Crofter

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.

Intersting. I was under the impression that students were much more politically active in the past. But maybe that's just a perception that I have and it doesn't reflect reality. Too many films set in the 60s with anti Vietnam war marches I suppose!

So how far back would you go to get to the 'good times'? I presume you mean Brown? I wonder how differently things might have gone if he'd been able to see through his plan to get out of the 2008 crash. Cut VAT, encourage consumer spending, grow your way out. Instead we got the coalition who tried to cut their way out, and we've had stagnation of wages and living standards ever since. That's almost my entire post-student life. I don't honestly know if Brown's economics would have worked any better. But other countries certainly bounced back faster. I returned to uni in 2012 as a mature student, and I was pretty appalled by how little interest the younger students had in pretty much any sort of world affairs. That's not to say they were following the Kardashians et al, but they just wanted to do their own thing. Nobody joined any sort of political organisations, went on rallies, etc. The idea that students are where new political movements are cultivated is no longer true. They don't actually want to change the world, probably because they don't believe that they can. It's very sad. These are supposed to be our brightest cohort who will move in to positions of influence in society.

That's my gut feeling, but it doesn't let the person in the cottage operate it unless they download the app and log in.

Anybody? Possibly not a common choice for the typical new build on here

You can still buy sheet material in either metric or imperial in the UK. That was a surprise to me when I was designing my house. Except they call it 1220mm, not 4ft.

If you could pick a time when you think Britain was well run, which point would you pick? I was born under the Thatcher government so have only experienced the period of decline and poor leadership that you identify. Nevertheless, I would grudgingly admit that Blair/Brown brought us some improvements. Sadly it came as a package along with a disastrous illegal war. Although the other lot were even more supportive of that so it's not as though we'd have avoided it had we voted Tory instead.

I'm 44 and we didn't mention imperial units once at school. For me, imperial is used for certain specific things e.g.: - socket drives - wheel diameters - length of a boat

On a related note, I know a guy who insists that a 3-4-5 right angle triangle only works if it's in feet.

Metric all the way. Steel is sold in 6m lengths. Concrete by the cubic metre.

Won't Dogger help address the location issue?

The greatest trick that Reform have managed to pull is to convince people that they are new, and different, when in fact they are merely the current iteration UKIP/ Brexit Party, which has roots going back decades. And most of their elected members are former Torys. They wholeheartedly endorsed Brexit and the Truss government, both of which are deeply unpopular today. It boggles the mind why anybody would trust this bunch of charlatans, especially in light of the Nathan Gill Russian bribery scandal. But, as you say, they've managed to somehow convince a chunk of the electorate that they're a new option on the ballot.

Just to clarify, is the roof slates or tiles? Regardless of what the final covering is, there should be some form of waterproof material underneath. The exact type depends on how the roof is built. E.g. in Scotland, a slated roof would typically have a bituminous felt on to timber sarking boards. Slates come in varying sizes and shapes so you need this continuous layer of timber to nail in to. In England, you often will have a waterproof membrane which sags slightly between the rafters, and battens over the top to carry the tiles. You can use battens because the tiles are a uniform size. But in general, yes that membrane needs to be there. The tiles or slates themselves will shed most of the water but not 100%. They can get damaged, or in strong winds rain can get forced in to the gaps. Repeated exposure of the roof structure to water will cause serious damage.

Can I ask you about your roof windows? Make, uW value, and how much they cost?