Ed Davies

Right, but what about when the test buttons which do go to PE? The subject of this thread is testing on a temporary supply which might be to a caravan or site equipment with possibly dodgy TT wiring so having a caravan frame at 230V, albeit through a resistor, is not out of the question with a tester of the type @MJNewton and you have.

With RCDs with the test button going line to earth, if there's a broken earth connection won't that make the cases of any connected equipment live while the button is pushed? Not liable to directly kill anybody with the resistor in the way but might startle somebody with indirect consequences.

“[F]rom the pole in the orchard” makes it sound like there was no hole to excavate.

Exactly. But people really ought to think, otherwise we get stupidity like the EU upload filter rules. All they had to do (I assume) would be to ask nicely…

Building (control) officers don't deal with planning. You want a planner for this.

No. There can be complications but if you took the photograph with your own camera on your own time then it's highly likely you own the copyright to it though it's just possible your architect could have a small interest in the subject (something that's more likely to be an issue under, e.g., French law than UK law). Nobody else should use the picture without your explicit consent, e.g., given when you signed up to this forum, except in very limited circumstances which wouldn't include use on a commercial web site. Possibly they have a clause saying they can take pictures themselves for marketing purposes (even that's unlikely) but if they have one trying to claim rights to other people's pictures then I'd think it'd be very tricky to enforce as it'd likely be chucked out as unfair. Personally, I'd write them an e-mail saying I don't really mind but that they should have asked first and please can they attribute the picture. If they argued, I'd tell them to take the picture down.

That's a cute system. It's a shame the mapping between words and lat/longs is proprietary. If they go out of business then anybody using the system is stuck. Ditto, if it becomes popular they have the leverage to exploit it heavily.

“Torx bit in every box” If that's not an impact bit, what would the effect of using it in an impact driver be? Just that it wouldn't last long or worse?

If it's a IEC C13 (“kettle” - but not really a kettle type) connector then you can get right angle versions and adaptors. https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=iec+c13+right+angle

Paul's house is a new build with MVHR / ASHP, etc. You're probably thinking of his old croft house. https://lifeattheendoftheroad.wordpress.com/tag/akvaterm-store/

Simplest would probably to have two consumer units: a high power one directly off the mains for stuff you'd accept the loss of in a power cut like the oven, immersion, washing machine, etc, and a low power one off the UPS of whatever form you have running everything else. It'd be well worth doing some measurement of your current power consumption both instantaneously and averaged over a day to get some numbers to work from.

I'm surprised you suggest that rather than cooling the UFH with the ASHP. Is that just because of this thing about the RHI not allowing cooling to be enabled by default or is there something else?

Tesla might be the only solution to power cuts at the moment in the form of a packaged solution aimed at the domestic market. Dunno. But more generally there are lots of systems that can do this sort of thing easily. For example, un-interruptable power supplies used in data centres and it's very common on yachts to have an inverter/charger which allows shore power (from a socket on the dock) to run the house loads and charge the batteries with the capability, of course, to continue to run the house loads from the battery when shore power is not available. E.g., https://www.victronenergy.com/inverters-chargers/multiplus-12v-24v-48v-800va-3kva Obviously, there's a limit to how much energy and power you have available from such systems but it'd keep you comfortably doing most things for a longish power cut.

Woz that, then? To tell if there's been movement of the scaffolding or to tell if people (or other animals) have been on it?

Yep, friend had a single largish flat-plate collector. He'd switched off the electrics to do some work on a sunny day having not given the matter sufficient thought which resulted in the pressure going way up and the temperature reaching 130°C before the plastic pipe burst, squirting hot water around. Fortunately nobody was in the way. Yes, the “professional” plumber had installed plastic pipe right up to the panel. You shouldn't be using soldered joints within a metre or so of the panels, let alone plastic. You'd definitely not want to rely on just the controller to make sure that that sort of temperature water could never get to the Sunamp. E.g., if the power went out for a while then came back with the panels hot.

New study: V2G may not degrade EV battery life – it might actually extend it

But PD rights in that part only apply “within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse”. If you've got an empty site prior to commencement there's only any PD it has for the land's existing use. http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2015/596/schedule/2/made

Re your first statement: EH??? Sorry Ed, you've lost me on this one. (The reason for the robust response is that you are someone that I know that I can have a useful debate around this.) Can you cite any physics or engineering references that support your conviction? I've been pondering, too, and I'm now a lot less convinced of that point. I now think that actually the dew point line should curve upwards and it is possible to have condensation in the middle of a layer without there being a condensation risk at the interfaces to the adjacent layers. I've been trying to think of a succinct way of describing that. Yes, they're closely related but not quite the same. The equilibrium vapour pressure (EVP) is the pressure at which condensation starts if you increase the vapour pressure at constant temperature whereas the dew point is the temperature at which condensation starts if you decrease the temperature at constant pressure. The rest of what you write seems quite reasonable to me but I'm not sure where you're going with it. Is it that you think that diffusion alone cannot transport sufficient water into a structure to cause problems?

I've read there are a few companies which have stopped shipping to the UK recently if the order can't be guaranteed to arrive before the 29th.

Also, better thermal IR radiation from the general environment. Normally the ground is warmer than the sky, except the hot patch round that fusion reactor up there.

