Carrerahill

What do you mean by centrally switched LED lighting?

There is (now a "was" for me) some mileage in this if for using PV generated and battery stored power, I looked at it. I essentially have 3 PV systems, 1 on the shed, 1 on the garage 1 on the house. They are all grid-tied just now. I was thinking of putting a 20A 24VDC charge controller on the garage system and using it to charge a fairly inexpensive leisure battery array, then I would run 24VDC into the house and have some 24VDC lighting, thinking being I would have created a little off-grid lighting system. Sized correctly, even in Scotland, I should never run out of battery capacity. Great free lighting. With a little imagination other things could also be tied into this system. However, after much deliberation I decided that the better long term infrastructure plan was 2 consumer units, an on grid and an off-grid. Feed the off-grid from an inverter, and add loads to it that the batteries can cope with, as the battery storage becomes more affordable I would move more and move loads over to the off-grid board until I was fully off-grid. At that point the old CU just becomes redundant. This I was saw as a smaller investment, a futureproof one in my eyes, and it lets me just stick to conventional 240V loads - it also allows me to do an automatic mains bypass on the inverter if battery voltage was to plummet.

I cannot really see what you would tie into this realistically. Most systems that require low voltage will generate their own bus. @joth discusses some very specific lighting controls things which any controls circuits would generally have and having some LED on a 24VDC PSU doesn't quite constitute low voltage infrastructure. I had considered a 24V supply to my living room, and some other rooms for some 24V DC lighting that could run directly from a solar charged battery circuit to give me some off-grid capability but I am just going to put my money and efforts into a off-grid 240V system. Even had I proceeded with my 24V system it would have been very home made. I design building electrical systems for a living and cannot see the benefit of a low voltage infrastructure outside of specialist environments. The Engineer article really discussed the DC micro-grid that would be formed between PV panels, inverters and batteries and datacentres are a whole different kettle of fish given IT has heaps of power supplies, so why not ditch them and just run DC buses, but very very specialist. The paper you link to is very typical of, usually South Asian students who write these frankly absurd papers on really random things for their thesis. The ideas are very much based on a shall we say, less mainstream proposition. Other things to consider, SELV DC will require heavier cables, everything you bought would need to adhere to some sort of SELV convention, even if you had 4 things in a room that were ultimately SELV DC, you would find that probably they all range from 5-28V for most things, so you would still need voltage regulators and then to convert the appliance you bought to run on your DC supply. I suppose you could wire your house like a caravan and buy caravan appliances and lights?!?

Simple, looks good and suits your property & surroundings.

That all looks like a right pig. I can think of a few things I would do, but what about, extend the notch on the back plate so the rod can drop down and under the porcelain, so the sink sort of sits on it then use a big square washer with a rubber gasket behind it, nyloc nut, torque it up, you get clamping force and some under support, a blob of CT1 may do no harm as well.

Bankers not understanding Construction industry I guess. Nothing new!

.. and they just tend to explode without actually burning unlike the firework that is the Li battery. I once shot a mobile phone lithium battery pack - fireworks and funny smoke!

I am just thinking a 4 inch concrete slab, brick/block on 3 sides, maybe 900mm tall, depends on batteries, mine will be rack mount units and about 8U high so that works, then a big double door on the front. So all in all it will be about W1200mm x D900mm x H900mm internal space.

I am thinking of building a little block kiosk. Dress it up with some cladding or something.

Got it now. I misread the comment as being possible doubt of the rod holding, my mistake.

I think Celcon do a 750Kg - I read it in one of the journals, less cement used, higher strength and lighter were the key points.

Given Gus is an SE...

Construction in this case is far superior, if you knew Gus you would know this and the key here, is the fixing method I would say. These shelves are probably designed to go onto all sorts of walls, including stud and PB - in which case they probably rate the shelf on weight bearing capacity of a PB fastener into a 12.5mm PB wall. I have some here that claim 17Kg a point. So they will then further de-rate it to eejit-proof it.

I made some. I built them in MDF and CLS. I build a fully screwed and glued CLS frame, that was fixed to the wall with chemical anchors, then I built slide over covers in MDF which I could prepare and spray paint in the garage, these simply slid over the frame and then I caulked them to the wall which is technically all that holds the painted MDF "cover" to the frame. I sat my brother and my son on them to test it - going no where. If I was doing it onto a TF wall I would probably remove a section of the plasterboard and fit a timber directly to the studs before a copy of the above.

I see the trusty Merc trying to get in on the action there!

@joe90 @Gone West Both fine looking houses!

I think you quoted me instead of Charlie...

My sentiment too...

Re-read the conversation and you will see your error. You are conflating things.

You will need to buy gallons of the finest artisan spring water.

Merely making a point. It goes two ways. Don't put words into my mouth either. I didn't say anything of the sort. I responded to a comment YOU made, and now you're accusing me of something quite different.

Sounds like a Scottish Water issue not yours, well an issue for you in the sense of flooding yes. I would speak to them. They are pretty good as showing up and doing inspections and investigations I have found. Sometimes a backflow preventer would be used, but that is just a bandaid and they can bung up.

Lets stick to the topic of architects spending lots of cash. DIY design is another topic for another day. However, while you mention that, practically everything Zaha Hadid did makes me wince.

Libel even? Not met an architect yet who doesn't spend clients cash like it is going out of fashion and that's from working with local independent one man band firms through to Snohetta/Fosters & Partners and many the in-betweens!

It depends what you mean by better. If it was me, my forever house I would build it in block/brick. I've done TF and I am happy with it, but I would have been happier with block. There is a recent thread on this topic and the pro's and cons where we have all chipped in the 10's of pros and cons.