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In a world where funds are limited and we have to make choices about how to spend them it just makes far more sense to spend 20k upgrading 10 houses to support heatpumps vs gas (or oil) vs upgrading one hobbyist who needs a large amount of power occasionally. The carbon emissions from your diesel compressor will be relatively tiny compared to those saved from 10 houses given you only use it occasionally. I'd hazard a guess that if you used your compressor a lot the fuel bills would be large enough to make the 20k fee look like a good deal.

Though forklift batteries are a long way away from being ideal for this sort of system. You'll get much less out of them than an equivalent modern LFP pack per charge and they will degrade more quickly. So if used very occasionally and free thats fine but don't plan on using them for grid arbitrage or daily cycling.

You would, but the question is do you need that extra cooling? If you don't actually need it to achieve the temperatures you want then it's an over complication to install it.

25mm likely buys you enough room for the clamp. If you have a row or a grid of lights and have one out of place its going to look awful but if you haven't done any of them yet can't you adjust the overall spacing a touch to create room?

The assesor is probably a contractor working for a private company that charges a nice big administration fee on top of the raw costs.

I think this country would likely have far fewer claimants long term if we actually treated people with respect and helped them back into work. Would cost a lot more at first though and there would always be a small percentage taking advantage so can't see it happening.

Sorry I slightly misspoke. I meant earth. If you are in a vehicle your electrical system will not be connected to earth. You will ground your system to the negative battery terminal (and likely chassis of vehicle) but the tires will isolate your system from earth. There are some different rules for systems like this to normal domestic systems. I'm not an electrician and thats about as far as my memory goes (from looking at this out of curiosity a while ago). My comment was made more from the perspective as I saw what the others had said in this thread seemed to be coming from the perspective of a domestic system and wanted to cover the possibility that you read them as such and thought you could ignore them because your situation is different. Having read your reply it seems like you have all the bits you need for protection so my point is somewhat moot.

Has been discussed previously.

I tend to agree but at this point I'm out of knowledge/experience to help. I'm sure others will step in if further help is needed. Seems like the natural state of things. Humans tend to underestimate the complexity of things they don't understand/lack experience in and while we learn the specific case we don't necessarily adjust our handling of future unknowns. Good luck!

I apologise I just re-read your original post. A victron charge controller for 15A 100V (so 2 strings of two panels) is about £70 so not much difference than the cost of a panel and does buy you some redunancy (which is useful if you go on trips to the middle of nowhere). At 70V on a system isolated from ground safety concerns are less than a traditional system but you do stlil need to pay close attention to them.

I assume you have a battery to run off during the night. Disconnecting the solar panels from the charge controller shouldnt interfere with your consumers. I know you said you didn't want to think about a second charge controller but I wonder why? It seems like an easy option and not expensive. Are you using an ecoflex or similar?

IIRC Roger has an offer to go to 80A for free but no more and no three phase which Roger wants for other reasons (workshop). Even for a house with relatively poor insulation I would have thought a heat pump could be made to work within the supply constraints. Skill Builder had a series of videos on Youtube where they looked at a property that had a badly installed heatpump that didn't do the job and heatgeek came in and fixed up the system and ended up with a happy customer. They installed some cheap loft insulation but otherwise the property was old solid walls, etc, at least for a large part of it.

I can't see how an annual property tax replaces stamp duty easily (from a government perspective). The talk I've read is about an annual property tax replacing council tax with CGT replacing stamp duty. I can see how that would make sense and likely be a relatively positive thing if done purely on a cost neutral basis (not that any government would do it on that basis). Also not sure how exempting people who had paid stamp duty on their purchase would allow any change to work. If the governments reason for making the change is to raise money but do it as part of a reform that raises the money in a 'fairer'* way than just raising existing taxes, then giving every current property owner an exemption would mean the policy will raise less money than the current policy for potentially decades as the housing market turns over. * whether whatever policy they come up with is actually seen as fairer overall I reserve judgement. Seems likely to be quite unfair to people who happen to live in London and surrounds.

Yeh if a loxone bulb cost £20 rather than £80 they might have something but the prices compared to standard off the shelf are crazy. I'm guessing the price on the website can be got down a fair bit through a bulk order but still. Having looked again at their website thanks to their thread at least they now seem to have fittings with decent lenses, etc. I doubt we will get there as standard in domestic properties in any time scale relevant to this forum.

That sounds like the best approach to keep things standard and understandable. GU10 seems to have won the war for replaceable bulb fittings even though its the worst format for dimmable LEDs.

I checked, my old MR16 drivers are AC. First hit for MR16 driver now came up with a DC driver.

MR16 is 12V, I believe historically AC, though I think DC is common too. A 24V dimmer designed for LED strips should I think be able to drive two basic 12V MR16 LEDs in series assuming you are driving simple LEDs. I wouldn't expect it to work with LEDs that have any smart features. Even 'dimmable' ones might be difficult. To be clear, when I say work I mean work with the dimming function of the loxone driver. All will likely work if the set point is 100%. A 24V dimmer designed for LED strips will likely be able to supply enough current to drive multiple sets of 2 in parallel but if you wired a single MR16 up to it (or multiple in parallel) the 24V will almost certainly pop them given they are designed for 12V (even if you set the dimmer to 50% - it doesn't work like that).

