ProDave

I remember as a boy my dad doing some work under the floor and installing a black alcathene pipe to "replace the lead pipe" That was about 40 years or more ago and as far as I know the black pipe was never connected and the lead is still in use.

The black could well be imperial. What I was getting at with the brass tee, is can you undo whatever is screwed onto the tee? and then find a fitting that will go from that to the blue mdpe? Best wait until the new year when the merchants are open again, you have managed the leak well enough for now.

Is that tee in the black pipe a brass compression fitting?

It sounds like you have a "plasterboard tent" The name given dot and dab plasterboard installed badly so the edges are often open to cold areas like under floor, lofts etc that let cold air get in between the walls and the plasterboard, largely negating the insulation in the walls. One of the plasterers will advise but as a minimum you need to seal all the edges of the rooms which will probably be quite destructive. The lack of floor insulation to do it properly means lifting the floor room by room to expose the bare joists and insulate properly before replacing the flooring.

That is stretching the imagination a bit isn't it?

Just using surplus wind generation that cannot be otherwise used, makes sense. But that is not what is being proposed here as far as I can see.

This scheme is going through planning near us. https://www.cromartyhydrogenproject.co.uk/ It is an "electrolyser" plant to be build close to one of the wind farms near us. So it will take electricity from the windfarm and electrolyse that to produce "green hydrogen". So dig down and find some more details. The water will be conveyed from a pumping station at a water treatment works about 20 miles away. So that will be potable or near potable water pumped nearly 20 miles and about 400 metres up. The hydrogen produced will be taken by road transport to a number of distilleries to "decarbonose their energy supply" My thoughts: This wind farm does not have "surplus" generation, everything it generates goes to the grid. Anything taken from the wind farm for the electrolyser just means less goes to the grid for general use, which in the real world results in more fossil fuel used to generate the "lost" electricity. The water to electrolyse needs to be pumped there, So that is energy use I bet they have not thoroughly accounted for. I hope the trucks transporting the hydrogen are themselves powered by hydrogen. But the final thought, would it not just be simpler for the distilleries just to use electricity for their production? I refuse to believe electrolysing water to make hydrogen, then transporting that hydrogen by truck to then burn it can produce more power to the end use process than just using electricity from the grid. If ever there was a case of "greenwash" this has to be it? If schemes like this that are at best "creative" with the facts are allowed to proceed then we are all being conned that they are "solving" the problem.

It will work, but you will miss out on being able to read the tank temperature. I like on mine when someone has had a long shower and almost emptied the tank, being able to read the tank temperature on the ASHP display to see how it is doing re heating the tank and is it ready for another shower yet.

You really need a themometer on the flow manifold to check what temperature it is at. A simple solution is to buy a cheap infra red handheld thermometer and use that. Only then can you tell if the flow temperature is correct and being regulated properly. What do you mean by "venting the circuits"? Do you mean flushing water through them to ensure there are no air leaks? If so shut the red and blue isolating valves, connect a water supply hose to the fitting on the right of the top manifold and a drain hose to the fitting on the right of the bottom manifold and run cold water through each loop in turn until water flows through each with no air bubbles. You really want to do that one loop at a time, so put the actuators back on (not energised) and remove one at a time to allow water through each loop one at a time.

Yes that is still in use. I use the "room thermostat" input to call for space heating when required. As pointed out, there is no official way to "call for hot water" from an external source, so my solution was to use a relay to switch between the cylinder temperature probe (which is a thermistor) and a fixed resistor, chosen to mimic a hot water reading which fools the control system to thinking the tank is above the set point so it does not do any heating water. The way I have it, is with the relay not energised the fixed resistor is connected so no hot water heating happens. When I want it to heat the DHW I energise the relay, that connects the temperature probe and the heat pump heats the water if it is lower than the set water temperature.

And there is a more fundamental issue. If you are heating with an ASHP (rather than direct electricity) an ASHP will never get a thermal store hot enough in the first place. So a thermal store is a complete non starter if a heat pump is in your plan.

