ProDave

So I have been having a conversation with Cool energy. My customer wants me to get all the wiring in place so he can finish plastering but he does not yet have the heat pump and tank. So I asked them the simple question, can I download the manuals? Their reply was the manuals come with the units. I have replied if they can't supply an electronic copy of the manuals, can they at least scan the pages that show the electrical connections and email them to me. Not the most helpful company to deal with.......

What is your weather down there? Unusually warm here for the time of year, and dry as well.

Plug in an electric convector heater on an extension lead from the rest of the house. Get the room up to something like a normal temperature and see if the problem clears.

No heating on inside yet? This regularly happens with triple glazed, it shows they are "working" and not letting enough heat out to raise the outside glass above the dew point.

I notice you are all just putting the willis heaters on a switch. No attempt to interlock this with ensuring the pump is on and water is flowing? The "engineer" in me says contactor controlled by call for heat from manifold controller which in turn is controlled by the room thermostats. Or are you just relying on the immersion thermostat to turn off if the water stops flowing?

In the ceiling space get the electrician to clip all the cables to the TOP cord of the joists if going in before the insulation. Then the insulation will not touch the cables or fall down onto them. Wiring regs say you only have to consider insulation if more than 300mm of the cable is embedded in insulation, so where it drops down for say a light fitting it will pass through less than 300mm of insulation so is not considered.

I thought the problem was deforestation. If someone thinks forests are expanding I would like to see his evidence.

I would take a different approach. You have already considered a non opening window or just a simple pane of glass, so clearly the ability to open it is not important. I would have a detailed look to see where the water is getting in. Is it every time it rains? or only if the wind is blowing in a particular direction at the time? Then I would look at making modifications to stop the leak. The window is designed for a certain pitch of roof and relies on the water running down in a particular way and if there is not enough slope water may run in places it is not supposed to so you need to find where and stop it. The final option is lots of CT1 or similar and just seal everything so the window no longer opens and every joint is sealed. I really don't see any realistic option to fit a different make of window on top of the existing frame.

What electricity supply at the moment? At a push you can run 2 showers from a 100A single phase supply, or 6 from a 100A 3 phase supply. So electric is not the way if you want 9 showers.

Last supply move I was involved with, the DNO guys moved the meter, even though they shouldn't, so supply was back on almost immediately. Suppliers meter man arrived a few hours later and went balistic, accusing me of moving it saying I am not allowed to touch it. I really don't think he believed me when I said it was the DNO guys wot did it.

I did not bother filling in between the gaps. The white cable is tv aerials and network so not bothered by being in contact with insulation, taking the shortest route.

Some VERY dodgy maths. Space heating 8927kWh DHW 2603kWh gives a total of 11530 which at an electricity price of 11.06875p gives £1276.22 They seem to have nearly doubled that. So lets assume the HP gives a COP of 4. You still need the same kWh of heat but that will now only need 2882kWh of electricity, which will cost £319.04 So saving of £957 per year At their system cost of £18299 that will take 19 years to repay the cost

Frametherm 35 on a roll is quite stiff and generally stays put. It is a lot less nasty to work with than most of the "loft" type glass wool insulation. Between the posijoists I wedged it in, then sotted any old offcuts of wood just to ensure it did not fall down before the plasterboard went on. Where possible I clipped cables to the side of the bottom timber of the joists so they were not in contact with the insulation. Just to show how stiff Frametherm 35 is, I used it in my warm roof. Just a push fit there, nothing else. I had one test piece that sat there 6 months before the plasterboard went on, and it did not move at all.

Yes. You will be left with just a little box with a removeable lid to reach down to the stopcock and to read the meter.

One observation with my "new" laptop was it ran hot around the CPU fan. It was not blocked just running hot. I had a look in the BIOS and changed the CPU speed from automatic to "low power" This slows the machine down but it runs a lot cooler and the battery should last longer. The whole thing runs so fast that the reduction in speed is barely noticable. I bet there are not many people who deliberately underclock their computer? The only issue I have yet had with Zorin was it is unable to browse the network to find network drives. I soon found a work around. I believe the current Ubuntu has the same issue. Strange really as it found the network printer okay and set that up without problem.

I have just looked in the box, and both the laptop HDD's that we have had fail have been Western Digital. Call me silly but I think I will avoid any more from them. What make is recommended these days?

It's normal * to fit a "boundary box" (known here as a Toby) that contains a stopcock and a water meter, at the boundary of the site. The pipe from the main to the boundary box is the water companies responsibility. The pipe from the boundary box to the house is your responsibility. * They do sometimes forget as @AnonymousBosch will confirm.

I would love to see the calculations that arrived at that statement. A "little" optimistic?

That will be the cheap ones from Stirling build (and others) https://www.sterlingbuild.co.uk/category/eco-plus-pitched-roof-windows I fitted one in the plant room. You get what you pay for. The finish was not briliant, and the mechanism to close the trickle vent is not briliant. That's why I ended up using Velux and paying a bit more.

This thread confirms my view that basing my home audio system on a 1990's hifi unit and a Raspbery Pi Music box was a sound choice. (excuse the terrible pun)

Not an issue, these are on a north facing roof.

We have had 2 HDD failures both on laptops that SWMBO uses. First was in about 2008 when the HD of her then Vista computer crashed. I recovered most of the stuff off that and and that pc got a new HDD and Ubuntu and was what I was using until a few days ago. Then just before Christmas the HDD on her present laptop with W10 crashed. We looked at getting a new laptop then, but I did not see anything that floated my boat then, so that got a new SSD and a fresh install of W10 and most of her files recovered from the old HDD. I have never had an HDD fail on the probably less harsh environment of a desktop pc. I have plugged the backup disk into the router now and that seems to be working, and it does spin down when not being accessed, So I will go and order a USB caddy and a HDD

Yes when the HDD on SWMBO's laptop died, I did manage to recover most of her files from it with some disk recovery software. I am pondering a backup strategy for this laptop, and thinking the best way would be say a monthly complete disk image and keep that on the backup drive. Then if this SSD dies I can restore to a new disk exactly as it was.

They still do the non inverter ones. I believe this is the one he is planning to buy https://coolenergyshop.com/collections/pro-range-heat-pumps/products/cool-energy-pro-range-8-41kw-stainless-heat-pump-model-ce-h8 It's hard justifying to him why he should spend £1000 more to have an inverter driven one. Just because they are a bit more refined is a hard argument to justify an extra £1000

I am curious why an SSD is okay as an every day disk in a laptop but is not suited to a far less demanding role of a file storage medium?