jack

I know you aren't saying otherwise, but stair angle isn't the whole story. You could have 10 steps over, say, a 2.6m total stair height, but the 260mm rise would be completely unworkable even at 38.5 degrees. There are some interesting notes on the topic of stair comfort here. Personally, I think that if you stick with commercial, rather than residential, guidelines, you won't go far wrong.

He means that the rise and run should be consistent throughout the stair, not that they should be the same as each other.

There are a number of tribunal cases where HMRC looked up the date a new build was added to the council tax valuation list and used that as the date of completion.

I don't specifically recall. It may have been to do with wanting to let people post about their general tax situation without it being visible to casual visitors.

I believe you may need to have 10 posts before you can access the VAT Reclaim Queries & Guidance sub-forum, but it has a lot of discussions about the risks of claiming VAT after you've lived in the house for a while. For a while there, HMRC was outright rejecting claims from self-builders who'd lived in their house for even only a few months before claiming, even if they claimed within three months of obtaining a completion certificate. I get the impression the tide is turning following HMRC losing some tribunal cases last year, but it's still something you need to be mindful of.

Any use?

Who told you you need to do this? I've never heard of any such thing. It would take an awful lot of odd things to happen for a piece of rebar to become live inside cured concrete, and then for someone to come into contact with it. In fact, our electrician used our house for his periodic inspection for ELECSA (or whoever he's with), and they told him he was overdoing it by earthing all the steels in the house.

The Siberian larch wasn't quarter sawn, it was flat sawn like the Scottish stuff. Same supplier (Russwood), same machined profile. When we were first making inquiries, the supplier specifically warned that there'd be more movement over time with the Scottish stuff, and I have no reason to doubt that.

We got samples of Scottish and Siberian larch and left them outside for a few months. The Scottish stuff cupped badly across its width, whereas the Siberian stuff remained almost completely square. Perhaps we were unlucky, but unless a very rustic look is desired, I wouldn't be considering Scottish larch.

I don't recall.

Remembering names has always been a serious issue for me, and it's absolutely been getting worse over the last few years.

You're welcome.

I'll probably get my HA system to control it, which perhaps counter-intuitively might make things simpler. Still requires some upfront thought.

Good point. If I were still building, I'd definitely be grabbing this deal, despite already have two batteries, an impulse driver and a heavy drill. A lighter drill like this would be ideal for lighter-weight repetitive jobs, plus as you say, having two drills is useful anyway Also, 5 Ah batteries are great if you ever plan on buying battery-powered garden tools, or use heavier power tools such as a circular saw (mine chews through battery life like no-one's business).

Yup. The question is whether I actually need to heat outside the off-peak period.

Yes, a COP of 4 isn't very likely during that time of the year, so it's slightly cheaper to use the immersion off-peak than the ASHP during peak hours. The main question will be controlling it all, and keeping it simple.

Interesting you found this to be the case - I'm planning on trying this out next winter. I'm on Octopus Go, and my peak rate electricity is about to go from 13.8p to nearly 30p per kWh in May. The off-peak rate is only going up from 5p to 7.5p, to there'll be an even bigger incentive to push things like heating into the four hour off-peak window. I need to do some maths, but the modest reduction in COP caused by a slight increase in flow temperature will be swamped by the 4x cost difference between peak and off-peak rates. The only question now is whether our 5 kW ASHP will be able to both heat our DHW and put enough energy into the slab during the four hour off-peak window during cold periods. I suppose we can just add a bit more if needed during the day.

Very possible. I've seen dumber behaviour from eBay buyers!

To give some idea of how good a deal this is, Screwfix is also selling a single 5 Ah battery for £100. A pair of these batteries on Amazon is £150, so as you say, it's literally a free drill and charger on top of a better price than you'd generally be able to find for just the batteries. If anyone's thinking about getting into the Makita 18 V ecosystem, this would be a great way to start.

We used rapid racking too. Can't remember which flavour - maybe the one above their base level? - but it's absolutely rock solid. The chipboard shelves probably won't last forever, but easy enough to replace (probably with thicker plywood) in due course.

Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Yes, something like that. As suggested above, there's a lot to getting this sort of lighting right. Colour temperature, power, output angle, etc, will all play a role in how effective the lighting will be. My general feeling is that small uplights are always visually annoying unless they have screen or are recessed such that light is blocked from directly hitting your eyes as you walk by.

Couldn't agree more. Constant current if at all possible. With decent dimmers, you can dim smoothly all the way down to zero. I played around with an EldoLED constant current driver when I was thinking about switching from mains dimming, and the quality of the dimming was startling compared to the mains dimming I was using at the time (now since replaced with a White Wings multi-channel dimmer and a KNX multi-channel dimmer). Interestingly, the White Wings dimmer has let me dim noticeably lower than even the decent quality KNX mains dimmer I have running the rest of the house. I assumed the drivers would completely dominate dimming performance, but it's marked how much better the White Wings dimmer is.

It's a (mains) dimmer, not a driver. You'd therefore need a further driver after the dimmer (to convert dimmed mains to something that can drive an LED), which is massively over-complicating the situation.

I wouldn't leave a decision like this to an electrician with this unless they have experience with the different sorts of lights and driving arrangements that are possible. Get onto the Loxone Google Group if you aren't already there, and ask them for suggestions. They're generally pretty helpful. I have one of these and am very happy with it, but it's driving existing per-LED-downlight drivers. You'll be driving very low power LEDs (I'm guessing you'll want something like 0.5 or 1W for your application), for which this sort of dimmer isn't really appropriate.