Radian

Really trying to avoid resistive heating if at all possible, but it could be a solution. The other reason for getting a small boiler is being able to run without a buffer tank to prevent short cycling. I wonder what the smallest gas boiler actually is?

Very good point. He started off at 30kW and I beat him down! Strange how they always seem to overspec these appliances. Even at 24kW he thought we might regret it. My heat loss calcs suggest around 2kW at inside/outside delta 10oC for space heating and HW is only required to supply a single basin. I think the problem is that it appears to be only system boilers that go down to 12kW. I couldn't google up any combis. The extremely infrequent demand for HW means a system boiler isn't really the right choice. The right choice would be an ASHP if it wasn't for the infrequent HW and the small matter of a factor of five in the installation cost. Also, not having much space for the outdoor unit. On the subject of alternatives, I have also considered Air to Air but having got the UFH loop in the ground floor I'd like to use it. I did measure up for an A2A outside unit and there is just about space behind the garage as they're smaller than the ASHP. I could still go with one for upstairs as it could really use some cooling in the summer months, powered by PV on the roof.

Mostly it's full of fruit an veg now. Can't afford meat or cheese after shelling out for it. Yes it was expensive but the one it replaced was 24 years old yet was similarly priced which is a bit mad. Like TV's always seem to cost the same.

Thanks. That calculator seems like it could be useful but I don't get how it comes up with a flow rate at all. Does it assume a standard 25mbar after the regulator as @Marvin describes and then do some guesswork? What I didn't quite get from the engineer is what could be done to work round the issue. I got the impression that adding a separate metered connection to the supply line might solve it. Not that I would want to dig up the patio I just laid to tap into the supply!

Does it hold 300l of grub though? 😉

Energy data as advertised: Energy consumption in 24h 0.242 kWh / 24h Energy consumption per year 89 kWh/a Actual consumption data for 24 hour period: My daily kWh legend has rounded down to zero but the average of 12W over 24h makes 0.288kWh so slightly higher than their 0.242 kWh / 24h but not bad. Logging is done every 5 minutes so you only get a brief current spike, mostly averaged out, when the door is open due to the considerable led lighting. What's the betting the standard for test results are arranged to eliminate the contribution of the interior lighting. The old fridge was averaging around 60W / 24h so this is going to save us £212 every year at the October price capped tariff.

I have a quote for a gas safe engineer to supply and fit a 24kW combi to my detached garage (to run a 100m UFH loop and single radiator that I've installed). Worryingly, he warned me that he couldn't guarantee sign-off due to the sharing of the gas supply with the 30kW system boiler already in the house. Back in 1998 when we built the house, we had a mdpe gas pipe run from the house to the garage but I don't recall the size of the pipe other than it was the same as the supply pipe coming up to the house. Here's the end where it comes out of the ground and T's into the supply after the meter (22mm copper T): The black sleeve hides the plastic pipe so I can't easily measure it but the outside diameter of both sleeves is 40mm. At the garage end it comes up outside a wall to the workshop next to the water supply pipe: The length of the gas pipe from house to garage is around 17m and runs parallel to the supply pipe until it enters the meter box : Unlike electric where you can be pretty sure you're going to be able to get 100A/240V/24kW out of the incoming supply, I'm not so familiar with gas. I guess the pressure will go down when the house boiler is on and gas hob is lit (the only two house loads) but what about the neighbours and the utility supply? I may be asking daft questions but this is uncharted territory for me. I was hoping the engineer might be a bit more forthcoming about the issue but he was very non-committal. I asked if there was any objective test we could perform before going ahead but he seemed to think we had to install it first and then find out. Pretty crazy if that's the best we can do.

So what happens when lorries roll over it? As we are at the end of a cul-de-sac everything tends to back a little way into our drive to turn. Bin lorries twice a week. Can't see how it would stay put.

When I read online reviews of cold lay tarmac, there's not much positivity around. Not that I put all my faith in those kind of reports as there are some right dummies around who wouldn't read the instructions. It would be more useful to hear of some experiences here.

It has been over a year since we had a regular procession of grab lorries, skip deliveries, cement trucks etc. The driveway suffered badly during that time and we've just kind of got used to it. But it really needs something doing. But what? I know nothing about tarmac or whatever this black stuff is called. Is it something you can buy and lay cold?

From the latest photos it looks clear to me that it's just a failure of the pointing. All bricks look to be in reasonable alignment apart from one corner brick on the slant but I expect it was laid like that to begin with.

Ended up buying a Miele. The XXL Neff was a touch too tall to be a guaranteed fit under the countertop without yanking up the floor tiles. The Miele XXL is about 20mm less tall so fits comfortably. Got to hand it to RDO Kitchen appliances who delivered next day and price matched a lower price we found online. They also supplied our fridge last week and price matched that as well.

