jack

My parents in law are like this. They like the house to feel bright, and they can afford the electricity, so they just leave the lights on without any consideration of wasting energy.

I have wiring for sensors in a lot of places but didn't get around to installing them during the build. Rough calculations suggest it would take a long time to pay back the cost of the sensor in most positions, so I haven't (yet) bothered.

Double-clicking my bedside light switch turns off all lights in the house and garage. I'd put this feature in the top three must-haves if I were to build again. I also have a dedicated switch at the base of the stairs that turns off all the upstairs lights. It's nice to be able to click it as I walk past on the way to the kitchen from my office! I've also put many of the lights on a timer, so they turn off automatically after a certain period. I think it's a couple of hours for the kids' rooms (I started with an hour, but there were complaints about the lights turning off too soon). It's half an hour for the pantry and the laundry, both of which my wife would leave on all day after using them for 30 seconds in the morning. None of this would be necessary if anyone but me knew how to switch off a light as they left the room. Still, I distinctly remember how bad I was at this even when I was in my 20s, so maybe there's hope for the kids yet, even if the wife is a lost cause.

Good lord, what a steaming pile of nonsense.

I came home on Christmas Eve a few years ago to find that every single light in the house was on. I mean that literally - every bathroom, toilet, hallway, bedroom etc light was blazing, with just my wife and two children at home (all of them downstairs in the kitchen). A recent tweak to my home automation programming lets me open my phone, click a single button on the app, and turn off every single light in the house except the living room where we watch TV. It gives me great pleasure.

We repeatedly tried to get people to work on day rates during our build, especially for larger and less predictable jobs, and the vast majority weren't interested. In one case, I suspect the guy underestimated the time it was going to take to put up our larch cladding, and it coloured the rest of our relationship with him (although I didn't realise this at the time).

Did they give you some sort of monitoring screen with the smart meter? Does that track things any differently to the app?

I don't know what the difference is, but the Flair 400 doesn't look the same as the Excellent 400. Is the Flair PH certified? Just the standard that comes with it - G4 I think? Not F7, anyway. We're on the suburban outskirts of a market town, so no particularly strong need for better filtration.

The Brink Excellent 400 units (and maybe others?) seem to be rebadged by a number of other companies: Wolf: https://database.passivehouse.com/en/components/details/ventilation_small/wolf-gmbh-cwl-400-excellent-0324vs03 Envirovent: https://www.envirovent.com/products/heat-recovery-ventilation-mvhr/energisava-400/ I'm sure there was another one, but I don't seem to be able to find it right now. We have a Brink Excellent 400 that's mostly worked well for over 5 years since installation. It's very quiet - I can't hear it when it's at its normal background levels, even standing beside the unit. The unit itself makes some noise on boost, but with the volume of air being shifted, I think that would be impossible to avoid. It remains quiet at the inlets and outlets. The one slight issue we've had is an odd leak in very cold damp conditions. It's only happened a handful of times in five years, but basically condensation from the heat exchanger seems to escape the internal drainage path and make its way into the gap between the insulation and the casing, a space which isn't drained. When enough of it builds up, it finds its way out of casing along a join at one of the corners. To their credit Brink sent out an engineer to fix it over three years after installation. They clearly knew about the issue, because the guy turned up with a solution very much along the lines of what I'd been considering doing myself. Unfortunately, I don't think his installation was that great, because it dripped again the following winter, and I found out the fix hadn't stayed put. I then did my own version (basically a strip of plastic wedged underneath the heat exchanger), and touch wood it's been okay since.

Based on context, I assume "openings".

Our entire roof is flat (well, flat-ish - most of it actually has a 5° slope, which is better than 1:20). We were advised that fiberglass would be difficult over such a large area due to thermal expansion issues, although I've since learned that this likely wouldn't have been the problem it was made out to be. The leaks happened where the Resitrix membrane joined scuppers passing through the parapet wall. We have five scuppers, and three of them failed (one failure only became apparent when the scupper was removed). Our Fakro rooflight is built on an upstand and nothing in that area has ever leaked.

Do you have PV? If so, then anything that can tell you how much the PV is generating could be the source of such a signal, which could be used in conjunction with your thermostats to block calls for heat. If you don't have PV, I assume you're interested in solar gain, in which case I'd have thought letting the house do its thing based on temperature would be sufficient. One thing to keep in mind is that ASHPs don't like short-cycling, so whatever you, ideally build in a minimum run time element.

Impressive! Have you had any issues with building control and DIY windows?

Weed burners are okay as long as you do it regularly. They're a lot less effective if the weeds get above a certain size. Unless you get a massive one, they also cover only a small area at a time, so you may end up spending a lot of time covering a large area like a driveway. Little and often might be the key. Weeds are killed immediately if they've just sprouted, so you can just do a fast sweep every week to get new sprouts rather than a massive effort every month involving more established growth.

Welcome to BuildHub, sounds an interesting project.

Welcome Clive.

I submitted late October and got a positive decision 4 months later.

All done @Geminiuk01 (link to original thread).

Hi Gem Welcome to BuildHub! A lot of members don't follow the Introduce Yourself sub-forum, so you'll likely get a better answer if you post your question in the correct sub-forum. This also makes it easier for others to find the information in the future. If you want to start a new thread in the relevant sub-forum and cut-and-paste your question into it, then let me know, I'll edit your post above to provide a link to the new thread. You can get my attention by putting an '@' sign immediately followed by 'jack' (no quotes), then clicking my name on the pop-up that should appear underneath. Thanks Jack

Massive pinch of salt, but according to Elon, you can play online games requiring low latency. Whether you can play them well...? The video above did show some latency numbers when he first connected, but I don't remember what they were.

I suspect that isn't going to happen. Signals from these satellites are not going to be strong enough to be received with a small non-directional antenna like you'd find in a dongle. There's overlap, so it's continuous.

I think the main application at the moment is those who live in places where broadband bandwidth is still very poor.

That's an extremely low demand. I'd have thought electric towel rails in bathrooms, supplemented with a small electric heater (maybe portable) for really cold spells, would be sufficient.

This is a difficult question. Several years ago, HMRC quietly changed its practice from always giving claimants three months from the completion certificate date, to undertaking a multi-factorial assessment including factors such as date of last invoice and moving-in date. There was a presumption that if you moved in, say, three years ago, the house was "complete" enough to live in, especially if no significant further building costs (i.e., costs directly related to the building itself) were incurred in the three months before you actually lodged your claim. They were denying claims made within three months of the completion certificate on this basis. There's been a series of tribunal cases challenging this position over the last couple of years, and most have found for the claimants (although annoyingly, one or two followed the multi-factorial test). Unfortunately, tribunal cases are not precedential, and so they can't be relied upon by future appellants. In short, unless and until this matter is heard by a higher court that can issue a precedential ruling, there'll always be a risk associated with moving in and claiming more than three months later, even if that claim is made within three months of the completion certificate. The risk can perhaps be mitigated by ensuring you have some high value invoices less than three months before submitting your claim, especially if those invoices relate to building works rather than, say, fencing or driveway materials. Although the latter are claimable under the DIY VAT scheme, HMRC seems focused on completion of the building itself, rather than the project as a whole. If you have the cash, one thing you could do is buy as much of the required materials as possible and then put in your VAT claim. I believe you're also allowed to continue buying materials after completion/moving in, up until the point you lodge your claim. TL;DR: To avoid risk, you should make the claim within three months of the completion certificate and also within three months of moving in.

It'll be interesting to see what happens when the price eventually comes down. At the moment, there isn't a lot of contention, but if the price falls enough to make it a viable alternative to ADSL, that will change.