markharro

On that I dont have the technical knowledge to comment. We are building a passive house which may or may not have an ASHP. At the moment the issue is space more than anything else. Its not really an option to put in a new tank and there would then be a need to take it out and store during the build. Pretty happy I can connect up the cold water feed and from what others have said it cant be rocket science to turn off the cold feed to the water tank. The electrics are the issue. I need to be happy I can isolate the consumer unit without killing myself (having watched a few Youtubes now I think I can. But I am still unclear whether I can simply unwire the feed to the immersion and then use the empty terminals to wire in a new cable of sufficient rating (what would that be?) that goes to the pull cord isolator and then on to the shower? Or is the compromise to do all of it apart from the connection to the consumer unit and then pay an electrician to that bit?

Thanks for the reply. I wondered about the cable and can easily replace it with a heavier duty. A basic question but where does the cold water supply normally enter the tank - at the top?

We have an all electric house with an old copper water tank with immersion. It has recently sprung some sort of leak although hard to see where through all the old foam insulation. Anyway this got me thinking about whether to simply disconnect it and instal an instant shower. I should explain that we have been used to boiling water on the cooker to do the dishes etc rather than using the immersion as a matter of course and we hopefully only have another 6 months or so in this house before its demolished and we rebuild so fine to put up with minor hardships. So the question is could I instal something like this myself. I could easily connect the cold water feed but what I dont understand is how to shut down the tank and isolate it so that we solve the leaking issue. This and whether that will create any issues I am unaware of. There is also the issue of the electric. The immersion appears to run from an RCD on the consumer unit so I figured that is we decommission the tank I could redirect the cable that currently goes to the immersion - via the 2 pole isolator switch - to the shower. It would probably be a 8.5kw shower and from youtubing I saw a reference to needing a minimum 80A fuse in the consumer unit I think. From what I can make out our one appears to have a 60A. Would that be a deal breaker?

I am experimenting with Apple Homekit which no-one has mentioned yet. I have bought a Homepod mini, a smartplug, a bulb and a door opening sensor and got them all set up and working very well over Thread in the one room they are installed in. Bouyed by the impressive performance - ie instant and consistent activation I bought another bulb and a couple of further door sensors for our two outbuildings. The bulb - in an adjacent room - seems to be linked into the Thread mesh now and working. The two door sensors however appear to be too far away to join the mesh. So I will probably need to buy at least one ore smartplug to extend the mesh and I am hoping that will be enough to bring these sensors into the overall network. I am mainly interested atm in building a security system over Thread - it is looking promising so far - but down the line hope to instal Thread enabled smoke and heat dectectors and automated blinds.

How do you configure this Dave? Say you wanted 12kWp in total and had 4 set up in a standard DNO max configuration what do you do with the other 8? A second string I can understand but what type of battery and how do you prevent the battery becoming overcharged if this string cant export?

Thanks - thats just what I had been looking for - now just need to work out which is the current satellite!

Thanks but I dont mean a terrestrial transmitter

My interest is in the best quality footage whether that is HD or 4K but without paying to view the latter. There is a tiny bit of 4K on iplayer for example. I don't think that there is currently any 4K content broadcast on either Freeview or Freesat but would love to be corrected. Does anyone know if/when 4K will start to come on stream on Freeview/sat? Same goes for Dolby Atmos content. Finally is there any easy to use website to plug in your postcode that will then show the direction and angle the Freesat satellite is at as we are quite shaded to our southeast where I suspect it lies?

Yes that would work as well I think.

I've just bought a Homepod mini and and Nanoleaf bulb and Eve Energy smartplug as an experiment to see how good the new Thread wireless standard is. In short I have found it excellent - extremely quick to respond and very consistent. It has made my mind up that this will be the first choice for smarthome stuff in new project. What is needed though is a smart plug socket that is Thread enabled so it removes the need to plug in the smartplug and then another plug into that. Anyone know if there are UK Thread enabled smart sockets available right now?

Just starting out with this App having bought a Homepod mini and smart light, Want to try to automate the light to switch on/off at random times to give appearance of someone at home - is this possible in the App?

Having now invested in an Apple Homepod mini and the nanoleaf bulb and got the whole lot working together with homekit I have to say that my initial impression is extremely favourable. It just works, instantly and consistently. This Thread technology looks extremely promising and seems to me to offer real potential for a low-cost DIY home automation system that can rival a more "professional" system

https://www.bimblesolar.com/330w-perlight-solar-panels-all-black as a random example and I think the GSE tray is about £30-40

That sounds like a very expensive panel - I thought the GSE trays were around £30 so £270 for a 350? watt panel? I would have thought half that,

I think the point Dreadnaught is making is that this is the big boys' collaboration to fix the very issue you are mentioning ie to produce a unified system to bring order to the current mess. As it seems Apple Google and Amazon are on board with this I suspect it is worth paying attention to.

Thanks - I think you had mentioned this in another post that I read - I had hoped that "Thread" was this standard but from what you say it will be a subset of "Matter"? Do you know enough about this to advise whether (assuming I purchased a Homepod and Nanoleaf light to work via thread it would integrate into any future Matter infrastructure?

