ProDave

The weather continues to be carp here as it was most of June. Wednesday the sun came out, so I sparked up the barbeque. Thursday was dry so I finally got back out on the boat, first time in over a month. Normal service resumed and it's drizzle today. At the moment it's lack of funds once more slowing me down. I had hoped to be plasterboarding now but I blew that budget with my (hopefully) bargain ASHP so that will have to wait until next month, so now I'm grubbing around trying to find worthwhile things that need doing either with very cheap materials, or using up materials I already have.

The bottom half of the fortnightly wheelie bin is good for "stuff" and then the normal rubbish on top hides anything I only take big stuff to the tip that's too big for the bin.

18mm T&G chipboard is no good for 600 centres, only for 400 so can't use that. Do I NEED plywood? Last house has tiles onto chipboard with no issues (slate in the hall, ceramic in the kitchen) Probably just using some form of ceramic tiles on the floor pf these rooms, a long way from that decision yet. I was assuming that whatever tanking I use would waterproof it, that is a question I was going to leave until we are ready to do it but I assume we are talking about something you paint on, rather than a sheet of something?

I suspect it's that the SB inverters are transformerless, so any leakage on the DC side (poor installation) would directly lead to leakage on the ac side.

Some say Sunny Boy inverters don't like an rcd. But mine has been running for 5 years on an rcd and has never tripped yet.

Some makes of inverter trip rcd's and advise against them. You haven't mentioned what size cable feeds the studio, and how it is connected and protected in the house. That is a much more important question.

Does anyone else remember when you could buy rolls of EPS about 1mm thick. You stuck it to your wall, then wallpapered over it to "insulate" your walls.

Our en-suite and main bathroom will both be wet rooms. I have identified the wet room formers for the 2 shower areas, they are 22mm thick, but for reasons of budget (lack of) I am not buying them yet. I do however want to floor most of the rooms. So what 22mm thick floor boarding for a wet room, suspended on Posijoists at 600mm centres? Is it as simple as P5 chipboard, or something more exotic?

OR didn't charge us a thing. They provided the cable free issue. There is something about all connections get a subsidy of about £3K and you only get charged if your connection would cost more than that. I had to pay BT £65 for a "new connection" but that then got refunded because of the length of time it took them to make the connection. Compared to over £1K each for water and electricity, the telecom connection was a bargain.

So what you are saying is I can make an image and copy it under windows but I can't see what's on that copy using windows. But if I then plugged that copy into the ubuntu laptop I would then be able to see what's on it?

I have just had a look at the memory card (and taken a backup) this is all that is on it: That didn't work very well. I will try a better listing tomorrow, have to go now.......

Good point, I will take a backup before the unit is put into use in anger. I remember when programming my Arduino for my solar PV Immersion dump controller, the data logging I did on that deliberately wrote data to the entire memory in sequence, rather than writing to the same few bytes and "wearing them out"

Depends where you are. Up here in the Highlands, Open reach still supply steel wire armoured telecoms cavle that is buried directly. the only bit I put in grey duct wa under the road crossing. My SWA comes direct into the house with no external junction and OR just connected the master socket to it. They do seem to have different local rules, but once you get your local OR surveyor to visit the site he will tell you what needs to be done to meet local rules.

I have seen that done/ The outside was clad in a breathable membrane, then battened then clad. I thing the crucial thing in the one I saw, was the gaps were narrow, and the edges were cut at an angle, so water entering the gaps would drain outwards, so probably not much would rain would get through the gap.

The missing memory card was posted to me on Monday and it arrived today. I can now report that it is all working okay and I can connect to the unit's dashboard. I can't see (or have not yet found) this quiet mode setting that was mentioned. But the important thing is I can now customise the temperature compensation curve. I also see a load of event log entries from 2015 so this "new" unit appears to have had some limited use 2 years ago.

The standard meter box has a chipboard back, I don't know if it has a special coating. I see MDF used frequently for meter boards as well as plywood.

The 3 metre rule is when you have no switch or isolator so the cables are only protected by the suppliers fuse. It's not a wiring regs thing. it's a supply company rule. You can have any length you want if you fit your own switch fuse. Since you like pictures, here is mine. The switch fuse I am talking about is in the right hand box labelled "main" in my case with an 80A fuse in it.

