JohnMo

Maybe next week? But likely not, although there is rumours about the pricing structure may change and somethings being moved to general taxation, instead on the kWh pricing. Who knows in reality. Get you solar panels up and then add some more.

@Alan Ambrose What are blue squares on the roof and walls

Isn't that the norm - i.e. what they always do. Buying pre-insulated cassettes is not the norm.

But pretty unlikely to drive oil and gas prices either way, as they are set globally by the markets.

Tools rusting is more related to lack of ventilation than insulation. Ideally add one on the inside wall, behind the ply. I would add a mineral wool insulation.

Pretty much left it to the electrician. As a side note: Scottish BR are way more prescriptive than English and much easier to implement a good design.

Yep, but sure you treat each tooth equally, so exactly the same number of file strokes on each tooth. When I first started every tiime I sharpened the teeth I didn't count the file strokes and ended up with chainsaw that cut nice angle and never straight.

Had an issue developing with one of the roof beams. Had used C16 wood and one has quite a lot of knots. Anyway it started to save quite a bit around 40mm when I took it off. So have replaced all the roof timber with C24 and added 2x 460W panels. So in theory 1.92kW of panels. However have retained the 1kW inverter (checked the voltages etc and all within limits). The 460W panels will clip the 500W panels a little, which is ok as I am only running against the 1kW inverter. Looking for more time running decent number of Watts - so a long day at close to 1kW. Photos to follow. Will be adding drainage clips to the panels to help move the standing water and debris.

5 to 10 minutes and file - nothing

Never too early to start making plans, they will take a few iterations to get what is correct for you - not the architect. We ended up changing the full build method from timber frame to ICF, so all the Warrant plans needed to be redone. Lots of details that maybe standard for the architect but end up being a thermal bridge or key details just missed altogether that have you scratching your head or the builder doing what he normally does and mess thing up for you.

No wonder the farmer didn't want us going across his land.

And good quality underlay

PIR is great insulation value in theory, but theory and practice are not generally the same thing. Cutting and then foaming to get a good fit between studs is a pain to do well, if you don't do it well, the practical U value suffers. Mineral wool is forgiving you can cut oversize and it can be squished into place, cut it undersize you can add more. Mineral wool is easy to do well. Use some thing like Frametherm 32 or Rockwool Flexi. Add PIR to inside face in full sheets if you need to after.

They pretty do any for maintenance activities and gas is switched quite a bit anyway. I have just planned 3 maintenance activities for 3 offshore gas turbine generators, each service takes 3 weeks and will allow them to run on demand. 3 weeks is equal to 4% of the year. Also only 2 of the 3 run at any time, so actually the run time is well below 96%. That is how you have to manage rotating equipment. If peak demand is 45GW, the grid doesn't need to handle the whole installed capacity available, it needs to handle 45GW. It may need to be altered to accept electricity from different areas but that's life. Towns grow or shrink so does industry they need have different electric demands change is part of life, the grid and generation changes also.

Couple of issues, offshore generation in Scotland isn't really that intermittent with a strong enough and almost constant wind - around 96% if the time over a year. Second issue is Scottish wind energy is really an export product, so is equal too the energy England imports from Europe, but had no emissions. But also it's transported via high voltage DC interconnector (or will be) so very little losses occur over long distances. 3rd issue all generation is responsible for the grid network costs not just renewable! Yes they could change the law to make the UK government the only place they can sell too with hedge pricing. Trouble is the oil produced is too good for general stuff like fuel oils, plus nearly all the refineries have gone from the UK, so we would have to export anyway and buy lower quality oils for fuel oils etc. Gas a slightly different story. We could self consume. We or various companies currently store gas (taken from the market when wholesale prices are cheap) in vast onshore cavens, dotted about across the UK, many million of m³ at a time. This is then sold back to the market when prices are high. So we are getting screwed there also.

Really depends on the insulation levels on the ground floor not so much on the upper floor. But generally think I would be doing closer to what @saveasteading did. Then screed and the bond the finished floor to that, no underlay, no floating floor. Then depending on heat losses choose the pipe spacing, but generally on that sort of build up somewhere like 150mm

Not completely correct - you must use an F gas installer if it's an F gas, R290 isn't covered by the rules so you can self install it's not a refrigerator gas by the rules as it's propane. However if R32 or any other number other than R290, you must use F gas registered installer. In addition it is not even legal to sell to anyone other than an F gas certified installer, except R290

Basically steam is made it drives steam turbine that drive a generator to make electricity. The steam turbine strips the energy from the steam making it a low quality steam. They are basically taking seawater in, passing through one side of a heat exchanger this used to cool the low quality steam back to liquid on the other side. The then hot cooling water goes back to the sea. The turbine water/steam goes around in circles just like your heating system. On a different circuit high pressure water passes through the reactor core taking heat. An intermediate loop extracts that heat to heat the steam circuit. So you have several layer of seperation from the reactor to the sea

Chernobyl 40 years ago, still a little bit of a no go zone

It's not that small as you need a steam plant to go with it. So would be a car a 10 Tonne trailer.

Not sure there are any long term plans except concrete and lead lining of fuel waste, components removed during the plant life treated in a similar manner. Then decommissioning taken several lifetimes. Impact on the planet ignoring the above is pretty small, you use the heat to make steam that drives a steam turbine or two. There is no combustion by product that leads to global warming - just super heated water, used in the turbines. Renewable - no, radiation is from a fuel source it gets depleted and converted to a waste product. It happens the waste product is very dangerous to all life.

If that was the case there would be no wind turbines near us, but we have plenty, so maybe not that true. Maybe getting towards the number cats kill, but maybe not. So we should discuss banning cats also? That's a regular occurrence - or again, maybe not And gas doesn't have curtailment - they spend even longer offline but no one talks about it. They even have diesel generators on the same sites to allow gas turbines to start and get hot enough to bring the steam plant online in CCGT packages. A least wind can be taken on and off line very quickly by feathering the blades. That's an all wind or no wind argument, which isn't being discussed. Wind is part of a diverse energy portfolio. Unfortunately as @saveasteading infers, included nuclear, which is what we should worry about.

If it's an A rated cylinder the vacuum insulation, any other ratings it's most likely not vacuum insulation

Move washer to next to sink and dryer next to wall. Drain, water supply and electric in cupboard below sink?

Could have, but maybe they are sensible. That's why we have wind providing most of our electricity nearly all the time. Plus we can export energy. Think bigger picture is hydrogen generation instead of curtailment and that becomes another export product.