ProDave

The turbine I was thinking of was this one. https://uk.vevor.com/wind-turbine-c_10731/vevor-wind-turbine-generator-kit-12v-wind-power-generator-500w-w-mppt-5-blades-p_010867819262 I have not got as far as looking at the youtube reviews to see if it is a pile of junk or actually works. If I did go down this off grid system, the advantage of 12V or 24V is lots of cheap turbines, solar panels and inverters. But I am not yet convinced that is the way to increase my self generation effectively. What is abundantly clear especially when PV is in the mix, is you get way more power in the summer. So you either size it to meet your needs in the summer and it will have to charge from the grid in winter, or you size it for winter and in summer it will generate way more than you can use and the investment will be wasted or at least not optimally used. So I am now thinking what can I get away with by way of a grid tied PV + battery system designed to supply power when the main PV system is not and specifically so it never exports a drop. I might be sailing close to the wind if I try anything like that. But worth discussing in due course. In the mean time I have been adopting the @SteamyTea philosophy of No 1, reduce usage. That seems to come back to the sky box which seems to have a rated power in the order of 50W. I need to reduce the time it is used. Part of that issue has been poor freeview reception here meaning I almost always watch satellite tv. Yesterday I spent several hours trying to work on that, trying again to better align the aerial, trying a slightly different location for it and then trying a different masthead amplifier. I have made an improvement that makes it mostly watchable while still far from perfect. That has allowed me to drastically reduce the timer settings so the sky box is on for about half the time it used to be. I will see in just over a week if it makes any measurable difference in my metered usage of "other stuff"

That sounds like mechanical pump noise.

Mine is down to 2 zones now, once I realised the utility room has less heat input per square metre (for various reasons) and also the largest heat loss per square metre, so it was often the only zone keeping the heating on. Now the utility is paired with another room and if it goes off before the utility is technically up to temperature, then too bad. the utility thermostat still looks like it is doing something, even though it is not.

Be you have to make 2 cuts. The vertical cut, yes, hidden behind the plinth. But the horizontal cut in line with the top of the kick board, you have to do perfectly without chipping the board finish on either side, and then you need to protect the raw cut edge of the board somehow.

Our first house I appealed the valuation. I was asked to "provide some evidence" so I scoured recent estate agents adverts for similar sized properties and submitted several examples of similar sized houses in a lower band. the VOA countered by submitting several similar sized properties on the register in the higher band. I agreed i would go to appeal. I had my case prepared and was ready to stand up and present my evidence. The day before the hearing the VOA phoned me to offer me a lower band. they clearly did not want to attend.

If you have the tools and skills to do that neatly, I agree, but I suspect if I had tried it, it would be a rough edge to the cut that you would forever see, so I left it intact and separate kickboards.

Mine sounds similar, a run of units ending in an integrated dishwasher, then a tall unit for the ovens. I kept the full height decor panel for the oven unit, but as suggested supported the end of the worktop on brackets from that, and the dishwasher space goes right up to the oven unit decor panel.

Now come on, fess up, YOU initiated the spray from YOUR phone while he was peeing for a laugh? All good reason to stuck with a completely mechanical WC.

Hi and welcome. As you are finding out the crux of a self build is finding a plot. Harder in some places but Norfolk should not be too bad. Are you looking at bare plots of land without planning and dismissing them as unlikely to get planning permission? You are better off looking for plots that at least have outline planning permission or near derelict houses to knock down and rebuild.

That deserves some scrutiny. You replace your gas boiler with an air source heat pump. You don't burn any gas any more? WRONG. At the moment, we do not have anything like 100% non carbon electricity production, a scarily high percentage of electricity is generated in a gas fired power station. So you add a new ASHP to the electricity grid and it is an indisputable fact that will increase the load on a gas fired power station. So now the question becomes does that burn more or less gas than a gas boiler heating the same house? One would hope less but does anyone have any figures?

Sorry but first thing is cut a thread on the steel pipe. I bet that is not what you want to hear.

I did some more testing on my cupboard full of stuff today. I tried powering it all up via a little inverter from a 12V battery and measuring the actual DC power used. First issue, the start up current of the printer tripped the 200W inverter I was using. Clearly I would need something bigger to account for things like that. So everything else apart from the printer, consumed 7 amps at 12V DC so that's 84 watts of DC into the inverter to power my cupboard full of stuff. That's not as high as I initially though, confirming the simple ac VA measurement was highlighting a lousy power factor.

