ProDave

Today I was helping a friend with her e-bike. Short story, 3 years ago "the battery died" Only recently did she get a new battery pack and charger. My first job was to connect that and working (connections slightly different) I brought the old battery home so have a look at. Initially with a view to replacing the cells. However on investigation it is actually the charger that has failed. The battery was no doubt run until it was flat, then left 3 years. It appeared to be completely dead. The battery pack is made up of 1865 lithium cells. Banks of 7 cells in parallel and then 12 of these banks in series. Initially trying to charge it as one stack resulted in some stacks starting to accept a charge while others not. It quickly dawned on me that was not going to work well. So I did a quick trial on one parallel stack. I put it on charge for a few minutes on a current limited power supply and it came up to a terminal voltage of about 3.6 volts. I don't know if that is normal, a quick search suggested it should be more like 4.2V. I don't know if it would come up further if I just left it on charge. Basically I am asking is this a lost cause? Or is it actually possible to get totally flat lithium cells to accept a charge again and have any useful capacity? If so I take it I am on the right lines to put a known charge into each stack individually before attempting to charge them as one string? P.S Some things about this e-bike battery system astonished and frankly shocked me. The DC input connector from the charger to the battery pack is a tv aerial plug. and if that is not bad enough, the DC output plug is a standard IEC (kettle) plug. If you were daft enough, there is absolutely nothing stopping you plugging an IEC mains lead with a 13A plug on it, straight into the battery pack

They usually take some of the weight. And they will hide the pipes, which is what they were designed to do,

Micro inverters are a good solution but expensive. The one thing i would not recommend is one big inverter in a roof space, they can get very hot and shorten their life. Decide what you may want and make a decision.

I would put 3 pairs of DC solar PV cable from the roof to the plant room. Probably 6mm, you buy it as red and black, so three of each kept as pairs so you know which is which. And (if the CU is not in the plant room) a spare feed from the CU to the plant room for the inverter. Probably a 5 core 2.5 or 4mm to cater for a 3 phase inverter.

A treatment plant does not cost much more than a septic tank, so why would you want to save that small amount? Anyone still using a septic tank and discharging to a watercourse should have upgraded it to a septic tank by the start of the year. I know at least 2 around here that have not.

I only have boarded up window holes in my sun room. Would I qualify for a grant to buy the 3G windows?

That should be possible. The LDC does not define ownership. In my very first house I wanted to move the fence, I ended up doing a joint application with some of the neighbours under one application for one fee, and then 4 of us all moved our fences together.

Presume it was just the motor gone? Can you not get a new motor of the right spec and use it with the original fan blade?

You would need to have the water tested. You should be able to collect a sample as it is without any expense. The results of the test will tell you what treatment is necessary. What does a sample look like if collected and allowed to settle? is it clear or coloured? is there any sediment or smell? I come across lots of private water schemes here, from the dark brown peaty ones, the dubious ones from surface streams with sheep grazing the land, to the downright hard borehole water we get here. One local farm pumps water a long way up a hill with a hydraulic ram, so no power other than the flow of the water. It arrives as a trickle into an underground holding tank from where it is pumped into an accumulator. He seems to be drinking that with no treatment at all. As it only arrives as a trickle, there can't be much overflow or throughput. The only issue with water not originating on your land, is what might happen in the future. the farm mentioned above only installed the hydraulic ram pump system a few years ago. He used to get water from a spring up the hill. but that spring "went bad" when the forrest above was clear felled.

Interesting footnote. in 2003 when we bought our first plot up here, we got a very cheap connection fee, because SSE said there was a "spare" cable in an adjacent plot, that had been paid for by that plot's owner but never connected (because that plot had not been actually built on) When they came to connect our plots (there were two adjacent plots expecting to join onto this cable) they could not find it. So at their own expense, SSE ran a new cable down the road from the substation. Fast forward to 2015, we now owned that unbuilt plot with the missing cable. I was aware of the story of this missing cable so was careful when digging. I did in fact uncover a cable, but it looked somewhat small, but I called SSE to look. they cut into it to find it was a multicore cable but not twisted pair and not a telecoms cable. I uncovered and severed that unknown multicore cable again on a different part of the plot. Nobody complained their telephone stopped working. So to summarise, a cable that should have been there was never found. And a cable that nobody knew anything about was found. My best guess is our site was part of a former saw mill. We uncovered a load of buried bricks and broken roof tiles. I suspect this mystery cable could have been an old private telecoms link from a site hut where we are, which was the log store area, to the actual saw mill at the top of the road.

Yes definitely, not enough airflow now so the heat pump's evaporator is getting too cold.

Read this before you do anything https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7817277/Hundreds-furious-customers-left-no-internet-days-Virgin-Media-goes-down.htmlhttps://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7817277/Hundreds-furious-customers-left-no-internet-days-Virgin-Media-goes-down.html Sorry DM link.

Charging tools. to plug the kettle in.

Hi and welcome to the forum I can see a lot of potential and problems for both those buildings. They should keep you quiet for a while.

We have not "registered" our address, I refuse to pay the council's fee for doing that. The council do not seem bothered and have told me as such. The result is the address is not on the Postcode Address file. But it IS on just about every other register I have found, the council's own street naming register, the DNO and telecoms registers, the house name appears on the Land Registry maps (we did not inform them of the name) , electoral register etc. And it did not create a problem getting electricity, water, or telephone to the site or paying for any of them, and creates no problems with delivery. The bigger problem with deliveries is google maps have messed up the position of the map pin for our postcode and now puts it down by the river well away from any of the houses in the postcode, and then sends you down a dirt track to leave you on the wrong side of the river. I have to advise people NOT to use satnav to get here.