ProDave

That just the conclusion I have come to, one of the cars in the house can be an ev and get used for a lot if not all the local journeys. But I just can't contemplate that leap of not having an ICE car for the long journeys.

Turn the power off, unclip the existing programmer from it's back plate, and turn the power back on. Be careful live terminals are exposed on that backplate so don't touch and don't leave it unattended with power on. Like that the boiiler should not fire up. Then manually open each of the motorised valves and see if the pump starts and the boiler fires as you open each one. Only change to the hive if you really want to have it controlled by an app and that is really what you want, otherwise start with a new perfectly ordinary 2 channel central heating programmer.

Is that you pushing buttons, or is the right hand selector flag moving upwards of it's own accord? The heating and hot water lights on the programmer appear to be both off, yet you say the boiler is firing unless you turn it off at the boiler. I suspect you have multiple faults, what is your level of expertise around electrical circuits, fault finding with a multi meter?

You need to actually check the system operation before adopting the "fault finding by substitution" technique before you waste any money (replace the controller with the hive and find it still does not work) The existing programmer should work. It should have a light to show when heating is on and when hot water is on. Do those lights turn on and off at the correct times as expected? if not the programmer is probably faulty. If the lights on the programmer operate as they should but the boiler is switching on and off at eratic times not related to what the programmer is doing, then it will almost certainly be one of the motorised valves in the cupboard with the tank has failed. they look like Honeywell so unless they have seized it is usally the actuator head that fails and they can be replaced without needing a plumber. The existing system should just work heating and hot water on and off when they set it and temperature what they set it, with no continual input from the user.

Well painting it any colour you like is not going to alter the function so I see nothing wrong with you painting it.

Reading about this one thing has struck me. The difference between housing and transport. I am sitting comfortably in my well insulated low energy house, enjoying the same standard of living I had in any other house, arguably a better standard of living, but at very much reduced energy usage so much better for the planet. so in other words moving from an older inefficient house to a new well built one, is good for the environment AND the occupier. but when it comes to transport, I cannot yet see the solution that still gives me all I had before while saving the planet. That is the gap that has to be filled, so transport can go green in the same way housing can, without reducing our expectations of what it delivers.

But Scotland, with it's low population density, lots of hydro and wind power can only achieve 90% renewables at the best of times. Not much hope for the whole UK being close to 100% renewable any time soon. And UNTIL we reach 100% renewable for what we use NOW (let alone increased use for charging electric cars) then you cannot dispute that plugging in an electric car to charge it, WILL increase fossil fuel generation somewhere. As for that mythical thing, surplus renewable energy to make hydrogen, none yet. The solution will be many things over a period of time. But many are pretending we will solve this just with a few simple changes. My stance is EV's may well be the future, but they are not the present.

I love the curtains shown on the master bedroom with the pointy window. Do let us know how those work in practice.........

I don't have one because a) I can't find one that will tow nearly 2 ton of trailer 200 miles on one charge, and b) even if I could find one, I would not be able to afford it. It would be good if they came clean and just told us our motoring expectations have to diminish and our motoring costs are going to drastically increase. i.e many will be priced out of car ownership.

And an end to most industry and mining, no new steel, just recycled, well I suppose we have to do something with those redundant ships. It really is reverse the industrial revolution. Oh and cars, not only will all cars after 2030 be EV's but a move to make them small lightweight shopping trolleys, so it really is an end to towing anything Who is buying shares in Boeing, Airbus, Maersk etc now?

We know we are heading for "net zero" but I don't think the vast majority of the public actually appreciate what that means. We are being told to buy EV's, build more wind turbines and swap our boilers for heat pumps. I suspect most people think when that's done, then job done. WRONG. That is just the easy low hanging fruit. Have a read of this article Absolute Zero – UK FIRES But the headline from that article has to be this chart If all that is implemented in that timescale that is going to cost us ALL a LOT of money, and severely going to restrict what we can do. I just feel it is time this was more public and people knew what is ahead of us.

So what you want is a normal lamp that has an LED lamp of some sort, you then doctor it by removing the LED driver from the lamp, putting that in a box near the mains plug and extend the cable from the LED driver to the lamp with flat speaker cable as suggested.

Should have fitted a floor socket or two........

Ask @greenbanana

Can you explain exactly what you are trying to power and why it has to go under a carpet?

My take is he is worried the works next door might be putting his own home in danger if they are being done wrong. If only he would post the pictures for us all to see, we could either re assure him it is all normal and nothing to worry about, or tell him yes you do have a bunch of cowboys working there and give him some advice.

Don't assume "April showers" means rain. I worked for someone not far from here that remembered it snowing in mid summers day many years ago.

I wired a container converted as a gym. (Jim's gym) I idd it all in conduit and singles on the surface and treated it as a fixed install. The only important but is make sure there is an earth bond to the frame of the container.

ASHP has not done any DHW heating for at least 3 days now. We have had a rare occurrence here, 4 mostly fully sunny days, coinciding with a bank holiday weekend. Doesn't stop the air being cold due to a cold wind.

Well that is my "summer" programmer now on the wall and the one with winter times set, put away for 6 months. I will see how it works now it is automated. Of course the theory works well on a sunny day. A lot is talked about "weather compensation" but for me, proper weather compensation would be turning the heating on and off to properly match available PV generation.

If you do return it, just say it leaks. Don't try arguing the perfection or otherwise of a soldered joint and say it might leak one day.

When I say a summer / winter setting, I want something that has 2 (or more) sets of heating TIMES. So in winter the heating comes on at 6AM so it is warm by the time we get up and stays on all day. In spring / autumn when not a lot of heat is needed, it can all be done an hour or 2 either side of mid day when it is near certain there will be lots of surplus PV to use up. So a different set of on off times. Something that would let you have 2 sets of on / off programs entered and easily switch between them is something I would like to buy, but fear it is something I will have to make. Ha ha, thinking about it, I may have a "solution" I actually have a "spare" 3 channel programmer. The spare is not of much use, as it is missing it's back plate (the connector plate that goes on the wall) But it is a simple job to unclip from the back plate, so I could have one of them set to winter timings and the other set to summer timings and just interchange them. I think they call this "thinking outside the box"

Still a little too cold for heating completely off here. I recon an average outside temp of 10 degrees is needed. Still only an average of 7.4 over 24 hours here. So what I have been doing is putting the heating on for 2 hours in the middle of the day so it is entirely powered by surplus PV. Bit of a pain to do that manually, and even more a pain to change the timings on the heating programmer. Anyone know a 3 channel heating programmer that has (at least) 2 sets of on off programs and an easy way to switch between the summer heating times and winter heating times? Sounds like another DIY project but it would be making it with some form of user interface that is not too geeky?

A nylon netting I think called "netlon" or similar was always the normal way. You lay it over the joists draping down, and fix it to the sides of each joist at the bottom to keep it taught across the bottom. They don't need to be strong or thick, I ripped left over OSB sheets into thin strips for this. Then lay the insulation in. I like the Knauf frametherm type insulation, much nicer to handle than most glass wool products and it won't slump. Cut it to your joist spacing with a panel saw while still on the roll still wrapped up. Random link. Don't assume this is the best or cheapest supplier. https://www.insulationsuperstore.co.uk/product/insulation-support-netting-2m-x-100m-white.html

Usually the cavity is filled below DPC so there is no "cavity" there. As there will be a cold bridge from the beams out through the wall, I would perhaps mitigate this a bit by not taking the UFH all the way to the edge of the floor, as another way of giving the heat further to travel to get out of the house.