joth

Fair, but I think most TVs revert fairly elegantly to being a dumb-TV at the point of smart obsolescence. In particular the TV tuner still works and they tend to have an HDMI input or two that makes an easy path to adding an external up-to-date set top smart box. The issue with Sonos is the smarts is so deeply embedded in it, when that gets turned off, it's not clear how well you can use the residual amplifier/speaker in it at all. e.g. a £600 Sonos Amp has an HDMI in, but will that even work in future when they withdraw support for this device? If it does, how will one adjust the volume control? Will the amp still be usable as the surround channel for a 5.1 system? etc. Yeah, a £60 speaker is one thing but it's the hard core customers that have invested £1000s that they're pissing off the most. (As they predicted they would, in their last financial statement)

Is this for the contestable work items (digging trenches etc) or suggesting there's a whole other DNO you could be using?? We did all contestable work ourselves which obviously saves a bit. Surprisingly the gas co. at first didn't want to do a temporary disconnect for us (prior to a long delay on permanent disconnect), but then agreed to at no extra cost and even declined the offer of using the jointing pit we'd already dug saying they prefer to dig their own. So clearly what they put on a quote and what it really costs them is quite a different thing. Oh yes: IDNO https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/electricity/distribution-networks/connections-and-competition/independent-distribution-network-operators Lucky you. Can't hurt to get a quote, unless you're on a tight timeline?

The additional costs are completely optional. For future proofing I'd just pay the 100£ for 3ph as far as the main fuse, and use a single phase meter and wire your house as normal. No extra costs, but you have the 3phase there at the cut out if you ever need it in future. We'd be looking at 3000£ for a 3ph upgrade. How I wish the original builder had just spent that extra little bit to start with.

It says "Maximum annual demand for useful energy for space heating " I think "useful" means heat output, this it is equivalent of saying not more than 40kWh/m2 heat loss per year. So doesn't matter where it's coming from (and conversely, getting it from a 300% efficient heat pump vs a resistive heater won't make and difference to meeting this specific goal) As @Temp mentioned the solar PV is for the "Silver Active" add on: "" 7.1.5 Silver Active level This is the same as the silver level but, in addition, the dwelling includes the use of a low and zero carbon generating technology (LZCGT) in respect of meeting at least one of the aspects: Silver 1, Silver 2 or Silver 3. This level is primarily to assist local authorities to meet their obligations under Section 72 of the Climate Change (Scotland) Act 2009 by identifying the use of LZCGT. In this respect, LZCGTs include: wind turbines, water turbines, heat pumps (all varieties), solar thermal panels, photovoltaic panels, combined heat and power units (fired by low emission sources), fuel cells, biomass boilers/stoves and biogas. """ (my emphasis) so if you remove PV you need to add one of those other things instead, and use it to meet that level 2. A heat pump is probably simplest option, as you need some sort of boiler/heater anyway (and could save you on gas or oil supply), and it should be feasible to meet the 40kWh/m2/yr easily enough if correctly sized.

Nice idea but I've never heard of anyone giving estimates or quotes Inc VAT in this industry. Which is annoying if you're doing a deep renovation...

And here's an article from 2011 stating diesel is the best option for a new car, not petrol https://www.telegraph.co.uk/motoring/green-motoring/8461146/Petrol-versus-diesel-economy-challenge.html Parallels with this ASHP debate: 1/ the equation is dynamic and will change over time, so an article from 4 years ago may not be valid today, and certainly won't be at some point in the future. 2/ the way we define "best" tends to be purely in terms of direct economic payback, but as we found with diesel there can be other factors that people may make their spending choices on that go beyond the purely economic. All that said, yes I think the economic evaluation it is still in favour of gas. Yet we're currently in the process of cutting of the gas to our house and going the other way to ASHP, for the several of reasons mentioned above and also it's a leap of faith that by the time we sell (at least 10 years) we think/hope/trust this will be common enough it won't be seen as a drawback. Time will tell!