Looking at Nicks reply makes me wonder if I've answered a different question. The 24v dimmers are generally for LED strips not fittings. If you want to use them to dim bulb type fittings, one idea is to run two MR16 bulbs in series from one dimmer channel. That should just work with standard dumb MR16 bulbs. Of course if one bulb failed it would take out both fittings but that might be a good trade off. MR16 is designed to cope with 50W halogen so should have no problem with anything you can throw at it LED wise. Do keep the cables to the controller pretty short though. Running long leads with PWM dimming signals is a recipe for issues (thats ignoring the voltage drop due to cable length).

BTW Soraa do some high quality externally controlled lighting so it's one place to start looking. But it's expensive and still doesnt really fit the bill. They also look like they have been bought out/merged since I last looked so not sure their products are the same/same quality as when I last looked. https://www.ecosenselighting.com/products/soraa/

I've never heard of 24v GU10 lamps. I'm not sure I'd want to try and make my own especially as the best lights are ones with sophistcated lenses not just a bunch of leds on a board. If you did want to do that I would go for MR16 as a connector. What you'd like to do does seem fairly optimal as a way of doing things. I'd like to do something similar. But I've not really found anyone selling much suitable. Especially as I want CCT controllable lights (at least in some places) so that I can alter the colour temp by time of day/activity. You either get 'smart' lights with their own wireless interface or dumb lights in MR16 (12v) or GU10 (mains voltage) or completely custom fittings. I think loxone do their own multi-colour light to connect to their controllers but its really pricey and didn't seem that good. Oh for an industry standard option in this space. Most people just want something they can retrofit to existing system.

I'm certainly not suggesting anyone replace a working system which is not due for replacement except maybe for those who have spare cash and who could realise large savings by switching (a relatively small group) However, if you have a system that is end of life and in need of replacement then for many people a heat pump will be cost neutral vs a replacement boiler (once you consider the BUS scheme). My replacement boiler cost £3.5k a few years ago - I had looked at heatpumps but it was too difficult to organise in my flat). Even with the MCS daylight robbery £11k (3.5k + 7.5k BUS grant) is enough for radiator, DHW tank and heatpump install in many many properties and the running costs should be similar for any well installed system. To be clear, the vast majority of properties won't need electrical upgrades and most can reuse pipework. For heatpumps as above I don't think there is a payback period. For many it should be a straight choice heatpump vs boiler for similar upfront cost. Running costs should be similar for a normal system. Ideal world you can make on going savings on cost but lets assume most installs are not ideal or have people willing to tweak them. As for solar, again, if you are having roofing work done then the cost of putting panels up is low and in some cases (integrated GSE panels on a slate roof) might be very similar cost to not having solar. Then for the next 20 years you pay a lower electricity bill. The payoff for this is very positive. Putting solar on a good roof as an add on is a higher cost and payback longer. It works out well for many people but you do need the upfront capital and if you have limited resources there might be better ways to spend your money.

If your door is not square you should be able to tell by measuring the diagonals. If it was square the measurement from bottom left to top right should be the same as from top left to bottom right. If its not square the length will be different.

I'm very pesimistic at least in the near term about the ability of politicians in the west to solve anything (not advocating for dictatorship - that would be worse). That said, just because our leaders are failing doesn't mean as individuals we shouldn't be taking all the steps we reasonable can to minimise our personal impact where we can. Things like heatpumps and solar for many people will be cost neutral or actively save money so that is the obvious choice. Where the maths doesn't add up there are other things to do instead where it does add up. In good news I read the other day that China's emissions have now plateaued. They are rolling out solar at an incredible rate and it's making a real difference. If they maintain that rate for a few years they will likely shame all of us with the speed of their transition to a low carbon economy (with the downside that they will then be at a huge competitive advantage going forward).

I did try and address the case you planned to do it all yourself too. It's taking on a lot of work and mental effort. The more complex/less standard you make it the more mentally taxing it will be. More chance of errors, more chance of getting stuck or delaying things. If you have the luxury of time and are willing for the build to take as long as it takes like @Pocster then maybe this isn't a huge deal but if you have a time frame for finishing the build, the need to work to bring in money, etc, keeping things as simple as possible should be your focus. If still keen, then on the particular plan you have, think about how it would impact the horizontal connections as well as the vertical ones. Seems to me you might be creating a difficulty with waterproofing on the horizontal axis along with it possibly looking quite odd/not joining up well on that axis.

Is the door actually square though? I believe what the others are saying is that the door frame has likely sagged due to the inserts and is now more of a parallelogram than a rectangle. I'm just regurgitating what I've seen discussed here and elsewhere before so take the others experience with more weight but I believe this is fairly common in windows and doors (other threads on here and videos on youtube if you search) and a relatively easy fix by removal and refitting the glass.