Carrerahill

They have clearly never worked on a commercial project with ducted services in their life. They have created a problem now.

I'd have gone under the footing with it in a duct. I would just have your bricky build over it, lintel it to be on the safe side (although it will be totally unnecessary) then within your property you can take the cable to wherever it needs to go, issue you now have is that the cable is very near the surface on the outside, depends how far up your going to be bringing soft/hard landscaping but I would want coverage over that, if not get it housed in a red uPVC duct and get it down again as quickly as you can.

I would ask to see an example of their technical drawings and warrant drawings and see what detail they produce. Someone who actually understands how buildings go together at all levels is a must at this stage, your architect may well be this person, but they might also be more akin to an interior designer. It really all boils down to money I suppose. Good plans now will save money in the long term and will give you a better more integrated and coordinated building in the end. If the plan details everything from the first concrete foundation to drainage to membrane details then everyone can price something that is firmly stated, as soon as there is interpretation then things can go south. Builder A might use the cheapest of all materials and a high labour cost, builder B might use better materials but a lower labour cost, so you have two similar prices. Then builder C might be the most expensive, so you take a punt on builder A because he was a nice guy and looked more professional. So you end up with, smaller rebar or lower strength concrete and lower service life membranes and cheaper windows and doors and electrical accessories and taps and WC's etc. It is like ordering materials, ask for timber and you will get heck knows what, ask for a piece of treated C24 2x6 4.8m long and then they all have to provide the same product at their price.

Are you sure you then want to enter into the major works phase on a house you have just moved into then?

Agree with all of that. The whole micro-generation sector is just a lot of forms and red tape. This in my eyes just disincentives the whole thing for many and has created an industry of rip off merchants. I know someone who paid just short of 10k for 2.6kW on his roof! - easy install, usual kit. 10k? Why?

Is SEG not the replacement for FIT? Apply for SEG for the new array and see what happens? Or, if it was me, I would not registrar the new array and just export it and get the money on the FIT! There are no solar police! I am an advocate that all this stuff should be abolished, it should be as simple as installing a compliant solar generation system, the meters should be bi-directional - if you use a kW you pay for a kW, if you generate a kW you export a kW and the meter rolls back 1 click. Checks and balances could be added, such as max array size under this scheme, but it would just simplify it all and do away with frankly a lot of total rubbish.

My high level pressure washing experience was for prepping the walls for dry-dashing and cleaning up a roof area at the end of the build and I just used a long hose for the lance, I have a very similar, if not the same, Nilfisk to you and I just used an extension hose on the HP side.

Agreed, planning drawings are basically pretty pictures, often I find of buildings that cannot be physically built! Like a block of flats we are working on where the planning architects included no columns anywhere in the whole building, now people have columns in their living rooms and stacks running through their walls; this is a mid-market development in London! Not all architects are like this, I work with a few small practises where they are great and do know how to build a building and not just sketch it.

It takes us about 2 days to write an electrical spec, 2 days to write the mechanical spec... see where this is going. For the general build I would expect building warrant drawings with enough detail will give them enough to build the building, but not all drawing packages are this good. Normally an architect is not the best for these drawings, they are more about looks and polished things and bits of slate forming openings and glazing and decorative cladding drip edge details around windows. Once you have a drawing that specs, every detail of the building you can then worry about the internal stuff, like plumbing and electrics, with obvious chicken and egg situations such as drainage routes and popups, duct for electrical services etc. If you want a certain level of electrical fitout, mechanical fit out, joinery fit out then you will need to write a spec. I would even spec cable types and manufacturers to stop that cheap Turkish cable I have seen on some sites recently that looks very poor. This is the only way you can get an apples for apples quote and even then there will be exclusions and things not as per spec. For example, drawings might say, plasterboard with full skim quote, yet they will price for taping only. They need to be told the spec is the spec, not a guide, not a suggestion, its the spec.

I personally would remove the ply and relay with new stuff, but that is me and I just have a slight obsession with things being, as intended or without repair if that makes sense. For example I object to holes in walls being made and patched, I want a full sheet of plasterboard put in place!

Gimmick. No tech spec in sight. Don't see this taking off. Bet it costs more than the equal power density installed on the roof out the road which will look better and can be upgraded using off the shelf panels.

