Carrerahill

You are right, when broken down that is where my gripe is. The whole industry is just a corrupt mess. If they offer me 5p kWh (I know higher is available from some) then I feel truly ripped off if my utility co. then charge me 50p. If the argument is that they pay wholesale, then we need to be asking why between purchase from me and sale they generate, between them, a 900% mark-up. However, I don't think wholesale/retail pricing should come into it, a unit in or a unit out. It all balances out. US, parts of Canada, Denmark etc. have net meeting (usually up to a max figure but from what I have read it is always well above any domestic installation).

It does indeed! Also appears to be storm proof its such a good snug fit. But you need to know to slide it over the handle side first then down over the drum.

Buy it. You will also need it for all the other things you forgot about or haven't even thought about yet. I got mine 7-8 years ago and it has mixed so much, concrete, mortar and render that I just couldn't imagine life without one sitting there at the ready. I need to pour 2 small founds for some block columns at the weekend, an easy mornings work to dig, mix and place concrete with the mixer about.

You are just a lowly home owner sold something by a bogus renewables company that then disappeared! My attitude here, as with many things like this, is that if you install the second PW, and configure it to sit within your current G98/G99Export Limitation, then who cares, you know it will be fine, the issue is the DNO just doesn't trust people with extra capacity in case it gets configured incorrectly. There is a potential in their eyes for it to exceed permissible export and cause higher voltage on local LV network (only you + neighbour?), and they would be right, but they need to start being more forward thinking about this because it's the future and if local government (particularly the greenies) got wind of this sort of setback to well meaning homeowners I think you could ruffle some feathers and maybe even invoke change. Another gripe of mine is not having net metering in UK (although I think it might be coming for small scale). It should be that I use a kWh, my meter rolls on, I generate, it rolls back. Fair, you scrap all the systems and offices for SEG and disband the lot, make life simple. We pay a standing charge which is meant to cover transmission costs so why they need to rip people off by paying 10-20% of market value for generated electricity is frankly just theft.

Have you considered just doing it? Configure it properly and within realms of what DNO would want and crack on. I could not professionally make this recommendation obviously but what is stopping you? There is no DNO police. There, I have thrown the written hand grenade.

You only said Ancon, I don't have a crystal ball...

Hmm, might put concrete in my sons bedroom when we do it up then, with a channel drain in the middle.

Our 4 year old regularly, i.e all the time, plays on either engineered oak / Amtico depending where he is in the house, we only have carpet upstairs. No complaints from the little scone. A nice rug helps too and if something is spilt can be machine washed.

Thanks, our bricklayer has been building things for us for about 6 years now, he is very accommodating, and does it all as weekend shifts so it creates timeframes for me to get my bits done without it impacting him. I know this will not suit all but it suit me perfectly. This was done last summer and I was doing 6-7 sheets a night after work before dinner - it was an easy shift. If you ask your guys to build like this and fit the insulation as full sheets you will get a nice neat job like this. I think the key here was installing full sheets to minimise joints and just generally make it look much neater.

This was during tape-up:

We used PIR, fully sheets with foamed and taped joints. Bricklayer put the internal walls up to a level first, then left all the wall ties sticking out, I worked out I could just push a full 4x8 sheet of 50mm PIR over the ties and they just poked through, I added the retention discs and could install about 8 sheets in 30-40minutes, it was comical how fast it went on, we got a really tight fit, jointed and taped it all and it looked like a perfect foil box. If I was doing it again, I would probably use 75mm PIR, I would even look into stretching it to 100mm PIR, but it makes the walls thick at 350mm, but then, not really that much worse than a TF and block build using block 100mm, cavity 50mm, and 150/175mm TF. So only 25/50mm in it.

If you have a gap, then yes you should close it up to get a better fit and seal, is this internal? Depending on how it all looks and will sit I would probably fit a length of say 19*150 onto counter battens/packers to get the desired 30mm. My reasoning for this may be driven by potential for condensation sitting on the steel and rotting out the timber, but it depends on the make up of this, what is the room type, what is the insulation, but I would be reluctant to come up hard against the steel in one single piece without considering potential issues. For fixing I would probably just pilot drill and stick some stainless self tappers in. Shot fire would be good but I am going to guess you may not have access to one.

