jack

I think there's design flaw with these Brink units. Mine has the same issue with standing water in a non-draining area. There's some discussion here: The solution for me was to fit a strip of flexible plastic between the inverted channel on the heat exchanger and the foam ridge that it slides onto. The edge of the plastic extends past the foam, which kicks any condensation out away from the foam itself. That stops it trickling down the foam and tracking to the undrained area. Brink must be aware of this issue, as they send someone out to fix it over three years after installation. Their fix involved aluminium tape, and basically ripped off the first time I removed the heat exchanger! As for your mould issue, once mould gets into this foam, I suspect it's going to be hard to kill off. I think a few rounds of scrupulous cleaning coupled with the application of some anti-mould compound (gel bleach perhaps?) might work?

The way phase change materials (PCMs) work is that they start as a solid below a transition temperature. Heat gets added and the temperature rises until it reaches the transition temperature (note that there's really a temperature transition range, partly due to material properties and partly due to imperfect heat transfer within the material). At that point, extra heat energy no longer raises the temperature, but instead goes into changing the phase from solid to liquid. In general, this phase change takes a lot of energy. That's why a relatively small volume of PCM can store a lot more accessible energy than can be achieved by heating something like water while it stays within its liquid phase. Once the PCM has all been converted to liquid, adding further energy will start to increase the temperature. At some point, the PCM's maximum operating temperature is reached, and no more energy can be added. One difficulty with PCMs is that you can't determine from temperature alone how much energy it's storing when it's at its transition temperature. With water, if you know the temperature, you can estimate how much hot water you have. With PCMs, once you reach the transition temperature, there's no significant temperature change until the PCM has all liquefied. This means that if the temperature is below or above the transition temperature, you can estimate total energy based on temperature, but you're somewhat in the dark while at the transition zone. Estimating the energy while the PCM is at the transition temperature is what's been discussed above. However, once you go above the transition temperature, you can again determine how "full" the energy store is. So if your Sunamp was completely full, then used a small amount of energy, that would have resulted in a temperature change that the Sunamp controller can interpret as meaning that capacity again exists. So the Sunamp knows when it's full, and in theory knows (or could know) how much capacity it has left as long as its PCM temperature is above the transition temperature. It's when it's at the transition temperature that it's ignorant of how much energy it's actually storing. Of course, the vast majority of the energy stored by the Sunamp is available at the transition temperature, so the ability to determine energy capacity based solely on temperature (beyond "nearly full" or "nearly empty") doesn't exist. I'm completely ignorant of how Sunamp actually program their controllers, but something like the above could be happening in terms of allowing the immersion diverter to operate even if only a small amount of power has been taken from the store from when it was full.

I'm not saying no-one should ever have glass doors. I just think people reflexively choose them as if they're always the right option in all situations, and I disagree with that sentiment.

I don't know about folly, but if I ever build another house, I won't bother with sliding doors, and not just because of the problem we've had here. I just don't see the point in having such a massive expanse of moveable glass in one place. Windows work perfectly well (I've no interest in seeing the ground right outside the house) while not getting in the way of furniture placement. I think I'd have preferred a pair of French doors in the middle of the wall, with windows either side.

I have exactly the same problem as @Pete above, despite having goal post steels.

Fixed it.

Just discreetly take a photo, print it, and send a physical letter with no details. Even without the photo, you could just describe what's happened, as you did above. If they take no action, you've lost little.

Changed to Octopus about 5 or 6 weeks ago. It took a month from asking for them to come and fit a SMETS2 meter (they did it this afternoon). Apparently it takes up to 2 weeks for everything to connect and sort itself out, and after that you can go on whatever whacky tariff you want. The installer was excellent. He did an extremely neat job - the result is a lot tidier than the original network installation. He also mentioned they're an amazing company to work for.

Who supplied the doors to be fit? Either way, if the manufacturer can point out what's wrong with the installation, surely the onus is back on the builder to either fix or explain why the manufacturer is wrong?

Check whether you need a mortice lock for insurance purposes. Most insurers require one, I believe.

Not sure, sorry. I had an Immersun. It blew up in less than two years. A few months after I bought the unit, the Immersun business and brand were bought out by the company that makes one of the other immersion products (of course, they didn't take on the warranties). I contacted them about repairing my broken unit and was pretty unimpressed by the quality of their support. They don't service anything they didn't sell, even if it's literally the same product off the same production line a week before they bought the company. They don't share schematics etc, so no-one else repairs them either. They offered me a "good faith" discount on a replacement which was still more expensive than just buying it retail elsewhere. They also tried to make out that I had unreasonable expectations. Based on that interaction, there's no way I'd buy an Immersun, as I don't trust that the support will be there if I need it. Might just have been my experience though - I'm sure you'll find lots of happy customers. The Eddi is an enhanced version of the original Immersun (although I don't know whether the Immersun has been improved too over that time). According to someone who posted on a forum somewhere, I understand that the Eddi corrects a few of the design weaknesses of the Immersun. It also has a few other tricks up its sleeve if you want to integrate their Zappi charger, although I don't know how well the ecosystem plays with Powerwalls or net metering.

