Carrerahill

Not sure what that bodge of ridge tiles is about. As far as I know those are ridge tiles for a ridge. What should have been used is called a "Secret joining/bonding gutter" - it looks like a flat piece of tray with an upstand in the middle, the flat sections have some grooves and usually a rough finish to limit water travel, you cut back the neighbouring roof slightly, they lap the hopefully good felt up onto the gutter, then your new roof membrane is laid up to the gutter before re-covering. Job done. Looks like someone has gone cheap and used tiles on your roof instead of slate which has maybe caused the contractor (horse tied up out back?) some issues with the joint. But that is an abomination. If they have not used a gutter, which I suspect they have not or else why the ridge tile bodge? Then I do wonder if they have just lapped the felt, then tried to rely on the ridge tiles and mortar to provide the seal. The ridge tiles and mortar are now ropey and there you have it, a leak.

There is about 3' under my house, I screeded some of it as I use part of it as a sort of plant/storage area, my son is short enough he can walk about down there just now, it's tempting to stick him down there to play!

He takes it out in bags in his trousers and kicks it about the yard at exercise time.

I had a friend who had this issue, we were convinced it was a leak because he lives on a hill and his garden slopes away quite briskly from the rear elevation which was where the problem was worst. Both of us being in the construction design sector we pulled our resources and ended up getting friends who were civil engineers, water engineers, water retaining structure engineers, geo-technical engineers etc. to come and inspect and give thoughts, we even dug up his drive and inspected soil pipes, dug test pits around the property and he got Scottish Water to come and investigate. No leaks. The water & ground guys eventually concluded on the cause which was likely an increased water saturation level due to increased rainfall and the soil conditions not being ideal for drainage, the soil samples suggested this too. Increased rainfall over the last few years has changes the soil conditions to a point it changed the behaviour of water percolation in the area - @Gus Potter alludes to this in his post above too. Essentially water was percolating through the ground from the higher area in front of his house, but when it came to his cellar the water was pooling as it was easier for the water to filter up and through into the unsealed cellar rather than to continue on its merry route down the hill away from his home through saturated clay and silt. The constant flow of water coming down the hill kept filling the cellar and essentially the height increased as the water level in front of the house was far higher. He had a groundworks contractor dig out around his house and install French drains. The problem was also seasonal so it took nearly 6 months before he could see the results. It worked! So, even just eyeballing the lie of the land around your property etc. might give you some clues.

Is that what you call it? In the last 5 years about 5 houses on one street near here were bought, demolished and better ones built. The houses were 400K houses, I wonder how the financials stacked up if I was honest. As I see it there becomes a point where a home on a plot on a street will struggle to go for much more. Say they build a new house and want £800,000 for it, I don't know that people are going to pay £800,000 for technically a smart £400,000 house. If you had £800,000 you buy a £800,000 house within a street, area or land that is £800K worth.

What was wrong with it? The firebox should be in negative pressure.

Can you make the house super well insulated, then put in a wood boiler in an outhouse or garage or utility room to charge a big buffer tank which you can then use to feed rads? You can then control the amount of heat that goes into your home so you don't overheat. You could also then have a little 5kW stove if you want "the look" and use it on coldest nights but still heat with wood fuel.

If a tree is cut down, because someone is building a house for example, and it gets chipped or cut up and taken away, the chances are it is going to either get burnt, or allowed to rot somewhere. Either way CO2 will be returned to the atmosphere, as a cycle is is fairly short in the grand scheme of things. Tree's are being planted at a great rate, there are more trees in the northern hemisphere now than 100 years ago, all taking in CO2, CO2 which previously was not embodied in a tree, if that tree is planted for fuel, then the CO2 was just borrowed from the atmosphere to grow the tree. Had that tree not been grown for wood fuel the CO2 would never have been taken out the atmosphere anyway. We must apply the law of conservation of mass. As a process it must be carbon neutral, you cannot create or destroy the carbon, in this instance it is just the speed in which the carbon is released into the atmosphere changes from slow to pretty damn fast. It is however by definition carbon neutral - processes excluded. For every tree used as fuel about 1.1 is used for construction. Therefore for every 2.1 tree's planted only 47% of the Carbon is quickly released into the atmosphere, i.e. within 1-2 years typically which means 53% is stored long term and the construction timber value is increasing year on year. If you include haulage and preparation of firewood, then you add some CO2 to the process, but most energy for heating currently releases CO2, wood fuel just has a benefit that it is renewable and the CO2 is cyclic. Interestingly, if you grow a carrot and eat it, you have taken CO2 out the atmosphere stored it, you eat the carrot, the human body uses the energy, or maybe stores some as fat, you burn the energy and breath most of the CO2 back out, some remains as solid waste. If you grew that carrot in your garden, then that carrot is pretty much CO2 neutral as a food stuff.

About the only thing you will be able to afford - assuming DIY woodfuel, which is about the only way this should ever be done - to run in the near future and they cannot turn it off when the SHTF. It can be about carbon neutral as a fuel where you are a self wood fuel producer - you must however allow for some chainsaw fuel. If you bring it in from external sources then the C02 starts to add up a bit, keep it local. All the wood I burn is from within about 2 miles of the house, I reckon a litre of diesel to haul it in, then maybe a litre of petrol for the chainsaw. I do sometimes bring in wood from about 25 miles away but I am going there anyway. I know people who got stoves and then buy heaps of kiln dried stuff from Latvia... seriously! I have no issue with the many many many stoves which the media like to include in their false pollution figures that get burnt at Christmas and the odd cold night in January. They are £2500 sculptures that emit very very little by way of pollution. The only argument is the actual particulate, depends where you live, if you live isolated from other houses/people then the argument looses its gravitas. The figures that are banded about are totally inaccurate and tell a narrative that enviro types want to tell. The pollution in the room argument is one of my favourites.

