Andehh

I had the first extended Christmas holidays where all I did was normal household maintenance this year! It's so worth it when you make it out the other side, I actually look back through the photos I took and chuckle at the shit shows, and emotional lows I went through, the most frustrating, the small victories, and the moments of dispair. Amazing how much relatively short periods of time soften all wounds! Keep at it team

We have an illuminated mirror with one of those swipe to turn on. During the night there is the slightest of glows that comes from it, only slightly noticable in the dark. I'm sure I read somewhere that power cables running long distance in parallel can allow a tiny "cross contamination" which generates just enough to trigger the LEDs. Sticking it into Copilot AI give other reasons including sharing a neutral etc, might be worth looking through it..... -----—--------------------------- A faint glow from LED lights even when they’re switched off is surprisingly common, and it usually points to one of a few electrical behaviours rather than a fault with the bulb itself. You can think of it as “ghost current” finding its way through the circuit. ⚡ Common Reasons LEDs Glow When Off 1. Residual Current in the Circuit LEDs need very little power to produce light. Even a tiny trickle of electricity—far below what an incandescent bulb would notice—can make them glow. - Happens often in older wiring. - Can be caused by long cable runs acting like an antenna. 2. Backfeed From Other Circuits If your lighting circuit shares a neutral with another circuit, a small amount of current can leak across. - Very common in UK homes with multi‑gang switches. - LEDs are sensitive enough to pick it up. 3. Illuminated or Smart Switches Switches with: - Neon indicators - LED indicators - Smart switch electronics …all allow a tiny current to pass through even when “off”. That tiny current is enough to make LEDs glow faintly. 4. Capacitive Coupling If your switch is on the neutral side instead of the live side (common in older UK wiring), the lamp still has a live feed present. The cable itself can induce a tiny voltage into the LED driver. 5. Poor Quality LED Drivers Some cheaper LED bulbs don’t fully discharge stored energy when switched off, so they “sip” power and glow for a while. --- 🔧 Practical Fixes (Safe, Non‑DIY) I won’t tell you to do electrical work yourself, but these are the usual remedies an electrician would consider: - Ensuring the switch breaks the live, not the neutral. - Adding a load resistor or anti‑flicker capacitor to absorb ghost current. - Replacing the switch if it has an indicator light. - Checking for shared neutrals or wiring faults. - Upgrading to higher‑quality LED bulbs with better drivers. --- If you want, you can tell me: - Whether your switch has a little indicator light - Whether the LEDs are on a dimmer - Whether they glow constantly or only briefly after switching off …and I can narrow it down to the most likely cause for your setup.

How easy are these frogstar type units to install? Is this default job for an electrician, or does it need someone who has specialist knowledge? I'm very tech literate (but entirely new to home energy) , so would research the right combination of inverter to suit my needs... But could my normal sparky install it in a few hours?

Thank you for all that, now that you say it... It makes perfect sense... If a cable can carry electricity in one direction... Spooky that it can do it in reverse!! 🤔😂

Could I locate batteries and inverter in nearby garage (cable length of around 8m) then utilise the existing armoured cable that runs between garage and fuse box (originally there for a 7kw car charger)? Existing 3kw solar and inverter is tied to a very old and lucrative FIT, so happy to leave that seperate . 😎

I presume you then need to buy a seperate inverter, which is wired into the fuse box?

Expanding foam every gap you see where air could get in, but shouldn't enter. Any small gaps use silicone sealant.

Our builder went through the villages main power cable 1 week into our build, several houses on emergancy gennies, half the village without power all day, and about 4 days of 24 hour work to resolve. Architects assured us builder was responsible, and had insurance for this... And when I gently confronted him on the day, he crossly assured me his wife wasn't getting a new car this year... Thank fully he managed to prove the cable wasn't laid to the drawings, and we never heard about it again. Its a shitty situation, but if there is a doubt check before you dig is common sense... And a professional will know there are ways of checking. However.... Disputing and falling out over (say...) £5k bill on a £150k build will come back to bite you one way or another....but if it's £5k off a £15k bill..... So you need to judge the situation pragmatically

Also interested to know! I want the battery in the external garage, but the fuse box and solar inverter is in the utility room. I have 2 x armoured cables, and 2 x Cat6a, running between the two, originally for car chargers, can these be used to connect the battery to the house? I have no comms cables installed, is this an issue? Thanks

Fingers crossed! Let us k ow how you get on

We have a very large recirculation, probably 100m? We're a bungalow with high ceilings, and fairly spread out layout. I thinks it's a 22mm circulation loop outbound, 15mm inbound, with very thick Armaflex pipe insulation wrapped all around it. 30 to 40mm thick maybe? I wanted high flow as much as possible. The circulation is on for about 14 hours of the day, but is timed to come on in the cheap night tariff when DHW comes on, so the whole loop warms up during cheap period. It drops a 49 degree 300L cylinder 3 degrees from DHW being turned off around 5.45 am, and me walking past it now 90 mins later. Some natural cylinder loss as well. I'd say that's totally worth it for what is otherwise a near 1 minute wait at the kitchen tap for hot water. Two core bathrooms on the circulation loop is within 10 inches if the tap.. Instant... The kitchen/other bathrooms is annoying as it's in the ceiling above it, so takes around 5 seconds (!) to get to the tap, I shoulda got them to loop it into the cupboard. Can't win them all!!

Well done OP, thanks for the update!

Fire doors have a reassuring heft and sound deadening benefit as well... Not always a bad thing to have that in a high quality home!!

Go to screwfix, ask for 4 cans of expanding foam, and an expanding foam gun. Screw the can onto the gun, and pull the trigger in your garden to get an idea of the flow and how it expands etc. It's horribly sticky stuff, so don't get too carried away. All holes, gaps, areas you feel air could be coming in... Squirt deep into it and slowly pull the nozzle out. It will expand out, but it is very easy to cut back with an old stake knife 24 hours later. It's messy stuff!! YouTube videos will give you a good idea of what you want to achieve. That will resolve air movement. Or... Ask the builder to do this, it's a 15minute job. ________________________ Before you panic about the quality of install, how old is the rest of the house? Whilst the extension is highly unlikely to meet the HIGH expected standards of Build hub (we're all home building nerds!!!), modern building regs for an extension are better then a house a few decades old... So all needs to be viewed proportionally.

The shoulder months are also problematic for us (!) we are in a well Insulated house (miles off passive though... 2.7 airtight, 0.11 floor, 0.22 walls, p. 14 roof). We also have a huge amount of glass & very high ceilings of 3.2 to 4.2m, and regularly during shoulder months the house isn't cool enough to trigger the heating (21 - 22 degrees) , but the tiles feel cold under foot and you can actually feel quite chilly... Maybe due to the large glass? As a result we actually need to force the heating to come in (set thermostats to 24 degrees) for a couple of hours to warm the tiles up. We are also heavily zoned, which works well for us, as we have a very complicated design, so can fine tune the boost to rooms that need it, and leave the bedrooms etc