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Yep. AFAIK the way you decide a tax is progressive/regressive is to see what overall percentage of income the tax takes, not the headline rate. If the tax takes a greater percentage of income from poorer people then the tax is regressive and there are likely better ways to extract the same amount of money. (assuming you want either a income neutral tax or a progressive tax). I like the nordic idea of fines being a proportion of income vs our system of fixed penalty. Seems much fairer. A speeding/parking ticket for a minimum wage person is much more impactful than for a millionaire. In my system none of this gets taxed. Income taxes are higher to compensate. Capital gains is significantly different (if it exists at all). The richest people in this country often pay the lowest tax rate (not raw £) of everyone because a lot of their income is from capital not work. Remove that difference (in the main) and you get some very interesting results. (I'm not saying my proposal is an easy sell -- I believe it would seriously reduce bureaucracy but would also disadvantage a lot of the richest and the white van man tax avoiders who tend to have a significant political influence). Almost all taxable. As it is today (or rather as it was when I last looked a decade or so ago, rules may have changed). My last company gave me all sorts of benefits but also paid benefit in kind tax on those benefits as if I'd earned the money directly. Leather? Alloy? For a work van? No. More seats can be justified. If providing a service and the luxuries are for the use by clients then that's potentially different. I'm not sure of the existing rules here but setting rules in this area is not different from what we do now. Businesses have to deal with this already, my proposal doesn't change that. Sure. But council tax is worse. And maybe I should have said 'property tax' rather than land tax. (I'm very much not a fan of a land tax in our current system and it has issues in general, however, I gave it as an example of something that might be needed in this new theoretical system for it to be cohesive, there are likely other options too). It doesn't but it's not meant to. She has an income (likely mostly structured as capital gains rather than income tax). Tax her at the income tax rate. To me this is much more of a hidden tax. I'm generally against frictional taxes. Far prefer to have simpler, easy to understand, in your face taxes. If everyone (even idiots) can understand the taxes and understand that everyone pays them then social cohesion will be higher. Not done the maths, but if you remove the ability for rich people to pay less taxes by structuring their finances differently then I expect the headline tax rates go down. In summary, what I proposed, is not a summary of all taxes, but a reform of a subset. In my thinking it eliminates a lot of paperwork for the less weathy (<£1million) and smaller companies while preserving flexibility for incentives where needed (though the overall system is thought of as a way of reducing overall costs and therefore the need for incentives). One thing I didn't mention before is that there would have to be a limit of transfers between personal accounts (normally tax free) and transfers to cash (if it still exists in this system).

Well this got super off topic. But as a master of asides I will join in! *ducks* Sales tax/VAT is quite a regressive tax so I'm not hugely in favour. I tend to think that in a digital age (where most transactions are done electronically) we could radically reshape our system. Make bank accounts be marked with a flag that denotes the type of account (I'm sure this already exists but I mean a UK wide standardisation and make this flag part of the transaction). Hugely simplifying, an account can be owned by a person or a company(*). Payments from a company account to a personal account have tax deducted at the time of transaction at the rate of that taxpayer (based on annual income). Other transactions are tax free. It is illegal to derive personal benefit from a non personal account (similar to existing benefit in kind rules). Payments to/from foreign (unmarked) accounts treated as payments to personal account and taxed (allowance for international agreements for tax free transactions to jurisdictions with compatible laws though clearly starting with zero). Possibility of claiming tax back in exceptional(*2) cases. Mechanism for refunds automatically refunding the deducted tax (basically need to enter original transaction ID at time of refund, or request refund using online banking that is then confirmed by company). Likely need an annual land tax also, but these two taxes can cover a wide range of existing taxes. Exceptions and incentives can be created but they are created on the basis of having to claim the tax refund, rather than having a lower tax bill. Claims should be digital and easy to claim (possibly directly through the online banking transaction record). (*) there may be more categories with special rules but they should be limited (*2) exceptional sounds wrong here, there are going to be many cases where you want to claim a refund, but the key is that these are rare overall given the total number of transactions Edit: companies would still have some additional taxes in some industries (carbon tax?) and need to file tax returns in many cases. But amount of work involved significantly reduced. Individuals much less likely to need a tax return. Individual (automated) tax refunds possible on specific transactions avoiding need for end of year return.