Right got you, so your limited to 8kW which is your 2 inverters, but in fact you could actually have 4 inverters at 2kW and your DNO would be fine. I just wondered if you were being told porkies. Micro-inverter installs have 10's maybe even 100's of inverters. You could of course do this entirety off record and just not export. Have they capped you at 8kW then? Which DNO is that? I know some were 5kW per phase. 8kW sounds more generous.

Ask for a price from some IDNO's as well. Not sure about domestic like this but we get prices from Energetics etc - often cheaper. That is commercial, including residential development certainly but not domestic like your application would be - you can also do the dig on your land yourself to save some £££'s - maybe even lay the cable too. It varies from operator to operator. Basically they don't want your generated electricity, it is a pest for them - shocking, pardon the pun, actually because they will be forced in the not too distant future to make it easier for microgeneration connectivitly. I would like to ditch grid connections altogether and suspect I will get there eventually.

In what context,? In general you can have as many as you want.

I still ended up with a 8-10" slab!!!

Like the time I needed 40 tons of hardcore for my garage!

Something most architects don't have unfortunately. One of our projects just now is an apartment complex, architects went and drew a stunning looking building as elevation drawings, some OK looking apartment layouts, but the building could not work, none of the drainage would line up, soil pipes would be dropping into lower floor bedrooms and things, these were no risers, when we told them we needed space for utilities, they said, oh can you not make it work through the fabric of the building... structural columns in the middle of livings rooms and kitchens, clearly didn't understand how a building goes together. Do not get me wrong, I know some brilliant architects, they produce wonderful buildings, but they could go onto a site and build it themselves, that makes the good ones, ones that understand just how materials work together and go together and the makeup of various details. Either they build their own projects at home, or have a house build of their own under their belt or they go to site a lot and pay close attention.

Left hand side of image, just me, or does that course look a bit bendy along the line?

For my self-build I bought I got some Leica kit for site levels, already had a Fluke laser measure (+-0.2mm up to 100m) and some other site marking kit. Or find a local topo company that you can use, build up a relationship with them and you will get a decent price.

Should be no flicker on a good constant voltage LED source as it dims by reducing voltage. Plenty of good 0Hz LED CV supplies.

Could work, however, some considerations: The sleepers sit flat on top of each other, the external wall, would be susceptible to rain sitting/passing in between them and will become quite draughty, it will get worse as they dry out and the gap opens, even sealing it on construction would not last. You need to think about a method to enable water run off - options may include asking a mill to cut the sleepers with a groove and raised "key" section with a diagonal cut to the joint to create a sort of tongue and groove affair. Check the treatment of sleepers, as this is not their intended use they tend to use treatments which are not great for we humans to breath in and touch, just make sure you are not creating a gas chamber for yourself. More of a note this one. How are you going to fix them together at a depth of 200mm - LONG coach bolts? I am sure there must be a cheaper option for you to achieve the same look - I did a fancy garden shed/log store with 100mm block up to 1200mm then a 2x3 frame on top of that, then clad the whole lot in breathable membrane, battens and timber with shoshugibon treatment. I went for vertical 100mm pieces but you could use 1x6 off saw treated for the external, I'd run the lengths through a table saw and cut the corner off to help make the water run out and drip down and out from the above board. Then inside you could buy a suitable internal wood and insulate the frame. Given the volume of timber in a sleeper, it would equate to about 5 pieces of board per sleeper.

Don't think freelance architect for self-builders is for you, with all due respect. A self-builder needs that hands on approach that so many of the veteran self-build architects give. Often they can be found on site, boots on, hard hat on, working with self-builder, contractors and builders alike and getting their hands a bit grubby, offering solutions, being part of it all. £5K - no. Now before you suspect I just think it is too high a price for a package or work and "don't know what goes into it" - I do all my own architectural design and CAD (I am a consulting engineer so in the right industry to self design and draw in CAD), most of what I/we (the firm) do, is make a building work after an architect has done the plans and elevations so I am well placed to pull together a Tender package - unless you are onto the big Grand Design style house, then I don't think there is 5K in the average self-build, unless you will include the SE calcs, drawings and details in that too.

I agree with this, as a consulting engineer I hate when you see "Sales Engineer" on a sales rep's email signature, or some random manufacturer who has trained an 18 year old how to quantify and quote roof coverings as a "design engineer". Everyone in the construction industry now is apparently an engineer. I had someone tell me about their son who was an electrical engineer, I asked who he worked for and didn't recognise the name, I asked where the office was and she oh he is just on sites, I discovered he was an electrician, there is nothing wrong with that, but he was not an electrical engineer.

Pretty much!

https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/ Try these guys, there is even a array builder tool on the home page. I like these: https://midsummerwholesale.co.uk/buy/eurener/eurener-375w-mepv-zebra-ab-half-cut-mono they work out a good peak power for the ££££'s.

This is where a little EV would be good to consume the energy. Issue is my EV would be away from home during the main sunshine hours 3 days a week. I worked out I could get a little VW EUp on lease for the same money I spend on diesel a month, I considered it, but was put off when I realised I would not get rid of my diesel car, so I would end up paying out more albeit some of my motoring miles would be much cheaper.

I would read myself and @pocster 's post over here: Got some info that pertains to your question. I would give the grid nothing! In the grand scheme of things every solar panel generating electricity and adding it to the grid is a good thing, if we all gave 200W across the whole nation think how good even that would be, however, the system is a sham, the system, is designed, and this needs to be dealt with soon, that they are actively discouraging people from generating their own. My aunt in law gets 45p kWh from a historical tarriff, I would get 3p. My attitude it that why should I give them it!