jack

I'm surprised it's only a factor of two.

If the display was on the smart meter itself, would you argue that I wasn't looking at the smart meter? Of course not. The only difference is that the display is remote, so as far as I'm concerned, it's part of the package. Moreover, of the three examples I gave, only one of them (the heater in the garage) was a result of interaction with the display. The others were due to me analyzing online data that was uploaded by the smart meter. And yes, they could supply a device that interfaces with a dumb meter to provide similar data, but why do that given how little extra hardware is required to allow the data to send back to a central site for logging and display via an app or a web interface? You'd be throwing away half the functionality and convenience. The alternative would be local(-only) logging, but it would be a waste to store that sort of data locally and not make use of it for billing purposes. If it gets uploaded for billing, then we're back to the result effectively being a smart meter. As you say, if you're technically competent, you can probably put together some hardware and software that provides you with the data you get from a smart meter (probably better data, actually), but 99% of the population can't do that.

I disagree with this. Reading your meter tells you how much energy you use, not how that energy usage happens. Despite knowing (vaguely) the power outputs of our kitchen appliances, I've been quite surprised at how much energy they use when cooking, especially if you have a few things on the go at once. If I were struggling to pay my bills, this could be a very useful piece of information. Same with being able to see my background energy usage - it's over 300W a lot of the time, which really surprised me, and is something I'll be digging into to try and bring it down. And finally, being able to see my smart meter allowed me to notice a persistent 1.5+ kW power consumption even when no-one else was home and almost everything was off, which let me find that my son had left a fan heater on in the garage gym. Without a smart meter, that could have been left running for days. I'm sure there are other examples, but those are just what jumps to mind.

There's no guarantee how HMRC will treat it, but we had a few invoices in the name of someone other than us. One was an over-the-counter transaction at a builder's merchant, the invoice for which was in a business name completely unknown to us. We assume they did something like (accidentally?) using the account of whoever had the transaction before us. Another couple of invoices were in the name of our tiler. That was because his trade discount was so ridiculously good that we would still have been well ahead if the VAT reclaim had been refused. The last was some wood we bought for one of the contractors, which for some reason was supplied with an invoice in his business name rather than our name. We just missed this one at the time. In all cases, we made a note about it in the covering letter, and all amounts were allowed without question.

289 m2. Your U-values are good. It's possible you might meet PassivHaus standards (which set energy consumption targets rather than insulation values), depending on other factors such as solar gain, windows, form factor, etc. 5-6kW might be okay, but a little more overhead might be useful. It also depends where you are in the country - I imagine someone living in the north would have greater heating requirements than me in the south. One thing you might consider if it suits your layout is waste water heat recovery, which recovers some of the heat energy from showers while they're in use. Depending upon what proportion of the hot water water in your house is used for showering, the net effect can be significant. Some have argued that the payback is too long, but there are decent energy savings to be had, and they're about as set-and-forget as anything you can install when building a house. They do take some planning when it comes to drains.

One small thing to consider, especially anyone fitting a relatively low power ASHP: We've been very happy with a 5 kW ASHP doing our hot water and heating for the last few years. Recovery time isn't too bad, and no issues keeping the house warm (roughly PassivHaus levels of insulation and airtightness) and sufficient hot water in the tank. I've recently found the one shortcoming: we're trying to move over to doing as much as we can in the 00:30-04:30 cheap period we get on Octopus Go. Unfortunately, looking at the data I recently started collecting, I think I realistically need to allow up to two hours in very cold weather (and very cold incoming water) for the tank to fully heat up overnight. That leaves me with only two hours in which to heat the slab with the ASHP. I plan to increase the flow temperature by a few degrees - it's currently 25 deg C (the lowest setting) for all but the coldest weather - in the hope I can get more into the slab during the heating period. However, two hours of heating is not going to be near enough to get us through the day in very cold weather. Another option I'm thinking of is using the immersion heater during the cheap period for at least some of the DHW during the coldest weather. Even if the ASHP could manage a COP of 3 during the coldest part of the year, it's still cheaper to use the immersion at 7.5p/kWh than the ASHP is at the full rate of around 34p/kWh. I'd then have the ASHP for up to four hours to do the UFH. More data and thinking still to come, but it's an interesting topic.

I think the general consensus is that solar thermal is at best marginal compared to PV. The latter has a much longer usable season, plus when the tank is completely hot, you can keep using surplus electricity for other things. If you're considering batteries, I think the maths is even more firmly in the PV camp. Perhaps the only potential issue is how much PV you have installed now, and whether your local network operator might object to you connecting more.

Never thought of it that way - interesting. Must be more to it than that then (assuming the principle is even correct).

The relative impact of air tightness rises as the internal volume of the building increases. It's to do with the relationship between wall/ceiling/floor areas and internal volume. That's why you'll sometimes hear it said that poor insulation on very large buildings (think warehouses) is far less an issue than getting them airtight, whereas the opposite applies for, say, a small bungalow.

I don't know, but bloody warm! We have an insulated garage door, and the rest of the insulation is better than current house building regs. I've just been out there actually, and it's still very warm hours later.