First find out who manages the gas pipes in your area: https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/consumers/household-gas-and-electricity-guide/connections-and-moving-home/who-my-gas-or-electricity-distribution-network-operator Then look on their website for a "Dial before you dig" inquiry line. For example in our area it is Cadent, and their info is here: https://cadentgas.com/help-advice/digging-safely

I'm imagining @pulhamdown was meaning a lot of competition for the "most incompetent utility co" award. To continue my sorry tale, after 2 attempts and computer system reboot my emergency meter move was rebooked at 9am to be done before midday. Just had a call to say they're running behind and it'll be sometime this afternoon. I pointed out this is the fourth booking they've failed to keep for a single job. And we wonder why the smart meter rollout is going so poorly, with these companies in charge?

Eventually got hold of SMSL's emergency contact no. and they said.... they don't have any emergency booking in their system for our address. Brilliant.

I did jokingly ask the DNO why they don't do the meters too, and they had a lot of sore points about the whole thing. Referred to something "in the last few weeks" (regs chance since start of year perhaps?) that meant it's even more sensitive topic and they're not allowed to touch the meters at all.

FFS Ovo, you've now missed the second appointment slot today, so I expect 2x compensations. Also: their webshite says their emergency line is open until 8pm but guess what happens when you call it? "Sorry, our offices are now closed. Please call back between 9am and 6pm"... What a shambles.

Today was the big electrical meter relocation day. DNO arrived promptly 8.30am, 4 guys: 1 to work, 3 to watch. Job done by 11. 2pm come and goes, no sign of OVO's contractor SMSL. 3.30pm finally get a call saying their one and only engineer is unavailable, we're being rebooked for Feb 13. So over 3 weeks without a supply - that's going to have a lot of knock on costs to the schedule! I escalate a complaint, get it reported as an emergency outage and after a bit of back and forth they agree, should be out within 3 hours. So my poor contractors electrician is still sat on site 10 hours after arriving, and still no sign of them. And the cheek of it all: they say if I late cancel this emergency fix they'll charge me. But obviously they can late cancel and I get no compensation whatsoever for the expense incurred. All this for a trivial job any of the 5 other electricians that have been there today could easily have done it. And don't even get me started on the gas supply. They failed to remove the meter twice, and are still billing me the standing charge on a supply I shouldn't have. Anyway, too late for me, but as catharsis any recommendations for a good supplier for build & renovation projects that's not entirely sh1t? My gut feel is British Gas would be as good a chance as any, as they might still have a reasonable network of their own engineers.

Hello! Have a look at these Basically, anything in https://forum.buildhub.org.uk/forum/104-costing-estimating/ with "m2" in the title.... ?

Unvented cylinder. The 'unvented' is not important here, I was just being lazy and not wanting to type Hot Water Cylinder / tank.

With I double decker CU I should be able to put an Eastron SDM120CT on each circuit of interest. They're going for about £22 on AliExpress and reasonable examples of using them around. Definitely want the CT rather than direct connect version, to keep it non-intrusive in the circuit commissioning. There's also the very cheap alternative PZEM-016, but looks messy to put in a CU

Yeah the texture comment was even in a "all else equal" situation, the textured surface feels warmer than a gloss surface. I recall now this was in NSBRC on the Pietra porcelain tile stand - the lady there pointed out how wood-effect textured tiles didn't feel as cold to touch as the gloss marble effect tiles, even though they're the exact same material underneath. My gut feel is those highly glossy tiles would be more echo-inducing too, but not hard evidence for it.

Yeah on this line my current thought here is to put energy meter on the hob & oven, and just have the HA crank up the boost when they go above a certain threshold. Originally I was going to try and hook it into the hob extractor fan, but this seems simpler and might even reduce the need to run the extractor. Same for the washing machine? Coffee machine and bread maker could also be monitored with a negating effect, to keep those smells around longer :-D

Right. We got ours approved with 3 skylights we had no intention of installing, and several other openings are moving/changing size by a couple 10s of cm, and all seems no big shakes -- neither in increased risk to the application itself, nor to the make changes after approval. Proximity to boundary though: I imagine there's some well established thresholds and if you go beyond them it will trigger Problems in the PP that make it not worth it unless you're 100% committed to trying to get it and use it.