I think I'd do this too. The toekick/plinth bottom will be a good way back (not in line with the drawer fronts) and most of this won't be seen. I would not do any of the options with an angled bit. That looks wrong. A version of 3c might be fine also.

This maybe a bit harsh but they look like a guy in his bedroom has cobbled together some pc water cooling parts and fans and 3d printed a case for them and has now set up a company to sell them. (I've not looked hard at them and they are probably doing it properly but they have a very 3d printed look). Pretty much any unit other sold as an FCU will support going below dew point. That's the primary market after all (proper air con performance). It's only a relatively small market of eco warriors and retro fit installations where below dew point is a problem so that will be an afterthought. So trimley have identified a market opportunity. Shame about the design.

I'm guessing you didn't insulate your pipes (and a condensate drain) to give you the option of running a little below dew point if the need arose? What is the FCU you are looking at? Guessing supplier didn't want to sell to non-installer.

IMV the A/C unit would be much more unpleasant due to compressor noise. Would likely keep me up at night (light sleeper). Quiet fancoil will be much nicer.

The AI is sending you down the wrong path (slightly). That particular unit doesn't need you to fiddle with gas at all. It's definitely diyable. Downsides are it requires two 100+mm holes in the wall (and thus mounting to an external wall) which unless you are very careful is going to mess with your air tightness. Equally, those holes will provide a route for external air into the unit bypassing insulation/heat exchange. It won't get into the room but in a tightly insulated house it may create a cold area in winter. Those two holes also bypass your insulation for sound deadening so you are likely to hear the outside more directly in that room. Finally, the compressor is in the internal unit so these will be louder than conventional split A/C (or water based fancoils). Given the temperature has now gone down and you don't have to rush, I'd take a step back and look again at fancoils. See if you can make progress there. Failing that, look at proper split A/C units (likely requiring an installer - but the units are cheaper so overall cost of that install vs this unit might not be huge). What's the issue you are having with fancoils?

Well that's a much more substantial workshop than I was expecting from your previous posts. Barn vs 2/3 car garage. To cost effectively make that space warm? Build a room within the room for the work area and heat/cool that, don't heat/cool the storage. Even a large tent that you can move about if needed to contain the air of the area you are working would help.

I really like that house (though been a while since I watched the video). From my memory of it I think they made it work by: 1. Having plenty of previous experience. She is a designer with experience of remodels and IIRC her husband has industry experience of some form. They have worked up from from smaller remodels and projects. 2. From that previous experience they have a well established network of trades they can trust. These trades know they are reliable customers and this job is not a one off so they get better attention to detail and less 'risk' mark up for an unknown customer. 3. She seems really detail oriented, focusing on lower cost ways of achieving a result. But even with that focus, they had the money to spend to address issues as they came up (and trust in their trades when the trade needed more).

And that brings us back to mains sockets with USB-C. The vast majority of them will be more basic chargers so basically the same as a USB-A fast charger but with a usb-c connector. So that means even if you have a socket with a USB-C you can't necessarily plug your higher power device into it and charge at a reasonable rate. All devices have to support the lowest power standard but a laptop would take hours upon hours to charge at that rate. When I say higher power device, obviously laptops but it also applies to tablets and even the big high end phones. Anything with a big battery wants a higher power charge.

For laptops, monitors, etc. The charger will be physically quite a bit bigger if it's putting out that much power. I'd guess the more commonly available ones will go up to 30-60W max. If you have a USB-C laptop charger that will be 60-150W probably.

Double C no question. USB A will hang around but anything new will come with C and adapters are easy to get. Having said that, personally I wouldn't get socket integrated USB at all. The prices are high, standards change, the standby energy use of them adds up and the risk of them breaking/costing you more money during their life is not great either. (Some types of electrical testing done during EICRs and fault investigation would require all these sockets to be disconnected before the test is run, that's going lead to the electrician charging more). I'd rather get something along these lines for when USB is needed (not a recommendation just result of quick search - in fact not sure the foldable pins is a good idea). https://www.amazon.co.uk/TEKRAT-Charger-Foldable-iPhone-Samsung-White/dp/B0DNRLYSZ1

When I mentioned thickness I was thinking of 0.7mm as the standard but you can get thicker. 0.9/1mm IIRC

Not sure about manufacturers but two things I've found in my research: 1. Can get different thicknesses (I'd prefer thicker but it's obviously heavier, harder to handle and more expensive) 2. You can get different coatings on the panels. I think typical panels have 20-25 year coatings but you can find more expensive options offering up to 60 year coatings. Though the longer lasting coatings might have less colour choice. As usual with me, no practical experience just commenting on research I've done for myself.

