MrMagic

Just a thought (and not a spark so take this with a bucket of salt)... but you mention above it's an old fuse box - if this was fitted correctly and compliant with the regulations at the time of fitting then I believe it's a C3 - Improvement Needed. I'm guessing you've probably got an old Wylex brown board or something along those lines, fuses only, no RCDs - provided theres no exposed live parts and the board isn't damaged in any way then thats fine, theres no immediate danger to life and no danger to life after a sequence of events (such as a loose face plate or loose wiring). Useful reading (few years out of date now) - https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/electrical-professionals/best-practice-guides/ - Guides 1 & 4 Discussion - https://www.theiet.org/forums/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=205&threadid=51909 Irrespective of all the above - the EICR coding system is open to huge interpretation, at the end of the day it comes down to you as the inspector, your experience and competency - make the decision to mark it as you deem fit and sleep well at night.

I'm afraid this pace is darn sarf - http://www.mitchellsworktops.co.uk/laminate-worktops.php - but have a flick through the brochures they link to - it lists all the stock sizes they come in, then find somewhere local to get it.

Had a quote recently for an all black panel 300W, MCS - £128 inc vat @5%. Theres some good products and prices out there at the moment.

Just thought I'd share some info here - recently had a quote for a Pylontech based system to be installed - it's actually coming in quite competitive compared to the DIY route. Pylontech batteries are £834 inc 5% vat each, 3 off + inverter, cabling, certs etc for an installed price of approx £3800 - so £3800/6kWh useable = £633 per useable kWh installed. Not quite Tesla PW 2 territory £500/kWh installed, but certainly heading in the right direction.

It's quite an eye opener sometimes at the local dump - you can see people unloading cars, SUVs and trailers rammed to the gunnels of assorted carp from the shed/garden... but the moment you turn up with a tiny offcut of Celotex, no, thats trade waste. Our local LA is now charging for plasterboard and rubble/soil waste - £2.50 per standard rubble sack or item.. had to pay £5 to get rid of an old toilet as the cistern was classed as separate to the pedestal even though I left them bolted together.

Scorchio! The bedrooms have A/C, hence the 'sawtooth' graphs. The downstairs rooms are reasonably stable - the kitchen is suffering from overheating tho, keeping the blinds closed down over the bi-folds helps to keep it down a bit. Living next to a busy road during the day somewhat limits the purging options, plus we're in a kind of a dip so the through air flow is hard to achieve.

For A2A heat pumps I've certainly noticed that there has always been a bit of a discrepancy between the heating and cooling power & efficiency - annoyingly HP manufactures seem to like to measure heating and cooling performance differently to make it even harder to compare. I'm sure someone smarter than me can explain. e.g. https://www.orionairsales.co.uk/daikin-air-conditioning-ftx20kv-wall-mounted-inverter-heat-pump-20kw7000btu-a-240v50hz-6533-p.asp Cooling capacity (Min./Nom./Max): 1.3 / 2.0 / 2.6 kW Heating capacity (Min./Nom./Max): 1.3 / 2.5 / 3.5 kW Consumption power - cooling (Min./Nom./Max): 0.31 / 0.503 / 0.72 kW Consumption power - heating (Min./Nom./Max): 0.25 / 0.524 / 0.95 kW ...so this system has up to 1Kw of additional capacity when in heating mode (max). Using my very basic maths to get a rough CoP - Cooling CoP (Nominal) - 2 / 0.503 = 3.97 Heating CoP (Nominal) - 2.5 / 0.524 = 4.77

This would be the least of my worries when buying a house - a few thoughts - - If I ever listened to everything a surveyor said I would never buy any house, ever.. - I don't have a copy of the 18th, but looking at the 17th, provided you are over 3m from the edge of zone 1 and have RCD protection then this is a perfectly ok socket - Usually (but not always), surveyors are only commenting on the general condition of the house and tend to be more focused on structurals. I'd really only start to be concerned if they had a proper electrician in performing an EICR, even then any recommendations and remediations would be the purchasers issue. Looking at the EICR guidance notes here - https://www.electricalsafetyfirst.org.uk/mediafile/100126678/best-Practice-Guide-4.pdf - the worst I could do would put that socket as a C3, but from what you've described earlier it sounds like it's compliant. I'd probably be more worried about a slipped tile or crack in the wall.... surveyors love a good crack. Edit - Those EICR notes are from 2014 so take with a pinch of salt but you get the general idea of what people are looking for when inspecting.

