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Everything posted by MikeSharp01
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Concrete screw length for installing Upvc windows.
MikeSharp01 replied to Discoeye's topic in Windows & Glazing
Shouldn't you be using frame anchors rather than going directly into the Brick work, you need to avoid splitting the bricks I would have thought! -
Welcome to the FORUM for people like us... except I am no fan, as in I love to see it done but don't enjoy doing it, of painting, decorating and tiling so great to have your wisdom aboard.
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Global warming is in fact entirely natural and has already peaked
MikeSharp01 replied to ProDave's topic in Boffin's Corner
Sorry, I get that, no I meant exploit the science for their own ends by being selective, looking down the wrong end of the telescope etc. -
Global warming is in fact entirely natural and has already peaked
MikeSharp01 replied to ProDave's topic in Boffin's Corner
which can be exploited for good and bad as well remember - many instances and it does not always agree with itself. (This is not to say I don't believe in most of it because AFAICS it is still the best understanding we have.) History tells us and Einstein knew he was wrong sometimes, thought he was in the case of gravitational waves, ripples, but decided, rightly as it turned out, that he was right. Doubt is a key part of progress in the same way mistakes are. Science is only as good as the people who make it and those who exploit it. -
Welcome to BH. There is another factor you may need to consider here. You are definitely in the right to crack although I do worry that the new single storey permission may have had some clause closing the previous two storey one. The additional factor is how long you intend to live in the property. When you come to sell it you will have to declare any issues you have had with neighbours, in England anyway. If only a few years after build this may put off purchasers who do not want to be landing in a still raw battle zone.
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Sadly from my perspective it feels like the usual closed shop approach, to do heat pumps you need to be registered with both the Plumbing and Electrical registration bodies - that is a tough ask for the sole trader and so a restriction to trade even in the trade. This is not the case for Gas boilers as I understand it. It is interesting that HMG feels we need such strong regulation in such relatively simple technologies but none in the complex ones - eg AI, IoT and Social Networks (coming I know but decades too late for many with serious well being issues because of it). I appreciate that many do not have the confidence to do it, manage it and/or evaluate options (other than in money / personality terms) for themselves and that is a failing of our education system and indeed our whole investment system.
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Interesting read - not everything is well in the state of MCS - looks like more than 50% of the installs they looked at did not have the correct Legionella controls and the estimation of how good the home's insulation was seems often to have been woefully subjective rather than objective. It also seems that systems designers, those given the authority to say what was correct - and therefore what you should buy and HMG should subsidies, did not use consistent approaches so your design could have been different from two different suppliers. There seems much that is positive however.
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Very true - in fact the S curve is the pattern of everything BUT (could have used AND but I cannot be bothered) the S-curve is for a single technology. What people don't get is the changeover from one to another and the nature of that changeover. Stone age people got very good at knapping flint, so good in fact that we cannot replicate how good they were with todays technology, in getting good they engineered a whole society around it. People who mined the flint, people who gathered the wood to make arrows, people who knapped the flint to make the arrow heads and cutting implements, people who took the arrows and plunged them into woolly Mammoths, people butchered the meat with flint knives, people who cooked it. Anyway when the Bronze wielding hoards came over the hills at them they needed to defend their way of life strongly as their society was built on flint! Ever since, and somewhat before for other technologies, there have been two sides in every transition from one S-curve to another. The attacker, in the present case the ASHP, and the defender - the gas boiler. Our whole way of life is being challenged here, it is not just a technology switch. In general the attacker needs first to create a crude product that enough people in a particular niche of the market (that's people like us) will like and purchase (in my view this is about where are). They can then grow into other aspects of the market as their technologies improves - but improve it must and gather around it a band of followers in vanguard of the early adopters who can persuade others of its efficacy, if it does not achieve all these things it will wither and die. Meanwhile the defender needs to make an array of mistakes to be overthrown; misreading the market, not understanding their customers, thinking they are big enough to withstand the onslaught and that they are able to react fast enough not to be displaced. If the attacker wins then they become the defender and while this whole thing is going along another S-curve starts up some place that makes both the S-curves we have been discussing redundant. Systems thinking 101! (Mostly after Foster, R N, Innovation the attackers advantage, 1986) And my first mobile phone also of 1986 cost £1500 to purchase (£4K at todays prices) - people told me it would never catch on!
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Welcome to the THE forum for people like us. Great to have you aboard.
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Sounds like a good plan. You can also use your skills to build well insulated cheap to run homes with traditional brick technology - it can be done. @nods idea is worth following up but you need to own it rather than them own you.
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How not to market heat pumps
MikeSharp01 replied to sharpener's topic in Air Source Heat Pumps (ASHP)
Seems that way does it not. Given the discussions here across a large number of threads the ASHP silver bullet seems to be alchemically altered to runny stuff when it comes into contact with the retrofit challenge across the technical, commercial & environmental dimensions. -
As I understand it it is from the finished surface so you should be OK. Make sure you put the warning tape at the correct level above the cable, at higher levels as well, so directly beneath the slab if like and put it in ducting if you have some. If you are in Kent I can let you have a length as I have a bit left over.
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We can't trust energy companies
MikeSharp01 replied to Radian's topic in General Self Build & DIY Discussion
This is obviously a manual intervention as it says 'Actual Read:' rather than 'Smart actual read'. There must be a handover figure that both companies agree so Octapus know what your reading was the minute they took over and SSE closed which should have come from the meter at midnight on the change over day. I wonder if there is some sort of internal, between the two companies, which sorts this out post factum but I doubt it. -
Looking very good! PS Serious site signage.