PassivHaus is a means to an end. The goal being to tread lightly on our planet and minimise carbon emissions. In a way it's a little dated in the sense that to achieve that goal it can (depending on situation) be cheaper (financially and environmentally) to put more solar panels in than do some 'heroic' engineering to achieve a set energy use per/m2. (heroic in some buildings who's architectural concept didn't consider passive standards so now an energy inefficient form has to be forced to be energy efficient - not saying that's your case). Being a sealed box is overengineering, building to a passive standard case study of balancing lots of variables and moving forward with the most efficient way to achieve the goals. Over doing it likely just ends up consuming more carbon in building materials and a lot more money in consulting fees. Once you have a target, there are often multiple ways of achieving it. For example, solutions like Aerobarrier can bring low air tightness scores for much less effort than traditional methods. It needs a good base, but the most difficult part of airtightness is the bit that Aerobarrier does in it's sleep.

In some cases. Definitely easier for a developer, housing association, etc, where the design costs can be spread over multiple properties. Not an uncommon situation. I'd guess the majority of self builders who want to design to passivhaus standards fit in this category (though sounds like your issue with the door is a bit exceptional, either bad advice or just bad timing - needing to meet a specific but also new spec - regs on fire doors have been changed recently and maybe the market hasn't caught up yet).

well it is Buildhub It wouldn't bother passivehaus standards or likely building control (as long as the wall was built to the right standard) but for me a concern would be whether insurance then considered the garage part of the house. I want a garage partly so I can do hobbies in the garage that I wouldn't want to do in the house (and I'm pretty sure insurers wouldn't want that either). So for me, keeping a completely separate building has advantages there, far enough away from the garage that if I screwed up in some way and there was a fire in the garage that it would not affect the house in any way (and thus the insurers would not have to worry about that). Edit: If you just want to park a car in the garage I don't really see an issue assuming planning are happy.

To be clear when I said robot mower I was thinking of a fully automated set and forget thing. For 6 acres they are still expensive but sensible 4 figures not 5. But they are only going to deal with grass and similar so to get started you'd need something heavier and then rely on them to prevent anything coming back. (They go out every day to keep things under control)

Remote controlled things like that exist. Doubt you'd find a fully automated robot though as it sounds too dangerous for unattended use. Jeremy Clarkson hired something similar for brush clearance in Clarksons Farm.

Yeh. I will be interested to hear how the new deepseek flash model does compared to Opus. I've heard good things about using the frontier models to orchestrate lower tier, cheaper agents.

Wow, wasn't expecting you to actually go for it. This is gonna be one hell of an expensive home automation system lol. Cheaper than a sports car though I suppose!

Seems an expensive way of doing it (if you have to pay for an electrician anyway). In a garage I guess there's not much else on the ring (that couldn't be left unplugged if not in active use). Most likely it's the freezer itself or, if you had heavy rain recently, a damaged cable getting wet (at least here we haven't had much rain at all, and in a newish build I'd expect if an area is wet it'd be pretty obvious). So my thought is spend a little time trying to track it down, but maybe instead of paying an electrician to investigate just put that money into a new fridge/freezer.

There are some pretty beefy robot mowers that can keep a large area under control and don't care about the incline (but you'd have to clear it first). Not cheap though.

Mac Studio M5 Ultra is out. Up to 512GB but not sure pricing is available for that yet (they say wait until October). The 256GB model with maxed out CPU/GPU is £10,799. How rich is your blood @Pocster?

I was referring to the requirement to show photos as built and have a full library of such photos for inspection. I may be getting something wrong here but I thought that was now part of the newer building regs. People on here have certainly started threads where they were asked for photos and didn't have exactly the right thing for the BCO. Assuming I'm right, if every junction now needs photos of it showing it was built correctly, then inevitably the cost of doing so vs the passivhaus requirement for similar is going to be smaller and the quality of the standard build will inevitably be higher so the added quality supervision aspect is also not as significant as it used to be. I'm sure passivhaus requirements are stricter, but my point is that once this process is in use by normal builders the add on cost of doing 'just a bit more of what you already do' vs 'doing something entirely new and unfamiliar' is much smaller.