At the moment of course when the sun shines this base load will be powered by the sun. But I am talking here of shifting this collection of stuff onto an off grid supply, so it would no longer benefit from the rest of the solar PV. And the other side if the equation, on a day like today, not a breath of wind and grey overcast sky, the off grid system would not be doing a lot so the mains charger would be kicking in. So savings will not be as much as the theoretical maximum, and harder to actually quantify.

Some bedtime reading. Make any useful comments on the third of those threads please to save taking this one off thread.

Internal walls will likely be timber stud frame and plasterboard. External walls will likely be dot and dab plasterboard onto blockwork. The "problem" with dot and dab is usually poor workmanship and lack of understanding that somewhere there is a gap that allows cold outside air, usually from the loft, to get behind the gap between the plasterboard and the blockwork. The term "plasterboard tent" has often been used to describe it.

Make sure you give clear instructions.

I keep seeing this company VEVOR cropping up more and more, they seem to make everything?

Sorry to see this. But welcome to the "failed thin coat render" club. When did the damage occur? Let me guess last winter when it was cold, wet and lashing with wind driven rain? It looks like this render is applied direct to concrete blocks? or is that ICF blocks? I hope you get more help than I did. You have probably seen my threads about my (as yet unresolved) issues with my own render. Mine is a different make to yours, and on a different wall build up, so perhaps not directly comparable. In my case, the manufacturer BAUMIT and their agents were all completely useless and disinterested in finding the cause for the failure. You would think having spent several £0000 buying their material, they just might want to find out what went wrong and find a resolution so you were a happy customer happy to recommend their product and customer care, but all they did was blame poor workmanship, without even showing the courtesy of sending someone to have a look and see what actually happened. They don't seem to comprehend that attitude only results in me pointing out the failings I have had and lack of customer care and not recommending their product. Anyway in my case, I believe (but as I say unconfirmed) that wind driven rain managed to penetrate the top coat, and soak into the slightly porous base coat, and then hard frost caused the water to expand and break down the base coat which turned to powder. Some close up photos of the bits that have failed and a narrative of exactly when and how it failed might help to build up a picture. If you do approach the supplier or their agent, I hope you get more satisfaction and help than I did from Baumit.

I have said before the cheapest way to provide this is buy a cheap old touring caravan. It will provide a chemical loo, will have seats and a table and a sink and gas stove to boil a kettle. Only downside is you will have to bring drinking water each day if there is none on site and you will have to empty the chemical toilet. Practical experience, my builders were more inclined to go behind a tree for a pee and bring their own food and drink and sit in their vans.

I did method B But the No 1 question when trying to drain wet land that is lower than the adjoining plot, is just where are you going to drain the water to? I hope you have some area that is either lower, or drains well, to drain all your water to?

The satellite box is mainly because freeview reception is poor. We do use catchup occasionally, but I hate the fact they block you from skipping the adverts, so that is only a last resort when something failed to record, or I did not know about it in time to record it. It is certainly easier for someone living alone like @SteamyTea to only turn stuff on when you need it and tolerate the start up delays. In a normal household, the rest expect everything to just work, whenever wanted, whatever time of day or night.

Probably some of it could be. Certainly a few things are USB powered so 12V USB supplies would work, but they are tiny, almost insignificant loads. No hope of that with the bigger loads like the printer and satellite box.

I tried that, but each time it turns on it grinds through this "calibrating" routine, and I suspect that has resulted in much shorter toner cartridge life.

Sadly not. All the network / internet stuff needs to be on 24/7. the printer takes a few minutes to grind through a "callibrating" routine when powered on so would be a nuisance waiting for it. But the big one is the satellite box. It's an old repurposed Sky HD box. It takes about 4 minutes to boot up upon power being turned on, but in any event it needs to be on if you want to record something. It is old obsolete technology but there are reasons I keep it and probably will continue to use it until it stops working. I have a spare Humax satellite PVR that i could use instead which probably consumes less power, but would be more clumsy to use. I already have the sky box on a time switch, it comes on at 1PM and turns off at 1AM it is unlikely I will be watching or recording anything during that off time.

If you are going to power part of the house "off grid" this really needed thinking about when the house was built. I didn't. I have chosen this cupboard full of stuff as it is all together in once place, and is the once place in the house I can pull a new cable in through the hockey stick that goes down through the floor and emerges outside just above ground level. So easy to get a new cable to bring the off grid supply into the house. Getting a similar off grid feed to the fridge would be nigh on impossible.