jack

We have an 8.5kW array on two sections of flat roof on the Hampshire/Surrey border. About 40% of them are facing directly south at a fairly shallow angle. The remaining 60% are in a flat east-west concertina shape with a very slight tilt towards the north. There's some morning shading throughout the year. We went for Enphase microinverters following modelling that showed how much more power would be generated. This is the summary from about half an hour ago: It's dull and rainy here this morning, so I'm surprised we even have that much being generated.

Official testing is an average of positive and negative tests, for exactly the reason you mention. They also make a note of wind conditions on the day, and won't (or shouldn't) test if it's above a certain wind speed, I believe. I think they did three cycles ([positive + negative] x 3) of the test when they did ours. With the house depressurised, even small leaks were very obvious. We got just under Passivhaus airtightness on our first run (despite the front door not actually being closed properly!) They depressurised it after the last run and let us go around for a few minutes looking for any leaks. The biggest was clearly around our large slider, as expected. There were also a couple of pin-pricks in the airtightness tape due to misplaced staples near windows. Unfortunately, for a decent sized house you'll spend a lot of time going around all the interfaces for relatively small gains, and it's unlikely a tester is going to hang around for that unless you're paying.

Well I hope she wears proper footwear. The boots that woman is wearing are completely inappropriate for site work.

@Construction Channel Ed, your address is in some of the screenshots above.

Good point. Even less reason to buy this one

Interesting unit. A couple of concerns would be: - corrugated pipes = higher likelihood of blockage/grunge build-up - stainless steel = good for longevity but heat transfer not as good as copper - looks like it would be difficult if not impossible to clean - looks like only a single wall construction. If so, doesn't building regs (but don't quote me on that - I'm no expert!) - the whole unit is only 60mm in diameter, and the waste water connections are 1.25" BSP fittings. This seems very small for a shower outlet. It also suggests that the gaps between the internal pipes in only a few mm. I can only imagine how little hair it would take to cause a blockage in one of these units.

We have high ceilings downstairs so the mounting height was okay for us. Ours is behind a full-height removable panel at the back of a drying cupboard in our utility room: I assume the 25 deg C ambient temp is to do with Legionella. We have several showers a day, so unless the house is left unoccupied for a long period, I'm not really concerned about this particular requirement (even if we go on hols, the temp in enclosed spaced will quickly approach the low-20s ambient of the rest of the house anyway). Our plant room would have been a better place for the unit, as it's just on the other side of the drying cupboard, but the plumber was very reticent to install it there given it was likely to be well above 25 deg C for long periods of time. It's been quite a while, so I'm not sure. I believe it was around £600, but that's a complete guess. Powerpipe (the main competitor to the one I used) has pricing on its website

I believe it was this one.

Just typing this as you posted actually Nick. We have one. Long payback, yes, but I reckon 90+% of the hot water use in our house is showers. Baths are extremely rare - maybe once a month at the moment. We have 4-6 showers a day, 2-3 of which are kids old enough to shower themselves but not old enough to get out of the shower without a lot of cajoling. Even taking a conservative estimate of efficiency, we save a lot of hot water with WWHR (reducing energy consumption is good, surely? ). Equally importantly, we get a lot more out of our tank. We have a 250L UVC. With our particular water usage patterns, I suspect it's like having a 350+L tank. As for just taking shorter, cooler showers, no thanks. A decent shower is one of the few luxuries I allow myself. I already keep them pretty short and I shower at whatever temperature is comfortable. We don't have high flow showers. One thing I don't have is comparative performance numbers, because the unit was installed before the house was occupied. I do know we've never run out of hot water in over a year. Can't say whether that would be true if we didn't have the unit.

I've been looking at this recently. I was originally thinking along the lines you discuss, but I'm concerned about complexity etc. Ideally you could provide an original number for each order, but that's a bit of a pain, and I don't doubt that a lot of delivery people will ignore it. Another approach I'm considering is buying something like this or this and building it into a cupboard

Screwfix all the way with me. The staff aren't that helpful, but they have an absolutely no quibble returns policy, and I can check online to see prices and stock before I leave (and even buy it). We had one about 20 mins drive away, which was a bit of a pain during the build, but not so bad as long as you planned ahead and tried to make each trip worthwhile. Painful when you got out of the car at home and realised you'd forgotten to buy the most important thing on the list! We did use Travis and Jewsons for stuff Screwfix didn't sell. In the end, we found the people at Travis (in our area, at least) a lot more helpful. Once they got to know my wife by name, the haggling over price became faster, but she still had to ask them every. single. time. whether that was the best they could do.

I'm sure he can't wait!

My wife hasn't yet, but she'll find a way! Thank god I'm perfect

Wow, that's some view. House is looking good too!

Story of my life.

Our cats ended up going to another home. I got sick of being woken up every single night to let them in/out, since I'm the only one in the house who can be roused from sleep by noise. I don't miss them at all, and I'm sure the surrounding wildlife is pleased they're gone too.

The problem is that the zeitgeist - and more importantly the legislation - isn't interested in your beliefs about common sense. If you properly fulfil your obligations, then some numpty doing something stupid when your back's turned is far less likely to result in you being sued, or worse.

What the...? And I feel guilty for letting ours play for a couple of hours on the weekend!

Exactly this. We have a camping stove and spare bottle in the garage. Worst case we need to cook on that once or twice, not the end of the world.

Come on gents, it's the festive season. Let's all talk nice.

Agreed, but to be fair, you guys are a small minority within a small community that has self-selected itself on the basis of an interest in self-build that goes far beyond that of the ordinary person having a house built or renovated. I know a handful of people who've done large refurbs (double house size sort of thing) and built from scratch, and every one of them looked at me blankly when I asked what sort of insulation they are using (I didn't even bother asking about U values or airtightness). I was unhappy with our first architect. Not incompetent, but we didn't like what she was designing us, and the way she positioned the house on our block would never in a million years have passed planning. I'm hugely positive about the architect we replaced her with. He had great ideas, was technically excellent (with the possible exception of some of his weathering details) and really helped us think about how to approach house design. We would never have come up with the layout he suggested, but it works really well in practice. There are, of course, things I'd change in hindsight, but they aren't his fault. Design is an organic process, with lots of compromises, some of which aren't apparent until you're living in the space. Friends of ours had a highly awarded architect design them a house. It's a hugely contemporary glass thing to sit on a country plot. They've just had it costed, and the cheapest he's been able to find so far is over twice the budget he gave the architect. To be fair, I do think they (the friends) were ridiculously optimistic on price and indeed may have contributed to the higher costs based on their insistence on luxury spec throughout. It's also a difficult house to build, and I know lots of builders simply refused to quote. Other friends of ours used an architect to convert their bungalow into a two story house and are wildly happy with what he did. So what does this tell you about architects? Very little, I suspect. Like any professional qualification, it's just confirmation that at some stage you ticked all the boxes to get it. How good a practitioner you subsequently become depends on your talents, experience, motivation and a bit of luck. You should expect competence, and for most people that's sufficient (see first paragraph above!) If I found an error, I'd point it out to the architect and have them fix it. As you say, the "correction" isn't my responsibility.

Yep, spring-loaded clips I believe. Just be careful!

Good luck.

Stick to your guns on this one, would be my answer. A year after moving in I can still see every compromise and imperfection in our house. I wish I'd stood up and demanded better in some cases.