jack

I'm genuinely puzzled by what point you think I'm missing given that we seem to be saying the same thing. You said: And I said (having just pointed out low depreciation on EVs): Am I missing something?

Tell me how you get on with that. I was looking at buying ours at the end of the lease period and the depreciation is nowhere near what I'd expected. I've looked at other models and they're no better. For example, I quite like the look of the 64kWh Kona. The most expensive model sold at about £37k retail two years ago, but you can't buy one that's two years old in any condition or mileage for less than about £30k. Low mileage cars are listed at £34k or even £35+k. To be fair, this affects all second hand cars to an extent due to supply shortages on new cars. Another issue is that there aren't many electric cars in the 2 or 3 year old class (my preference for buying to long-term hold) that have the longer range I want from my next car. I suspect that's what's holding up the value of those bigger-batteried cars. I'll certainly be taking a much closer look at this towards the end of the year, but don't hold out much hope of getting a deal unless the economic situation falls over into a screaming heap (in which case that last thing I'll be doing is tying £30+k of my capital up in a car).

The fixing distance is different depending upon the particular track you're installing. Look at the relevant technical catalogue in the "Downloads" section on the right of this page of their website. The spacing for each model is in there.

2.5 years with a BEV for us and I wouldn't go back despite the drawbacks. They're expensive, although I think we're ahead given cheaper per mile running costs (especially given we already have a lot of PV), lower servicing costs, and much lower BIK (currently leasing through my business).

I'm not seeing any photos... 😞

We seem to be talking at cross purposes. I'm talking solely about @Bitpipe's scenario, where only a single microinverter has stopped reporting. I'm just saying that it's premature to conclude that the problem is with the Envoy. I don't know how they can remotely tell the difference between noise on the powerlines and an issue with the Envoy (e.g., one or more components in the input filter of the Envoy deteriorating or failing). The fact that the replacement Envoy solved the problem without other changes suggests noise was not the core issue. I looked into this when considering whether to go the microinverter route in 2015, and you're right, it's just the unit that gets replaced under warranty. In my case, it's easy to get onto the flat roof for access without the need for scaffolding, so I concluded it wouldn't be a big issue if I did need to make a warranty claim. My main question was really whether they keep a stock of old models on their shelves for 20+ years for warranty purposes, or ensure that their newer models are backwards compatible. Most likely the latter, I'd have thought.

I know the Envoy unit isn't covered by the warranty, but at this stage it isn't confirmed that the Envoy is where the problem lies. A single microinverter not reporting for some time seems more likely to be a microinverter problem than an Envoy problem. All the microinverters piggyback their data onto the same power connection, so it seems unusual for the Envoy to fail in such a way that it's suddenly unable to read data from just one of many microinverters. Indeed, it might not actually be a microinverter failure. It could be that the connection at the microinverter has deteriorated enough that power still gets through, but the injected data is a bit too noisy for the Envoy to read. Hopefully Techfor can confirm what's actually gone wrong. An interesting question is how they might deal with a warranty claim a long time after installation. Presumably they don't keep stocks of inverter models they no longer make, so how do they replace a failed microinverter that's 10, 15, or even 20 years old? Perhaps their later units are backwards compatible? Let us know how you get on @Bitpipe. I'm interested to see what the problem is given how similar my own setup is.

Another Techforenergy customer here. By the sound of it, I can expect a failure of some sort in the near future! 🤣

I have the same system. I seem to recall that the microinverters came with a very long warranty - 20 or 25 years, I think. If you can't get in contact with the original installer, I guess the distributor is the next port of call?

We mostly get away with 4 hours a night, it's just when we do a long drive and then need the car again quickly. Maybe a handful of times a month. I doubt it'll pay for itself all that quickly, but it'll be nice to not continuously be thinking about how to optimise charging.

Ours bumped from 5p to 7.5p /kWh a few months back. Still amazing value compared to the peak rate. The inability to properly take advantage of the 4-hour cheaper overnight rate on a 13A plug is a major factor for getting the charger installed now.

Still on a 13 amp plug after 2 years! We're about to have a Zappi installed, to go with the Eddi diverter we already have. The recent increase in electricity price when we came off our fixed price deal means we really need to be able to take better advantage of the 4 cheap hours we get overnight.

