sgt_woulds

We used one of those plastic ketter maxi stores for our laundry room. We could just fit both machines side by side with 70mm of insulation glued on all round (inc doors + 100mm on the floor with 12mm OSB over) with a tubular heater (at the back near the incoming water pipes) to deal with frost. I also injected spray foam into every cavity and crevise. I didn't bother with a vcl as the whole set up was impossible to make airtight (plus we popped the top up when the machines were running), but for your shed I would ali-tape the PIR board joints to keep moisture away from he wood. Our 'temporary' solution was used for 4 years... Biggest issue was with the supply and drainage outside the shed; even with heavy lagging, the drainage pipe could freeze up, so I wired in a 12v pizza heating wire under the pipe insulation. Everything inside was fine, but the bottom of the machines got a bit rusty, so an extract fan is probably more important than keeping the heat in. I got both machines, and all of the insulation free from the side of the road. Total cost was £199 for the shed and £6 for a replacement bearing get the tumble drier working, and £10 for the tubular heater heater. 🙂

This is where my understanding of the magic that happens inside inverters ends 🙂 When TL inverters were introduced, SMA and Mastervolt told us that there was no conventional galvanic seperation, that's all I can remember. We had endless tripping problems with DC leakage until we changed to type B RCDs. Agreed, array earth is not designed to be an LPS! But earthing the panel means that you have now created a path inside the house, where previously a strike on the building would more likely flow external to ground via the Faraday effect. The essance of the lightning study I read back then, was that earthing an array increases the chances of a lightning 'return stroke' forming when a storm is negatively charging the air above the building. Having an inverter that is not Galvanically isolated can't help things, so you are making it doubly likely to occur, and then you are directing the surge nicely into the consumer unit too. [I remember learning that lightning starts on the ground in GCSE science a billion years ago....]

When I began installing solar panels (twenty odd years ago) we did not earth the panels unless they could be touched from an open window on a roof, or were ground mounted, or there was an LPS within 10m of the array. There was a (Swiss?) study at the time that said earthing panels increased the risk of lightning strikes. All inverters back then had big iron core transformers so there was no ground path to 'attract' the heavens wrath. The first time I ever earthed a panel was when IKEA introduced their PV systems using (god awful) CIGs panels. We questioned the manufacturer repeatedly if this was a good idea. I remember those panels gave us lots of static shocks during install which we'd never experienced before. Dodgy stuff, as were most of the IKEA installs at that time, but I digress... Around this time, transformerless inverters were introduced, and without the robust physical seperation array earthing became more common, (but we always had to check manufacturers recommendations). With the introduction of micro inverters that extended the EPZ onto the roof, SPD's became common and array earthing became standard. I've not seen any recent studies that compare earthed systems to unearthed for lightning risk, but I'd be happier not introducing ground path inside my house. I never liked transformerless inverters; even though they are (slightly) more efficient and easier to carry, they are not as rugged. I know of a customer who's SB700 has been going strong for 23 years, but the transformerless inverters in the same building have already required replacement after 10 years. Of course, this may be due to the cheaper electronics and PCB used today; those old SB's had good old seperate circuit components.

You need to find a company that has experience with commercial installs where standing seem is more common. Unfortunately it is rare to find a commercial installer who will aslo do domestic as they are generally flat out with commercial installs and have no spare capacity or inclination to fit in small domestic jobs. The company I used to work for could possibly still do this, depending upon location and install capacity - assuming I'm allowed to whisper their name here. But last time I spoke to them they had a six month wait for a survey, let alone an install...

I woke up one morning with Vestibular Neuritis and the world was my personal rollercoaster for 48 hours. Sitting still it felt like I was leaning at 45 degrees to the left and lying backward. If I moved everything spun!

Sorry, I missed a word in my sentance: 'We installed maybe 10 pergolas accross the country and never had any issues with gaining PLANNING permission...' PD for ground mounted or wall mounted PV didn't exist back then, had to go for PP each time. Should be much easier today. PD is obviously the cheapest option, but having to get PP shouldn't cause issues unless you are in a conservation area, listed property, or have to get PP from West Oxfordshire Council!