No-one else in my house every switches anything off, not once, not ever. It's standing joke to everyone but me. Best effort was the older boy leaving the fan heater on when he was in the garage gym yesterday. I spent a puzzled hour trying to figure out what was using 2 kW all day today when everything in the house was turned off. By the time we realised what the issue was, it had been on full power for over 20 hours. Even with a 4 hour cheap rate overnight and some decent solar through the middle of the day, that'll have cost a pretty penny!

I agree. Most of our downlights are 2700 K or maybe 3000 K and the light is very pleasant. I was talked into higher colour temperature for the bathrooms - 4000 or something like that - and it's too cold. We have some very warm white wall lights in our ensuite, and use only them during the dim/dark hours. Much easier on the eyes right before you head to bed or have just woken up. Good point this. We have a few in our hallway and kitchen which are very effective for looking nice at night, but they make it impossible to hang anything on the walls. Directional spotlights or angled downlights can give a similar effect while allowing for pictures etc.

The problem is less downlights per se and more the visual effect of a vast array of closely-mounted downlights as the primary, or even only, light source for a large area. It's particularly bad if the ceilings are low. We have a small number of relatively high power, wide angle downlights in our kitchen and they're not actually that bad, although I prefer to have them on low in the evenings and use wall and accent lights unless I'm doing something that needs a ton of light. As well as using not shite pendants, you can also use wall lights and lamps (and LED strips, but even when they're concealed I'm not a fan of the way these are usually used). I've had the 16 channel version of this running via Loxone for a few months now. Rock solid so far. Dimming is excellent - better even than the 8-channel Theben KNX dimmer being used for the rest of the channels.

All I'll say is that downlights are the devil, and large arrays of downlights are whatever's worse than the devil. My eyes are already bleeding looking at the array in the kitchen. One thing I'll recommend (which we didn't do enough of) is to walk into each room, imagine specific scenarios about how it will be used, and think about what the lighting would ideally look like for each use. For example, the kitchen is probably going to be the most complex, because it has lots of different uses across the day and night: - Cooking on a weeknight: compare a bright summer's day with a dark winter evening - Eating lunch/breakfast at the island - Eating dinner at the table - Coffee on a dark, overcast winter weekend morning - After-dinner lighting for midweek where you might be wandering in and out from the living room, grabbing a cup of tea, etc - A party where there are lots of people drinking and eating snacks - A dinner party with 6-8 people at the table (does the lighting change over the course of the evening? Brighter when people get there and you're engaged in cooking and organising drinks, then changing focus to the table when you sit down to eat, and perhaps changing again if things continue after dinner) Other things to consider: - Will you have any art on the walls? If so, how will you light it (if at all). - How much of your lighting can be done with local task lights versus bright downlights? In the kitchen example, are you better having some good task lighting above the island where you'll be doing food prep, coupled with some more moody, lower level lighting over the island for when you still want to see what you're doing (e.g., eating), but brightness isn't so important. - Consider lamps and wall lights that are controllable as part of scenes incorporating your main lighting. Another thing to consider is to look at the lighting in bars and restaurants, and see what sort of lighting gives you the sort of mood you're after. It's amazing the impact a couple of lamps with orange or red shades can do to the feel of a space.

@jen and mark, I've closed this thread to avoid having duplicated comments across two threads. I think the other thread is in a better sub-forum.

These are a central element of the novel Oscar and Lucinda by Peter Carey. I don't generally read historical or literary fiction (this is both), but I remember absolutely loving it.

We cleared up our garden of things that could get blown away before the massive storm earlier in the year. We overlooked one thing: a small side-table with a glass top. After the storm, we realised that the top had just disappeared. Quick search didn't locate it. We found it a couple of weeks later in a bush quite some distance from the table. It had been flung in the air by the wind, bounced at least a couple of times on the paving (based on chips along its edges), then landed in the bush. Still perfectly usable if you ignore a couple of edge chips.

I got laminated and toughened for that very reason. That said, I don't believe building regs required laminated, at least for residential properties. Might be wrong about that, but either way, laminated makes a lot of sense.

When I was getting the glass for our balconies, one or two places offered an additional "heat soak" treated toughened glass. They put it through a process that essentially accelerates the impact that inclusions have. It's destructive, so the additional cost of heat-soaked glass reflects both the additional process cost and the average loss rate.

[Mod hat on] Please behave yourselves and stop bickering. [/Mod hat off]

If you don't have some form of battery backup, can you run an oil burner during a blackout given they need power for ignition/control?

In the original post: So the builder was told what was needed. If he couldn't do this, or didn't want to for whatever reason (e.g., it isn't practical based on the rest of the construction, or it's going to cost 10 times more than what he actually built, etc), the appropriate response is a conversation with the client, not to just press ahead and do something completely different. I don't think what he's done is terrible. More evenly spaced mortar would have been better (the angle each brick makes with the arch shows you how he's got it wrong), but the main point is that he didn't build what was shown and agreed, and he did it without a discussion.

Welcome Mark. After that length of time, plasterers tend to either have bullet-proof shoulders, or shoulders that feel like they've been shot several times. Hope it's the former for you!

Just for any others following, this discussion has moved to PMs.

Interesting, thanks @Radian I hadn't considered that the Varisine stuff might have had anything to do with the one-cycle limit.