Adsibob

No, nothing in the manual but the guys at Stovesonline advised us to undersize our stove so that we can run it on max, which I think is good advice.

You are of course correct to point out these subtleties. But the reality is that this is quite tricky to model accurately, so a certain amount of finger in the air/rule of thumb can be helpful. It will also depend on stove selection. Mine has a comment in the manual that said not to exceed four bends, so to be safe I went for no more than three. And my exhaust is virtually straight up and is about 11m long, so will have a greater draw than a pipe that is around 90% of that and mostly horizontal.

Agree 100%. Also, why do you want all the bedrooms grouped together?

Easy, don’t lay carpet.

Finally had my stove installed a couple of weeks ago. Seems to work very well. Our air supply pipe enters the house on the side, about 400mm from ground level, then bends downwards at a 40 degree for about 60cm, then it runs straight and level for about 8m then it does a right angle turn to the left and slopes up a bit at maybe 30 degrees for about 50cm to where it connects into the underside of my stove. Probably not the most efficient design, but probably also the only one we could achieve without trying something much more experimental. Ultimately as long as the length of your exhaust is materially longer than your supply pipe and you don’t have too many bends (I think more than 3 is too many) you shouldn’t have any problems.

The way I see it, my home server is probably more likely to fail than the cloud storage or the wifi, and so I'm happy to outsource that side of things to a third party. I guess a clever intruder could cut the internet cable from outside before commencing his intrusion. I don't have an answer to that other than to set up a ring camera so that it catches him before he snips it, but I guess that won't stop the intrusion. As for the complaints about subscriptions, they are probably not that dissimilar to the cost of setting up and powering a home server Had a quick look at Ajax. Looks interesting. What do you know of them / how did you come across them?

Have no idea what Ubuntu is? Sounds like a witch doctor, or a carton of sugary juice drink.., oh no that’s Umbungo. Sounds like Ftigate is going to be too geeky for me, and I will have to get Ring. Already have a Ring doorbell, so it’s probably the easiest option.

My problem is that I often have a lot of documents open at once, and it’s common for a PDF to be c 50MB to 500MB in size, because despite it being prominently text based files, the encoding/OCR of the documents are sometimes really inefficient. But all my work is text based. So a few of those large PDFs, a dozen outlook messages open, Chrome with maybe 15 tabs, Excel with one or two sheets and a couple of word documents. The excel sheets are usually very basic. I have a intel corr i5 3.2ghz cpu with 16Gb ram, running Windows 10 Pro. It has a stupidly good nvidia Gforce graphics card because it used to be used mainly as a gaming pc. It works very well on the whole, though sporadically will crash for no reason, maybe once a month.

If I were to use my PC that I have on most of the time anyway, at least when I’m working, for the Frigate’s server, what happens on the occasion that I need to restart my PC? Do I just lose the camera functionality for when the PC is off, or will I need to relaunch the Frigate software and tinker with it. And how much RAM from my PC will I lose to this? Just wondering if it’s feasible to use my work PC as a simultaneous server.

i meant a PoE access point that plugs into Ethernet and beams out beautifully fast wifi. The access points! That’s the point of them I thought! Now I’m sure you will tell me there are plenty of other clever devices that can be PoE, but I don’t own or need any of those, other than some access points. that’s really my question. if I’m only using them to power, and send internet to, the the access points, so I need them or not? Is not so much about lack of devices, it’s lack of cable imbedded in the wall. Basically, I didn’t know about all this technology when I designed my wiring. So I just put in a CAT6 cable for each of the two computer stations, a network printer, and each of two TVs. Luckily, my electrician used some initiative and buried an additional cable going to the landing of each of the two upper floors in the house and then when I later mentioned to him that I was looking into buying a mesh system, he said: why not install some access points instead. I guess I could go up a size and get an extra port or two for security cameras. Not something I’d planned, but my house is now the nicest in the street, so I probably should! I’m a bit confused as to why your toothbrush would need internet?!?

And that is the case regardless of whether I have a couple of wired ubiquiti AP, like the ones you recommended earlier, or a regular mesh system like the Deco?

And one more source of confusion. With a good mesh network, my understanding is that each node expands the network so that as you move through the house you are cleverly connected to the nearest node, but you don't notice any drop in signal as your connection changes from one node to another. Is that also the case with wireless access points? Or if i have a WAP on each floor of the house and i move from one floor to the other my connection speed might drop (or get severed altogether) momentarily as the device reconnects to a nearer WAP?

