Conor

Del Carmen prime, £1.50 ea from SSQ. They didn't even need to grade them.

The guys couldn't work on the west facing door after mid morning as the lead and slates were too hot to work with. They're leaving the south roof until Monday when hopefully it's a bit cooler.

The protection circuits didn't do the job and the cell at the front of the picture overheated and failed - with loud popping sounds and smoke.. was promptly thrown out on to the gravel until it calmed down. Surprised the whole thing didn't go up.

Oh, the battery. My circular saw is really, really hard on batteries. The Makita one does just fine, the copy ones literally melt.

You know those cheap replica batteries on eBay and Amazon? Best to avoid, unless you like your power tools exploding in your hand. Obviously the claimed overload and over heating protection didn't work. The heat probe tape had come free and was no longer in contact with the cells. Happened when I was doing a particularly tough rip with the circular saw. The solder on the other battery melted away on one of the tabs previously. Should have taken that as a warning sign.

It's depressing to see so many dodgy roofing job posts here. Our Slater's have nearly finished, here's their work to date: I've never had a roof slated before, or seen one close up. But I'm very happy.

If you do that, run the 22mm pipe in some conduit though the ground and the wall / floor of the house. Good luck!!!

As I inch further along.... Are the plastic wedges for the panel clamps only required at either end of the array or at all of the clamp positions? If it's the latter I've not got enough and these need to go on today!

Philmac universal connector will get you down to 25mm. Measure the pipe first and get the right coupler. https://plasticsuppliesdirect.co.uk/philmac-universal-transition-joiner-black-27-34mm-x-25mm-3-4-utc-x-pol.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwi9-HBhACEiwAPzUhHC0KLEE9TW7GqBYtsTd-mGS3L714LjIfyElq6ds3PS2bQx3uNQExrxoCziQQAvD_BwE Why 22mm? You're underground so you need to use either 20mm or 25mm MDPE.

Thanks @Marvin. If it makes a difference, the soil pipes enter inspections chambers right outside the building, and flow along our own private pipe to the public sewer.

Architect has specified one stack with an AAV, and the other (main one) with a vent slate at the top of the roof. We can't get a vent slate that will fit between the steel channel sections in our thermohouse panels (200mm), and roofers will be slating there tomorrow so limited options! I've just reread Part N and in all three paragraphs referring to ventilation (ventilation stack, discharge stack and separate vent) state that an AAV is acceptable. Is this correct?!

I managed to set fire to my fire retardant EPS when welding. It's hard to trust any data sheet these days.

You probably won't want to hear this, but going by the sound of things, you'd be better off demolishing the existing house and building a new one. If you are removing the roof, adding a story, building an extension, you'll have the building back to nothing more than a few walls.

I did this for our washing machine, drier, and freezer in our last house. Was bit of a pain making a run of units wider and deeper than standard, but worth it.

We did this on our kitchen as well. My tips would be to buy much more self leveller than you need, and return any unopened bags. Clean and vaccum the floor well, and damp down with water before pouring. Get a mixing paddle for your drill (or hire one) and get a system setup so you can mix and pour continuously. It goes off quickly so it's best to keep it moving. Get the consistency right, experiment with a half bag mix first in a far corner.

It'll be fine. As long as the concrete wasn't washed away.

Can't remember but I think it's a couple manifolds and plenum boxes. Ducting wasn't an issue.

No issues at all with cement, plaster, plasterboard, paving, concrete products, slates, flooring etc. Just have to wait slightly longer then normal. I think it's because so much is made here and there's spare production capacity for quarry and cement products. Only issues I've had are timber and insulation. Both doubled in price and hard to get. Steel isn't far behind, still waiting on stuff from Lindab a month after ordering. Stud wall guy luckily has his own stockpile of metal C studs and ceiling stuff.

Minimal, unless you are using hundreds of them over a small area.

Use 120mm concrete screws for anything heavy or need to be secure, like sockets or handrails.

But I don't see most people charging both of their cars every day though. Most new EVs have ranges in the 200mile zone and people just don't do that regularly. I think the average mileage in the UK is something like 30miles per day. So you'll only be charging a couple times a week to keep the battery in the 20%-80% range. Can you get sets of car chargers that talk to each other that would maximise charging useage off peak in this sort of circumstance? I have a memory of Zappi doing something like that. This is where we need the machines to do the thinking for us

Guaranteed loads of advice here, how much is useful or correct is another matter ?

A very handy reminder that as the diameter of a circle doubles, the cross sectional area increases by 4. You'll be fine with 100a, you'll unlikely have the AC and heat pump on at the same time at full capacity. And if you do, you PV will be helping anyway. And if this is a decent spec new build, your units are well over specced and won't be drawing nearly as much as you need . Our 315m2 5bed new build is getting a 9kW ashp, which is 40% larger than what is required. Also, I think it'll be unlikely you'll ever need to run both car charging ports at the same time. Assume cars with ~200mile range, each do 30-50miles per day, which means charging every 4th day or so. No reason why you'd be changing both cars at the same time on a regular basis.

As somebody that's doing their own EWI on a new build ICF house... I'm not surprised. It's a time consuming job that needs a fair bit of care and attention. I wouldn't so it for less that that. Can you use thicker insulation or will it less with your reveals/soffits? As you can see material cost is low, so you may as well go for thicker if possible.

Ordered slates on a Friday, delivered the following Wednesday. Merchant had 167k in stock. No issues either with felt, nails or lead.