Yes! Application of common sense is required... 🙂 Properly designed and nicely planted they can form an attractive addition to any garden. We actually had problems with people who wanted to close the pergola sides in, as they then required more ballast to prevent uplift. Generally a couple of extra concrete slabs in the trough bases before adding soil was enough. Wind uplift is easy enough to calculate. We had a structural engineer create a calculator for us that took account of average wind speeds accross the country + a margin of error for the 100 year storms that seem to happen every year now! You can find similar calsulators free on the interwebs now. When calculating the ballast, we used concrete slabs as the main ballast, with the soil (dry weight, not wet) as our margin of error. + Pergola, PV rails, Inverter(s), water, plants, worms etc. they ain't goin' knowhere! Plus you can easily take the array with you if you move house. This was 15 to 20 years ago when PD for solar panels was still being worked out. We installed maybe 10 pergolas accross the country and never had any issues with gaining permission, except with West Oxfordshire Council, which was seemingly staffed by the sort of NIMBY's that make 'normal' NIMBY's groan and look away. We had problems with every PV system we installed in their remit, ground or roof mounted! Their objection to the pergola, (with lovely green oak frame and surrounded on all sides by hedges and garden walls) was that it could be seen by someone looking out from the top of the church tower at the edge of the village...

Not necessarily. We used to build them with planters / ballast boxes at the base. Fill with soil and plants (or gravel for that pub ashtray look!) and they won't go anywhere. Pergola and frame still needs to be strong enough to keep the panels attached, but properly bolted 4x2 is more than man enough. If mounting microinverters under the pergola remember they can get very hot - keep out of reach of curious fingers

If adding to an existing sytem you will need to add them as a seperate string, due to the different orientation to your roof panels. You 'should' tell your DNO, yes. But if it is just one or two panels on an existing inverter and the extra panels don't significantly increase your export potential, then you'll have to ask if they'd ever know?

Ah, and there's me believing what the man in the store said. Explains a lot 🙂 I won't be using it to re-enact the 'Solvite' adverts anyway! With CT1, you could probably have hung an elephant under the helicopter...

CT1 really is 'The problem solver' I've used it for repairing and 'stretching' concrete roof tiles on my south-facing roof (10 years on and no issues) I've used it for sealing various external areas that need to be 100% waterproof for the life of the building, but a little bit of flex for expansion and contraction of differing materials. Internal or external makes no difference to performance as far as I can tell. We once made the mistake of using CT1 to seal a cable entry through a wall for a PV system. When the owner decided to extend their house, we came back to move the system. It took 5 hefty men in a tug-o-war on the cables to pull the plug of mastic out of the wall! I've hung a hook (with a wide base) from a ceiling beam that has held a 20kg bike in the air for 2 years now. We completed an emergency repair to a chimney flaunching in driving rain and a howling gale. Inspected it two days later when the rain had finally stopped, and it was rock solid. The homeowner decided not to have the pot re-bedded. To my knowledge, it has never been properly repaired, but I'd be 100% confident that the CT1 will still be perfect. We found that the clear CT1 flows better and has a slightly longer curing time, which is useful if you need to smooth it. It is also better for repairs that need to remain invisible. It's a bugger if you get it on bare skin, though! One trick for smoothing with fingers - lots of spit. It's disgusting, but human spit allows your skin to slide over the top of CT1 without sticking - if you try to do the same with water, you will just gunk your fingers. (Spit doesn't work as well on the coloured varieties for some reason - these just seem to be more sticky in general) I always keep a tube of CT1 in my toolbox, just in case. I've tried the Wickes BT1 alternative, but the grip doesn't seem as strong, it doesn't stick as well on damp surfaces, and the clear version goes yellow in the sun. It is about £1.80 cheaper than CT1 per tube, and is fine for indoor use, but I wouldn't hang a bike off it or make a long-term roof repair...

I'm an ex-solar installer - already got panels on the front roof and would happily add more 🙂 Unfortunately, there are structural issues with adding more panels to the dormer roof, even if I could afford it. Which I can't...

I'm looking for recommendations where the product is designed for EPDM, and any real life feedback. I've used reflective paint on felt, but never on EPDM. The results were mixed, and most started cracking within 2 years and needed re-applying. I suppose I could glue a load of CDs to the roof! 🙂

Unfortunately, the Covalba covatherm paint doesn't appear to be available in the UK. My roof is already a ventilated warm roof design (raised deck / ventilated airspace / woodfibre insulation / SIPs roof structure), so no benefit in adding an additional ventilated layer above the EPDM deck, even if it doesn't get blown away 🙂

I've tried asking this in the flat roof section, but I guess no one goes there! In other parts of the world, you can buy white EPDM to keep the summer temperatures down, but not in Blighty, so I had to use bog-standard black. I've done everything I can to mitigate the summer heat on our 55m2 dormer flat roof (ventilated deck, woodfibre insulation, careful airtightness detailing), and whilst these have helped over summer, it could be better. Does anyone have any recommendations for a reflective paint that works well on EPDM?