whow that must be some data hungry kitchen island, may be the fridge is actually a super computer in disguise, or the chef likes to watch half a dozen 4K streams at once while the hob needs to download all the data coming back from the Hubble telescope in real time.

Yes but it has been a bit of a pain as manipulating them is tough, I have converted all the main drawings into 2D for the build but keep the 3D for reference. The interoperability standards for drawings are a complete pain, I was so frustrated by a 1mm difference between the Architect and the SE - which came down to decimal places rounding error, so once you have it in a form you can manipulate I would stick with that. On the extension you can let the SE build on your drawings their concern won't be the details that you a3re concerned about they will just do the loadings and, as you say, beam work. Just brief them to keep it simple and give you some lee way on lengths of columns if the floor build up might change. One thing that caught us, and the architect, out and required a reworking was the bases of columns extending beyond the walls in which the columns were built.

It is just detail, sizes and fixed points, if you did the planning drawings in CAD that may be all he needs but try to get everything close to perfect measurements / scale so there are no surprises. Our architect let the SE have a set of base drawings the SE did his stuff and sent his work back to the architect (and me) to be dropped back into his drawings to check everything fitted. The SE was using REVITT (3D) and the Architect used Archicad (3D). Not everything was right first time around but after a couple of iterations it looks like it will all work. If it is simple column / post stuff with roof stress / racking calcs it should be straight forward but checking is important in case the SE specifies a beam right through your favorite window because it was not on the drawing.

Yep!

ISOLATE THE POWER, then just check that you have hit a cable and that the lights are not out for some other reason, from the picture it looks like an odd place for cable to be running, is the light switch above / below it, directly to left or right of it? (In which case nuff said) IIRC you put up the eyewash station a long time ago or talked about it at least.

Yep, they dn't need to be radial unless you are thinking of installing an exchange, in which case just use IP phones cos they need their own cable back to the switch / router or can be wireless. I am just, literally, pulling through a number of CAT 6 lines and a traditional phone cable and I am asking myself why?

Our neighbours have it / something very similar for about 10 years and it still looks as good as the day it was laid, they were very pleased with - moved out 3 weeks back, not sure about its permeability though.

+1 the multitool anything more brutal is likely to damage things. Just get in behind it with the tool then lever it out. Alternatively just cut the square hole in the tile with a diamond blade on and angle grinder and lever/ break the edge out. Thus will also cut the access hole. How will you fix the leak through such a small access hole?

Yes but it is a very good cold bridge! I have the same issue and had not arrived at a final solution but I did look at the structural issues a bit. Essentially once the batten is pulled tight against the insulation the friction helps carry the load BUT you have to crush the PIR which means the grip is variable so I dismissed that one. Standing the base of the batten on something helps but moisture might be an issue. In the end my preferred solution was to going to be to make hundreds of plastic bushes, a fraction shorter than the PIR thickness, about 30mm in diameter with an 8mm hole. These would go in holes in the PIR directly onto the timber frame and the screw pass through the batten through the bush into the Timber frame and when pulled in tight would slightly crush the PIR but be held a fixed distance from the frame by the bush and supported off the frame by it. Will draw a picture when I get home.

Proper must be lead, surely or, perhaps as the Romans did it with clay pipes and lead - time, me thinks, to move with the times. +1 on Where looks matter Copper is best I guess as the plastic connectors are bulky, the pipe never looks quite straight and you cannot polish it with BRASSO to make it shine.

He is just Jealous.

Very tidy Jeremy. Another application for shrink wrap.

Scary - we are up 38% at millstone manor and 31% here in not so sunny Whitstable. Anybody point me at the smug - self satisfied emoticon? PS so that is even more we have stolen from our children's generation.