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Everything posted by ProDave
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Loft roll is soft and will be unlikely to just stay in place. Frametherm is much stiffer and if cut slightly oversize will push in place on a sloping ceiling and just stay there. Early in the build I put a single piece in the roof between the rafters as a test , and 6 months later it had not fallen out or even slipped.
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Well done. I bet the challenge was getting oak planks for the half landing that matched the stair, or did stairbox supply those?
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Very similar to @joe90 stairs Shown here as work in progress. The 2 flights of stairs were 2 separate stairs from stairbox and the half landing was framed in place. Two 8 by 2's spanning the width and 4 by 2's spanning front to back. P5 chipboard floor. Where it gets tricky is if you want e.g. an oak staircase without stair carpet, then you probably do need to get the whole lot made by the stair supplier.
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CO2 level in passive house according to British standards
ProDave replied to irnbru's topic in Ventilation
Scottish regs do indeed require a CO2 sensor in the main bedroom. I missed out on that as mine was built to the version of regs before that. I did look at buying one out of curiosity, but they were hard to find and expensive. with every new house in Scotland needing one, I would have hoped they would be easier to find and cheaper now. -
At this time of year, solar PV output is very close to minimum,nothing like what they generate in the summer.
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Air to air heat pump aka air conditioning unit, you get about 4 times as many kW of heat as it consumes kW of electricity. You can buy one for under £1000 and they are (just) possible to DIY install. Unless your whole house is using storage heaters, I question of the night rate saving is worth it as the day rate will be higher than normal.
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Wall beds and other space saving ideas
ProDave replied to Jilly's topic in New House & Self Build Design
Look at caravan and boat layouts, they have mastered small and awkward spaces and multi function uses. But don't assume many of the tricks in caravans and boats will meet building regulations if that is an issue to you. -
It’s great to be “handy” but! …
ProDave replied to markc's topic in General Self Build & DIY Discussion
The fact you CAN does not always mean you WILL. -
100A single phase is 23KVA 100A 3 phase is 69KVA So they are pretty much saying you can have a normal 100A supply either single or 3 phase. You won't need anything like that, so no need for a new transformer, which is good. Probably worth getting 3 phase if available as it won't cost much more and you don't have to use all 3 if you have no need.
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Mine routinely turns on and off twice per second (not as fast as @Radian system) It's called "burst firing" meaning the on time is adjusted in this case to match available power. And Burst firing is used for industrial heater power control e.g in a furnace. You would have thought if such burst firing was detrimental to the life of a heating element, it would be well documented?
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Got a SAP, what now?
ProDave replied to HughF's topic in Energy Efficient & Sustainable Design Concepts
Few self builders would cheat themselves would they? It is the mass house builders that are often suspected of only building a few properly, the sample that needs inspecting by BC, and cutting corners on the rest where they hope nobody will notice. -
I would be having kittens if I was paying £23 per day even with a heat pump.
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I have not looked but can you get that for only the free channels without paying any subscriptions?
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Flexible PV solar panels on a single-ply membrane roof
ProDave replied to tpdubya's topic in Introduce Yourself
Post a picture of the roof for suggestions. And it DOES need notifying to the DNO if grid tied. Gluing them to the roof seems a bad idea it anything goes wrong with a panel or if the roof needs maintenance. -
I looked into this for a friend who is not allowed an outside tv aerial (conservation area) and cannot get a decent signal with an indoor aerial. Her only option is to stream her tv over the internet and that means a different app for each provider and of course the app won't allow you to skip the adverts (I prefer to record such programs on the satellite PVR and fast forward the adverts)
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You will need one more 32A mcb as you presently have 6 30A fuses and that Cu conly comes with 5 32A mcb's.
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I have fitted many of the SF BG boards, nothing to complain about My favourite if money no object is Hager (what i have in my house)
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No. Any mcb's you find for that will be old / second hand, if you do find any new ones they will silly money. And an rcbo for that is like hens teeth. Spend the money on a new up to date consumer unit.
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Got a SAP, what now?
ProDave replied to HughF's topic in Energy Efficient & Sustainable Design Concepts
I think the SAP report is as good as the assessor and what you instruct him to do. Ours was pretty detailed and used the actual calculated U values for the floor wall and roof make up, and reasonable assumptions about windows and a random choice of ASHP and MVHR units. and a pretty poor assumption of air tightness. At completion time I got them to update it to include actual as fitted window UW values, correct a mistake that got the roof U value too poor, include the actual ASHP, MVHR and stove used, and include the actual air tightness test result. This improved the score somewhat. -
Essential standby equipment, energy use and solutions
ProDave replied to ProDave's topic in General Alternative Energy Issues
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.
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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.
