jack

As Jeremy said, Loxone is the home automation system we use. There's a large yellow sticker out of view in this photo explaining that all switches with this sticker need to be switched off in order to remove all power from the Loxone cabinet in another room. Re: size, it was more than just circuit numbers at the time the house was built, we wanted it future proof. More PV, plug-in car(s), who knows what the future will bring? Some of the larger domestic units we looked at seemed a bit cramped for an all-RCBO installation. The electrician thought it would be easier for installation and maintenance if there were more room. The cost wasn't that much more in the scheme of things (felt cheap compared to some of the other things we were shelling out for at the time!) so we went with the bigger one. I can't remember the thinking about having the shaver on a separate circuit. Maybe it was to do with the fact that the lighting circuits are controlled by the home automation system and dimmed remotely, and there're no power circuits anywhere near the bathrooms. There are three shaver sockets so I assume he just put them all on the one circuit for convenience (and it isn't like we were short of room/ways! )

We're nearer Farnborough, but not that far.

Interesting idea. I thought it was just a plastic wrap, but looking more closely it appears to be a shrink-wrap tube with an internal resilient liner. Suspect it's a bit of a faff to install, but in the context of putting up an entire fence it probably isn't that bad.

Nothing changes...

Yes, hence the move away from a domestic CU! Please don't tell me any of this is lethal!

Lovely stuff. Hope you bought bulk Windex(TM) (other glass-cleaning products are available) given you have youngsters in the house!

Yes, my electrician and I looked into it far enough to agree that was the case. I can't remember exactly why we didn't go with it in the end. I think he just felt more comfortable with branded, which I can understand given what's at stake. Given the size of the house and the number of circuits needed (ASHP, PV, home automation, stupid number of kitchen appliances, etc) we ended up with a Hager three-phase board with conversion pack(?)

Is this the guy who's a sponsor on the electricians' forum? At one point I looked into getting our unit from him but my electrician was wary about where the RCBOs were sourced, then other things got in the way so I ended up with a large Hager box (three phase with a conversion I think) with SP RCBOs.

Freudian slip? Yes, it's nice (I live in west Surrey), but prices are eye-watering. I'd prefer to have lived somewhere cheaper so we didn't have to tie so much money up in a house, but this is where my wife's family live (mine are overseas) and where we ended up with my work a few years ago. I wouldn't move now we're settled, but I do sometimes look at the amount we have "invested" in this house and wonder...

Might be worth a quick private message. If it is them, it might be useful to know now, and to have some idea of what to keep an eye out for.

Hi Giuseppe. Welcome to the forum! That's a healthy attitude and approach. Bear in mind that two years will FLY by!

Welcome, and no apologies required! Most of the people who are able to help you will have been helped by others along the way. What goes around comes around, etc.

"The designer is saying they did not allow for X, Y & Z in the price and so on" What does your contract with them say? Presumably by the time you got to sending off a deposit the price was fixed? It would be a strange contract for this sort of thing where they're allowed to come back and arbitrarily add stuff they decided not to include in their quote (unless it's clear that the quote didn't cover everything).

To help those who might be reading this in the future (and me, if I'm honest) and trying to figure out what's important, is this about the formal definition of particular terminology rather than whether there's an issue with Jeremy's installation? Eg, in the absence of a rod but being really close to the substation, is the issue that it doesn't meet the formal definition of PME rather than there being a potential functional problem? Apologies if I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about (possibly because I don't!), but I'm mindful that that the thread is drifting away from the original question and into an area that might not be of practical concern for future readers. Pardon me if my ignorance isn't helping!

@TerryE, you can buy a Schrader valve for a car wheel. It's designed to be pulled through the hole in the rim and form an air-tight seal: http://www.tyre-equipment.co.uk/acatalog/TR413-Bag--10--Rubber-Snap-In-Tubeless-Tyre-Valve-TR413_10.html Drop past a tyre fitting place and see whether they'll give you one. Drill a hole in a 22mm end stop, pull through and Bob's your auntie's live-in lover.

You need to fill in a form letting the council know that you your going to demolish. From memory, you aren't asking permission, but you do need to let them know. That can take some time (weeks?), so worth getting onto.

You're in trouble if it does! We had an old oil boiler in the kitchen of the bungalow we knocked down. It wasn't boxed in and made a hell of a racket when it started up.

ASHP noise, at least on decent models, is very inoffensive to my ears.

I blame Apple for most things that are wrong with the tech world.

Double-checked and confirmed. This time.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely.

Nope. Was about to fix it when I saw Ferdinand's reply, so I had to leave it so Ferdinand's reply would make some sense! No worries. If I see something that looks like it could be fixed with a couple of moments' work, I do it as I read. Makes the place look tidy. Your most common sin is making the first two letters of some sentences capitals. @ProDave likes to add lots of blank space at the end of his posts. Some people don't/won't/can't use punctuation, or spell really badly. I never change content, just typos and obvious spelling mistakes. No-one seems to have noticed, which I guess means it's working(?) Back to doors and floors...

If you had any idea how many of your typos I quietly sort out on a daily basis...

Lots of research going into these over the last few years, although they're very old tech - think of them as the Edison battery rather than the Tesla Powerwall! They're best known for copping loads of abuse, happily suffering through deep discharge, being long-lived and cheap to maintain (just top up the water), and having relative benign chemistry. I think one problem is that they don't have great power density, so there's been no interest in them for powering portable appliances and cars, for example. I looked into this a couple of years ago when I was naive enough to think that offgrid could be made to work in a suburban setting with a wife and kids who can't/won't ever turn off a light in the house! Very interesting tech, although perhaps the economics of NiMH now makes it a non-starter.