Which ones in particular? I am seeing hits for 250 for £50-140 depending on which version. https://www.lbsbmonline.co.uk/wall-ties-st1-250mm-box-of-250-cavity-tie?gclid=Cj0KCQjw0tKiBhC6ARIsAAOXutlDxpMHy2J9v06nG3-jtf1gikFb0u_h_IPVr7-w1Gpxl6sYTsn5N5saAvSiEALw_wcB

Lazy (expletive deleted).

Agreed. A plausible reason for what is happening here is that they went down the G99 with export limitation route, got lazy and just shoved in a G98 which frankly anyone can do with their eyes shut and it is not onerous.

Essentially this may be your bottleneck, you see the DNO doesn't even want the inverter to be capable of anything over 16A on a G98 - however, G99 with export limitation would permit this but you then need to fill out the export limitation details to prove you won't blast more than 16A into the system. Once we see the mfr. & model no. of the inverter you have things will start to slow into place. Even a photo of your PV system showing the units would be good - a clear photo will maybe show what is connected to what and how.

You! Get your crayons out and do a wee scribble for us, where the bits of string go into boxes and things...

We need a system schematic with model numbers of devices and we will have this sorted by sundown.

Reading the conversation between you both was both entertaining and slightly perplexing. Typically you have your PV generation, that comes down into an inverter, or lets just call it a device, because it might be a charge controller, but anyway, that "setup" you would expect would charge the batteries, and or run the house and or export. You are clearly limited on the export limit 16A rule, but that should only impact export, you should still be able to pull more and if that load dropped off it would then clip the excess to keep your export down (in truth it will spike for a fraction of a second when the load comes off, but it works it all out rather fast. So, perhaps your limiting factor is your inverter section of your setup. Maybe it is only a 3.6kW or something? I wonder if the PV installer went under the G98 rules which limit inverter size not thinking about G99 with export limitation and that is now a bottleneck?

For your paint, I would empty it, clean it out, brush/vaccum it down and then just blast on a sealer/paint type thing. I did the inside of my shed with a concrete and wood sealer, it looks and smells like white-spirit, I just blasted that on. As for the foaming, take care here, you don't want to seal it all up then start dampness/mould because there is no air movement. Foam is good for some things but often misused and really is the devil. I don't know the full details of your building but just think it all through before you potentially cause issues. I might be more tempted by a mesh and staple gun to insect proof the place.

Will the new garage be connected to the house? If it is, I would make the case to retain the existing founds based on the fact they are tied into the house and will therefore provide a better connection at found level. New founds can cause issues with differential settlement, if you dig them up and pour new ones, which are for example, much deeper or bigger, then that part of the building will start to behave differently to the rest and that can often lead to issues.

What sort of system is it? With any luck the system has not been fired up yet and could be commissioned by anyone with the savvy. If it is a Texecom or something similar you could do it yourself with the manual. Probably just needs firing up, battery connecting etc. you would need to know the cable designations for the zones and what they do but even that could be worked out by a competent spark or DIYer.

Take photos with a measuring tape in place to show bearing length and email over. Depends who made the mistake the if TG engineer and the installer both work for the same company you might find, unsurprisingly, it will be "fine". The steels should really have been ordered from site measurements to solve issues like this, or an absolute guarantee the build would be done to correct dims and this imposed onto the builder, but even then, things slip. Options may exist to rectify, in fact I am sure they do, but you need to get this looked at properly now.

I can see the benefits of this in the winter, but it seems quite a mismatch at about 66% over, typically PV oversizing is usually about 20% - this is not an industry standard but a common figure quoted in the industry. I would expect on a good sunny day you will be clipping a lot (lots of heat in the inverter - not good for it) and wasting a load of generated power. I think I would be upgrading your inverter to about an 8kW unit - get one with a reasonably low start voltage and you won't lose out on much on a grey day.

Things to consider here are how are you going to finish the blocks, if you plan to render them you will need to consider the constant dampness that will come from the inside of the planter, through the block and damage the render, if you use facing brick it could be the same, so you need to consider how you will build them and put in an isolation layer for moisture. Blocks are blocks, you do get facing blocks but you probably want to be looking at facing bricks. For construction ideas consider some methods used in the waterproofing of retaining walls. A Geo-drain type membrane might help you here.