That might have been right up until now but all I am reading about Thread indicates it is superior to both z wave and zigbee - here for example - https://techtechandmoretech.com/news/thread-smart-home/

Just been reading about the Apple Home App - people saying its terrible even after 5 yrs of evolution. Seems really puzzling - how can't Apple make what must surely be one of their flagship Apps work properly?

Just been reading about this. Not really interested in the music capabilities as I am still a hifi separates man and, to be frank, not interested in gimmicky functionality, but what would be good would be automated blinds (even better if triggered by a temperature rise within the room); and lights that can be programmed to come on and off randomly to simulate someone at home. A couple of years ago I bought one LIFX bulb to experiment with but ended up just using it to amuse my daughter with the changing colours and then the dropped connections got annoying. I have just read that the relatively new Apple Homepod mini has a new or newish wireless technology called Thread which (appears) to offer instant action/solid connections when eg you use an App to switch something on or off that has the same wireless technology. The other plus point apparently is that all the devices mesh together so you end up being able to extend wireless connectivity easily without relying on wifi or extenders or hubs etc. Again I may be wrong here but it appears this https://nanoleaf.me/en-GB/products/nanoleaf-essentials/ is the only bulb atm that comes with this Thread wireless. Indeed a quick look on the Thread website shows a certified product list but there are not many devices listed (no blinds for example). https://www.threadgroup.org/What-is-Thread/Thread-Benefits#certifiedproducts Is this because this is so new or maybe because there are alternatives out there that are better? Be interesting to hear from anyone who knows this area who can comment - particularly anyone with experience of the Nanoleaf bulb? thanks

Just been reading up on Apple Homekit - in particular the thread wireless technology - this is sold as giving mesh capabilities and instant interaction etc. Looks like the only thread enabled bulbs available right now are these https://nanoleaf.me/en-GB/products/nanoleaf-essentials/ Has anyone used these bulbs with Homekit? thanks

We are currently trying to get planning permissions to demolish our existing house and then build a new passivehouse. The build wouldn't start for at least another year. I am giving thought right now to things like TV/broadband/wifi/security/electric blinds etc. I have to declare that I approach all of this as an amateur but we simply don't have the budget for fancypants consultants for this so I need to find easy solutions. So to throw a few things out there - 1 We don't need a landline for phone calls but obviously require an internet connection. Is 5G becoming an option now in terms of cost/performance to run a whole house's requirements? 2 Should we plan for ethernet wiring throughout the house or rely on wifi? I do have concerns about the potential health issues of a strong wifi signal but it is hard to understand if these are justified? 3 I suspect that we need some ethernet wiring at a minimum. In simple terms do we just need a router to take the incoming signal and then a big enough ethernet switch to handle all the connections needed? 4 For future proofing will CAT 6 cable be sufficient? I am thinking that we need provision for 4k right now but does CAT 6 handle 8K? 5 Intruder alarms - any recommendations for DIY systems either wired or wireless? 6 Any simple solutions recommended for lighting eg to set up random on and offs when you are out to look like someone is at home? 7 Blind automation - this could be important for passive house to address potential overheating in summer. Are there any simple solutions that can trigger a blind to be lowered when eg a temperature sensor records above a certain level? Any other things I should be thinking about. Don't worry about music as I have old school hifi separates that are good to go and am thinking of supplementing with a Plex media server etc. thanks

This is interesting. In our current house we use an aerial in the attic for Freeview and it works albeit passing lorries can shake up the signal from time to time. If all goes to plan this house could be demolished in about a year to make way for a new passivehouse. I am giving thought right now to things like TV, broadband etc. We can get by with Freeview and iplayer so my question is - obviously you can access the latter via a broadband connection but is there anyway to access Freeview through the internet instead of through a rooftop aerial? Or will there likely be in the next couple of years? thanks

Thanks for the comments.

I was hoping to make use of my existing Google (nest) fire alarm and buy more of these but it turns out that they don't make a heat detector and have no plans to so another solution is needed. From a quick bit of googling these appear to be options - https://fireguardplus.co.uk/fireguard-product-range/ and https://www.safelincs.co.uk/fireangel/ Can anyone endorse of suggest something else? I have been looking at intruder alarms recently as well - the Texecom Richocet system appears to include smoke/heat detectors in a single unit. Does anyone have experience of these in an intruder alarm system? Would these comply with the new Sottish rules or do you need a standalone heat detector? thanks

I am pretty sure that 0.6 would be more than thick enough. It is going to be screwed on to supporting battens along the top of the wall. I need 4 lengths - 2 of around 6m and 2 around 3m. At the price quoted for 0.9mm it looks like 20m worth is going to be around £300 at that guage but I think in any event that would be too thick for the purpose as I need to be able to bend it easily to cater for the undulations in the (lime) wall. Thanks for the advice - will try roofing merchants - it is a long shot but can anyone recommend any good ones in or near Edinburgh?