Not the most eco-friendly option (depending on where you buy your leccy from) - but mini-split air con units are the best money I've probably ever spent. All bedrooms fitted with them back to a single outdoor unit - the only drawback being that they can only do one function at a time (all cooling or all heating). Budget approx £1000+vat per room inc fitting.

Just the little financial bit on the right hand side here - https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/powerwall

If you're looking at the larger powervault (i..e 6kWh).. then bear in mind that the Tesla PW2 @ 13kW is only a grand more for over double the storage.

As a complete newbie on Sunamp - can someone advise if the heating element in the electric only version is designed to work with something like a Solar iBoost wheres its power draw is proportional to 'spare' PV, as apposed to full 3Kw, all or nothing. Considering using it to store any excess PV generation as either a combi pre-heat or with a solar diverter.

I must admit, after reading that Drax report the other day, it certainly hits home just how reliant we are on Gas as a heating medium. It's certainly spurred me on to look more seriously at energy storage - be it heat (Sunamp) or electric (Tesla) - as mentioned above the financials don't stack up particularly well but a lot of what I've been doing at home is about minimising monthly bills and investing for the future. You could have broadly similar type of argument about cars - every day they are costing you a small fortune (depreciation, tax, fuel, maintenance) but we don't even think twice before ploughing money in to them.

Was asked exactly the same question when we sold our last house - didn't have any paperwork due to some over zealous pre-move cleaning. I basically replied saying that we don't have anything to hand but if the purchaser wanted it then I'm happy for them to arrange and pay for an engineer to take a look Nothing happened after that and the sale still went through at the original asking price. I'm pretty sure some of this is just solicitors box ticking.

Chaps - I'm also in a similar position, I actually only need a single window for a loft conversion - pretty standard casement, 1700w x 1200h, alu-clad timber, nothing fancy. At the moment Rationel and Velfac are quoting £1700 (supply only) for just the one window which just seems bonkers to me! Can anyone recommend some more companies to approach? (or is £1700 for just one window the going rate?!). Maybe I'm just stuck back in the days of uPVC where I can get a whole house done for £1700!.. I know, I know, it's not an apples for apples comparison.

Not sure on a A2W ASHP, but I've got a couple of A2A HPs and they are pretty darn quiet. One thing which I hadn't considered is background noise - where I live the daytime noise is high but after 8pm it's basically silent - when the background noise drops you can certainly hear the compressor running... but even then it's pretty much whisper quiet. The only time that the noise is noticeable for me is at the end of a heating/cooling cycle - the outside unit kicks the fan in to full pelt for 60 seconds and theres some noticeable 'wooshing' then.

I've an old Edwardian house but we have 75% rads and 25% UFH - one loop covering the kitchen/dining area on a combi. Works lovely. Due to the age of the house I run the flow temp at 60degC to keep enough heat coming out the radiators but I have a thermostatic mixer+pump on the UFH which brings the flow temp down enough. Also linked to a Honeywell Evohome system which has a cycle timer setting, 5mins on mine I believe.

I went round and round on this topic for ages when fitting out. In the end I decided the best way to cover all bases was to star wire all lighting circuits and switches back to a central point (three in my case) and then it gave me the option to fit whatever combinations of switches/lights/control gear I wanted. If the system is no longer supported or I wanted to revert to a 'dumb' system you could pull the gear out and rewire it in the central panel without having to trash the house. In the end I went for a Zwave system - its been working for a few years now, no complaints.

