Crofter

I put planings down about five years ago a steep driveway with a tight turn, in an area with high rainfall. It's held up amazingly well. I'm going to patch a few places this winter but all things considered I would certainly recommend. I find it looks pretty much like tar, nothing wrong with the look of it at all, so long as you pull out the chunks of road paint and cats' eyes...

What's your intended final finish?

I did consider Eurocell. They could do uW 1.1 for the sliding door and uW 1.0 for the window. It would have been very good value and given they have a showroom in Inverness, it would have been very easy. Ultimately, though, I spent a bit more money in order to get u values that are substantially better. And don't get me started on a certain 'big name' outfit who, now that they have my phone number, won't leave me alone. Their quote was laughably bad. The sizes bear no resemblance to what I asked for, the colours are wrong, and they won't give me u values for anything. These places operate as finance providers and don't seem to know anything about windows.

Assuming it's a 'cold roof' construction, where there is a loft space left uninsulated, then you will need to add insulation above the ceiling and also add ventilation for the cold space- preferably at both ridge and eaves level. If I'm correct about it being a flat ceiling and cold roof, then there's not really much advantage to doing it at the same time as you board the ceiling- you'll have to board the ceiling first anyway. Although if your loft hatch is small, you could chuck the rolls off insulation up there first. If you can't (or don't want to) fit high and low level ventilation, you might be able to put vents in the gables instead. If you've actually got a vaulted ceiling, then not much of the above applies.

Here's a much better plan, sell it to me 😁

It would be easier to drill new holes in the plastic boxes than to drill new holes in the wall, by the sound of things.

Having lined them all up for comparison, it's now very hard to look past the Eddi! Hopefully something will crop up on eBay.

Absolutely. Just because somebody else benefits, doesn't mean you are losing anything.

@Roger440 how much of the gear have you already bought? The only way to guarantee no benefit is to leave it uninstalled. Just because you can't get the optimum use out of it doesn't mean it's pointless. You have to install the panels etc eventually, might as well do it now and you'll offset a bit of energy. And you can feel smug because you're doing your bit to help decarbonise the grid.

You could load shift to when the sun is shining. Better than leaving those panels sat on a pallet. Link?

Does this AI-generated summary of different inverters sound about right? Makes the Eddi look the best by far. Especially considering in the future, when the house is no longer rented out, I am hoping to get an EV and charger.

Yup, overnight boost on off peak rate (currently pay around 23p/kwh for that) with a boost function that they can use. Most people figure it out, but some manage to drain hundreds of litres of hot water and then phone up to say it's broken. I presume they're used to unlimited hot water courtesy of mains gas combi boilers. Not an option here! All they have to do is wait half an hour after hitting the boost button. Too complex for some people!! The PV+diverter would just supplement the existing setup. It's quite tempting to fit a dual-element immersion, so that the solar one can have its thermostat set higher.

That's all good info. Specifically, what did they want to know about the structural side of things? I looking at a DIY ground mounted approach.

So, it looks like the going rate for a secondhand diverter is around £100, sometimes a little less. I'm getting the impression that the Eddi is maybe the best of the bunch? And the Immersun also good; both can do two sequential loads, yes? The Solic 200 seems to go for a bit less money, but it seems that it's not straightforward to have it share a load with another power source (e.g. an off peak timer) Any others to recommend or avoid? The inverters are a bit more easy to find secondhand, and generally a bit cheaper. Other than making sure it's around 3.6kw, and compliant with current G98 standards, anything to look for? Any brands to avoid like the plague?

Just thinking about this again. Will Octopus reject me if I've used secondhand components (inverter, diverter; the panels would almost certainly be new). Of course if I can get export, there's little incentive for the diverter. But my gut feeling is that export rates are going to go down...

It's not really possible to have a perfect system. That's not to say we can't improve upon the current one. It's very tempting to ban second jobs and external sources of income for MPs. But that then excludes anybody who is running a business, as well as professionals like doctors who may need to continue working at some low level for CPD purposes. One area where I think huge improvements could be made is how everything is reported. Although policing social media is very difficult. We seem to live in a world where Joe public will believe whatever their favourite pundit says, and even when this is found out to be untrue it doesn't get retracted, no apology is issued, and the public just carries on believing what they want to believe. There should actually be an incentive for everybody, from politicians to pundits, to only report things accurately. There seems to be no shame attached, any more, to being found out to have lied.

Yup, I'm thinking of something like this: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/SMTGBD4.html?source=adwords&ad_position=&ad_id=&placement=&kw=&network=x&matchtype=&ad_type=pla&product_id=SMTGBD4&product_partition_id=&campaign=shopping_excluded&version=finalurl_v3&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=17412537060&gbraid=0AAAAAD-6GhngjnyiNNv99oTXWCfz05yLa&gclid=CjwKCAiA3L_JBhAlEiwAlcWO58bsIbDxo9-LpJwHEIi1sq9Y0U7PS0eaFIujmCgHwik3-wrmPLWRWhoC0BYQAvD_BwE I don't need to be able to over-ride the switch remotely (if they want the house hotter, I'm not going to stop them!) but I don't want something that can be left on when the place is empty. It's a holiday let so it can spend a few weeks at a time unoccupied.

So. I bought a couple of 25A Shelly relays (https://www.shelly.com/products/ogemray-25a-smart-relay?&utm_source=awin&utm_medium=aff&utm_campaign=All Products - UK (copy)&utm_content=Ogemray Smart relay 25A&source=aw&sv1=affiliate&sv_campaign_id=559319&awc=121796_1764752543_21b291805b055b2c57e400e59b2cbf3f) One is now installed to control the immersion element, and seems to be doing a grand job. Looks like I could set the other up to control a panel heater. And simply wire in a timed boost switch for user control. Which I think is what a couple of people up-thread suggested. Does the switch over-ride the settings I've entered on the app?

I can just picture it. Manifesto pledges based on the wooliest of weasel words. No possibility of genuine radical change. Politics becomes a futile exercise in centrism. Then, endless legal battles over the definition of each pledge and whether or not it's been fulfilled. All against a backdrop of opposition parties deliberately trying to sabotage the efforts of the government, in order to stop fulfillment of pledges. The exact opposite of the consensus politics that this country desperately needs. And, of course, unseen circumstances will come along. Pandemics, global financial crises, wars, which will prevent even the most well intentioned government from achieving what they hoped to do. Be careful what you wish for.

That's a fair point, it probably did sound impossibly good to them. Equivalent to about 90mpg in our money!

I was talking to some Americans a while back, moaning about my car that only does 40mpg. We were talking at cross purposes for some time, because over there that would be considered exceptionally good. I'm not sure that they really believed me when I said I used to get 74mpg on a long run in my diesel Golf.

Retractable?

I thought about simply adding a relay to a normal heater, the problem there is that a guest could turn it off and then I can't turn it back on. I'd have to instruct my cleaner to leave the controls in the on position, but based on experience I wouldn't want to rely on that.

That might be along the right lines, although having had a scare with an immersion heater that ran through a plug in timer, I'd much prefer hard wired. Perhaps I'm being a bit paranoid, the immersion was 3kw and the heater would be much less. But I'd still prefer it if the user was unable to unplug it to charge their phone!

That doesn't do anything that a heater with built in controls wouldn't already do. I'm looking to be able to remotely control the heater, but also allow on-site control, all without having to have two heaters.