ProDave

Not always. If I need a pee in the night, the very last thing I want is the light coming on full blinding me and disturbing SWMBO. I operate in the dark in that situation.

The crux of that is how does the automation know what you want? e.g walk into the bathroom, have a pee, flush and walk out. Walk into the bathroom, sit on the pot and open your book. Walk into the bathroom undress and get into the shower. All 3 very different situations. show me a sensor that can 100% detect which of those 3 you are doing and operate the lights and fan accordingly?

My PV cost me £1500 4 years ago with some diligent buying and all DIY install. The savings have paid 2/3 of the cost already and with the higher prices now it won't be long before the savings have paid for it and it is then just a constant saving. I am managing to self use almost all I generate, so don't believe batteries make sense yet for a normal 4kW system but probably do for a larger system where it would be hard to self use it real time. I will probably look at a second off grid battery PV system on the roof of the car port when I get around to building that.

I had a customer phone me yesterday. "Can you come and look at my heating, it turns on and almost straight away the thermostat turns off"

Let the stone supplier / fitter worry about this. They will template it first usually with plywood or something and will make the end panel match the wall.

I don't know where their calculation gets it's figures. I thought OFGEM were cracking down and fining suppliers who charge too much per month? I tried to change mine using the self service function on their website but it was advising me to increase, not reduce the monthly payment, even though just keeping it the same would over pay based on the last 12 months actual usage. So I sent an email outlining my calculations and they agreed.

I just put mine DOWN by £40 per month and will keep it at the lower level in anticipation of the £400 grand from the government. for at least 10 months.

Take the opportunity to replace the oven and charge it from the tenants deposit.

Ours seem to have a lot more friction and wind permitting, stay at any angle you choose , even one that would let the rain in.

Wood Burning Stove

Fit the WBS and use that. Plug in electric heaters on other rooms if needed. Fitting a WBS to our static caravan was one of the best things we did to see us through a particularly bad winter.

Multiple zones per thermostat is a standard function of a typical manifold control box. Don't over complicate it, floor sensors not needed, just use room thermostats.

If you are thinking of Octopus, PM me for a referal code that will get you £50 credit.

Renewable Energy?

I must have a look at that. Last time I used Spice, it was a command line interface, and it was quite a task to integrate it into ORCAD (which I still use) to run a simulation direct from the schematic entry tool. I see they don't have a Linux version, I will have to see if the windows version runs under WINE.