jack

I think you're being too hard on yourself. Sounds like the seller lied about stuff being in stock, then provided utterly shite service, then effectively tried to steal your money when you cancelled. Glad you got the money back.

Hi Jake. I'm not sure whether this thread is monitored much by the people who've posted in it. Best thing you can do is to send a private message to one of the people who mentioned the Facebook and WhatsApp groups earlier in the thread and ask them how to join. If you're on a PC, you can just hover over their icon and a popup will give you the option to send a message. Alternatively, click on their icon and the option will be on the next page. Good luck.

Makes sense a longer job price would be lower than a one-off day, but are plumbers really still £30 a day less than painters?

Seems very expensive to me. Nearly three grand just for first fix ductwork labour? Without any previous experience, I installed all of my ducting (£289 m2 house) over an easy couple of days with occasional help from my wife. Even at £300 a day (which is a lot given it's a low-skill job), what are they doing for 10 human-days? And what "second fix" works? Surely that's just fitting inlets and outlets? Again, how much time could that realistically take?

No way I can get a plumber onsite for a day for £210 around my way. Are they really only £30 a day more than a painter?

Can't help you with the on-tape stuff, but I don't suppose the PWM rate of the driver is adjustable via the Eldoled programming interface?

Admittedly I don't have any heating upstairs, but this is very much not my experience in winter. It's always 2-3 degrees cooler upstairs than down in winter. We're just at the time of year where that changes. In summer it's a lot warmer upstairs, and maybe a central extract upstairs would help when the MVHR is in summer bypass mode.

I'm very late to this but we have an insulated concrete raft: up to 300 mm EPS, ~100 mm concrete slab, then ~70 mm polished concrete screed (no insulation between structural slab and screed). I work from home and almost never wear shoes inside, so I spend a lot of time walking around on it in socks. Yes, it feels hard underfoot, but to be honest I don't notice it. As for temperatures, I had dinner at a friend's place mid-winter many years ago. It was a refurb with building regs insulation levels throughout. Top level was engineered oak flooring. I don't know what flow temperature they were using, but I found it extremely uncomfortable underfoot. My feet were sweating and I found it extremely distracting. TBF, my wife didn't notice the temperature. Our floor temp slowly wobbles around 19.5-21.5 degrees during winter, based on a 25-28 degree (weather conpensation dependent) flow temp. It doesn't feel warm underfoot, but it's perfectly comfortable to walk around in socks.

1. I was responding to you about EVs in general, not Teslas, since that's what you were referring to: 2. Assuming the 1% number mentioned by Tesla is reasonable for other manufacturers, my battery should lose up to 0.38 kWh per 24 hours. That's less than 2 miles, which is exactly in line with my comment: 3. The numbers given by Tesla in the link you provided suggest a 3 kWh/day standing consumption is far too high. Assuming a 54 kWh battery (which is what Jeremy's would have been, I think), 1% is 0.54 kWh, which is about a sixth of 3 kWh. In summary, parasitic losses are a thing, but are nothing like the thing you implied.

I've never measured it, but 3 kWh would be over 12 miles at our usual consumption rate and it definitely doesn't lose anything like that when it's sat in the driveway.

I did say "at worst". I'm basing that part of my comment on experiences several BuildHub members have shared over the years.

The main issue with committees is that a lot of people sitting on them are at best ignorant of planning law, and at worst know the law but intentionally subvert it to suit their personal agendas. They needn't be a bad thing, it's more that the introduce unpredictability.

My recollection is that the neighbour consultation date is nominal, and that they still have to take into account any (relevant!) objections received in time for consideration before a decision is made. Of possible interest is the question of bringing the application into committee. Our rules say an application is brought into committee if it receives a certain number (5, I think) objections. It may be that the consultation deadline is a factor in whether the number of objections triggers a committee review. Makes sense that would be the case.

Fears were rising a few months ago about the elevated sea temperatures this year's anticipated El Niño might bring. Interesting/worrying how extreme it's looking already.

There's an old book about designing homes called "A Pattern Language". A lot of it tends to the esoteric and it can be a bit new-age airy-fairy at times, but there're also some useful (and often research-based) observations. One of those is that balconies less than a certain depth (about 6", from memory) will rarely if ever be used. Edited to add: I found this: One more link: https://archive.curbed.com/2019/7/11/20686495/pattern-language-christopher-alexander

100% this. Stop wasting time and emotional energy negotiating with people who aren't negotiating in good faith. Tell them politely but firmly what you're going to do, provide copies of the documents supporting your right to do it, and then crack on.

We have balconies at the back of our house - a full width one outside our bedroom and another outside one of the kids' bedrooms. When I say they are never used, I mean no-one has ever once set foot on them for any reason other than to sweep them. They introduced significant cold bridges we didn't notice until it was too late, and they absorbed a lot of money for something that isn't ever used. There are cases where brise soleil make sense. We really ought to have one above our south-facing slider, for example, as that would cut a huge proportion of the solar gain we get through the summer months. I think for south facing windows, they can do a good job of cutting a lot of the direct sunlight through the middle of summer days. We actually have some of the windows on the south side set back in the the cladding by ~400 mm, and that's actually enought to cut out nearly all of the sun in the middle of the day in summer (the windows are only about 500 mm high, to be fair). But for other windows, especially east and west facing, I think external blinds work a lot better. We have them on west-facing windows and it's quite extraordinary how well they work to keep heat out. No cantilevered brise soleil could have achieved the level of heat-exclusion achieved by the external blinds. You can also have the blinds stay down only when needed - so we don't lower the east-facing blinds at the rear of the house at all in winter. In summer, they come down when it gets dark, feather slightly open at 7 in the morning (so you get light and can see out, but no direct sun), then retract completely in the afternoon.

Get into GPT. Apparently this is exactly the sort of problem it's ideal for solving.

I hope he's right, but I doubt he is: https://skepticalscience.com/flaws_of_ludecke_and_weiss.html

Ignore the fact that the Willis heater is external - the two situations are almost exactly the same (albeit there might be slightly more stratification in the Willis heater example due to how/where it introduces the heated water to the tank - an internal immersion is more likely to cause some turbulence/mixing). In both cases, buoyancy causes hot water to rise and displace cold water downwards, and also in both cases, the distance that the cold water will be pushed down is limited by the vertical position of the heater.

I disagree. Your current immersion is unable to heat more than the top of the tank because of its position. Putting a Willis heater low down would allow much more of the tank to be heated. Exactly. You were complaining about the complexity of a destratification pump. This is a potential solution. I don't actually know whether a Willis heater addresses all of your problems, but I can't see why you wouldn't at least look into it further. They're pretty cheap and there isn't much plumbing involved.

Look into Willis heaters. They take cold water from low down, heat it, and return it to the top of the tank. Do you have access to any sort of connector lower down in the tank? You might even get away with breaking into the cold feed where it comes into the tank. Then you just need a return connection at the top of the tank. I don't know whether there's such a thing as an adaptor that would allow you to blank off the immersion heater boss and provide a connector you can connect to the hot water output of the Willis heater.

Welcome. I haven't heard of Cortizo (which I think is the right spelling). Who recommended them to you?

The issue is that the American man's house could potentially be his heavily, even lethally, defended castle, so perhaps they're less concerned about pseudonymity.

What's a fad? Time of use tariffs?