OK, you're a conspiracy theorist. Although I just found this while poking about in my brand new Miele dishwasher's firmware:

There may be a restriction due to CT placement have you considered that? I wanted to install AC coupled battery in a detached garage next to the inverter for a PV on the roof but the installation is on a sub main 25m away from the CU and meter tails in the house. The battery systems all seem to need a CT cable back to the meter.

Well, if anyone wants to ditch the reliance on the Emporia cloud and it's query restrictions, there's at least one alternative firmware available. And this teardown shows it's based on the ESP32:

It's F'in chronic. Looking on their consumer forums it appears to have been brought to their attention for weeks and still they're not responding to the issue. Now of all times for them to lose our consumption data!

Wondering if anyone else who's with Scottish Power has found their online energy usage app or webpages not working: https://www.scottishpower.co.uk/my-account/energy-usage I've bee logging in every few weeks to check if their monitoring agrees with mine. Lately though the graphs are flatlined and the helpful message "Unfortunately we do not have consumption data for this level of usage" sits above. Also the .CSV download of all the data just returns the usage for every day in January 2019.

I know, everyone seems to make a big deal about slimline frames. But sometimes there's also an aesthetic or practical reason to go with wider ones. we had a pre-existing theme of black posts to a loggia porch and corner posts forming our pavilion-style extensions so we reflected that in the choice of slider frames.

I find 64 is about as low as I dare go if I want the HW at 55. Boiler is a long way from cylinder and the pipes are not particularly well insulated.

The problem with not having sufficient fall is that you'll not manage to lay the slabs on a perfect plane whatever slope. So without more fall than your worse laid slab, you may end up with a local puddle. If your ground already falls somewhere around 1:80 follow it but I wouldn't risk going to 1:100 Also, by starting in the middle you automatically halve the inevitable laying error so you make it easier to keep your rows and columns square. You'll always be fighting a tendency for them to creep out of line so the more help you can get from your initial set-out the better.

I just found a fuzzy photo I took of my "starfield deck" at the end of its life. This is the prototype of a proper UK manufactured 3W colour changing LED fibre optic set that I developed. Unfortunately the cheapo B&Q deck planks only lasted 10 years and turned to rotten dust so I've had to rip it all out. The stars are actually set out to mirror the sky above on the night of the summer solstice. Many are missing due to the rotted bits falling away. Wish I'd photographed it when new 😌 Another suggestion: Copy one of stellarlighting's recessed ceiling lighting designs. The aim is to use an LED tape around the perimeter of a inverted island that drops down a little way from the true ceiling. The island itself has fibre optic points for interest and the LED tape picks out the contour of the island. The trick is to break the direct line of sight to the LED tape so you only ever see a reflected glow from it. To do this the perimeter is set back a little way from the face to create a small recess. I think you might want to make the perimeter a multiple of 5m: probably 10m e.g. four sides of a 2.5m square to make use of the standard 5m LED tape length. The island panel could be painted exterior grade ply. Also pop in some downlights to create "task lighting". If you pick Tuya/smart life compatible smart RGB GU10 lamps and RGB LED tape you can set scenes in the app for no very much money.

Nice deck. LED light source + fibre optic bundle is kind of what you're asking about but I would think about how bright that's going to be. The light source is typically only 3W and even then, the Chinese ones I've torn down are actually only driving at 1W max (1W in R, G or B but less if more than one primary is on - to a total of 1W). So they look pretty up close but I think they'd get swallowed by the scale of your project. I have a commercial product that actually uses a 3W RGB source but what I've said already still applies. I used to produce a commercial fibre optic light source that went into a lot of cinemas and cruise ships and that used a 250W mercury vapor lamp and stepper motors driving dichroic glass colour wheels. That would have been ideal but sadly no longer available now. I would suggest some 10W or 20W colour LED floodlighting incorporated up in the canopy and maybe a couple of fibre optic kits for a little added sparkle.

Course it's not but it may live to a ripe old age at 13A. Unlike many chinese 16A relays. The relay looks like it might have the Zettler footprint so could possibly be swapped out for a pukka brand if needs be.

That was going to be my next question - what flow temperature have got the condensing boiler set to? Anything under 60 might upset things as the losses might leave a demand that can't be fulfilled. Bit of a tightrope act.

Yes, and @SteamyTea the sonoff products are typically (if not exclusively) based on ESP8266 so you have the choice of taking them as they come, or reflashing with one of the various open-source firmwares or rolling your own using micropython, arduino or whatever. The contactor bumps up the switching capacity as in MrMagic's case. OR you could get a high current relay board + ESP8266 like this one on Ebay Just needs a 9V or 12V DC PSU