Russdl

Thanks 🤣. Im not afraid, I can’t do any worse than the professional that went before me! I just want to ensure that any rectification/replacement I do is done according to best practice.

That’s what I’m here for, “HO’s”. I’m no electrician so I’m seeking advice. I’m definitely going to replace the contactor, I’ve no idea how damaged that is internally but it has most definitely got very hot and, on balance, it would seem that the whole length of T&E should be replaced as well, so I’ll do that.

Just so I’m clear on that advice you say the Wago would be fine? I do. But I guess the electrician that did the original install didn’t. However tugging upwards against the distribution board would have been difficult I guess.

Good point, I’ve not had a good look at what that would entail, replacing the T&E from the contactor to the fused spur, but I suspect I could do that with relative ease.

During my mid year service of the house it turns out that the second Willis Heater we hardly ever use doesn’t work anyway. After a bit of investigation it became pretty clear why that was. The neutral from the Willis Heaters fused spur into the contactor was trying to catch fire, it had actually melted and stuck to the outer casing of the junction box. The neutral was in the right hand No.3 terminal - kinda. I found that pretty disturbing, especially as there was no indication of when this had happened (nothing tripped off, no smoke alarm) or how long ago it happened. On closer inspection I think it’s clear what has happened, the terminal screw seems to be cross threaded so I guess it felt like it was done up tight but clearly it wasn’t. Stuff clearly needs replacing, like the contactor and the Wago. The obviously burnt twin and earth needs replacing, can I just cut out the burnt sections and splice in new cable with these? Or should I replace the whole length to the fused spur? The T&E appearing above the contactor is directly from the distribution board and looks slightly heat damaged, I guess that all needs replacing as well? As a side note, I’m going to be sourcing another smoke detector for this area. There is a smoke detector in the room and also an MVHR extract. The problem is with the relative positions the MVHR extract will effectively prevent any air from the area of the distribution board passing over the smoke detector.

No such thing as a dim question (Joe90 RIP would have told you that) Currently I have 2 tariffs when I buy, cheap overnight expensive during the day. I fill the battery on cheap rate and the battery runs the house for the rest of the day. I buy almost nothing at the higher rate. The particular tariff I’m on was dependent on having an EV (hybrid in our case) When I sell it’s fixed, whatever time I sell it. Excess PV during the day or offloading the battery when I don’t want so much in there. All of this is likely to change when it suits the supplier which I guess is fair enough because we couldn’t survive a winter without them.

Pre battery and hybrid car we were consuming 7.5 to 8.5MWh annually, the figures are a bit skewed now as we’ve become something an energy trader and EV user, 2024 consumption was 14.5MWh. Regarding what? Tariff or battery? Tariff: I guess you’ll have to see what’s out there in a couple of years time, I’m sure they will continue to evolve. Battery: I’m very happy with the GivEnergy AIO, in the event of a power outage we could run the whole house indefinitely on the proviso that the days were sunny.

I was about to say that I’ve been ‘Top Trumped’ again! But I guess the RHI payment makes it an uneven playing field so maybe I haven’t? Mind you, I was on a flexible export tariff post Covid and post Russias shenanigans where I was getting crazy amounts per kWh at times - perhaps it is a level playing field.

It is pretty sweet isn’t it. I keep checking I’ve got the calculations right because I can’t quite believe it myself - but it is right. No, Sunamp here and it’s still going strong. (so far).

We have 7.44kWp of PV. 13.6kWh battery storage and use Intelligent Octopus Go/Outgoing Octopus. PV keeps the battery topped up and then all excess goes to export. The battery charges during the off peak window and runs the house for the rest of the day/evening. Prior to the off peak starting again we export what’s left in the battery to the grid, and then fill it up again in the off peak window. I've never been overly concerned with ‘pay back’ (which is why I drive the car I want and not the one that will suffice) but I suspect we’re on track to be paid back before all the kit is dead and needs replacing. Obviously very much dependent on future tariffs/sunshine. We’ve been in for 3.5 years and as of this month our total energy costs for the whole 3.5 year period around is -£30. To be exact it has cost minus £32:76* to run the entire house for the 3.5 years we’ve been living here, including 12 months of running a hybrid. *that figure includes the £400 bung from the taxpayer which we passed on to some local old, cold people. 😇

Thanks @Adrian Walker I’ll give that a miss then.

That idea, or at least similar, was diss’ed a bit further up this thread so, due to an abundance of ignorance of these things, I’ll give that a miss. So it seems, however copper sulphate solution was promoted further up this thread so now I’m confused, but as copper was diss’ed I can get my head around copper sulphate solution being a no-no. Yep, shame on me. As they are promoted as self cleaning I thought I wouldn’t have to get involved. I’ve not cleaned them since installation which has got to be pushing 5 years now. It’s not easy to see them and it’s only in certain light you can see what is probably lichen and it was only late last year I spotted it. Window cleaner is going to cost around £80-£100 to clean them but I wonder if s/he will actually clean the lichen off or just make it wet. Hence the original question. I assume copper kills lichen (who’d have know!) Also, from what’s posted earlier in this thread I assume copper kills aluminium? It would also seem from previous posts in this thread that copper sulphate solution would kill lichen but not aluminium? Does copper sulphate solution kill zinc? Anyone know?

Bumping this thread again. We have what looks to be lichen growing on our solar panels. They are a long way up so not easy to reach. Does anyone know if that copper sulphate solution suggested by @Jeremy Harris would eat our zinc roof alive? If the copper sulphate solution is an option then I’d only be able to apply that solution via a sponge or something similar on the end of a long pole and wouldn’t be able to exert any scrubbing pressure. Would the copper sulphate solution work in that scenario?

