ProDave

I started with my desk facing the wall under the window. Unworkable, in the afternoon when the sun comes round You have the glaring sun behind your PC monitor. I now have the desk on the next wall round so facing a blank wall with the window to the side. Very late in the day the sun can shine right on the monitor, so not as bad but still unworkable late in the day. Most offices I have worked in the desks are a long way from windows. In my workshop I have a bench under a roof light and that seems to work well. So putting your desk under the roof light might be better for lighting and the room is still small enough to look out and daydream if you want to.

One of the "disappointments" of our build was the inability to get PV registered on the FIT scheme without an EPC and the inability to get an EPC until the house is complete. And further in spite of trying the inability to get anyone to write an exemption letter to claim the FIT with an exemption. Had FIT been possible the ground mount PV would have been installed as soon as the site had a supply and the static caravan was sited. I then watched the FIT rates fall, and then the FIT end before I could meet the criteria to sign up, which was a major frustration, and for some time i pondered whether to go ahead or not and I am glad I did but also glad it was very cheap to do.

Re the scientific explanation. It makes me cringe when someone tries to explain heat pumps by talking about compressing gasses and evaporation etc. While he is technically correct, as in the joke thread above, most people will simply not understand. Why can't they just say something like "it extracts some heat from the air by cooling the air a bit, and puts that heat into your house" Most people would understand that.

Even if they don't have a pressure gauge built in, the changeover regulator usually incorporates a test nipple onto which the gas engineer plugs his manometer with a hose to do the drop test.

I agree. Think of it as you have "reversed" the position of the hot bit and the cold bit, not reversed the physics that operates it, then it makes sense to most people. And most people understand you put the hot bit inside the house and the cold bit goes outside the house. Then it does heat the house.

Personally I would swap the room around and have the sofa bed by the window and the desk under the skylight. If the desk is adjacent to a wall, I would not be using floor sockets. It's easier to put more wall sockets, or at least provision for a mains ring main cable all around the room so extra sockets can be added anywhere you want them on a wall.

To put it into perspective, I have so far only exported 290kWh. If I was eligible to be paid the smart export at 5p per kWh, I would have received the grand total of £14.50 so far. But to be allowed to claim that small payment, I would have had to pay an MCS installer to have fitted and certified it. That low level of payment would never repay the MCS cost.

You do have to notify the DNO under G98 that you have installed a system, but you don't need to be a member of any organisation to do that.

No obvious solution. About all I can suggest if your engineering skills are up to it, is buy the Velux wall switch, and a blank plate of your chosen switch type, drill a large hole to match the round cluster of buttons on the velux switch to make a front cover to match your other switches. If not engineered well it could just look rubbish.

Well you want to mark it out on the panel side so the flat straddles one of the vertical panels equally. You need to choose the flap and see you it is going to work out, If your cat is not oversize you have more choice over what size flap to buy (we had a previous cat who was so large he used to get stuck in the flap we already had, and it had to be replaced with a small dog flap)

Can you post a picture or link to the existing remote control to get an idea what you are trying to replicate? Withou knowing or seeing it, I would guess there are two pushbuttones one for open and one for close? And a link to the type of posh light switches you are going to have?

Yes, your challenge will be getting it to look presentable and not just a bodge.

That was the stock door in most 1930's houses. If yours only has panels on one side, have a careful look. Almost certainly one side has just been clad in thin plywood or very often hardboard. That was done a lot in the 60's to "modernise" the house.

I have said before, a typical 4kW system with a G98 inverter limited to 3.68kW is easy to self use most of it, as long as you have a HW tank and a diverter to send surplus to the immersion heater. It is when you go above 4kW that it becomes harder to self use, so the returns on a larger system are diminishing, and that is probably the point batteries start to make sense. If I can self use so much of what I generate without batteries then at my level the argument for batteries becomes: Will batteries enable me to make more productive use of the surplus vs just dumping it in the immersion heater.

Does the passive cat flap thread still exist?

Here they have a "sustrans" (Sustainable Transport) thing that creates cycle lanes alongside some roads. The trouble is, to fit a cycle lane alongside a road without too much cost, it follows the terrain, and goes up and down slopes to follow the contours. Most cyclists prefer not to keep cycling up hill so just use the much straighter and flatter road and avoid the cycle route.

