sgt_woulds

I think the point is that this was measured over months and with higher sustained internal moiture levels. But it is pointless discussing technical points without the reports to hand. My old grey cells aren't good enough to remember the details! I'll ask one of our technical guys if he has a copy of the report - I haven't found the same one with an interweb search yet. The one I'm looking for is specific to natural (hygroscopic) insulations which work differently to oil and mineral based systems. It will have to wait until after the Easter break. Like you I have directly rendered woodfibre (mine is over a shitty SIPs build), but I live in a very exposed location on top of a hill in one of the windiest parts of the country, so I'm happy to practice what I preach...

Yes, but it was the freeze thaw that was the specific issue and the fact that there was no other route for the moisture to escape - the high internal humidity restricted flow that way too. While we may have high saturation rates along the UK coast, similar sustained freeze thaw cycles at the same are unlikely. Tested systems e.g. Baumit will take these extremes into account. As ever, informed specification is key. Seek the advice of the woodfibre and render manufacturers and build specific to the local microclimate. This is different to saying:

True enough, and I should have made it clear that I was talking UK generally. The Norway / Finland issues a combination of extreme differences between internal/external conditions for prolonged periods which added internal moisture to external external wet conditions with the added fun of sustained periods below freezing. I'll see if I can find the report but I think they also blamed higher average internal moisture due to saunas and gas cooking, but I might be getting it confused with a similar case on some islands off the coast of Germany. Surprisingly, the reports I've read include poor instalation which I had thought was a UK specific issue. In the UK, except on the coast at the far North of Scotland these specific issues are unlikely to occur. It should be noted that, (unless it is open slatted) where an external ventilated rainscreen is used, an external membrane is still not required for hydrophobic coated woodfibre external insulation. Although membranes are normally specified anyway as BCO 'expect' to see membranes...

Do you have the other half of the Moose report?

You Moosen't feel too bad about it... 🤪

Sorry, that is outdated thinking based on old building standards. It is perfectly acceptable to directly render onto a breathable insulation for a vapour open structure both here and in the whole of Europe. Building inspectors may expect to see a ventilated cavity based on previous experience, but point them to the manufacturers of such systems and they will be placated. Without knowing the construction details, your rotting sole plates indicates a host of other issues, (cold bridging, incorrect insulation type, poor internal VCL detailing). STEICO (and other) woodfibre insulations use a hydrophobic coating on external sheathing boards. In addition to the render it is more than adequate to keep external driven rain away from the structure. Unlike unatural insulations, the woodfibre actively wickes moisture away when conditions allow. Most EWI systems use direct render onto the insulation. Why should this be different for timber frame? Any vapour open structure needs to be properly designed. In Europe, TF houses are built inside out compared to UK; the OSB racking board is fitted inside the frame, not externaly. In this location (with taped joints), the OSB acts as a moisture vapour variable control layer. If fitted externaly, OSB acts as a vapour check and requires an additional internal VCL, the correct sealing of which is vital to prevent issues. The European TF vapour open building method removes any requirements for vapour control membranes, speeding the build and making it far less susceptable to issues caused by innatentive builders. No, it needs taping and sealing as stated previously. Untaped and in a poorly designed wall it is the worst option, since moisture can easily get behind it, but not so easily get out again once it has condesed against the cooler structure. Worst example of this is internal insulation using pre-insulated plaster boards where there is no way to properly seal the joints. Control layers of any kind are rarely done well by the Lesser Spotted Great British Builder. I don't think we have had a breeding pair of Great Builders in the UK for a long time.... This is why a fully breathable structure using natural insulations that doesn't require perfectly sealed membranes just makes more sense. I agree, decrement delay is far more important, espescially if it has a flat roof.

If you used PIR, that is already acting as a VCL. If you are careful with taping then an additional internal VCL would not be needed. I have a combination of PIR and Woodfibre in part of my own roof (due to structural loading, woodfbre alone was too heavy) with the PIR Internal and taped as the VCL.

