ProDave

I have used chipboard and MDF in the past. As long as they can drive a wood screw into it I don't think they care. The standard meter boxes have a piece of very cheap feeling thin chipboard. An offcut of chipboard flooring would be miles better.

Another common CU fault is the busbar finger missing the cage clamp terminal. Most mcb's have a terminal arrangement where if the clamp is closed you can insert the busbar finger into empty space. Then you can "tighten" the terminal and "job's a good un" except it's not. A few makes of mcb have solved this for a few pence, by adding an extra tang onto the cage clamp that blocks the hole into the space behind the clamp, so the only place the busbar can go is into the correct place. It iritates me that we "solve" the problems by putting it all in a tin box, rather than mandating engineering solutions like a very simple modification to the terminal design to design out the possibility of faults.

That re defines the phrase "steering through the seat of your pants"

I saw a dumper truck with a back hoe, and initially thought what a brilliant idea. Until I realised where the back hoe was fitted, there was no hope of self loading the dumper.......

Don't forget the metal CU thing is domestic only. You can still fit a plastic CU in an office or workshop. You obviously get a better standard of electrician doing that sort of work.

Quite right. One RCD is enough no need to fit a second one.

Knowing how poor most tradesmen are in regards to insulted and sealed houses, I would concur that you either need to give them a good briefing, and supply them a roll of airtightness tape to fix any punctures, or do all the drilling yourself.

I have read the description. It is a SINGLE fan that runs 60 seconds in one direction, then 60 seconds in the other. While it is extracting, it heats up the heat accumulator. Then when drawing air in, hopefully the heat stored in the accumulator warms the incoming air. Not convinced how that will work in practice, but in order to alternately supply then extract air on a 1 minute cycle, must rely on the house being leaky enough to absorb that waxing and waning air flow. Start running 2 in different rooms, and I can see it getting messy. I would avoid.

Which way round? I found internorm twice the price of Rationel, and only very slightly better Uw values, but others have found internorm cheaper. I am not sure from your statement which was the cheapest in your case? It is staggering how the quotes we get can vary so much.

The smokes should have battery backup as well. The only thing making you fit an rcd is the <50mm rule. Put all cables on the smoke circuit >50mm deep or in earthed metal conduit and you can indeed connect them to an mcb with no rcd protrction.

The issue with that is "Manufacturers instructions" If MK say you can only use their mcb's in their board and no other make, then by fitting a different make you have potentially taken on the task of type approving the whole consumer unit. Yes it's a load of baloney in the real world. If a crabtree mcb is happy to work alongside a load of other crabtree mcb's then it's highly unlikely it would suddenly catch fire if you put it in between two MK mcb's (assuming it would fit) but by doing so you would have been assumed to have taken on the task of verifying it is safe.

That's the best solution, only downside is cost, but it's what I have.

I think this metal CU thing was rather proved wishful thinking when that big stately home burned down due to a CU fire in it's metal 3 phase board......

Most industrial (3 phase) boards are outside the scope of these new fangled fireproof CU's that are only a domestic requirement. A good compromise might be one CU downstairs and a submain to an upstairs CU? I have a 20 way Hager board in my house. Deliberately fitted a few weeks before the new regs came in. It has a metal back part and plastic front. P.S I would hope all your circuits are on rcd's now?

Safe Zones are your answer. Basically straight up,. down, left or right from any accessory, and 150mm from the wall / ceiling joint. Assuming a sloping ceiling is still a ceiling, then anywhere, so that bit is easy. To get from first floor void to downstairs, any safe zone created by any accessory, and of course the consumer unit creates a safe zone above it, so first floor wiring staright up from CU to floor void above. Nothing wrong will drilling a counter batten to run cables through in a safe zone. I like to make my life simple so when fitting vertical battens for a service void, I leave a small gap at socket and switch height to save having to drill them.

Probably too late for my solution, but sleeve the studding e.g with pvc conduit, so the concrete never touches it. Withdraw the studs from the conduit once set and fill with foam. You will also then have a lifetimes supply of lengths of stud for "projects"

A had a quick look at County Battery, but that one is only 26Ah, The one OnOff linked to was 45Ah and at that rating County could not come close the the price he linked to.

Not staggering the tile won't make it leak, it just does not look right. The house next to me, when it was built in 2003, was done like that. To make it even worse, it was done with a tile that was "scored" down the middle, so each concrete tile was meant to look like two slates. With that, you stagger them a 1/4 of a tile so the "slates" look like they are staggered half a tile. But with them all laid in line, it looks like a slate roof with all the slates in line. The "error" in this case was employing a builder who you had previously not had the "best" results from?

Yes, but isn't the choice of Stainless to get long life? Talk about a report missing the mark.......

My partial soakaway is simply one section of the drain run, that runs parallel to the burn, being made of perforated pipe, and set on a bed of stones before being encased in more stones, covered in plastic and the trench refilled. The theory is, when the ground water table is low, most of what flows in will exit the perforated pipe into the stones and soak down into the ground, leaving very little coming out of the other end to enter the burn. This indeed is how it seems to be behaving in summer. In winter the water table will rise and the stones will become saturated in standing geound water so nothing more can soak into the ground, so it will all pass straight through and out into the burn, I believe it will actually act as a land drain to stop the water table rising much above the level of that section of pipe. The stipulation here is no part of an infiltration field will be less than 10 metres from a road, or a watercourse, so I have used that only available thin strip in the middle of my plot that meets both those dimensions. It does seem rather logical that one might want to continue with the perforated pipe and partial soakaway right up to where the pipe discharges to the burn, but one is not allowed to have the soakaway less than 10 metres from the edge of the burn. That restriction seems a little bit daft when one has a permit to discharge what is not disperseded to land, into the burn. EDIT: Another difference betweern England and Scotland, is according to the binding rules, a partial soakaway must be within 10 metres of the watercourse, but as I have already mentioned, Scottish building regs prohibit it being within 10 metres of the watercourse.

You normally start at the bottom and work up. If he has left the bottom row until last, then they won't be nailed, you simply cannot get in there to nail them. They may feel solid, but never under estimate the power of wind in a storm. I recall as a child a storm that stripped a whole lot of tiles off the roof of our house. My dad just went up the next day and put them back (replacing the broken ones) none were nailed. If they had been, they probably would have stayed.

I would not be happy with this job. More importantly will your BCO be happy with it? The nail holes are not only for "vertical tiles" they are to hold them down in a storm. Someone mentioned nailing every third row is normal practice and it certainly does not hurt to nail every row. The clips at the bottom edge that clip them to the batten below are to stop the wing getting under and lifting them.

If I am understanding that statement, and the pictures, then ALL the joints of all rows are in line, and no tiles are nailed? Oh dear. All mine have "coursed" joints, each tile nailed at the top and clipped to the batten at the bottom. And the bottom row of riles overhanging the gutter seems to me missing. I guess they will just be slotted in with no fixings either? Sorry to say you could have done a better job yourself.

If the armature was a permanent magnet, it would shuttle back and forth at 50Hz with just a simple coil energising the armature. I would have thought they would have designed the mechanics to be resonant at 50Hz so it would shuttle back and forth at 50Hz very efficiently. Any other mechanical resonant frequency and it will need more power to force it to move at an unnatural frequency.

Not sure how a diode halves the frequency? the waveform is still 50Hz but now somewhat lumpy. I can see it as a crude way to reduce power, not one the electricity suppliers would like.