If you don't ,ind me asking, roughly how much was a slider like that?

Double = MUCH bigger lintel to span the gap = less height. 2 singles = 2 much smaller lintels = more height. I am having a roller door so it can be custom made to have maximum opening size, in particular maximum height (I want to get my Landy in with the roof rack on)

But those additional works (the cable and poor infill) would probably not have added £6,700 to the cost though? When I built the previous house, it was on a fixed price, but with conditions. One was if the ground conditions were poor and required deeper foundations, there was an agreed additional cost for each additional course of underbuilding required. A simple and elegant solution to an unknown.

I am pretty sure Aberdeenshire don't

Certainly sign up for both, there is no fee to you, they both work by taking a commission on bookings through them. Air BnB pay almost straight away for each booking, Booking,com settle their account monthly one month in arrears. I can see you now splitting your house down the middle and making it two semi's. I would certainly prefer to book an individual house like your rather than one in a field of sheds.

Hi and welcome to the forum. The procedure is the same here. We are in an SSE area as well. You first order your supply connection from SSE who will connect your supply to the supply head in your meter box (temporary or permanent) They will then issue you with an MPAN (Meter Point Administration Number) Only when you have that, can you appoint your chosen energy supplier who will separately come and fit your electricity meter. That can take several weeks. Speak to SSE about what tariffs they offer, I am sure they still do a no standing charge tariff, which comes at a higher pence per unit, but if you are using nothing or nearly nothing, then it can save you a lot not paying standing charges. Not all energy suppliers will fit a meter, but SSE definitely will so it's usually simpler to just choose them to start with, and later on when you are using more you can switch supplier if you want to. You will need a consumer unit in your meter box with at least one connected and tested circuit, that could be as simple as an outside 16A socket for building work. The supply company may or may not refuse to fit a meter if you have no consumer unit in the box. As to what box. You can as you suggest fit a temporary box. I have even seen an old kitchen cabiniet with a bit of roofing felt on it used, but I would recommend something a lot better. There will be a charge for them to come and move the supply into the house at a later date. Alternatively you can as already mentioned make your outside meter box a permanent structure and just have the supply connected there and left there. You then supply and install your own cable from the meter box to the house. We chose this for several reasons but mainly it saved disruption and ground work later on. If you, like us, are near full capacity on your supply, just accept whatever they offer you. We were offered a 12KVA supply which should be adequate, but the reality is that it is the same size cable and the same 100A fuse that everybody else has. If all the houses drew more than 12KVA at the same time the transformer would get a bit hot and bothered. I feel certain if we had requested more than 12KVA there would have been a big charge for upgrading the transformer. Let the next person face that challenge. It's probably worth also talking to Open Reach (that is another challenge) and Scottish Water to get all your services in. Particularly if a road crossing is involved as doing it all in one road crossing is obviously cheaper.

As a former B&B proprietor I can say AirBnB was somewhat disappointing. The one that really worked (and is continuing to work for our tenants who are still running the old house as a B&B) is booking.com Here's an example of something that you will be competing against https://www.booking.com/hotel/gb/skye-cabins-am-praban.html?label=gen173nr-1FCAEoggJCAlhYSDNiBW5vcmVmaFCIAQGYATG4AQvIAQ_YAQHoAQH4AQKSAgF5qAID;sid=6b05f7a9212354902f8d5aa0f3ee2c43;all_sr_blocks=251729201_103674024_2_0_0;checkin=2017-07-17;checkout=2017-07-22;dest_id=2717;dest_type=region;dist=0;group_adults=2;highlighted_blocks=251729201_103674024_2_0_0;hpos=1;room1=A%2CA;sb_price_type=total;srfid=6a2725da7bf45c241a4e9d709f6d07cffe226578X1;srpvid=6c9d5a7ae12c03f7;type=total;ucfs=1&#hotelTmpl

Even up here where plots are cheap, you will struggle to make any money building a house to sell. About 8 years ago someone built a bungalow to sell right at the end of our road, he already owned the land and it had been a paddock before he got permission. After all the hard work he sold the bungalow for £50K more than the build cost. He said to me if he had know he would not have wasted 2 years of time, he would have just sold the plot to someone else to build on.