Massive NO to the Pod Point for me. I can't tell you how much trouble I've had with their public chargers (mainly the app forgetting that I've claimed the session and then refusing to release my car). The last time I was forced to use one of their chargers, it refused to disconnect. In the end, I had to change the max charge setting on my car to force it to break the session. It took me over 20 minutes to think of this solution, so I had to buy a lot of expensive electricity that I didn't want or need. Unbelievably, they no longer have a phone number you can call for help, either. I sent them a message via their (very difficult to find) contact form when I couldn't disconnect and it took them over 24 hours to reply. That was event though I'd selected the "I can't release my car" from the drop-down in the contact form (which would seem like an urgent issue to me!) I don't believe there's phone support for their home chargers either, but check. Also, take a look at the online reviews about support generally.

I drove past a wheat field being harvested on Sunday. The dust cloud it generated was visible a mile away!

I had to help our sales team during a startup I was involved with many years ago. I was basically the industry specialist who knew the details of the business we operated in, and got wheeled in when potential clients got the point of asking questions beyond what was in the salespeople's flowcharts. Some of our salespeople used to get frustrated with me answering questions honestly, because the honest answer sometimes involved acknowledging the existence of a compromise. However, what we were offering had massive advantages to the average potential customer, and my opinion was that if anyone was going to get hung up on the inevitable slight compromises that led to us being able to offer these advantages, we probably didn't want them as a customer. Interestingly, our most successful salespeople were never the ones who had issues with me being honest.

Part of the reason I'm wary about high-speed bladed power tools:

My feeling is that something like this is fine for a job like the one you're planning(/planing). You set it up once and carefully do the same thing over and over in a single session. I think it's more when you're using something often enough to get complacent but not often enough to become experienced that you're more likely to have trouble, especially when every job is different to the last.

Yes, I assumed he was using this sort of thing from his description of it (before the accident): But it may well have been one of these convertible types that can expose the blade:

He definitely said it was a thicknesser, but it does make more sense if he meant one of those open-top planers (which I know can be extremely dangerous). I didn't really want to go into the details given it had only happened days before. He was still in a lot of pain and concerned about long term damage. He ended being fine after a few months.

Me too, until I saw the damage a friend of the family did to his hand on one a couple of years back. It was only a small one too. I still don't have any idea how he managed it.

This could be a very long list, but a few thoughts: - More blinds. Currently have external blinds on most east, west and southern windows, but we stupidly left them off the large east-facing glass french doors in our bedroom. The idea was to reduce costs, but we're going to have to retrofit, so it'll cost us more in the end. - Recesses in ceilings for curtains. The external blinds don't block out all the light, and I end up being woken up by the light in summer. We can retrofit in most places, but it will be messy and a lot of effort. - UFH heating in the bathrooms. I was talked out of this by people with passivhaus levels of insulation and airtightness. It isn't that the bathrooms are particularly cold, but they could be a lot warmer. We've ended up fitting aftermarket electric heaters that certainly cost us more than UFH would have, and aren't as neat a solution. - Insect screens on bedroom windows. This is a massive oversight that I hope to rectify at some point. It would be great to be able to open the windows and our large skylight when the external temperature falls below the upstairs temperature in summer, but we can't do it at the moment due to insects. - Less floor to ceiling glass in the kitchen. People remark on how nice it is to see out into the garden, but it really isn't great for furniture placement. - Think harder about placement of electric car charger. We thought we were clever running heavy armoured cables to the garage, but in the end we decided that we wanted a workshop and gym more than we wanted to garage the car. Solution (again): retrofit cable through ceiling then outside to where we actually park the electric car! At the very least, we could have run a duct that would have allowed a new cable to be routed. Ducting is cheap - I think I'd have run a lot more of it all over the house if I'd known what I know now!

Our plumber recommended least a 12 kW ASHP for our house. Even after I showed him the heat calculations, he was still concerned that the house temperature would drop to uncomfortable levels when recharging the DHW on cold winter days. The 5 kW ASHP we installed has been perfectly adequate for nearly 7 years now.

Welcome to BuildHub. Are you sure the cooling isn't controlled by dry contacts (i.e., a separate set of contacts to those probably controlled by your thermostat for heating)? If so, you'll need a separate thermostat (or a switch if you're okay with manual operation) connected across the cooling contacts.

Yup. I don't see any other way around this.

Yes, that's the component I'm referring to. It would be a shame to lose those permanently and then have Octopus withdraw this tariff in the near future.