jack

Some mini-diggers have retractable tracks that let them get through doorways as narrow as ~700 mm. One of our neighbours had new fences put in about 5 years ago and two of them have already failed at the base. This is in a very damp area that gets no sun. I see similar all the time around me. I wish I'd known when getting the fences done how long ordinary treated posts tend to last. Our fences are 10 years old and no obvious issues yet (we're much higher up than the neighbour and on sandy ground), but looking at all the failing (and not that old) fences in my area, I know it's only a matter of time. As for longevity, perhaps not ideal for OP if they plan to sink a load of vertical posts, but for fenceposts in general, postsaver sleeves have a good reputation.

Welcome to BuildHub.

Full details in this BuildHub thread. Thanks Jack

And by quite a lot in some cases. https://www.reddit.com/r/OctopusEnergy/comments/1rwgpp5/wtf_octopus_just_slashed_iog/ Just in time for the sunny weather when my solar produces more than I can use!

Hearing this would make me very keen to consider them if I were building again, even without the door and window installation nightmare we had with another supplier. A supplier who's willing to take this sort of responsibility is a rare and beautiful thing.

It's worth having a look at installation specs and limitations. Higher spec cables tend to be thicker, stiffer, and have larger minimum bend radiuses. Cat 6a can be more challenging to route and terminate than cat 6, for example. I also think cat 6a needs different terminations compared to cat 5e/6 due to having thicker conductors.

It's possible I suppose. Of course, all of this assumes Iran agrees to back down, or is incapacitated, and I don't see either of those happening in the short term. Insurance or not, would you agree to take a ship through the state of Hormuz when the Iranians have been laying mines and are threatening to blow up shipping?

I think insurance policies are already on hold for transits through the Straight of Hormuz. I personally think the situation is too far gone. I was reading earlier how long it takes to get insurance policies back up and running properly after they've been suspended like this. Trump could declare "victory" tomorrow, but it could take weeks if not months before shipping insurance is back to normal. By then, the world's economy will have been crippled. Trump and Co. really thought this would be a slightly bigger version of Venezuala - couple of weeks instead of a couple of days. Instead, they've probably brought forward the next big recession and money print by months if not a year or more. Probably the last thing they were hoping for given the mid-terms later this year (although another argument is that they know they're going to lose those, so they want to get as much of their agenda implemented as quickly as possible before then). Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.

Copper grease is your friend with stainless-on-stainless. I learned this after I managed to completely seize one of the stainless nuts that holds my ASHP stand down, halfway onto the threaded bar. Apparently galling is a thing.

Be gentle. Toughened glass is already under a lot of tension, and etched toughened glass has an increased chance of shattering. I'd personally be tempted to start with some sort of windscreen treatment like Rain X and see whether that reduces the appearance of etching. If it works, you'd need to re-apply it every few months, but you'd need to clean it far less often, as water won't stick to it. If that doesn't work you can always move on to something more aggressive.

The PassivHaus Institute thinks otherwise. Sure, their heat demand/load numbers are based on the theoretical ability of an MVHR system to deliver the required heat based on several other assumptions, but imo that context is of little practical relevance given they don't actually require heat to be distributed in that fashion. But UFH isn't "sometimes" installed for "reassurance" in the UK. UFH is widely installed as the primary heating distribution system in PassivHaus-class buildings in the UK, presumably because people prefer to heat their homes that way than via hot air through a ventilation system.

In thermal efficiency terms, the PassivHaus standard is more about reducing power consumpton to a particular level than to removing the need for a heating source. Very few PassivHaus-class builds in the UK would be comfortable to live in year round without any form of heating.

It's a bit like childbirth (I imagine). In the immediate aftermath you can't imagine wanting to do it again, but the memory of the pain fades and you find yourself thinking about it. I'd love to build again, but I couldn't manage it while having a day job. We might sell up when we retire and put the money towards a smaller new build somewhere a bit cheaper.

We self-installed a 5 kW Panasonic Aquarea in 2015. Our electrician did the wiring (very simple) and the plumber took care of the plumbing from where it entered the house. We probably paid £400 all up for the installation, maybe less. I did the pipework from the plant room, through the underslab insulation, and plumbed it into the unit. As to why we went with a heat pump: Despite there being gas on the road and the bungalow we were replacing being built in the 1950s, there was no gas to the property. It would have cost us time, money, and disruption to install gas. We wanted to avoid paying two lots of standing charges. We'd used an induction hob at a friend's place and wanted one of those instead of a gas cooker. We were going for PassivHaus class insulation and airtightness, so we knew that we wouldn't need a massive heat source to heat it. The idea of a low-and-slow option seemed more compatible with the house's thermal characteristics. We wanted the option of cooling. Having lived with it for about 8 years (we didn't enable it for the first couple of years), this is probably one of the best reasons to choose ASHP in a well-insulated house with UFH, imo. We (well, I!) wanted some sort of home automation, and I felt that an ASHP offered more interesting control options than a boiler. We haven't actually integrated the ASHP in the way I'd thought we might (the modbus module for the ASHP was too expensive to justify), so this point was somewhat moot in the end. We installed a lot of solar (8.5 kWp) and I thought we'd be able to at least partly power the ASHP with excess solar. With the benefit of hindsight, I'm not sure this was a great argument. I'm genuinely unsure how often we generate excess energy at a time when the house needs heating. In the shoulder months we often don't need heat, and in winter when heat's required, we often generate very little solar, let alone excess solar. I don't remember whether I considered E7, E10, or any other time of use tariffs at the time we made the decision to go with an ASHP, but cheap overnight rates have since become of the strongest reasons for using an ASHP imo. For example, I have our system set to prioritise heating during the 6 hour cheap window with have with Intelligent Octopus Go. I allow a little bit of overheating during that period, and allow things to cool down a little more during the expensive period before turning on the heating. There are sometimes periods of several days where the heating is only on during the cheap period, which is quite satisfying to see given it's about a quarter of the price than the peak rate. The main concern I had was DHW recharge time. That hasn't turned out to be a massive issue, except when our younger one - Mr three-hour-shower-of-power - is home for the holidays. Upon reflection, I'd have gone for a larger tank than the 250 L one we installed. That would have allowed me to lower the DHW temp even further, while ensuring ample hot water. I don't know how repairable boilers are, but I get the sense that ASHPs could have a very long life, at least while parts are still available for any given model. How repairable any particular issue is depends on the failure mode. About three years after we installed the unit, either the control board or the pump failed. Apparently both are replaced at the same time, because it isn't possible to tell why one or the other failed, and one of them failing can bring the other one down with it. Sounded like bollocks to me, but I did a bit of research at the time and this seemed to be a common view. I don't recall what that cost us, because it was tied up with some other work, but certainly it was several hundred quid. I think the pump alone might have been £400, which sounded like an utter rort for a smallish pump, but I wasn't able to find a cheaper equivalent. It's since continued running without issue for a further 7 years. If something catastrophic happened and the whole unit needed replacing, I'd just go and buy a new one for £2-3k and install it myself, reusing the existing wiring and plumbing. The units themselves aren't that expensive, even for decent brands. For example, the current equivalent of the model we installed is about £2700.

For those using SketchUp, here's a potential alternative way of working out heatloss, based on SAP principles: https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/topic/46635-preliminary-sap-and-heat-loss-tool-for-sketchup/