It's a kitchen, so maybe we'll just cover the walls with egg-boxes. More seriously (and @puntloos will be familiar with this too) my work has a lot of plywood "dividers' to make up meeting rooms, and they have pretty good acoustics (for video conferencing needs) as they use a lot of perforated ply acoustic panels to deaden the walls & ceilings (a bit like http://stil-acoustics.co.uk/Timber-Acoustic/Perforated.html - probably not that specific one though) and I might take a cue from that as it will generally fit in with some of our built-in furniture ideas.

Deciding this is proving to a nightmare of the Open Plan design for us too. we're still well before 1st fix, but have an 100m2 area L shape very similar to the OP We've gone round cycles of standard options like bamboo & oak engineered, porcelain tiles and Amtico, through to more exotic poured resin, polished concrete, WPC and SPC variants and others I forget. Mostly don't want water-damage prone in kitchen and around rear/utility doors, so not wood. Don't want cold & echoy everywhere else, so not tiles.... while we have UFH, we're also going for passivhaus so don't expect the UFH to be on that often, thus it will be a shame to spend SO MUCH on this project and still have (literally and metaphorically) cold feet over the flooring. Resin would win except the cost is shocking, and then you only get 2 or 3 year warranty. (And examples we found, albeit in commercial areas, look very tired and crappy condition, considering the price) Polished concrete (or effect on screed) can stain, and we know we won't be careful enough. Plus, we're not brave enough to go all in on that aesthetic. A lot of SPC (stone-plastic composite) products seem to have an acoustic underlay built in (IXPE or cork) but AFAICT that's for managing impact noise transmission to the room below (moot for all our ground floor open plan areas?). At a first-pass my guess is that the more textured the product, the more anti slip it is, the more pleasant acoustically (diffused reflections), the warmer to touch (perhaps -- the Amtico sales person suggested this as more texture = less contact, more air trapped), but harder to keep clean. In almost every respect Amtico seems like the happiest compromise; except our architect persuaded us away from it onto engineered oak, on a keeping with natural products ethos of the build, plus a general fear of the VOCs. However I've just seen Amtico Cirro which is a pretty good marketing bumf for why they can out-eco all the other eco-product. (Especially being made in UK, it has fewer transport miles than half the bamboo I see these days being shipped from China) https://www.amtico.com/media/2462713/amt_cirrobrochure_english_digital.pdf

I found this: https://palramapplications.com/product/nancy-door-awning/ POLYCARBONATE PANEL – 4mm

Sorry not answering the question, but a different angle to take maybe get the PP with 30cm and take the option to increase the gap to say 50 or 80 post approval, once you've have answers to everything else (including the Party Wall Agreement process) Caveat: I have no idea how much you can decrease house footprint by and still be compliant to the PP approval granted, but it's surely gotta be easier than increasing footprint post approval Edit to add: in an old (terrace) house we had neighbours put scaffolding on our side of a boundary, when they realised their own extension was in the way of their own loft conversion. I think they sneaked this in as an extra ask after I'd signed the party wall agreement, I surely could have kicked up a fuss over it but didn't.

Unless your CoP is going below 1.0 then the algorithm is simple: always use the ashp and never use the immersion. The slightly funky variation would be to continuously set the ashp to "UVC current temperature +5°C" (say). This way you get a good CoP initially and slowly decreasing efficiency as it works harder to top it off with the final few kJ. (Analogous to the taller you build your pyramid, the more effort is needed to install the final blocks)

It may have been Peter Warm's blog actually: http://www.peterwarm.co.uk/10-most-common-phpp-mistakes/

Welcome to the scope creep! @Ferdinand summed it up so well for me here: