Russdl

As you’re with MBC I guess you’re going passive-ish? If you are (and you should, especially if you’re using MBC) don't put anything through the roof, even if the soil stack is effectively sealed it’ll be an unnecessary thermal bridge. As @Dunc says: That is the way to do it. That’s the way we did it. MBC will do what you ask, and do it well and the airtightness will be spot on, but if you’re trying to be ‘passive’ don’t have that tube going through the roof. Also, don’t put any ducting through the insulation if you can possibly avoid it (you can). Any large ducts through the insulation will degrade the insulation properties where the ducts are, and that’ll degrade the ‘passive’ aspect, the passive bit is worth fighting for, it pays dividends. There is always a better way so that you can keep everything inside the airtight layer, even if it may compromise a little bit of the interior space.

As above. As soon as outdoor temp exceeds desired indoor temp we shut all doors/windows and turn the MVHR down to its minimum setting. When the outdoor temp drops below indoor temp of an evening, we open all doors/windows and turn the MVHR up to max. Currently 33.7 degrees outside and 22.5 degrees inside. No active cooling but we do have external blinds which are game changers I reckon.

Well, I’m signed up and have my £25 bonus. Strange that there is no password to log in to ‘my account’ I guess yours is the same @JohnMo?

I should have used a Google search, BuildHub search didn’t find that. Thanks for the offer of a referral code but I’ve got one from my BiL so I’ll use that as he introduced me to this. At first glance I was pretty sceptical (who was going to pay £1/kWh!) and ignored it. After a closer look it seemed liked a good plan, as your experience shows, and decided I’ll give it a go.

If you were home. If the DHW cylinder sprung a leak why would it only loose 300L, wouldn’t the supply of water be endless until you isolated it? I reckon you are massively over thinking this, get a flood sensor (Shelly do one, I’m sure many others exist) If you spring a leak, unless it is some kind of catastrophic failure, then it’ll take a long time to empty that tank. A flood sensor will tell you the floor is getting wet whilst you’re miles away, you send the neighbours round to isolate the leaking component and continue your holiday. Small leak, dries relatively quickly, zero damage to the timber frame but the plasterboard may need some attention.

I’m surprised that I can’t find anything on BuildHub regarding Axle Energy. They’ll pay £1/kWh for battery export and you don’t need to change your current supplier or hand over complete control of your battery. It looks a bit far fetched on first glance but digging into it, maybe not. They operate a virtual power plant (VPP) using thousands of domestic batteries and use that to fill generation gaps when the grid is under stress, that’s when energy prices are their highest hence they can pay the £1/kWh. Gary’s in to it. Anyone signed up yet? I think I may just dive in.

+1 to the “very” We have acoustic PB, resilient bars, rockwool and then the upper floor, underlay & carpets. Noise doesn’t really get through that.

(Not the Russell you asked but…) Find your nearest metal fabricator (most towns have a couple or more). Have an idea of what you want and get them to make exactly what you want, to the colour you want. Two ‘L’ section pieces may work, or one ‘U’ section and one ‘I’ section. The metal fabricator will most likely have some bright ideas as well.

They sent two sets in case we have trouble with any other seat. Fitted in seconds, great service.

Looks like they have a showroom in Stockton on Tees (wouldn’t have helped us, way too far oop north).

I thought I'd just report what I consider to be great customer service from Lusso Stone. All of our sanitary goods came from Lusso Stone and have been in use for coming up to 5 years now. The soft close mechanism of the most frequently used toilet seat is becoming less and less soft close so I gave Lusso a call to see if there was a fix, or if they had service parts available. I was informed that the soft close mechanism is covered by the same 25 year warranty as everything else. I was quite amazed, and a few minutes after the call the new soft close bits and bobs are in the post (they also look to be very easy to replace as well, video instructions have been received). They're not the cheapest out there, they're also not the most expensive, but the great customer service (second time now) is making it feel like a good purchase decision.

Bugger. It would appear that my All-In-One didn’t charge up last night but I only spotted that this morning when we had a brief (1 second) power cut. It looks like that was the battery emptying and the grid picking up. Pretty sure that scenario shouldn’t give us a power cut but it did. All indications I get is that the battery is at 7% and not taking any charge from the excess solar we have at the moment. A quick internet search for resetting the AIO is to press the button on the right hand side of the battery for 5 seconds, the battery will shut down and then 1-2 mins later start up again. Guess what. It hasn’t restarted. Any one have any similar issues? Or any pointers as to how I can get this heavy box of chemicals working as a battery again? ~~~~ It turns out that pressing the button again restarts the battery, so it’s up and running but discharging at max rate when it should be charging from excess solar. I reset to factory defaults and all seems to be well for the time being.

Most people shop around for most things, it would be a bit odd to not shop around for the best energy tariffs just because you don’t agree with how they are set. Laudable but you can’t cook on a storage heater, or shower, or drive to the shops etc and you probably don’t need that storage facility for half of the year. Batteries are useful all year round.

A MWh cost me £52 and I sell it for £120. The simple calculations get muddied by the various tariffs/self generation etc. This house really has cost us nothing in energy in the 4.5 years we’ve been in.

The battery would be VAT free during the build and maybe VAT free after. They became VAT free (outside of a new build) a couple of years ago and for sure that gift will be removed at some stage in the future. Definitely get the battery when you’re building, they change the game entirely compared to just solar PV. It’s costing us naff all to run this house (and hybrid car) the battery and off peak tariff is a large part of what makes that possible.