Yeah, it’s bonkers. I discovered a small draft above one of the panels of my new sliding fits last night, and it really pissed me off. Must be an installation issue.

So this thread has definitely helped me get less confused about ubiquiti, but I’m still confused. To get the switch, within the flex series there appear to be three options: See final section on right hand side of this table: https://www.broadbandbuyer.com/advice/4384-ubiquiti-standard-and-lite-switch-series-comparison-chart/ I don’t care about outdoor use, so then the only difference between a USW Flex and a USW Flex Mini is that the mini does not support 802.3af PoE. But is that Worth spending an extra £60 on, because that appears to be the price difference!

That doesn’t sound enough to me. What have you actually done? How much loft insulation, what’s the u value of your walls, what about your glazing? Any cavities you can fill? Draft excluders?

I agree with this... to a point. We looked at ceiling speakers but couldn't get our act together in time and already had enough crap on the ceiling with the BCO insisting on sprinklers and alarms in that room. Instead, we're going for a Sonos system made up of a Sonos Arc and two Sonos speakers as satellite as well as the Sonos subwoofer. The Arc has really good reviews and although it won't be as good as ceiling speakers for Atmos, I understand it's the next best thing.

Yes, that's a good point, I like it. Where should the soundbar go though, above or below the TV. Dolby guidance on this is a bit confusing. On one hand it says: "For optimum playback performance with dramatic overhead effects, mount the Dolby Atmos enabled sound bar at, or slightly above, a seated listener’s ear level." On the other hand, the very same article has a diagram showing the soundbar placed significantly lower than this: https://professional.dolby.com/siteassets/tv/home/dolby-atmos/dolby-atmos_sound-bar-setup-guide.pdf To maximise storage under the TV (one of SWMBO's chief concerns) we would prefer to have the soundbar above the tv, but I query whether this will in any way mess up the soundscape.

I believe that what has happened is that when they built their extension, they didn’t plan properly what to do about drainage, and as an easy fix they plugged theirs into yours. That is technically a trespass, but it may be that if you (or a predecessor) allowed it to go on for 20 years, they acquired a right of way for their drainage over your land, known as an “easement”, in this case a prescriptive easement. This website explains it quite well: https://www.adams-harrison.co.uk/prescriptive-easements-what-are-they/ In particular, for that right to arise: 1) The use must have been exercised without force, secrecy and without permission. 2) The use must have been exercised continuously and without any interruption for at least 20 years. The 20 years use does not have be by the same owners. It sounds like the 20 years have not elapsed yet, so I think you can, after all diplomatic attempts have failed, demand they disconnect from your pipe, or forcibly disconnect it for them. I don’t think it matters that you damage their property in doing that, as they shouldn’t have trespassed on your property, so as long as you give them sufficient notice, say a week, to sort it out, you can be a bit vigilante about it. Obviously try all diplomatic routes first, as you need to live next to these people after all.

We are thinking of having our TV set up in the corner of our lounge, within a custom built storage unit, something like this, but with the tv lower down as I think this is too high: I’m looking at combining it with a Sonos Arc sound bar which has Dolby Atmos. I presume the Soundbar therefore needs clearance above it, so that sound can be fired upwards towards the ceiling. Can I get away with placing the soundbar above the TV? Ceiling is 295cm high, so a 55” tv placed so that the top of it is about 125cm from the floor, leaves 170cm of space above for the sound bar. I know they are ideally meant to be at ear level, but can I put it higher, at say 160cm from the floor, this would be quite a bit higher than ear level when seated. This might defeat the purpose of having a corner storage unit that SWMBO is insisting on to store a lot of the kids’ crap. Perhaps a solution is to have a shelf projecting forward out of the storage unit on which the soundbar sits so that the upwards firing sound is not impeded by the storage space above the tv. Thoughts much appreciated!

Forget it! You need much more insulation and to replace all your rads to make the investment in a heat pump worthwhile.

that is the very expensive model. There is a cheaper model I'm after which retails for about £860 and that is out of stock everywhere.

Honestly, it’s a serious problem!

No they don’t!

Hmmm, not sure. The rooflights are hard to access without scaffolding or a cherry picker!

I don’t think mine are solar powered, as the electrician wired them in, each with their own fused spur