Carrerahill

Just get decent ones, zinc galv or stainless. Timco or Fisher do boxes at decent prices. Even the sheradised ones, which are not as good, I found, having sat in a damp garage for over 10 years, I noticed had no disenable corrosion on them. I cannot imagine you will have any by way of exposed framing nails. I never had an issue with SS nails, they work just the same in my gun.

Have you gone to speak to him, you have clearly done something that upset him, I am not suggesting that what you did was unreasonable, but certainly in his eyes it is/was. Just speak to the guy, when you knock his door etc. just say I would like to have a conversation without prejudice and that you will respond via his solicitor but you want this without prejudice discussion with him directly.

They do not need to be on their own circuit. A dedicated circuit is fine, but given they are all battery backup its not the same issue really. In an ideal world yes you would but not a requirement and I am not really sure, having done it myself, what real benefits it really has. I always spec them on their own circuits I have to say, one of the first things that get's VEed out though.

It depends what your putting on top of it... What was down before? Sub-floor quality requirement is driven by floor covering type.

It looks fine, but a bit of a long way round...

Got to be real wood for me. When we renovated the first floor I used all Howdens MDF stuff. It looked good for a while but now looks awful and by the time I got to the extension and ground floor I had converted to pine. I also go for the bigger stuff, 145mm I think, it looks great and is very forgiving. I am going to rip out all the MDF over the next year or so upstairs and replace it as rooms get redecorated. I literally hate it!

Almost everything can be DIYed in my experience, even the stuff that apparently cannot! Its just a case of buying or borrowing the right tools! MVHR would be very high on my list of easily DIYed items.

What a great question. I will be intrigued as to responses you get on this one if anyone has experience and further down the line, your own findings of what happens when your contractor demo's your building. I am going to suggest it will just get broken up into the rubble as the walls fall, I do however hate the idea that some of this rubbish is just going to break up, blow around, get mashed into foam powder which will go into the ground where it will stay for centuries. I don't even like PIR insulation being cut outside and all that dust going into gardens/sites. Everywhere I look contamination from man made materials is in the ground. Stuff like block and brick and cement and even glass is bad enough but at least it is more or less inert and as far as I know would cause no pollution in terms of a contamination that can leach through into the soil/water.

Probably not - even if they did, they might just send a email or letter to the electrician telling them to sort it, but they will immediately treat you with contempt, because you are not paying their subscription. They will also probably almost immediately treat you as a laymen and try a fobbing off exercise. Just to understand this, did your electrician install a new CU (consumer unit)? I would expect him maybe to have done an EICR before the board was done to highlight any issues, after the board is installed I would then expect an EIC for the board, but the whole installation should be checked now he has replaced the heart of the system.

NICEIC is just a subscription gathering organisation in my eyes, as with many of these professional organisations. I have more or less been in engineering consultancy my whole career, I've been a member of a professional membership for 1 year until I came to renewal and realised I'd given someone £350 the year before for absolutely no reason - well, apart from the magazine, which was pretty much a magazine full of advert articles! A few years ago I did some research into it all, and came up with the answer that in Scotland anyway, you don't actually need to be a member of any of these organisations, its just implied and people expect it now, but as you say it doesn't actually mean good sparks. Thinking aloud here for some discussion Dave regarding the immerser on the ring; I'd say that within 314 - division of installations, that will suggest that a hot water heating circuit should not be combined with a kitchen ring, it also ruins the diversity figures and the circuit design is being stretched having a 11-12A continuous (hours) load on it when other kitchen appliances kick in.

Get your plumber and electrician back for starters and get that mess sorted! I'd ask your plasterer to put some access hatches in for when those unsupported and stressed push fit Tee joints are so when they blow off you can get in and fix it quickly.

How have you calculated this? Have you applied diversity and or done a load analysis?

3.4 lpm sounds like a dribble. I think that will be one of those showers you will be shifting about looking for some water!

If you tell me what your planning on installing in your workshop, I can do you a cable calc and quick written "design".

I created a external lighting circuit which does all external lighting on house and garage with a feed into the garden for garden lighting. I have interlinked all of them onto a photocell (or some are wirelessly with Shelly's switched via a link to the supply) so that they all come on at the same time (I hate lights coming on in dribs and drabs. I can override it all too from a switch in the kitchen or my phone. Then down one side of the house the lighting from the gate is then on a PIR so it only comes on if activated. We also have one light that comes on at 10% when dark and ramps up to 100% on motion detection for the log store. General back door, main side of house and front door lighting is on when it is dark all night. All the lighting is the same except 1 piece (the log store light) and it looks good.

I'd run a 10mm 2 core SWA (you can use 3 core if you want and use a core as earth but the armour on a 10mm² cable is of greater cross section than the core will be therefore compliant). That can be put onto a 50A or 63A supply no bother which will let you run more or less anything you want out there. I even have the cable calcs sitting around me somewhere as I ran them for a garden office my parents are building at the moment and they have a 28m run from house consumer unit to new office consumer unit and I based that supply on general small power, electric water and space heating. People can sometimes get carried away with power supplies to garages and things and say you need 80A services and things, however I always point out your whole house will only be on a 100A fuse maybe even 80A in some cases yet they want to export nearly 80% (or 100%) of this to a garage/workshop!

So you know what you must do, stay in the renovating phase for as long as possible and your bills will be cheap!

If you remember!

So you just added submeters onto various circuits? Low tech indeed, I have no objection to that but I would forget, I struggle to submit my meter readings to the utility on time!

What data logging equipment are you using? PV array should be going live in the next week or so and I would like to monitor the rest, I have got some ideas but always keen to get real world, tried and tested reviews.

I always show socket positions either side of the bed and at about 800mm AFFL - in the notes I sometimes put, "Bedside sockets to suit bedside furniture height, min 150mm above table/cabinet top" - but that is generally in hotels or care homes where the spec of the bedside table will be known. In residential jobs I usually just say 800mm unless the bed position is not absolute or there is some other reason. I placed bedside sockets in my own house and stupidly put them at at circa 300mm, so now the bedside cabinets need to sit much further forward than I'd usually like to be able to get in a use them. We don't have table lamps, we have wall lamps with dedicated switches in the spares and in the master we have bedside pendants, so the sockets are only for plugging things like chargers, laptop power supplies etc.

I buy the Avocet ABS ones from Home Secure Shop.

They are in all honesty all correct, however about 1:4 is about the normal mix. 1:3 would be severe environment with 1:8 being passive. I usually go about 1:4.5.

Yup - really good idea and saves exporting your energy for peanuts!

If you are trying to do what I think you are trying to do, then what about this? Solar iBoost? https://www.heatershop.co.uk/solar-iboost-solar-immersion-controller