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That’s how I have my Ubiquiti Swiss Army knife set up. Works very well. Managed to send a WiFi signal down a 20m side passage between two houses. I do have the external antennae on it though, in sure they help. We haven’t had much rain since I installed this a couple of months ago, but it works fine.

I know Ring gets a poor report on this forum because of the subscription, but I’m fairly happy now that I have improved my outdoor WiFi. we have: 1 doorbell cam (wired, but only for power) 3 outdoor PoE cams 1 outdoor battery cam plus with a solar panel battery booster 2 indoor cameras All seven cameras get 180 days rolling unlimited cloud storage which has always been reliable. If I want to keep something beyond the 180 day period, I need to download it. I pay £80 a year subscription, which is a lot, but for 7 devices I don’t think that’s so much. I can have as many devices as I want for that price, although I doubt we would ever get more than we have at the moment, possibly one more if we ever upgrade our shed into a man-cave.

You can get PoE Ring doorbell.

Is it really not advisable to use a pressure washer and just water? My contractor who installed the render has cleaned my render this way and it worked fine. I have ceresit render and appears very tough. I was trying to mark it once before drilling into it and even hitting it fairly hard with a screw driver didn’t do much damage. I ended marking my hole with a felt tip pen instead.

I have the same unit as you, and mine was also fitted about 3.5 years ago. Now I feel inadequate.

I’m a bit late to this discussion, but here are my thoughts on the ground floor: If you switch the boot room with the WC, you can install a side door that gives you direct access to the boot room. This will require making the study and/or snug a little smaller to accommodate the boot room, but I think it’s worth it as you can then avoid walking through your hallway with muddy boots. A benefit of MVHR is that having ventilation from windows for toilets is no longer required. Currently, there does not appear to be a doorway into your snug.

If 600mm goes in the ground, that leaves 2.1m above ground. If 45cm is taken by the gravel boards, and 150cm by the fence, that leaves 15cm for supporting trellis. Are you suggesting it doesn't matter whether I go for 30cm high trellis or 45cm high trellis as either way I join the trellis along the top with an extra batten, to give it additional support? Or is it still better to go for 30cm? Building trellis entirely from scratch seems unnecessarily laborious when the supplier can supply it so cheaply. The 30cm high stuff is about £11 a 6' wide board, and I only need 6 boards.

So after discussions with my neighbour it looks like we are closer to agreeing the replacement of the fence which the burglars broke through. That fence was 4.5 feet high wooden panels sitting on a concrete gravel board which is about 1.5 feet high, so a 6 foot fence in total. Sounds high, but the ground level is raised by about a foot on my side, the concrete gravel boards making up a sort of retaining wall. They didn’t climb over it, instead they managed to exploit a weakness in one of the panels and get through it. I’m now planning on replacing the 4.5 fence with this 5 foot one: https://www.eastcoastfencing.com/6ft-x-5ft-ultra-heavy-duty-closeboard-fence-panel-pressure-treated-brown?_gl=1*18b65mh*_up*MQ..*_gs*MQ..&gclid=Cj0KCQjw16O_BhDNARIsAC3i2GADgF_150ffj2f5cihPlYl8P3YmV7wN28jL8p60pK3VThN90tv0M-IaAgo3EALw_wcB The side without the horizontal pieces would be on my side, whereas the side the burglars came from would be just the vertical planks. This would sit on the concrete gravel boards, between new concrete posts. On top I will fit trellis and on top of the trellis, the scissor spikes (see previous link). my question is given the longest concrete posts I can find at a reasonable price are 2.7m, what is the maximum height of trellis I can fit: 45cm or 30cm? The fence plus the gravel board will already be 6’6”. If I add 45cm of trellis, that makes 8 feet. If only 30cm of the 45cm trellis is bounded by the concrete posts, and 15cm is sticking up above the posts, this would mean 7’6” of the post is above ground and leaves only 41cm of post below ground in the concrete foundations. That is not complying with the installation notes of the 2.7m posts which say a third of that, ie 90cm, should be underground. 90cm seems excessive, particularly because this fence is largely protected on one side by trees and on the other side it is only 10m away from a house, so shouldn’t really have much wind exposure. is 50cm foundation enough? That would allow 2.2m above ground, which would be 45cm gravel board, 150cm fence, then either 30cm or 45cm or trellis only 25cm of which would be supported by the fence posts. The other alternative is to fit 6 feet of fencing and no trellis, but police recommend trellis as it provides less support to an intruder wishing to climb over which apparently creates a psychological deterrent as the intruder runs the risk of the trellis snapping under his weight causing injury. Thoughts?

Thanks. Those spikes from https://intruderspikes.co.uk/product/wall-spikes look good. Will probably go with those.

I don't think these will be very effective if a thick blanket was placed over them. It would just bend the bird spikes over so they weren't spikey anymore. Plus being longer they are more noticeable and uglier.

Refreshing this thread I need to get some spikey strips to install on top of my trellis. The options I've found are: Plastic: https://earlygrow.co.uk/product/fence-spikes?srsltid=AfmBOooT0wBqLvT_DpBdfK2i_Kky2LzYmyqB6u7AqffioMnus5-RYXg2 Metal: https://www.insight-security.com/razor-channel-inchuinch-profile-anti-climb-security-spikes-1point8-metre-length-galvanised-finish Another plastic option: https://www.insight-security.com/anti-climb-spikes-prikla-hinge-strip-individual-strip-500-45mm I like the third option the best as it comes in a colour that matches the paint on my fence and trellis. Only issue is that being 50cm long will need to be cut to size to fit 6 foot long fencing panels. The other products come in 180cm lengths which is not ideal because that will leave a little gap at the end of each fence panel which together with the fence post will allow an "island of safety" where the scumbags can get in. Other query is whether plastic is ever going to be as sharp and scary as metal? Presumably it could just be cut off? Let's keep it on topic please.

Thanks @sharpener. Another reason for preferring the “normally open” version is that in the event of a power cut it will stay open I believe, thereby making sure we don’t lose power and running water at the same time. I found a 1” version of the one recommended by imist https://www.mmcwebshop.com/products/a0e1dbe8f9/35372000019718077 so have gone with that. It cost 7 times the price of the cheapo made in China crap my builder originally installed so hopefully will last a lot longer than the 2.75 year life we got out of the cheapo one.

imist have recommended this PDV instead: https://www.mmcwebshop.com/products/f59dc1f60e/35372000007965040 it’s 3/4 BSP, is that going to be compatible with my pipework, which is compatible with the dimensions of the PDV shown in the image in my OP, sorry I’m being really daft.

So apparently, after a helpful call with imist today, the minimum requirement for the water supply is 14 litre per minute, which I just meet. I can only remove the PDV altogether if I have 25 lpm, which I definitely don’t have and never will have - we have already got Thames Water to increase our flow rates at a crazy price of c. £2k! As an alternative they are happy for me to swap out the PDV with one that only draws power to close, rather than the inverse which I have now, ie draws power to open. They are sending me a suggestion for such a PDV. In the meantime they have advised me to decommission the imist pump until this is sorted because the swapping in and out of valves can cause a sudden pressure influx into the pump which can cause a false trigger 😱 luckily that is apparently very easy to do, so they’ve said I can do it myself and are sending me a doc explaining how. Let’s see…

I wish I had gone with those two companies. Just to clarify: I am not considering changing systems. I want to keep the imist, just either take the PDV out altogether (with imist’s consent… it seems they may be amenable to this); or I want to install the best PDV money can buy (within reason) so that this never happens again. So that I can decide which route to go, grateful if anyone who knows plumbing fittings could let me know which PDV manufacturers are best