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Upon reflection I feel I should clarify this. All the 'transformerless' inverters I've looked at in detail in fact have transformers but I'm not saying that there are zero truely transformerless inverters out there. Electrically it's possible to create something truely transformerless. Transformerless has been used as short hand for 'doesn't have the whacking great 50Hz transformer'.

I'm pretty sure you and Steamy know this, but transformerless inverters are not transformerless. The transformers are just smaller, higher frequency ones. The amount of isolation provided is down to the manufacturer and is a separate parameter. High frequency ('transformerless') inverters have got a bad rep, because it is newer technology and plenty of manufacturers made mistakes in there design but I think we should be at mature technology now, and the efficiency and weight/size advantages are not to be sniffed at. Victron who for years made a big fuss about how their traditional low frequency inverters were so robust have now launched high frequency inverters (MultiRS/InverterRS) and have stated that they are now comfortable that the technology is robust enough (though admittedly even their first revision of the MultiRS apparently had issues). Most newer inverters now that promise high efficiency >97% are likely to be high frequency as low frequency has inherently more losses.

They realise that they are far behind and if they don't start building a network (and learning how to run it) they don't stand a chance so yes they are throwing money at it. But my general concern with them does seem to be that they have too much money so are building very traditionally and not doing much different from the Boeings of this world. I expect that will mean that even once they have a reusable rocket it will still cost a lot more per launch than SpaceX and they will have to spend a lot more time and money fixing that (if it's fixable). Even their pockets aren't deep enough to launch 10's of thousands of satellites using those high cost launch platforms. Amen, though don't expect the Chinese systems to get licenses to operate in the west (and that brings up another point, Starlink has been buying up all the radio frequency licenses building an even bigger wall around themselves).

This is probably a bit of a highjack (sorry), but what are peoples thoughts on using something like this gutterbrush as an alternative to the traps discussed above? https://www.guttersupplies.co.uk/gutterbrush-4mtr-black-box-of-10-p-GB4PK10/

Not sure how relevant this is to self-builders as I haven't seen their name come up here, but I'd guess any reduction in capacity has knock on effects: https://www.constructionenquirer.com/2025/11/04/building-control-giant-assent-ceases-trading/

I doubt any competitor will be truely competitive until they are launching on reusable launchers (like SpaceX). Before that the costs just don't add up. Other reusable launchers are coming (Blue Origin has its second launch scheduled this week) and RocketLab are working on one but SpaceX has a very large head start.

So long as you know what you are doing. From experience, you are going to discover something that doesn't work through double NAT (wifi calling, video conferencing, some random app that you need to make something work) at the most inconvenient time and have to rush to rejigger things. So I suggest grasping the nettle earlier at lesuire rather than in a frustrated hurry after wasting a couple of hours trying to figure out why it isn't working.

If you can locate the two cylinders close to point of use you save wasting water warming up the pipes when the tap/shower gets turned on (or installing a pumped loop - which has a maintenance/energy cost). When you do get to the teenage stage the separate cylinders will stop the kids draining the adults hot water and vice versa which removes one reason for arguments. Don't see the need for separate boilers especially if you think you might have a lot of excess solar to keep the tanks topped off with heat. Have the two tanks piped in parallel to the boiler which should minimise recharge time. If you feel like you want two boilers and have money to throw at it, consider a heatpump and a boiler. Heatpump for most heating (run off solar energy when possible) and boiler as top up/insurance. You might end up finding you don't actually need the boiler in the end and even if you do you are using more of your solar energy.

This sounds like the answer to me. They know they can't charge you to cover the cost of fixing it and know it's going to be expensive to fix so do everything they can to avoid the cost.

Have you reconfigured this router to act as a bridge or is it still acting as a router? Generally when you plug something into a WAN point the router will apply NAT/firewalling to that network and create a separate network with it's own DHCP, etc, on it's end. This may cause issues down the line if this is not what you intended.

Good news! Depending on how much the remaining problems annoy you I'm sure you could get them out by additional jacks and possibly if needed applying weight to areas that are floating high. Maybe a good caravan shouldn't require this but if yours is a little bent out of shape you should be able to move it back a few mm here an there if needed.

Yeh I get that. Your issue comes down to not getting what you expected which is frustrating and hopefully your complaint will lead to documentation changes from Volvo, but at least you haven't been put in a situation where the vehicle just doesn't work for you. The volvo docs do seem quite poor. When I first saw this thread I googled for Volvo PHEV charging and the first hit was a document that clearly covered the limitations but the document you linked to doesn't.

So in the vast majority of cases you will always be able to fully charge your car every day (even twice a day) without much hassle?

Not entirely sure of you overall result here. Neither end is plugged into your home network and is connected to it via Wifi? All bridged networking, no routing? As long as it works, can't complain about the price.

