ProDave

Only an English problem. If you built a roof properly, like we do in Scotland, with some form of sarking board, you would not be able to fall through it.

You can fit it here for free and I will report the results.......

You only need to (perish the thought) watch Homes Under the Hammer to see street after street of old, poor, small, Victorian terrace houses in poor repair. Perhaps it is tome for another "slum" clearance program?

Now living in a reasonably well insulated and airtight house that does not take much energy to keep it comfortable, I hark back to what I used to accept as "normal" Thinking in particular of the 1930's house I grew up in as a child, and then a bit later, a different 1930's house that I bought myself. Both were cold, draughty and damp, and both took a lot of heat input and even then, they were not always comfortable. There is no way I could contemplate going back to living in one of those, unless I had a sudden unexpected input of capital to either upgrade them or just pay the huge heating bills. But those, and Victorian and earlier must make up a huge percentage of the UK housing stock that simply waste vast quantities of heating fuel. You would think in the current era of recognising the need to reduce fuel usage, particularly fossil fuels, that these old poor houses would be in less demand. We even have an EPC system that (for all it's faults) will at least give you an idea of the running costs and you might think would make the older poorer houses less attractive. You might also think it would encourage all mass builders to produce good houses, all striving for an EPC rating of A. But neither of these seems true. People might only buy an A++ rated fridge, or an eficcient car, yet the largest purchase they make it seems "character" and "period" win over practicality. About the only place the EPC has had any effect is buy to let, where the very worst EPC ratings now cannot be let. I am sure this will change in time. Perhaps it is time to charge more council tax for properties with a poor EPC?

The coloured ones are apparently bright colours so BC can tell from the ground they are treated. The plain ones are probably not treated. All mine are the bright green ones as that's all the local BM has.

Firstly maximise generation for self usage, rather than absolute maximum output. I am proposing an E/W split to get more early and late generation, with a slight tilt to the S mainly hoping that will improve winter yield a bit. Then it is down to lifestyle, use the big appliances, washing machine, tumble dryer, dishwasher, etc only in the daytime and one at a time. The near essential one is a diverter to dump unused PV to DHW heating via the immersion heater. Later on when the price comes down more battery storage should hoover up the remainin g surplus for use at night. An EV and only charge it in the daytime should wrap up any excess.

I will take "the day" off from working on the house. But I might keep an eye on BH from time to time. Usually go for an epic walk somewhere on boxing day if it is dry. Looks like it will be dry but cold. When you are living in your part finished new build it is hard not to just do a bit every now and then.

The brick wall you will hit on a new build claiming FIT is the required EPC certificate. I tried every avenue I could find. The basic issue is you can't claim the FIT unless you have an EPC D or better and you can't get the EPC until you are pretty much finished the build. So will you be in that position before the end of March? I tried to find someone to issue an EPC on the static caravan, by being a bit creative and taking into account the solar PV it might have just scraped a D. But the brick wall I hit there was a "park home" was EPC exempt and because of that I could not find anyone that would do an EPC on that. I then tried the EPC exempt avenue, becaue in theory if your solar PV is on an EPC exempt building then you should be able to claim the FIT with a letter from a surveyor stating it was EPC exempt. That failed because "EPC exempt" means a barn or other uninhabited building. They said a "park home" is a habitable building with heating, so it was possible to issue an EPC for it. Except back to square one, I could not find a surveyor that would. So I have just bought my panels for my completely DIY system with no FIT. My target is to get the whole lot installed for £1500, and then projected £250 pa electricity saving should give a payback of 6 years.

At least the green lobby are turning away from entirely blaming transport fuel. What are they going to do about agriculture, can't have all those flatulent cows in the countryside can we? The "industrial revolution" is widely blamed for mmgw, but I don't see a countryside full of cows as an industrial revolution problem. Rather that other problem that nobody will talk about, that is the unsustainable and still increasing human population figures.