@Alphonsox Good question - Just been trying to think of anything low power with a live wire that I can clamp... not sure I've got anything readily available at the moment, sorry. Perhaps try contacting the vendor? I'll have a dig around and see if I can find something that I can modify to test with... EDIT: The folks over at OpenEnergyMonitor look to have done some low current testing using similar hardware - general consensus seems to be that anything <50w may be incorrectly reported. https://github.com/openenergymonitor/emontx2/blob/master/accuracy.md https://learn.openenergymonitor.org/electricity-monitoring/ct-sensors/measurement-implications-of-adc-resolution-at-low-current-values

I recently ordered a 3 channel board from this place - http://lechacal.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page - works really well. You still need to write your own code to 'do something' with the data that comes out of the sensor board but theres some examples on their wiki on how to do basic integrations. They do a 7 channel version for £35 (ex clamps). Still uses the same CT clamps from the beginning of this thread so not ideal for stuffing inside a consumer unit. This one is monitoring my garden office/shed at the moment -

Worktops purchased from a local supplier (although they may have expanded their range since I purchased) Lights above and below the cupboards are IKEA Omlopp LED strips, nice and easy to install and all pre-wired

Very late to this topic - but also got a DIYK kitchens - good kitchen, no real complaints with it! Same comments as everyone before - they are standard chipboard carcases, solid MDF doors (matt white), blum hardware. When we were looking we checked out DIYK, B&Q, Wickes and IKEA - Wickes and DIYK came in roughly the same price but DIYK was fully assembled so that just made it so much easier. Drawbacks - large spares - if they have missed them or if you have run out of the odd bit (like plinth fixings, odd spacers and such) they will simply post them out to you FOC. Anything more substantial can attract the full delivery van charge again. My parents have just fitted a B&Q Cook & Lewis kitchen and it is also very nice, cost competitive - a lot of the final finish quality coming from the installation. Pics attached - excuse the utter mess and unfinished state... DIY, life etc.

Thanks Nick. For the sake of a few hundred quid I guess it makes sense to run it in now.... can easily turn it off at a later date but would be a pain to install after the fact.

Hello all, In the process of planning a loft conversion but getting a bit stuck on heating options at the moment - - Loft conversion on standard, nothing grand, Victorian terrace - Will be insulated to meet or exceed regs (but nothing spectacular as we still need to stand up in it!) - Air tightness will be as good as you can get it in a leaky Victorian house (but with good attention to detailing on the conversion) - Glazing will be pretty standard veluxes ....so your basic run of the mill loft conversion. Where the plot thickens - how to heat the darn thing. We have a standard/modern mains gas combi boiler heating the existing bedrooms - logic would dictate that we simply extend that in to the loft however we also have an A2A heat pump with mini-splits in each of the existing bedrooms, primarily used for air con in the summer. (#firstworldproblems) Now the plan is to fit an additional mini-split unit up in the loft room for summer A/C.... thats a given. The question is - do I bother fitting a radiator up there as well or take the plunge and just have the heat pump? (note.. there will probably also be a little electric heated towel radiator on a timer in the ensuite) I know A2A heat pumps work in heating mode in my area, I use one to heat my office (read: shed) and it works remarkably well. On the worst, humid days it does of course drop in to defrost mode but not for any great periods of time (and it appears to do it without sucking huge amounts (if any) heat from the heated space). Mains Gas + Electricity is on an 'eco/green' tariff so electric is low/no-carbon as such. Bit of a ramble on my part... but whats everyones thoughts? anything I've overlooked? am I overthinking this too much?

For info/inspiration here's something that I'm just in the process of finishing up - my garden shoffice (half shed, half office) Wall construction was (inside to out) - - 11mm OSB - Multifoil insulation (I was curious to see how well it worked..) - 4x2 stud filled with 100mm Knauf Ekoroll - 9mm OSB - Breather membrane - Horizontal batterns - Vertical cladding (gravel boards "good" side facing out) (there should be more air gaps and such, but it's a shed at the end of the day...!) Roof is EPDM on 18mm OSB, 4x2s @ 600 centers, mix of ekoroll and celotex, 11mm OSB internal finish Floor is 18mm OSB on 6x2s @ ~400 centers. Ekoroll supported by breather membrane looped over the joists Costs add up surprisingly quickly but saved money by sourcing all the joists from a nearby bungalow that was being scalped and turned into a house - the builder said it's a shame as it all treated, slow grown, dead straight wood but because it isn't graded he has to burn it or skip it. All the joist wood cost me £20 + labour for denailing etc. Smallest 9000btu ASHP for heating Still needs some finishing touches and another coat of paint/stain (Cuprinol Shades) but otherwise it's probably very close to what you're trying to achieve.