If someone does have problems with interference from these converters (or quite a lot of electronics) then the fix might be to put a ferrite bead on the output cable close to the device. Arbitrarily picked eBay example: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/10-20Pcs-Clip-on-Ferrite-Bead-Choke-Coil-Clamp-Rfi-Emi-Cable-Clip-Noise-Fil-UKTC/332895172548?var=&hash=item4d821937c4&enc=AQADAAADAFjVrDbVsZ8oH%2F8PNHtt9VX4%2Fw7FZcmMuqsX8uaFEduViZQycFraZcN76hYOMV0FKBoPtXZxqBRjSkEkD6MUe9BfsUKY4Kbn5iLQg%2B3WHNgn3%2BxsxAeKbeuJwoqXoOIy%2Bpb8Ym1Ue6e7BGeALFDg5tYvq10UEucTJ1yfzjuRqAKpdfwMUkWfnd9ofOgOQk16Em%2Fp6Sh%2B1gsETbAAWTvqmhPazTGTXcLvdw%2BEkT599aT33E4WPHjIzl5TpTgGNXyieIjQwYOfOKYiwAxAnO2VOXmVGJpoRB1oTfsFI%2F8kkm3akHImc8ezezQa9ME9EBvbjP4hNRfL9GRYUg05gFh6sbGzdBCBJjWKFwPgTmlxH4xRRQ8KCB9Cs%2FURDcwBpxh4SrVGwLiBOrf4qzsJMFZ9p%2B84Skt0nbj4DpFBSv0aME0t7ng6Ofszc1FBdCLnbYnHTMuEWl5HXqrDmungy8BK2b7sPxLjHI26nEuebAtu8%2Fw6gKBEz1uA%2B%2F9g5Zfdvm6IE44SX8WvihNsjkHTQ4R7T%2BBnzlFUfU73d4DqmktaYRuxdNz0Fg%2Fog3mMyL%2FwHDs1FL7nAC2VSiz1b2zusGkqD76O6%2FEBIn4tijDpcgWjVHXqhHYlYYFpOhM1ASg0RO%2BM%2BXSQsPMup%2BAz5RNyoFVLLvVZv7QKBF91w08Y5qJgo%2BayF5N2FmQrqgct99OfFkgSuf1%2BfA4P5vdO2f04hBRxJIkLf%2BDdJ6UTRSox54Qtlvk3lKnkpZN9RP31e7eVvqoXlG%2FkNWmwCSvUBKspZndFLk1KxqghQ%2F%2FT6IPpZYQn0V2xSVnbU3NpbS4b0ggjW%2FZTYWPa7d7dY9WC5%2B0l1tAobIZOKpHk%2Bvneu%2FfBPh1eVFgjjTjnJ3nxj8CtqJn01f2navGmbpvlbFuoQI6wFUNje2%2BCRCBgFPCs5Iy8vJRf2TzLeNlnTaIR3My0rUc0IMpGlGtUummcWv0loaRBljt7Z1Wqu8rG7Rb2cdJCmHdPmrVzIfI3RP4D4rdrdxmIBRWbPw%3D%3D&checksum=332895172548920a8db2711548ec9e7b5ea93bf44984 Umm, that's a URL? Sorry. I didn't pick the first eBay listing because it showed the cable just running straight through the bead. From what I've been told that's close to useless, you need to wrap the cable round at least once and preferably a few times. I suspect the difference between “good ones” and others will be whether they have a choke of this sort on the output fitted internally.

When's “now”? I.e., which edition is your house? 2013, 4.1.7: https://www2.gov.scot/resource/buildingstandards/2013Domestic/chunks/ch05s02.html “Whilst an accessible entrance to a house is commonly the front or main entrance, an alternate entrance may be designated as the accessible entrance where this provides a more convenient or practical route into the dwelling.” 2017 handbook says exactly the same thing.

I've been in this rented house for 30 months now having replaced all the old halogens and incandescents with LEDs in the first few months of being here. I don't think I've had any failures. The only “problem” I've had is that I replaced one of the halogen E14 (SES) spots in the kitchen when it blew in the first few weeks I was here with a LED one which was much too narrow beam. Shortly after, I replaced all the kitchen bulbs with wider angle LEDs which have been fine. Not given the lighting any thought since.

Exactly, BT do not offer a broadband service in the sense that Openreach only guarantee a copper pair for speech quality to a certain standard (SIN5xx for some xx I can't remember, 516?). If it happens to work for broadband as well that's a bonus. If it cuts off everything above 3 kHz that's not their problem. I think it's different with FTTC and, of course, with FTTP.

I'd be paying £35/month for ADSL rather than VDSL. At the time I connected BT were in the process of upgrading the exchange here and were taking no broadband orders. In addition, there was a problem with the previous tenant stopping the line so I could take it over. A&A got that all sorted for me though I finished up with VDSL because there physically weren't any ADSL ports available. Since then I've had no problems other than once where my IP address got DoSed for some unknown reason. A&A sorted that quickly and gave me a new IP address in a different block so all happy. A while ago I was on PlusNet (so, effectively, BT) and had a problem on my line which took ages to sort out with “if it turns out to be your modem or wiring we'll charge you XXX pounds” nonsense. Not doing that again.