It will become viable one day, but every time I have looked, the cost of the "free" time shifted electricity is no cheaper than just importing it, when you properly cost the system cost and battery replacement cost at end of life. It will become viable one day as battery prices fall and electricity prices rise but i am not convinced we are there yet. It is a real shame the DNO's are not more flexible. They are stuck in the mindset that if you have 4kW of PV then you are likely to export 4kW and so their network has to be capable of supporting that and in a lot of cases they just say no to more than 3.68kW. It should be possible to install a second PV system that only charges the batteries when the sun is out and that properly monitors export and ensures it never discharges the batteries at a rate great enough to cause any export. A system like that ought the be possible even when you are limited to 3.68kW. Of course one could DIY build such a system and just not tell anyone.........

I don't know this Richochet alarm so can't comment on that. Like @PeterW I only fit AICO. They are simply the best, easiest to fit and neatest, and you can often get them pretty cheap on ebay, e,g there is one supplier I regularly use and pay £16.44 for simple smoke alarms. (do check if using ebay they are not old stock with a short "replace by" date) I can't believe how stupid some other makes are that either force you to cut a hole in the ceiling and accommodate a junction box above, or fit a "flush mounting" kit that makes them so much bigger. Aico also have a good range, and I particularly llke the combined heat and CO alarm in one package (and wish they would also do a combined smoke and CO alarm) And the last plus point for Aico is the locate / test / silence switch panel you can add if you want to. Oh and the good range of radio link options for where it is difficult to get a physical link between them.

I am of the opinion that without subsidies now, solar PV is only worth it if you can self fit very cheap. My own system is 4kWp ground mounted that cost me £1500 to buy the kit and self install it. My original prediction was it would take 6 years to pay back the cost from self used electricity saving. With the recent rise in electricity prices i suspect that will now be nearer to 5 years payback time. I self use nearly all that we generate and that is achieved by using the big appliances (washihing machine etc) in the middle of the day, timing the ASHP to heat the DHW from 11AM onwards (when PV generation should be good) and dumping excess to hot water (about 1/3 of what we generate goes into the immersion heater)

I discovered this today when talking to someone wanting to come and measure for carpets and locating our house. The site is https://osg.scot/portal/ That stands for the "One Scotland Gazetteer" (read on, a similar version should be available for other nations) So type in just your postcode (with a space) and it should list and show on the map ALL the properties on that postcode. It certainly does for here and our new house is shown. Each property has a Unique Property Reference number and there are also Unique Street Reference numbers. A bit from the FAQ's on the site says So a similar web portal should be available for the other UK nations to present this data (if you find one for your nation please post it in this thread) Now this is of particular interest to me as I have failed several times over the last few years to get my new house onto the "Postcode Address File" I kept hitting the brick wall that it was not registered with Highland Council and to get it registered and included on the PAF would cost me £150 but I had already found the property IS on a LOT of databases, in fact everything except the PAF. Another snippet from the FAQ's says So since my property has been given a UPRN and it is not possible for unauthorised persons to create a UPRN, it MUST have been created by Highland council. I will mention this point next time I have the "why is it not on the PAF" discussion....... Anyway apart from the above waffle, I think this is a damned handy website as it is a much more complete address database than I have seen anywhere else so I will put it on my phone to help me finding properties I have to visit.

Put a LOT of CT1 on the threads, both the internal thread and external thread and screw it together. Wait for it to set before filling with water. You will probably never get the heater out again, but that doesn't bother you. If that won't fix it, the leak is unfixable.

And how well will it work when 12" of wet snow lands on it in the night while it is idle and how well will a fan blade totally enclosed in wet snow start up in the morning?

My though is they have a big hole in the top for the fan. So even when idle rainwater is going to fall in. I would want to see what is inside that "wet" space that might corrode and fail. and how they have protected the workings inside. A normal ASHP has air inlet on the back and outlet on the front, and very little rain enters at all, and even if it does it is just the evaporator that gets wet.

As in you go through a door from the bedroom into a shower room?

And how do you stop more than one being used in an HMO? you can get a relay that disables the others when one is in use, then you will just get constant complaints "the shower does not work" I am also intrigued by the layout, there was mention of showers in the bedrooms. How have you dealt with the electrics re a "room containing a shower" if the shower is really in the bedroom rather than a separate shower room.