Ah yes, got it!

The net result is the same in terms of power output, but the impact can be different. The better quality diverters generate a proper sine wave output that's in-phase with the grid. That's how the Eddi works (same as the Immersun, of which it's an improved version). Phase angle firing is a lot noisier and might cause interference with stuff like radios. People with crappy dimmers might have experienced this. Burst firing can cause perceptible flickering of lights, although I don't know what sort of lights are affected, and it probably depends on how much energy is being diverted. Presumably if it's a lot, it's probably very bright, so pulsing lights aren't likely to be noticed.

It depends what sort of shading is involved with the chimney flue you mentioned. It's counter intuitive, but even a relatively small amount of shading on a single panel can massively lower the output of the entire string within which the panel sits. If the flue is south of and close to the array, it could result in almost permanent downgrading of the panels output for most of the day in sunny weather. You shouldn't have to speculate on what impact optimisers or micro-inverters will have. All of these factors can be modelled, and an estimate given as to what sort of generation you can expect for each combo. I think these more expensive solutions probably made more sense when FiTs payment were higher, but it really depends on the individual circumstance. As well as dealing better with shading, optimisers and micro-inverters can also have a lower turn-on voltage. With a standard string and inverter, the inverter won't produce power until the voltage of the string as a whole exceeds a certain value. Micro-inverters (and maybe optimisers - not sure) start generating as soon as each panel gets to operating voltage. The individual operating voltages enable power to start being produced at relatively lower light levels. I think the net effect is a bit more energy at the start and end of the day. Are you perhaps thinking of the Zappi rather than the Eddi? The Eddi is an immersion diverter like the iBoost.

Our enphase microinverters are 5.5 years old and have never skipped a beat. Microinverters take a different approach to optimisers, but they both allow per-panel optimisation.

Nothing so crass as money.

Also not much like cheese!

No worries, I think I assumed "Crittall-style" would be interpreted as hinged, but perhaps not clear enough. Glad we sorted it out! I'll take a look at MetTherm, thanks. I definitely get the impression that a lot of these internal doors are using profiles intended for double glazing, and are perhaps therefore overengineered where single glazing is all that's required.

Now you're talking. Why has it taken you so long to contribute? I do sometimes wonder whether you're actually serious about wanting to sell the walk-on glazing.

I'm not sure whether I'm missing something in this conversation. You kept talking about sliders (e.g., your mention of how the top light might be adding to the cost due to the need to reinforce it for a slider, then how a "2850 sliding door would still look good"). I was just clarifying that we aren't after a slider. Re: very tall doors, most manufacturers won't go higher than 2400, or 2700 at a stretch. That's why I assumed a fixed pane above, but I'm not hung up on that prospect. Building down the aperture is possible, but would be a bit of a ballache due to the fact that this area is presently finished with brick slips on both sides of the aperture. I also like the view from the kitchen through this area and would prefer, if possible, not to block it off by building down significantly. If I can get a 2700 high pair of doors at a decent price, I could live with building down a couple of hundred mm. I'll update the thread when we make a decision, although costs are currently making us think this isn't something worth keeping at the top of our priority list.

Welcome to BuildHub @Ali F Re: your VAT question, you may find you'll get a wider audience if you continue this discussion in the VAT sub-forum. Some members stick to their areas of interest and don't visit the new members sub-forum. You can open a new thread and post a link to this thread in it, to save you copying all the info above.

This would have been very useful info 5 years ago!

Couldn't agree more. He also thinks outside the box. So many woodworkers are obsessed with table saws. I don't really have the space, and frankly, they're such relatively dangerous tools that the ability to get comparable (and in some cases better) cuts more safely is very appealing. There are obviously somethings table saws can do that plunge saws can't do (or make it harder to do), but for the moment, I'm happy with the plunge saw route. You won't go wrong with that set up, for sure.

I looked at this long and hard. Peter Millard's videos on YouTube are excellent. Along with some good "how-to" videos, there are also various comparisons between cheaper and more expensive products. In the end, I went with the Bosch GKT 55, which is made by Mafell (a German manufacturer who themselves make a much more expensive plunge saw under their own brand). It uses the same track as the Mafell. Very happy with its performance, although there are pros and cons to all the different units. Also look into getting a rail square and parallel guides, such as those available from Bench Dogs. If you can cut straight using the tracks, and at 90 degrees using the square, you've solved 95% of the cutting problems you'll face when making simple articles.

For a moment I thought these were the before and after shots: