Russdl

Are they all damaged in the same area? Bit weird to fail after such a short space of time.

No. Our blinds are constructed of a fine black mesh that are only down when the sun is trying to get in, i.e. when it’s bright outside. Whilst they do reduce the amount of light entering the room it is almost unnoticeable. From the inside looking out it can be hard to see that they are down and they are very effective at preventing overheating.

@HanleeHouse looks very smart, I also have garage envy. A couple of points: With all that glazing it will overheat, if you run the design through the PHPP (or similar) you’ll get an idea of how bad it may be. I reckon external blinds will be a ‘must’ at the very least. Standing seam zinc looks sharp but in our experience pigeons love to sit on the nice warm ridge and turn that sharp black ridge in to a bird sh*t encrusted mess. Spiders also love our standing seams I clean the outside of our house with a brush on an extending pole several times a year - I hadn’t bargained on that. Good luck with the project.

In a nutshell, no.

I’m with @JohnMo on this, probably unnecessary. We don’t have any automatic boost control for the bathrooms/toilet and don’t feel that it’s something we should have done.

Where is that heat coming from? You have a well insulated house so you need to stop that heat getting into the house in the first place. We have external blinds on all windows…apart from 3 that face east that I didn’t think would be a problem. They most definitely are a problem. The solution that has worked so far through these brief hot spells has been to isolate the overheating rooms from the rest of the house by keeping internal doors closed, can you do that? Fortunately for us, the overheating rooms (plant room, master bedroom and en-suite) all have an MVHR extract so with the internal door closed we are chucking the heat away as quickly as we can and, so far, so good.

@Alfie interesting design with all those curves. Is that going to be a glass wall all the way from the dining area to the master bedroom? If so that will look pretty funky but could lead to severe overheating (and maybe occasional blushes as curtains are pulled back). Placing furniture could be problematic, especially wardrobes in Beds 1, 2 and 3. Looking forward to seeing more drawings. Good luck with the project. 👍

That doesn’t sound right. If you’re having MVHR and you’re building to passive stands then you don’t want “automatic air vents discharging externally” that will kind of defeat the object.

@pocster The Quooker is definitely worth it. Stupid expensive, will never pay itself back but worth it. @joth I’ve only ever seen our Quooker draw 1kW after a cuppa however I’ve never looked to see what it’s drawing after filling a saucepan etc. Have they got 2 elements?

This has made short work of our very hard chalk and flint ground.

I don’t think it will. I have the same model (no PV diverter) and if I’m using solar I wait until I’m producing over 3kW before allowing the Sunamp to charge. If I’m producing less then the PV is topped up by the mains to charge the Sunamp. Having said that I’m charging overnight on Octopus Go these days.

@ProDave all copied Dave, thanks. There’s certainly a ton of wires behind some of the switches I’ve looked behind so far so I shall take care to not disturb any lives.

@ProDave Yep, the lack of working lights is not an issue, the 13amp sockets are fine. I’m happy to look for a loose wire, easy enough to isolate the whole circuit. Thanks for the input, I’ll continue the search.

Our upstairs lights (ceiling and 5amp circuit) are all on the same breaker. All has been fine for a year or so, but something has gone wrong now. The precursor may have been when a bedside light on the 5amp circuit was turned on. Apparently it flashed on/off in a regular pattern until it was switched off and now won’t turn on (led bulb that has been tested as working). Bed 1, en-suite, wardrobe. All ok Bed 2, nothing works* Bed 3, nothing works* Bed 4, ceiling doesn’t work* 5 amp circuit does work. Bathroom and landing, nothing works. * the ceiling lights are LED panels and they are faintly glowing all the time irrespective of switch position. The glow is so dim it can only be seen at night. Electrician tells me it may be a loose neutral but he can’t get to us for a week or more to check. I’ve had a quick look in the back of the switches of the affected rooms but nothing found. Does this sound like a loose neutral. If so, is there a clever way of finding where it is?

Thats exactly what we did to dial down the flow to our showers to a flow rate that would make the Water Calculations work... Promptly dialled back up again as the Building Control inspector waved goodbye after sign off (he never did check any flow rates though).

I’d say ‘no’. The top coat needs to go behind the gutter as well. Perhaps they’ll take the gutter down when they render. Maybe it’s just a ‘test fit’ of the gutter...

It really doesn’t seem to run much in the dark. The evidence seems to be that when it’s used it reheats instantly, when it’s not used it doesn’t. I’ve absolutely no idea but perhaps it won’t reheat until it’s lost 10 or 20 degrees? Our energy usage would seem to suggest that the Quooker is doing nowt overnight and then kicks into life when you start using it. Regardless of all that, it’s way way way more expensive than a kettle and in the grand scheme of things only saves a few seconds/minutes throughout the day but when, one day, it fails we won’t be replacing it with a kettle.

@Simplysimon yep, they do and even in the winter the feeble sun is normally enough to reheat it.

Oh, and congratulations on that. At last eh!

We leave ours on. Did turn it off a couple of times overnight a while back but then it took a while (sub 1 minute iirc) to get back up to temperature when we turned it back on, so gave that a miss. Pretty sure ours isn’t reheating every 15 mins but it’s out of earshot so don’t really know for certain but looking at our energy consumption through the wee small hours it looks like it does nothing - if it does do anything, it’s insignificant. It does take 4-5 seconds to produce boiling water first thing in the morning though whereas through the the day when it’s being used fairly regularly it’s probably more like 1-2 seconds.

@DragsterDriver good grief, that looks grim. I would have thought those photos alongside the independent report would be good enough to go to the Small Claims Court with, not sure you’d need expert witnesses, just images of how it should be done. Have you got someone lined up to replace it?

For certain, it would have helped. Never mind, I’m sure you’ll find loads of other stuff to do with it. Great toy.

@Conor mine looks pretty much identical, providing it’s compatible with your laser I wouldn’t hold back 👍

I got tons of use out of my DeWalt laser and the matching laser receiver. You can’t see the laser outside on a good day but the receiver can, and beeps low or high frequency depending if you’re above or below the laser line, there’s a visual indication as well. I did my drains with it, sat the laser on a solid surface, attached the receiver to a bit of batten that I’d marked showing the depth the drain needed to be for every meter away from the house in relation to the (random) level of the laser. There may be smarter ways of doing it but it worked a treat.

@Temp thanks very much for Posting that, much appreciated. My issue differs to the majority of those posted in that mine has tripped under load, and the firmware is up to date. I’m fairly confident that my issue is caused by my high incoming mains voltage, so I’ll either have to junk the Shelly or get a big old drum of cable as suggested by @dpmiller Neither option appeals!