I guess you’ve checked but as it’s a ‘room in roof’ bathroom, do you have the ceiling height for the shower head to go anywhere or will a sloping ceiling dictate where the shower head has to go?

Well that was uneventful, tiny dribble of water, gauge is off and still firmly stuck at a little over 2 bar, which makes that previous high pressure I saw a little less terrifying. I an’t see any way to adjust/calibrate it so I’ll guess I’ll get a new one and fit a pressure relief valve at the same time.

I was thinking of trying that Let’s see what happens…

I’ve had another read through @Jeremy Harris’s thread and he noted that the latest Sunamp models are limited to 5 bar instead of the 10 bar of the previous variants, mine being one of those. After getting the expansion vessels to play ball I’ve got around 5.7 bar, which is around 2 bar above my known water pressure from when we started the build and, knowing what has happened to previous Sunamps, higher than what I wanted to see. I was curious so turned off the cold feed to the Sunamp. Pressure remained the same (trapped in the hot circuit). Ran a hot tap until it stopped which was only a few seconds - pressure dropped to 2.5 bar (I was expecting zero??) Deflated the expansion vessels - pressure dropped to 2 bar (was definitely expecting zero now!) I ran every hot outlet in the house, non of them ran apart from one shower (it was running cold so I guess that’s just cold water getting past the thermostatic mixer when full hot is selected?) Still 2 bar of pressure. I’m assuming my pressure gauge is knackered and miss reading by +2bar. Is that likely? If not, where is the 2 bar hiding and why can’t I get it out of my hot circuit? So, to recap I’m sat here with cold supply off, hot taps open, expansion vessels without air and showing 2 bar on the pressure gauge. Any clues??

@Dillsue good advice. At least one of my expansion vessels had effectively failed as there was no air in it. And I’m guessing there was nothing in the working expansion vessels as well hence the over pressure I saw. Now they are both charged up again everything looks fine - too my eyes at least.

No, there's no pressure relief valve in or around the Sunamp, and no mention in the MI's. I think I recall Jeremy's replacement Sunamp having some pressure relief facility that his previous set up didn't. I'll have to re-read that thread. It looks like getting the second expansion vessel working again has fixed my problem. There has been negligible change in the pressure after charging the Sunamp for a little over two hours. I guess my lesson learnt is that those little expansion vessels that are pretty much out of sight, shouldn't be out of mind. I'll add them to my list of things to check every 6 months to make sure they're holding they're charge. I don't think I've checked them once since we moved in.

I seem to have got the dodgy expansion vessel working again, they're both now charged to 3.5 bar and the Sunamp is on and charging in the daylight so I can keep an eye on the pressure.

@Dillsue I probably didn't make it clear but that is my view as well that the expanding water as the Sunamp heats up is causing the pressure rise. There is a non return valve on the cold mains supply, and on closer inspection it seems like only one of the expansion vessels is working properly. I can get air in/out of one of them, but not the other the other one. I guess those things break down? Would going from two 500ml expansion vessels to just one be enough to cause this big water pressure rise? I don't know. I don't think so. Can you throw any light on what that would look like and where I'd find it?

A bit of a long story: It transpires a joint in our DHW manifold has been dripping unnoticed for what would seem to be yonks. It drips onto a pipe directly below, that drip then tracks along the pipe to a water circulation pump and then drips off the back of that pump on to a pipe below it before finally hitting the wall leaving very obvious evidence, unfortunately that evidence is nicely hidden behind the Sunamp, hence it's gone unnoticed. After reading @Jeremy Harris recent woes I took a good look around mine and discovered the evidence of this leak. The trouble is, this leak only materialises when the Sunamp is charging, all other times the pipes are bone dry, initially it seemed to be the rear plastic moulding of the pump that was leaking as that was the only place where water was evident, it had long evaporated from the copper pipe work. I blagged a replacement pump off a friend and felt certain my problems were over, except that replacement pump seemingly started leaking in exactly the same place so I widened the search and eventually found the source. Throughout the days usage the joint remains bone dry, it's overnight when the Sunamp is charging that it starts to drip which lead to an unpleasant discovery. There is a pressure gauge on the cold supply to the Sunamp and early one morning I saw it indicating 13bar! Maximum operating pressure for the Sunamp is 10 bar. The pressure instantly reduces to around 5 bar when a hot tap is opened. If I isolate the cold supply and open a hot tap it reduces further to around 3 bar, but no lower. So every night (for years potentially) when the Sunamp charges the pressure builds to 13 bar and forces water to leak from an otherwise water tight joint in the DHW manifold (maybe this small leak has prevented anything worse happening?) What can I do about this? There are two 500ml expansion vessels fitted. Do I need another, larger expansion vessel? Is there something much bigger going on here? Any help gratefully received.

We used GRP angle attached to/cast into the slab for all our exterior doors. On our sliders I put 7 x 150mm M12 bolts through the GRP, threads extending into were the slab was going so that the bolts would be encapsulated in the slab when it was poured. It seems to have worked fine, no thermal bridge and enough strength to hold a big heavy slider. The slab was kept 25mm lower where the slider was going so that Compac Foam could be used under the sliding door threshold to insulate it from the slab. The front and back doors were much easier with their narrower thresholds. Sliders Front and back doors were simpler.

I’m not entirely sure why you felt the need to get offended on behalf of @marshian especially as he responded with a laughing emoji? The comment I posted was ripped off from the Men in Black film, and was meant to be light hearted. I do not in any way condone the killing of a spouse to get your own way regarding the building of a Shabby Chic Bar.

I presume you told her that her terms were acceptable?