Radian

Oopsey! Is that what that 'film' was? 😄

Second that for the heavy duty tools. I 'treated' myself to a Makita DCE090ZX1 2 x 18v 230mm Brushless Disc Cutter mainly because I was choking on the dust thrown off by cutting concrete patio slabs with a 240V disc cutter. The Makita being low voltage has a water jet like the big boy's petrol cutters. Trouble is, it does about 10 slabs to the charge! Still, 12 x 18V 5AH batteries = roughly 1kWh for ~ £840 is interesting to compare with current solar battery storage at +£1K/kWh. Not worth the hassle though.

Oh those things are a PITA. Even after soaking in cellulose thinner overnight a thin film seems to remain in all the inaccessible places.

I do like the specification of the inverTech but I'm afraid it's still overpriced. Just for example, you can find a 18KW-24kw SS cased Inverter driven ASHP with electronic expansion valves on alibaba at $1400. I know it might as well be on the Moon but the the seller probably isn't a registered charity. Materials-wise I've already totalled up the component costs at around £600 for a typical small ASHP at the factory gate. I think this is validated by the fact that air-to-air systems and some pool heaters retail in this kind of ball-park. There's just such a huge cashing-in going on on our domestic market. Sorry peeps. Just me venting.

Success. In case anyone's interested here's the schematic of the reverse engineered Dimmer plus the handful of components I added to enhance its functionality: The original PCB had an unused half of a LM358 OPAMP which I've used to buffer the PIR module output. All the additional parts can be tacked onto the PCB in various places. The Rotary level control now sets the minimum brightness which the lights fade down two after a minute or two of nobody being in the kitchen (adjustable with choice of R101) and Full brightness is obtained within one second of someone entering the room (adjustable with R102). This is with the PIR module set to minimum on-time but this is also adjustable on the module. I will turn this up to five minutes or so when the novelty of playing around with the new feature wears off 🙂

Nicely done. In fact all your cuts look good and clean. Brilliant stuff to work with IMO. Did a king-sized shower cubicle with it in our rental.

T'was just my silly way of excusing repeating what I suggested earlier 🤪 Like @Onoff says SBR can make stuff go off a bit quick but as a slurry it stays workable for quite a while. Bedding mortar may go a bit quicker but at this time of year it shouldn't be an issue.

Feel free to carry on ignoring me 😁 But your best results will come from applying a SBR cement slurry to both surfaces before you bed them on. You would only have needed to apply it to the copings if you'd bedded them directly on top of the levelling fill. That's now a 'day joint'. Just get a rectangular icecream container and cover the bottom in SBR. Slowly add cement and stir in to make a porridge. If too thick/thin add more SBR/cement. You want to be able to apply with a stiff paintbrush - like one of those boxy 4" fence paint brushes. You can also add SBR to the bedding mix using the mixing instructions on the container. This will frostproof things by making the mortar less water permeable.

While it's more efficient than the coloured lighting it still draws 70 Watts. Usually on for around 15 Hours each day. 1.05 kWh 30.45p a day £111 a year 😮 People never switch it off when leaving the room and TBH the kitchen does look dull when viewed from other places in the house when not lit. So what I want is something I saw in the first blade runner movie - Deckards kitchen lights dim up when he enters the room. Dimly lit when unoccupied, fade up to max in around one second when you walk in, stay on full until room vacated then fade down over a minute or so. Easy to find a PIR on/off control but nope, not a two-level dimmer controlled by PIR. Time for a hack then! 12V PWM dimmer, PIR module and some diodes, resistors and capacitors...

Oh right! That was the back of the paper. So what do you plan to do with the decorating now? Presumably a short-term patch-up?

I Decided to fit some new LED strip as the twin RGB tapes I put up a long time ago are very inefficient for the white that we most often use. Over 120 Watts! And the family like to leave it on all day! I was very pleased with the new 3000K white but coming down to the kitchen the following day most of it had peeled off... Now that was a surprise because I had spent the longest time cleaning the underside first with wet wipes then with IPA on paper towels. My theory is that the melamine covered chipboard is just too glossy - rather like the backing tape that protects the sticky surface and you peel off before pressing into place. So my second attempt involved 80 grit sandpaper and more IPA to get the dust off... Nice and matte, ready for another attempt at sticking it up... Only time will tell if it stays up now. So far it's been up for two days and no sign of peeling. This might be a tip for people thinking of using self-adhesive LED tape like this.

I don't understand what I'm seeing in the first photo - the embossed wallpaper looks to run straight into the window reveal. Like the window is hard against a perpendicular wall? I thought you just took the lining out of a reveal and were going to replace it. If that was the case I expected it to be cut flush with the wall and the edges trimmed with something decorative or maybe filled and painted.

But that 'later' could be decades away! Why not bring it out all the way out and then, when you get around to IWI, trim it back flush when the battens are removed. That stuff is just so easy to cut.

What do you make of this £1400 ASHP ? I haven't got around to contacting them for more details but I doubt it's any good. They also do a range of pool heaters which I think is there main business judging by the site graphics. But these are in a separate section for home space heating.

Have you already got the LEDs? By choosing the right sort you can do it with one cable as others have said. Constant current driving is best and as @jack says might drive all twelve in series. But only if you find a LED spot that has a single white LED without any built-in current limitation (i.e. just a single LED (probably 3W) with two wires attached) You need to allow for around 4V each so you'd need a CC driver with a minimum output of 48V.

AFAIK the airtightness comes from it's flexibility once cured. A higher degree of joint movement can be accommodated without splitting and allowing air to leak.

OK, a little late to this but can't resist correcting you 😁

I've got a couple of those. I wondered if it might be an 'edge light'? Seem to recall there was a cutout somewhere that might give an LED access to the light guide.

Yes, even SLA batteries can vary a bit - especially from manufacturer to manufacturer. But you're getting into third-order effects with that. What can go wrong is if some of the cells become sulphated and present a relatively high impedance. Charge will still circulate but I2R losses will take place inside the weaker cells and put an unnecessary drain on the better battery. That could be either the larger or smaller capacity battery or even two supposedly identical capacity batteries so paralleling definitely needs to be done with healthy batteries.

No, so long as battery chemistries are identical (they absolutely have to be to do this!) the SOC is identically proportional to terminal voltage. If the smaller AH battery were to lose charge more it would drop the voltage at its terminals and this would cause current to flow in from the larger AH battery so restoring the balance. The charge shifts around but still equates to the sum of the two AH's overall.

I only started taking notice this month and noted approx minimums around 3AM: 1/4 28GW 2/4 26GW 3/4 25GW 4/4 24GW TBH it probably tracks overnight temperatures more than anything else.

Remarkable recent data from Gridwatch: Never seen the overnight load fall away so distinctly.

While connected in parallel the terminal voltages are obviously identical so it's impossible for one battery to be over or undercharged. Current will just share out safely between them. However, I would make sure both batteries had the same terminal voltage before joining them as the above only applies when the voltages are exactly the same.

The problem I see with pool heaters is they all seem to max out at 29C. Might just be hot enough for UFH but few seem to operate at air temperatures below 10C. But the core components are tantalisingly close to the specs required for a small space heating task. Obviously the £2.5K price gap with the arotherm is utterly artificial.

Is your outdoor probe just lying on the floor by any chance?