Alan Ambrose

>>> You can now get smart switches that don't require Neutral That's true. I think they're a bit of a bodge though and if you look at the reviews they don't work well for some people - so I wouldn't want to rely on them as a long term solution. If you have an existing house wired without neutrals to the switches, I can understand that it's an easier option than stealing neutrals from someplace. >>> We are now doing warehouses with HV (11kV) distribution within them to cut down on cable sizes and site transformers around the warehouse as needed Makes sense when you need 'proper power' everywhere. You probably run these in man-sized metal conduit or a cable tray well out of everyone's reach though - presumably you wouldn't put them in plasterboard stud walls. In a lowish energy house, I agree with MortarThePoint, I expect to be using only 100-200W of LED light total - say 30 off 12V 5W MR16s and 25 off 12V 2W G4s. In practice, you'll probably want to switch these in say 12-16 groups.

I don''t know if this helps any or just makes life more complicated - our 4-year old conversion was wired with 4-wire to the light switches, which seems pretty sensible. The extra wire was the N bus - this allows the standard mains set-up to be converted to mains powered wifi smart-switches. I have used this on a few occasions e.g. for outside lights. I was very grateful to find the N already there, rather than having to try to borrow it from somewhere else (which is, of course, dead dodgy). I appreciate that this is already 'old-tech'.

>>> Sure but it’s not building a database live like the search engines. It’s why it’s knowledge is limited beyond 2021. Also it’s not returning a series of hits based on your search request. It’s trying to interpret what you ask it and reply with an answer it’s derived from your question based on the knowledge it has. It’s why you can prompt it with a few parameters and it’ll respond linking them together albeit it’s still a bit limited. @Kelvin I think we both have a similar understanding - and just like Google search, the answers are often useful even if we're fairly sure they don't tell the whole story. The interesting questions to me are: + will it ever get to 'expert' (or even 'competent') level in particular subject areas or is it destined to always produce 'general internet standard' knowledge? + does it actually (appear to the average user to) 'possess knowledge', or does it just appear to be a kind of well-read parrot? + does that actually differ substantially from 'human knowledge' or are they somewhat the same thing? + will it (and AIs in general) ever be able to explain how it came to its conclusions?

Yeah, as I said: I'm not suggesting all DNOs / utilities have the same policy - it's worth asking. FYI UKPN's policy says: ...the provisions of connection services to our customers are not regarded as construction services because the work is performed on our own assets. Consequently, there will be no change to the way in which we determine how VAT is applied to this job.

>>> It's debatable whether the diversion works for the pipe can be zero rated. It would be classed as modification of existing infrastructure so not eligible. I was just looking at UKPN's terms earlier and they specifically say that. It doesn't necessarily apply for other DNOs / services etc as they all seem to make it up as they go along.

Ah, can I ask you guys then how you source your usage / heating data?

>>> Do you have a water tank in the loft or a header tank for the heating? No, this is a modern-ish set-up with UVC and expansion tank on the incoming main - at least, I think so - it's a bit difficult to see where everything goes as some of it is hidden at the back of the airing cupboard. I think I'll take it apart again and maybe install a surge arrestor and some pressure gauges and see how we go from there. The curious thing is why it happened after 3-4 years from new? I guessed 'fault on expansion tank' which seems to be wrong. The only other possibility I can think of is that mains pressure has gone up over that time - which seems possible but unlikely.

>>> Listening hard to the planner, compromise and careful attention local micropolitics. Finicky, delicate work. Point taken, no substitute for detail work huh? In this case, but not 100% relevant to my question, the planner is ignoring all requests for discussion. So, I'm both trying to determine my strategy and also understand how the system works. The latter is answered pretty well above, I think, and many thanks to everyone for their detailed thoughts and contributions.

One of my favourite books is Catch 22, because it makes me laugh. Unfortunately, these days I think it’s a required official training course text for all planning officers.

>>> It’s not connected to the internet ‘slurping it up’ Well there’s some supervised learning etc to tweak the output to be palatable, but the source data is: GPT-3 training data Dataset # tokens Proportion within training Common Crawl 410 billion 60% WebText2 19 billion 22% Books1 12 billion 8% Books2 55 billion 8% Wikipedia 3 billion 3% - ‘ Common Crawl’ is a web crawler that has looked at 3B pages of web pages, of the approx. 25B out there. Yes, GPT interprets that data in a smart-ish way …. but all it’s got to go on is the data that it’s been fed with.

And I was hoping for some easy negotiation …. you have some terrier genetics?

Yeah, a possible alternative to Google searches. Of course, it's only slurping up the rest of the somewhat inconsistent and error-prone internet - so can't be totally relied on. But neither can Google.

There are a couple of houses on one side, from, I think the 1940's, which are parallel to the road etc - this is rural so they're fairly far apart and mostly screened with hedges. >>> you can't actually stand in one place and see that view. Point taken - I think sometimes street scene drawings make it look like there is a more 'consistent street scene' than there really is. Sounds like 'policy (mostly) wins ... eventually'.