Both our posts suggest the same issue and it just confirms my belief about merchants. They just are a bit clueless.

https://www.vpsunderfloorheating.co.uk/product/complete-wet-underfloor-heating-kits-150mm-pipe-spacing/

There are some online retailers who do kits, I would start with some calls to them or if you have patience, unlike me, write up an email of what you need to do, area, heat source type, details of the installation etc. and get them to spec and quote but ask them to spec and quote based on availability. That is what I do for most of my procurement and usually go with the most helpful and fair business. Your plumber wants to plumb, he would rather walk away than source and buy all this. He will go to the usual merchants who will be the usual unhelpful most most likely and will stock 1 type and anything other than bog standard it will be a big deal and a big fuss, so your plumber has run. Not used these guys, but just an example: https://www.vpsunderfloorheating.co.uk/water-underfloor-heating/

Some valid points above and I will make some of my own, but you can do what you want. If you think it will really help, crack on, but be aware, my thoughts are as follows: There will be some benefits to having a single main contractor do all of it. In all honesty they should be fairly quick at demolishing, I assume, a house and can coordinate future requirements with the demo. The benefits are to the onward journey, for example, utility disconnection can be handled now and at reconnection by one, with machines on site demo and found digging can be combined with a single machine on site, certain things can be left and certain things must go. I am making a fair number of assumptions there but I am sure you can see some of the benefits.

You could try, as a bit of a bodge, setting the GU10 lamp into the base with some silicone (all of which will withstand high temps for this application - it won't melt or burn, but use silicone). Yes it means they will take a bit to get them out but a little pry with a screwdriver and it should achieve what you want. Good news is your draughty ceiling void will help prolong the life of these lamps!

I think they will still leak air. The lamp will be a tighter fit into those, but not airtight. Technically only a fire rated downlight will achieve what you want. You can get some decent fire rated GU10 down lights - but if you can stretch to the more expensive option I would high recommend it.

Install those Aurora or Luceco ones and you will not have to change a bulb all built in and fully sealed, also a little more efficient and better optics and lumen output than a GU10 LED lamp (which have little inbuild LED power supplies (drivers) which get hot and fail.

I have 3 panels on my wood shed, 340W in total, the first solar panel I got was just a little experiment and I bought a 120W microinverter from Amazon for £40 - they are now £60 and out of stock in most places, so I bought some more from Aliexpress for £25 each plus shipping. They are the little aluminium housed ones with a green and orange label, I think they are great value for money and when you consider £ per W on the roof installed and working they are very economical for little stand alone systems. I am however using a normal inverter on the house array.

Just bought some micro solar inverters from Aliexpress - hope my luck is as good as yours!

But don't buy unbranded Toolstation ones with a 120mm cutout!

Replace them with fire rated LED downlights. Something like the Aurora Enlite E8 or the Luceco F-type will work on a budget.

I have a 6kW inverter donated by a kind BH member, so I decided to buy more panels today and put it to use as I have had good success with my smaller array using micro inverters. So I decided to setup the bigger inverter so I could connect it to the Wi-Fi etc. however, no dice. It's all hooked up on the AC side, but nothing lights up on the LCD screen - so the question is, do some models not fire up unless the DC side is active? I did plug in a single panel I have in my garage just to show the inverter a non-generating closed circuit, but to no avail. I know my micro inverters, when plugged into the mains, with a PV string attached but no DC generation do nothing, they look dead, you would only get a fault warning LED if the string was generating without AC connected. The inverter manual is a bit poor - Goodwe GW6000D-NS is the model. Thoughts welcome.

If it was commercial building a load analysis would be carried out, but in the case of domestic they use a standard load, in this case an ADMD of 2.5kVA would be about normal - stick with the 15kVA and you will be more than fine and will have the equivalent of 6 houses capacity and that is as per SPEN, UKPN and Western Power, not sure about other DNO's but those 3 I deal with regularly enough and plenty of IDNO's can state with certainty that your sorted. We put in an application with Dewhurst (IDNO using Western network in this case) last week for 16 flats, each flat has a 7.9kW ASHP - all electric and some EVC's, for the whole development I applied for 52kVA total POC - 32kVA for the flats at 2kVA each and 20kVA for the landlord supply which has a lift and 2 EVC's on it. For the record, this does not mean you are fused at something lower, you still get a 100A fuse and can still pull 100A if/when needed. They just won't sell you a supply designed on your max demand or else we would all have excessive supplies. It is all designed to keep transformer sizes down and upstream HV network infrastructure sensible.

Stick with the 15 - plenty. Are you just converting your estimated load into kVA? If so this is where you are going wrong. 60kVA is the magic number, over 60 you need CT metering which is costly in its own right. A couple of K for the CT chamber and meter etc.