My ground mounted PV is now about 6 years old. I read my meters once a week to record usage and generation etc. When doing that on Friday I noticed the weeks PV generation was tiny (even for the time of year) and the inverter was showing an error. Yesterday was time to investigate. The inverter was tripping on excess leakage current, and powering down and re starting it did the same every time. Shut down and disconnected the DC from the inverter and sure enough one string was showing a leakage to earth of just under 1 megohm. Next step was go and disconnect the panels in the solar shed. Thankfully the interconnecting cables now showed very good IR. That was a relief as I had feared an issue in the 100ft long buried DC cables. Next go round checking panels one at a time. I soon found the rogue panel that on it's own shows this high leakage. For the time being I have reinstated things with this one panel bypassed so it is working again but one string is 1 panel short. The repair plan is this. I had 2 spare panels that are one on each end of my shed vertically connected to a cheap Chinese inverter to try and give a little extra early morning and late afternoon power. I will take one of those to swap with the faulty panel on the main array. Thankfully by happy accident is is the easiest panel to access on the main array that has failed. I will then investigate what has gone wrong with this panel. Though I suspect used singly on the cheap inverter it may just work, as I doubt that cheap inverter has all the checks that the proper one has. This is the first time I have come across and insulation resistance issue on a PV panel before. They are after all designed for outdoor use but clearly damp has got in somewhere on this particular panel. I am very thankful that this is something I can do myself, that I have a spare, and being ground mount I don't need the complication of scaffold (though I have that if it were needed)

I have a customised tote for my work tools, the customising is to divide the main section into compartments using several offcuts of very large trunking glued together. It has lasted surprisingly well. 2 of the metal cantiliever toolboxes for all the garage tools, spanners etc. You don't want to carry them far. and 2 metal barn toolboxes, the one I made as an apprentice and the one my dad made as an apprentice.

A bizarre twist to this, is those on pre payment meters won't get this surcharge as they can't go into debt. And already the prices of PPM have been levelled so it is not more expensive. Perhaps en-mass we should all switch to pre payment meters? Like I suspect most consumers I pay the same amount each month building up a credit in the summer to pay for the higher usage in winter. Does that not qualify as "pre payment"? If I did, as a matter of protest switch to a PPM it would mean me paying less in summer and more in winter. Is this a "solution" they really want?

I was going to suggest that. If it is just the bends at the end, then can you not fix it by digging up just a strip of the lawn and repairing / replacing the damaged sections?

What did they test for you? I don't see much posting about what you have been doing.

Yes, in the UK neutral is strapped to earth in the distribution system, so while officially a "live" conductor, unless there is a fault in the distribution network it is safe to touch.

This is the cheapest 200A 3 phase distribution board I have found https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/620464-4-way-tp-n-type-b-distribution-board-with-200a-isolator-incomer That would supply up to 12 single phase boards, 4 from each phase.

Why do you need 3 phase? And yes where does the 200A come from? 100A is easy, standard domestic consumer units and switchgear.

Could it be the original one was not blocked and you still have the same intermittent problem elsewhere?

What do you want to know? What project are you taking on?

Make it useful. I give you the "solar shed"

Or strip founds on land needing piling? I would be concerned if I was in one of the already occupied houses on the development.

Ours is similar. To get the SWA across the burn I went to the plot boundary where I erected a fence on the boundary line straddling the burn and the SWA crosses the burn fixed to the bottom of the fence. You could also build a nice foot bridge over the burn (on my to do list still) and use that to support it. My inverter is in a shed, roughly half way between the supply head and the panels with long DC cables to the panels. Volt drop on the DC side is lot less of an issue than on the AC side.

When I was choosing our bath waste for a similar "non dismantle-able" bath, I chose a McAlpine top servicable click clack waste. That may not help you at this stage, but can yours be dismantled from above?