Radian

The council tax rebate only applies to bands A-D as It's presumed owners of houses in higher bands are well-off. Not people who's circumstances have changed but who's properties haven't. Only those people on means tested benefits get Pension Credit and Tax Credits. Non-income related ESA awarded for being medically retired isn't means tested. Unless some other scheme is announced I'm having to tough it out on dwindling savings. Or be forced to sell-up.

Or not as the case may be. Due to booking me in at the last minute the installers hadn't had time to check the survey details and therefore turned up without the appropriate injection nozzles. Not their fault. They tried fitting us in when a slot suddenly became available and I wasn't going to turn it down just because I wasn't expecting it to be the next day. The problem is that most of the cavities they were coming to fill are behind 150mm of random sandstone backed with a lightweight concrete block so there's 250mm to go in before landing in the cavity. The standard nozzle they came with usually just has 100mm of brick or block with render to negotiate before it reaches the cavity.

I guess people who hide guns also often come to untimely ends and nobody else knows where they've left stuff like that. The hammer must have been dropped down the cavity when the builders demolished the top half of the end gable wall that's now the middle of our garage extension. Red star marks the other side of the wall where the hammer was. The electric cables entered the garage at this position hence the missing section of block. The worry is, the demolished masonry is now sat down at the bottom of the cavity ready to bridge it when the foundations fill with water. The worst bit is some dudes are showing up tomorrow to pump the cavity full of EPS beads 😬

Found something bridging a cavity in my workshop... ...Everything I could manage to extract from the hole. 🙄

Well I'm truly shafted for one. Two years before state pension, medically retired but only have non-income related ESA to help and council tax band G so dip out on every single bit of support currently available Think I'll try and get in an old folks home over winter.

I will need to add some more UPS as well. The main broadband modem/router is in a different part of the house so a smallish UPS should take care of that. One thing I'd like to know before I proceed is just how noisy the Victron multiplus is. Inverters can kick out a significant amount of noise from fans and transformers. If this is going to be used for energy time-shift then it has to be reasonably quiet. Unfortunatley this thread is beginning to put me off: https://community.victronenergy.com/questions/108663/victron-multiplus-ii-noise-level-what-is-your-expe.html

What's the glass wool insulation doing up there in between the rafters - apart from reducing the air circulation around them? The correct place for it is down on the floor with the vermiculite. Along with another 200mm or more!

Sounds fine in principle but in practice the majority of the interconnects are under the modules so shielded from the IR imager. Module hot-spots are going to be easy to see but the bit most likely to catch fire is probably hidden. Closely monitoring the power output and having some way of checking it against what would be expected WRT local irradiance levels would be my preferred way of keeping an eye on things. No bad thing to have anyway to understand how the installation is behaving (i.e. when cleaning is needed) but would quickly show up power loss through electrical faults - i.e. the cause of fires.

...Just started a new topic outlining my plans for a Multiplus

So I've identified a zone in the middle of the house that could do with an off-grid battery backup. The zone is served by four 13A radials that run back to a services cupboard (adjacent to an airing cupboard) that was originally used for a home-brew DMX lighting setup I built over 20 years ago. The idea is to install a modest 24V 100AH LFP battery and Victron 800W Multiplus intverter/charger in there. The zone has around 300W of 'essential' appliances: Sky Q, Oled TV, HT Amp, Broadband router and PS4. Enough to keep us entertained when the lights go out - except for three table lamps also on the unused outlets. Oh, and in the airing cupboard is the CH system (pumps valves) with a reversible route down to the boiler. That lot adds about 40W max. and could well do with being 'uninterruptable'. Maximum draw is going to be 400W so at least 5 to 6 hours of battery life. The Victron Multiplus is an elegant design that syncs incoming and outgoing AC with bidirectional transformer coupled-battery switching. According to the spec Switchover to inverter happens in 20ms so the unit operates as a UPS. I'm thinking of this as serving multiple purposes: By integrating the incoming AC with my solar divert to immersion I would have the option to keep the connected appliances (mostly used for a few hours at night) running off grid from excess solar. With electricity at a higher premium than gas, the HW can be given a lower priority. The cost of this system is coming out at around £1300 so considerably less than a whole house ESS. Economically speaking a whole house ESS doesn't care what appliances gobble up the battery banked power, sticking the electric oven on for an hour or running the rest of the house for 10 hours is all the same in terms of making use of whatever PV has been stored. But ring-fencing essentials is a different matter and the plan I'm considering is quite different to the usual applications I've seen.

Seriously, you need to jump on that and make sure they're up to float.

Well, when the lights go out on Dec 25th, I predict you'll be back here asking questions. In the meantime, you might want to ensure those batteries aren't left to self-discharge beyond a recoverable level.

Been a while. What did you do with all this kit? Very curious about the victron multiplus - like how much noise does it make when running?

Similar spec. Victron £1700. What's the catch?

Great share thanks! Estimating g-value is proving tricky for some glazing as the shading due to certain overhangs depends on time of year. How have you accounted for that in your design (which I believe makes use of overhangs)?

No, after. They say up to one month after so fairly relaxed.

And make sure it's on a full mortar bed. If he's not used primer, he might be laying on dabs.

E N503301-1 requires that Inverters should Isolate themselves within 5 seconds if they detect a grid impedance change of Z=0.5Ω

Aircon is a very valid option for me as well. I've got space around the back of the building for a split unit and an upstairs room which is in the roof and gets very hot with six roof windows. With PV on the roof, in summer it could work out well but I'm not so sure what heating is like from a comfort POV with aircon in the winter. The downstairs area is a cinema and music room and has already got the UFH loop in. I would prefer to use it if at all possible as it's guaranteed to be quiet. It's also logistically awkward due to layout. The ideal place for an air unit is on a wall already full of shelving. Not sure how the it would work out if surrounded by shelves.

Yes, over £6K elsewhere.

I have a requirement for running a single UFH loop (~100m) in an outbuilding and was planning to install a gas boiler. It's a bit of an overkill though as I'd successfully heated the space last winter with a 2kW electric convector. I'm still undecided but while looking for small ASHP I came across this Daikin Altherma 4kw hybrid ASHP Not that I was particularly looking for a hybrid design but the price point is turning my head. What I can't figure out at first reading is if it could be used without a gas boiler - it seems possible but I wondered if there was something I'm missing? What's the idea behind a hybrid?

Is it possible that rainwater has been making its way down the chimney and is collecting/spreading out at floor level? I'd be looking at the condition of the chimney exit outside.

110lm/W would be acceptable to me although I'm kind of limited to 3000K anyway otherwise I seem to get migraines 😬 Not seen much discussion about vacuum glazing. My initial thoughts are 'how long does it hold a vacuum'. Is it a mature enough product to answer that question yet?

Hi, and welcome. I like the ambition of your project but I'm just curious about what you count as ultra efficient lighting? You go on to express a preference for down-converted phosphor excitation but the Stokes energy shift means it's lossier to convert down from violet than it is from blue. Mind you, I don't know exactly how that's reflected in power consumption. It's certainly better for colour rendition!

Depends on how old you are.