markocosic

There'll be doors yes to form a cupboard. I've found a nice metal roof shop locally. Copper / brass / zinc sheet and all the gubbins to work with it. I'll fold up a "tray" in zinc to sit inside in the base of the cupboard; and drain through a waterless trap. This will be more robust to e.g. dropping a screwdriver/spanner on it during servicing work than lino over a soft floor (likely to pinhole) and should catch drips from filter servicing / the odd bit of condensation from water filters in summer etc. Cutting THROUGH the floor isn't an option as it's the aitrightness layer. Trimming a capillary break under the metal near to the doors might not be daft though - good shout and a job for the tracksaw 🙂

Management of how these are being delivered by Octopus seems to gotten worse rather than better over time @DamonHD - is the crew employed by Octopus or are they over-promising on sales and hoping to backfill delivery capability by subbing out 3rd party installers without a management structure to operate in this manner?

Sanded. Picking up finish tomorrow. Long weekend of priming, staining, and topcoating coming up. Nervous as heck!

Thanks folks; this sounds like a goer. 🙂 This be the nervous corner...

I have a wooden house There is a lot of plumbing in the "utility cupboard" that could, in principle, go wrong. (water pump gubbins, mechancial, de-ironing and softening filters, washing machine, general plumbing etc) I'm toying with the idea of a "tray" with floor drain in it, dropping through the floor to a hepvo trap that just drops into the (vented) crawlspace. In principle this will never see water. In practice it'll probably get the contents of a mechanical water filter spilled down it occasionally but that's about it. Do they stay dry / sealed from an airtightness perspective in this application? It's likely that it would be under negative pressure (suck from house, stack effect to roof) rather than positive. Ditto for the fridge freezer (power cut defrost don't destroy the wood floor) potentially; though that can probably just be a deep enough tray given the limited volume of water in a freezer. Madness because?

Mezzanine floor (light domestic use) 195 x 45 C16 joists on 600 mm centres spanning 3 metres. 120 x 28 mm tongue and groove pine/spruce floorboards. I would like to secret fix (screw through tongue) these boards AND glue the to the joists to avoid squeaks (caused by screwing through the tongue not being enough to pull the boards tight against the joist if the joist isn't perfectly level or the boards are not perfectly matched in thickness) Which glue and screw? "Yellow glue" (aliphatic resin) or "Bubble glue" (PU)? https://www.titebond.lt/titebond-original-wood-glue/ https://www.titebond.lt/titebond-polyurethane-glue/ Which screw? (note - softwood not ply)

For what it's worth this is what we have done did: MS Polymer floor adhesive, notch trowelled over SANDED OSB (told by man in shop who seems to know his stuff that it is important to sand to remove wax coating on the boards that's there for temporary site waterproofing), which at a 1300g/m2 application rate effectively gives you a thin layer of glue over the ENTIRE surface (aka an air moisture barrier - be sure to work it into the holes created by your wedge blocks as you go too) PLUS your raised ridges of glue to lay the wood onto. Secret screwed through the tongues too to keep it in place/persuade it to be straight/allow me to walk on it instantly. https://renove.lt/lt/klijai-ms-elastic-400-12kg Boards then graded by width (of course they're all bloody different once acclimatised, and indeed different end to end because they're trees) and wedged into submission (September being a "neutral" month for expansion/contractor) with the ends (where there has to be joints) routered/false tongue added/glued to avoid any moisture getting into the "ends" of the grain should anything get wet wet. Set the router depth off the face of the board to set these "flush" and make the glue take up any variation in board thickness (which is also all bloody different because wood). Prime/stain/2K PU laquer to go over the top in the coming weekends. For the entry mats I have left a gap (mat well) that is going to be edged in solid brass (say 10x5 mm, as a visual edge and to protect the wood; with the wood/brass sanded to be inlaid flush) then tanked before dropping in an underfloor heating mat and a coir mat to sit flush with the floor. That's hopefully enough to (a) leave wet shoes on safely and (b) dry reasonably quickly in winter. 🙂 Other tips - don't scratch your balls if you have slow cure floor adhesive on your hand and buy kneepads that you'll use and love. I rate these FWIW: https://lt.misupplies.co.uk/clothing-c12/mens-workwear-c635/trousers-and-shorts-c512/knee-pads-c519/helly-hansen-workwear-79571-kneepad-xtra-protective-p53480?utm_campaign=pr_r&utm_source=www.misupplies.co.uk&utm_medium=wi_proxy&utm_content=lt_LT&utm_term=c Start with a stringline, attached aline of blocks against it, wedge the heck out of your first boards to have them be bang straight. False tongue in the groove end and then lay boards from both directions having first checked where to start to avoid horrible part board cuts. (image pinched off internet)

Looks like the bigger rack mount units are pure sine rather than modified sine:

Good shout @Dave Jones - probably far better kit than fleaBay / Alibaba special inverters and can notify of an outage at more rural properties. - Any idea what the standby usage of such units is? (to maintain batteries in a charged state) - What internal voltage do the run on the DC side? (is it viable to run them from a 12V car? if yes up to what size?) - How do they handle nasty loads? (motor start; induction hobs etc that might go from zero to hero or otherwise abuse the output stage) I may add a used UPS to the Xmas list. 🙂

FYi Europe tends to use plaster made out of nothing https://www.knauf.lt/produktai-ir-sistemos/produktu-a-z/super-finish.html https://www.knauf.lt/produktai-ir-sistemos/produktu-a-z/fill-finish-light.html If you put THAT over plasterboard it offers about as much resistance to knocks as a layer of emulsion. If you put UK plaster (brown multifinish etc) over plasterboard then it spreads the load and offers real protection against knocks. If you put the Euro nothing plaster over fermacell then it is also resistant against knocks - but only if thin enough that the layer of plaster doesn't "smoosh" so to speak. Been there made that mistake. 😉

Read the terms - it's a bait and switch. Price is £X...but only after you contract do they tell you the actual price. They also don't trench. "cable must be run along walls" means then only thing they'll do is nail a cable through walls and along walls. No basements. No digging. No hiding cable. No mounting chargers on posts etc. Their base price is one hole through the wall, tying into the meter tails, and bodging an ugly cable along the outside of teh house to an EV charger nailed onto the wall on the pish.

Back of the render; edges of render?

Assuming continuous heating in winter; no cooling in summer? Enough air leakage condensed water can eventually run back towards the wood? Doesn't need much ventilation/drainage layer to avoid issues.

Hope they're airtight internally...

If available I'd do it for vehicle charging and future PV / battery reasons. Most EVs have 16A / 3.6 kW chargers. Two or three of them. If two, then max charge rate is 7.2 kW. If three, then they only use two when on single phase (to avoid melting cables), but can use three when on three phase (to charge at 11 kW) Very few can do 22 kW charge; but two 11 kW vehicles can easily. Beware that smart meters may take longer to source when on 3ph in the UK.