Using woodfibre & I-Joists with a direct rendered external sheathing board will give you a quick build, that will give you more decrement delay (probably more important than ultimate u-vale in our ever heating world. You can also do away with membranes entirely and have no worries about moisture. The example build up uses (taped and sealed), 15mm OSB3 as a combined racking and V-VCL layer internally. External, directly rendered woodfibre sheathing board. I've shown 240mm I-joists as these are more common, but 220mm are available I've also shown a service void behind the plasterboard as this makes wiring easier.

I assume this is a newish house built in the last couple of years. Do you know who the house builders are? Should be available from your local planning office. Find their contact details and tell them that this is a non-compliant installation and demand that they provide electrician details for reporting to NICEIC / NAPIT. Get as many neighbours invoilved as possible so they sit up and they might take notice. See what reaction you get. The only way that we'll stop all this cowboy bulldust is to hold them to account.

The EU is starting make changes to online selling. We can only hope that our leaders can take note: EU to impose fines on online platforms importing unsafe products

The power outage was not caused by renewables. It was caused by a lack of preparedness in the rest of the system that allowed a cascade of isolated failures to multiply. This is it a great advert for more distributed generation and power storage on the system. With battery storage and grid forming inverters, the drop in frequency that caused the Spanish outage simply would not have happened. Batteries can respond far quicker to frequency failures than conventional rotational generators.

For some reason I cannot zoom into the photo. Also, it would be good to have a shot from further back showing the whole installation.

@alwayslearning22 is this the finished install or did you take the photo when the Sparky was till working on it? Has it been left with the cover missing on the box above? If this is the case, then as well as the single insulated tails it has left live terminals exposed and the cables connected to the unit above are dangling from the terminals rather than being mechanically supported by a gland. This is all kind of wrong!

Ha! I had thought of the gun argument, but didn't go there...

The potential harm from someone 'doing something stupid' is not limited to that person. A house fire wcould also involve family members, visitors, neighbours, and members of the emergency services. We already have a way of ameliorating the potential dangers of PV installations. It is by having a dedicated circuit installed by a qualified electrician.

As it has been for the last 50 years...

Exactly my point. You just assume nothing bad is happening because you cant see it. Yet...! Which is down to dumb luck. This kind of ignorance is exactly what will be applied to PIS. There are plenty of examples to be found with an interweb search, and plenty more if you talk to an electrician. The point is that this is not just about what you plug in, it is about the state of your home wiring too - the stuff you cant see. It doesn't have to be dodgy DIY wiring, it can be simple wear and tear in the system (e.g. neutrals working lose over time) or lower quality or counterfeit materials used unknowingly and hidden behind the walls. Even the bits you can see (like modern electrical sockets), can hide dangers until too late; charging an EV pushes the the plug and outlet right to the very limit of its capability. To quote Jerremy Harris, the normal sequence goes something like this: 1. The plug gets warmer than normal, after a long period of running at high load. 2. Heat is conducted down the line pin, and transferred to the hard brass contacts in the socket. 3. Over time, the brass contacts fatigue from the heat, lose some of their springiness and so no longer make such a good contact with the plug pin. 4. This increased contact resistance causes the socket contacts and the plug pin to get hotter, as now there are two heat sources. 5. The build up of heat further reduces the socket contact spring pressure, increasing contact resistance still further and making things even hotter. 6. If left uncontrolled, then the area around the line pin will break down and char, and there may be enough heat transferred to the thermoplastic that many plugs are made from to cause it to distort, perhaps even catch fire. For years, plugs were all made from thermoset plastics, and this gave two big advantages. The obvious one is that they don't melt and distort when they get hot, the less obvious one is that they provide an early warning when they get hot, as most of them give off a pretty strong fishy smell when really hot. Modern sockets are now made with thermoplastics that are more brittle and don't give off any warning smells. By the time you see scorching of the plastics, hidden damage has already happened internaly. Why granny chargers are dangerous and fatalities will occur before they’re banned - Norwich Electricians Granny charger fire warning | General Chat Forum | MGEVs.com MG EVs Community EV charging cables: how safe are aftermarket leads? | What Car?