There is a material I have seen used for this but I don't know it's name. It is a sort of cement board but with a woven structure that looks a bit like straw. I think it was in 50mm thick panels where I saw it used I think this may be them https://www.savolit.co.uk/savolit

I have not paid for any waste removal. One of the advantages of a slow build is small quantities at a time are easy to dispose of, just take them to the local tip. Some areas restrict how many times you can visit but not here. If taking a trailer you have to sign a declaration that it is your own personal waste. Rubble, bricks, blocks all get used as hardcore. Wood gets used to make something or fuel for the stove. Plasterboard, I was so eficcient with use I doubt the total waste exceeded 2 full sheets, and cut up small, it just went a little bit at a time in the bottom of the wheelie bin (cough) Ditto all plastic wrapping from deliveries, cement bags etc got treated as normal waste. Insulation, nothing at all got wasted, small offcuts that are no good for walls, are perfect for insulating under a floor void. I even took many bags or waste rockwool from another local self builder and used that to insulate the posijoist voids around the perimiter of the house and some more under the floors. I even got enough large offcuts from that lot to insulate my entire garage walls.

The number of people affected is likely to me more as just about every tradesman around here has at some time done some subcontracting for them as indeed I did many years ago.

I suspect it was like I have seen before, they tried to grow too fast. As I understand it they took on a massive, 78 unit build. I am not privy to the contract terms, but I don't suppose much of the payment would have been due until delivery or completion, but there is only so long suppliers will wait for payment and staff need paying. There was mention on another source of £78K crowdfunding. I guess those investors now join the list of creditors.

Carbon Dynamic in Invoergordon has gone into administration https://www.pressandjournal.co.uk/fp/news/highlands/1627566/highland-based-carbon-dynamic-falls-into-administration/ These were the guys that did the design and all the drawings for our build, and one of their modular builds featured recently on Impossible Builds. Sad news for 40 workers especially at this time of year.

Related to that if you have a lot of 3 way switching. I used the Click Mode light switches, nice and cheap and good quality. But their "party trick" is the switch modules are interchangable, so it is easy for instance to create a 3 gang switch with say 2 intermediate and 1 two way switch.

Never been this way before

There was a joke about "wears the soap" and the punchline was "yes it does a bit"

Freudian slip?

The simplest and probably most robust solution is to use one of the rail systems used for a roof mount. Instead of using brackets to fix it to a roof you could just drill it and bolt it directly to the garage wall. I am watching the outcome of this carefully, i.e wanting to find the cheapest rail / clamp system to mount on the top of my wooden structure. The few I have looked at so far seem very expensive.

We have cardboard doors at the moment. All those massive sheets of cardboard the wood fibre board was packed in came in useful.

There is a trend here. Flood risk. The builder that built our shell lives next to a river. /His house has been there 30 or more years with 5 others. They have never flooded. He tried to get permission to build another house in his large garden, and it was refused because of the flood risk.

All rcbo distribution board. 2 way switching of hall light as well as landing light (so when you get to the top of the stairs you don't have to go back down to turn the hall light off) I don't know why this is not standard but I have not seen it in any house that I have not wired. Master switch for all lights by primary entrance door Think about tv / av / network and phone wiring at an early stage If using a service void, it is easy to leave cables in, in places you might want to add a socket later on. (wire horizontally from socket to socket and you only need one socket on that wall to create a safe zone but the cable can run the whole width of the room so you can add extra sockets later if you need to.)

A quick CAD model (cardboard aided design). An E/W split, with both halves tilted south a bit as well, viewed from the south. Might still achieve the objective of longer usable generation with the tilt hoping to improve winter performance. Anyone care to suggest how to model that on PVGIS?

You have now got me thinking of a compound angle. Keep them E/W split, but then cant both halves over so the S side of the roof is lower, so some slope to the S as well. I can see the cardboard and sticky tape coming out now.........

Planners are the ones that decide. CRT can only express an opinion but unless they have an objection that is a valid reason why planning law should not allow it, then the planners can choose to ignore it. The bridge is a highways issue. Expect a planning condition that no vehicle over the weight limit can use it. That may impact on things like concrete delivery where they will have to use a smaller vehicle, or take it over the bridge in small loads e.g in a dumper.