I thought you could get black as well OEM? Maybe I'm thinking of another manufacturer but sure I've seen something.

Clearly you are pissed off feeling decieved (fair) but I wonder how much difference the 3.7k vs 6.4kw charging will make to you in practice. How big is the battery?

BTW I did quickly look at the Zappi install instructions. They appear to have phase monitoring circuitry so it wouldn't work supplying more than one phase if you didn't have a true 3 phase supply, even if the car doesn't actually need separated phases, just power supplied on multiple legs of the connection.

That's not 2-phase though. Both supplies are from the same phase, if the car was relying on the phase rotation (which I very much doubt) then it wouldn't work.

Almost non-existant here, but again I think you should think of 2-phase as 3-phase (where they aren't using the whole capacity). 3-phase charging is relatively available here but again limited at homes.

Cars are designed for a global market. 3-phase is common in commercial charging points and homes in Europe. Most cars will charge faster when plugged into 3-phase. Why they have cheaped out and only put chargers on 2-phases I'm not sure. Guess it's cost saving rather than targetting a specific market. 2-phase supplies are common in some places (notable the US - though 2-phase US can be used as single phase 240v). Depending on how they wired this up internally, you may be able to supply the same phase to both internal chargers, effectively running 6.4kw single phase. IIRC a lot of modern 3 phase kit, is 3 seperate single phase supplies rather than something that requires the phase separated phases specifically.

Octopus offer the 15p export price but AFAIK they have a limit of 15kW of solar, so not sure they will offer that price to you if you go over that. That might make a 15kw export array more profitable than a 30kw one. Not sure about other providers and their pricing. Even if you do get the price then don't bank on it being around for the life of the array so don't base financial decisions on it. Agree that a large hot water tank isn't worth much given the amount of electricity you plan to generate. If you do a lot of miles via EV then being able to use the solar for that would be a big win, but then you have to wonder if the cars will be at home plugged in when the sun is up. If you get the 15p export rate an can export as much as you want it's no big deal as you can export at 15p and import overnight at 7p. But if you are export limited then batteries would help you time shift, but that is going to be very expensive and it probably doesn't make financial or environmental sense (to have sufficient batteries to charge cars). Your roof angles are also not particularly well optimised for winter generation, where excess panels can be really helpful. PVGIS is showing you that in winter you don't generate much. It may be worth considering if there is a location on your property that is not the roof that might better suit at least some of the panels. If you can angle at 45/50o you could generate a lot more in winter, which would likely be more useful long term (especially if export pricing during summer months becomes less attractive).

Wondering if you can unlevel it in a way to bring the insides straight? Would have though it would be relatively easy to push the frame 10mm in one direction or another over a distance of metres. Failing that, probably isn't the end of the world to remove the french doors and refit if it came to it. (either the seller arranging that or DIY) If the caravan isn't a leaky mess and all plumbing/electricals work then you have a good base for a while. No practical experience with these things but my impression from reading here is that buying second hand you will always have something to deal with with these units.

Steve Baker is making an impression I see.

I'm going to try and put my thoughts down here. The physics of enthalpy is a bit much for me so this is just how I understand it. But my understanding was that enthalpy is not a bad way of talking about what these things are doing. Air with 0% humidity at 30oC is in a much lower energy state than air with 100% humidity at 30oC. If you live in a hot climate with high humidity. Say Missisippi, then you really want to have an ERV vs HRV because the incoming air will be saturated with moisture even after the heat has been exchanged, which you will then need to use AC/dehumidifier to extract. In many parts of the world the dehumidification demands more power than cooling, so these ERVs are doing what they say they are. In this country where we don't generally have a lot of high humidity high temperature days and we also don't tend to air condition our homes then ERVs are not as useful. They will provide some benefit, possibly by preventing moisture leaving the house during cold winters*, but at least to my understanding, it was generally considered unnecessary to spend the extra for an ERV vs HRV in this country. As to your other questions, I'll leave that to others as I don't have the personal experience of one. * Thinking aloud but this may be seen as a negative in some homes with no other way of dehumidification, as you are trading the extract of humid air with dry air most of the year (which we often want) with preventing the air getting very dry in very cold conditions.

The 48V approach? I thought @MortarThePoint was making a more theoretical argument. Not sure there is much 48V lighting available to buy. Voltage doesn't really relate to brightness. All white LEDs need about 3.3V. The difference between a bulb needing 12v 24v and 240v is the number of LEDs run in series vs number in parallel. Brightness is just dependent on the specific layout within the bulb/strip. Bulbs/strips are sold on the basis of a brightness output often in lumen. The only case where voltage matters, is if you have undersized your supply cables which is to be avoided in all cases (even if you don't care about efficiency) because an undersized cable will heat up.