The market is driven by cost not quality. People searching for the lowest price know the cost of everything and the value of nothing. Exactly. There are lots of sockets in a house = I can plug in as many panels as I like. The uninitiated will think 'hmmm, AC panels are cheap' = 'I can take my house offgrid' (= 999 !!! 😞). Are plug-in solar users expected to understand how electricity works?

OPSS has reported some cheap chinese chargers that have been found without fuses fitted. A proper granny charger plug should have a fuse and a thermister to limit plug heat, but again, what you order off TEMU might only look fine on the surface. Granny chargers already cause scorching damage to sockets (which are not rated for 10a continous loads for 8 hours plus). What if the P-I-S was plugged into a double socket with the car? (I'm sure you can think of other examples! Nothing exceeds mankinds seemingly boundless capacity for stupidity) Think of this another way. What if its a long ring circuit, with lots of high load items (plug in stove oven, microwave, kettle, car charger, porn server, etc, etc), all switched on at the same time. Each load is cumulative even if they are only drawing less than 10 amps each. Without P-I-S that high cumulative draw will be detected by the mcb. With P-I-S it could be be 'situation normal' whilst the cables burn out in the walls.

Not necessarily. The trouble with this type of product is that it encourages a race to the bottom with consumers used to buying the cheapest offer on Amazon for a no-name panel and inverter combo. Back in 2012 I installed some supposedly compliant (G83/2) Chinese Renasolar Micro inverters on a couple of old panels on my garage. Renasolar, even back then, was not some fly-by-night chinese company. I was literally shocked to discover that, when I isolated the mains to change a lighting circuit, the little barstools kept generating for a good 5 to 10 minutes after the mains was switched off. More of a UPS than full islanding, but certainly not compliant with any regulations then or now. Any changes to the rules would need to put the onus on the 'installer' to use MCS certified - and tested - equipment. This is one of the reasons why a dedicated install by an electrician is important - no Sparky will allow a dangerous installation if it means that he might be fined or lose certification. Most houses in Europe use radial supplies using (I believe), heavier section cables to fewer outlets. In the UK we use ring circuits that split the ampage load over two paths, reduces the cable sizes required, and allows more sockets per circuit. This is important with plug in solar. Imagine the situation as explained to me by one of our sparkies: Plug-in solar is fitted in a socket right next to an outlet with an EV plugged in on a faulty granny charger for 8 hours, (or some faulty high load device is plugged in nearby). The PV panels will be supplying power to the nearest local load, which in this scenario could be near or above the 2.5mm cable rating for a sustained period. Would the the MCB in the consumer unit trip? What about a house that still has rewirable fuses? Do you think home insurers would pay out for a fire that was caused—or allowed to be caused—by the operation of a plug‑in solar array? Where would the onus of fault lie?

what happened to all the ridge line turbines we were promised?

I haven't heard of Motorwind for a while! They always seemed like a noisy gimick to me, although I was intrigued by the idea at the time. The only one I ever came accross was on a PV survey in Brighton, (early to mid 200's?). The chap had ordered some to mount them along his garden wall - would that be you DamonHD? Are they still working? Being made of (ABS?) plastic they looked prone to high wear and UV exposure.

It is about time we raised ourselves above the quotidian calibre of interweb badinage 🙂

Its an ARCO panel. Pre-production / hand assembled. A real chunky monkey for back in the day - 42w! Still putting out 16+volts. I guess the modern foil quality has dropped, or, more likely, the larger panel sizes flex more and put more stress on all componants. The old 980x1650 formats with chunky frames, thick glass, and long-edge only clamping zones probably will last longer.

I don't know where this fear of foil backed panels comes from. As long as you buy tier 1 panels (the most important thing when buying any solar panel), and don't mount them upside down (to collect the reflected light? 🙂) then there isn't much that will damage them. I have a foil backed panel from 1982 mounted to my shed that is still perfectly fine and still producing its rated output. But to answer the OP question, no they are not all the same. You need to look for vertically integrated (tier 1) manufacturers, who make their own cells and assemble the panels themselves. e.g. Tier 1 Solar Panels List 2025: Updated Manufacturers & Rankings – RENVU Although I imagine it is rare now, I remember installing an early batch of no-name chinese panels that were so poorly made that the cells moved around behind the glass as we installed them.