Hi, I have a general question, which is this: 'When evaluating a planning application: to what extent is the planner's own opinion re qualitative aspects important vs. the more factual rules in the local planning policy?' For instance, if the local planning policy says,: Improved energy efficiency and a reduction in CO2 emissions in buildings can be achieved through various means including orientation, siting, photovoltaics and heat pumps. but a particular planner says words to the effect: Please line it up with the neighbouring properties and parallel to the street. ... which approach 'wins in the end'? TIA, Alan

Hi, We live in a new barn conversion about 5 years old. It seems to be well built and by a good builder. About a year ago, we started occasionally getting a little 'water hammer' sound - a tapping about 1 once per second. This was relieved by turning on a tap for a few seconds. The sound might come back 10 minutes later, otherwise it would stay away for a day. OK I thought - the expansion vessel on the incoming main must have died. I'll replace it and the problem will go away. So, I replaced it with a like-for-like vessel - an 'Aquasystem 18 Litre Potable Expansion Vessel'. From memory, I think I checked the preset pressure etc. But the problem hasn't gone away... Any ideas? TIA, Alan

The Land Registry 'fast-track' thing does work and is usual for anything where anybody cares about the speed of processing - usually because (as in this case) one or more important things depend on it. These days most solicitors will do it as a matter of course. 'Fast-track means in practice, I believe, a couple of weeks. The solicitors also get to be able to log into some LR site where they can see the status.

That’s interesting. Having installed my wood burner and had the install passed by BC - each manufacturer publishes detailed data for each model on how close it can be in any particular dimension. I also measured he temperatures after I installed it to double check.

Another option might be to run temporary swa cable from your existing consumer unit via a new breaker/mcb/rcbo/rcb. This can go to a small temporary cu inside the building or a little ‘distribution point’ with a bunch of metalclad sockets. All in a temporary enclosure. Think typical supply for a shed / outbuilding. Probably a job for a friendly sparks.

Would another option be a projector?

>>> I PTFE the thread, with around 21 turns Sorry I don't understand - 21 turns of PTFE on the thread? Max I've ever done was about 5 or 6.

I put the drivers down to a mixture of: + housing economics (i.e a deliberate land shortage) which causes the big developers to make ticky tacky boxes, built to low standard, with the smallest possible rooms and on the smallest possible plots. Yes, they can sell all they make. + largely uncontrollable LPAs who are there to protect the status quo and support the big developers in their aim above - the big developments are the easiest way for the LPAs to meet their targets. + lowest common denominator regs partly for 'affordable housing' which usually means 'low quality' housing. + fairly dumb consumers who until very recently haven't given a fig for energy efficiency and/or how their house is constructed. I probably wouldn't bother to build if I could buy the kind of thing I want.

>>> I wouldn’t consider a failure within 7 years to be fair. Well I wasn't best pleased and my neighbour's water-based UFH lasted 30-odd years - but he has it below a fancy wooden floor, which is so much bother and expense he hasn't actually had it fixed yet. Just a factor of burying stuff in the walls and floors I guess. I don't think there's much wrong with the physics - in general the wattage and temperatures are both quite low. But a little more thought in installation and a quality check on materials would have been helpful.

Hmmm - as two data points - I have a couple of Heatmiser installs using the Heatmiser Zigbee hub and they're fine - one is 80 m^2 (with 5 x neoStat 12v + 4 x neoStat-e + 1 x Wireless Air + UH8-N + NeoHub), one is 180 m^2 with (13 x neoStat-e + 2 x Wireless Air + NeoHub). These are both single floor with typical stud walls, so not as tricky as 2 x concrete floors though. These are the kind with wired power (the signal is Zigbee) so they mostly don't have batteries. All fine except I sometimes lose connection for a few hours to the battery-powered Heatmiser temperature sensors which are outside in weatherproof boxes. FWIW the two systems I have seem pretty reliable. I wonder whether Heatmiser trims the signal output for battery-powered sensors to conserve battery life? Knowing how dodgy RF is, and how busy the spectrum is, and since you don't have that many sensors - is there's a way to run cabled sensors? You wouldn't have to change the batteries then either 😎.

Hmm, maybe measure the temperature in that position when the stove has been going full pelt for a few hours? I'm seeing 50 C numbers from random Googling for 'max temperature for a flat screen TV' - but there will probably be actual data in the datasheet for that particular TV. I know above our stove is 'properly hot'. Maybe some kind of baffle to deflect the hot air might come into the thinking? Actually checking my missive for BC when I installed ours - I was getting 30 C at the wall closest to the top of the stove. So, at that kind of temperature - maybe you might manage to keep the wife happy 😎.

I think with either electric or water-based UFH - in the future, I will interleave at least two cables / pipes in any floor so that if there's a cable fail / leak you can always easily just fallback to one loop.