Ferdinand

Should say that that payment is set by me, not by them. For obvious reasons. F

Due in 6 instalments from Oct...

It's a bad mismatch with poor data, as my current value used is £40 not £67, and I aim to reduce my gas usage (quantity) by around 60% this winter compared to last. And my current payment is £65 not £137. In Jan this year I had to recover a whole year's worth of electricity charges, as the estimates had been double for a year :-). I think they are misestimating the solar generation. Since the Smart Meter went in, they know that I am only using about 90p a day of electric. The display still has to connect to the gas meter, and I may need to move it to the hall. I just stuck it outside for half an hour next to the meter to see if it will catch.

Interestingly Octopus have now started including Rishi's £400 in my payment balance estimates. Apparently I will owe £900 more having received another £400. This does feel like future taxation policy. A difference of £1300. (The Beta uses the extra 65% on prices from October by the look of it.) Looks like I need to reduce my gas usage by 60-70% this winter. Before: After:

Sorry - I must have been commenting on what you actually wrote. 🙃😁 By the time I have Rishi's Dishy £550 plus the FIT, I may make a profit his year.

Coming back to this, does it include the standing charge? Or is the English as bad as the Maths? 🤠😛😁

Thanks for the reply. The important thing is that you have thought sufficiently and will be satisifed with your decision, without surprises in the future.

Just come across his, but delighted that you have a good result.

Excellent post. Very thanks. My only note would be that for light stuff (pictures etc) surface mounted hooks on paint such as command.com exist. I use those for nearly everything such as pictures.

Um. I'm biased but I''ll try to give good practical advice. I admit that my attitude to painting pebbledash is roughly the same as having a leg off with a rusty nail file and sulphuric acid. I have a T who has been campaigning for it since about 2011, and I have so far held firm; I like making tenants happy and this has not been easy. The issue as I see it is the difficulty of doing it, and the need to repaint it periodically. IMO it is the unnecessary creation of unnecessary work. However, given that you are committed to painting it white, the basics are that you need to make sure that you are utterly tight against water ingress at the top, and probably need paint that will let any moisture that does get in get out again, and use paint that is going to last the longest possible, and consider maintenance, and that you are both sarisfied. On colour for the brickwork and your direct question , if you do it all white it you need to be sure it will work well as a "face" for the house and you will be happy. I would look around at other local houses to see what you both think works. I think in these circs I would leave the brick as brick, and consider painting the eaves triangle at the top in a brick colour or something smart - or perhaps cladding it with something 'plastic wood' in a suitable colour. One way to check this is to print out a photo processed to look like a line drawing, and colour it in on paper or on screen. You get something suitable to do that by taking a photo and running through an "edge detect" and "monochrome" pair of filters, plus perhaps a "sharpen" filter. Stuff up at the top wants to be maintenance free, as you cannot maintain paint from a ladder without risk. So you will be into professionals or at least a scaffolding tower once every decade roughly. I would do it differently, but so would we all and that was not your question. I hope that helps a little practically. Aside: do you need planning permission ? Sometimes it does apply to colour. Or are there covenants? Checking around the area may give an impression on this. Ferdinand

It will be nothing like that difficult. 🙂

If you are using expanded foam, make sure there is room for it to expand 🙂. I think it is normal recommendation to mist the cavity with water first.

I've been doing some checking, and the problem seems to be the connections from the inverters. I have indeed changed internet provider. Reconnecting, however, seems complex, and I think I will need to raise a ticket. Reading around, there is an app called SetApp from SolarEdge, which seems only available to maintainers. In theory I can reconnect it as a customer using WPS, but that is not being very helpful. The inverters are SolarEdge 5000s, installed Dec 2015. F

By assumption, and keeping a rough watch on the FIT feedback, the electricity meters, and the meters on the Inverters in the garage. Shameful, I know. But life has been busy etc. Now I have the time to take more of an interest, and the higher prices etc.

That's the illustrative graphic from the Octopus website just to help bods here identify the particular display version I have.

Smart Meter installed, and after a couple of days has connected itself to the Octopus electrical service. It turns out that mine is a Chameleon ID3 display unit, and that it displays the amount of electricity going through the meter in both directions - which when exporting gives me the *Net* amount of export. This is on the "Now" screen. (Which means of course that I cannot disaggregate how much my house is actually using). When exporting it displays a symbol of an arrow going into a pylon. There is a chat about the symbol on the Bulb forums here: https://community.bulb.co.uk/t/pylon-symbol-on-smart-meter-monitor/54932 This is the home screen appearance of the IHD3:

I haven't tried anything at all yet 🙃. As I can't find how to do anything in the portal. Digging, there is help in there - but it is aimed at installer / maintainers, not customers. Looking at the SE website, there is a knowledge base. Digging required. https://www.solaredge.com/uk/service/support/system-owner I should confess that I have always been happy just to have the panels working, and that it went off in March 2016.

My pv solar system (Dec 2015) uses Solar Edge units on each panel for optimisation, and Solaredge inverters.. When installed it came with monitoring via the Solar Edge online portal. The company who installed my solar PV got out of it some time ago, and logging back in using the original details I see that monitoring is no0t happenng. Does anyone know if I can get that up and running again, or do I need to switch to a third party type standalone meter? Any similar experiences? Thanks Ferdinand

I don't think it has been mentioned how "ground level" is measured for fence height. There's stuff about measuring from the original ground level, whatever that means, and also how slopes are handled, and also how being next to a building affects it. But for now just be aware of the issue, and only dive into it if you need to.

Smart Meter now connected to the Electricity Data. Still waiting for gas - interestingly gas meter is rather further away. May be more than the nominal 10m - hmmm.

The concept of land use is separate from the concept of land ownership. Often supervening usage rights are held by third parties, such as Govt Departments. For example, in many places the plot boundaries extend up to the middle of the road. So the land under the road is owned by the householder, but the road and the pavement have a supervening right to exist on it as a public use, and you will not get away with fencing in your portion of the road. Similarly for a public footpath across a farmer's field, or a private ROW to access a mid-terrace via the back garden of the end terrace. When I did a PP I proposed a road widening to accommodate a junction, and that required the land between people's fences across the road and the edge of the pavement. There was a great kerfuffle about "butbutbutbutbutthat'smygarden", but it had been "highway land' for at least half a century designated for a future widening of the A38 - which was exactly why the fences were set back a little - and the Highways Department of the CC were able to provide a map. I had a hell of a problem once when the buyer for our family's house of 38 years refused to believe we had a right to drive into our drive because the carriageway had been moved a few feet further away when they built the M1 as it was realigned in 196x. And documentation was light about who owned the bit of land where it had been moved. I think in the present case the Council are going to insist on their amenity land unless you find a loophole that sticks, and have gone quite a long way in allowing even a 1m fence, as the character of the estate is fairly clearly designed to be open and a garden fence will disrupt that. And it is prominent. I would go for a 2m fence around the side of the house to enclose a front to back private footpath, which route I do not think the OP has.

The Smart Meter is in, so the next experiment can begin after it has connected itself. Which trakes 5 minutes to 2 weeks. Allegedly.

If you are well insulated perhaps put them on inside walls - closer together and fewer pipes..

I thought it was a Robot out of Arthur C Clarke...

IMO the biggest error was for the Govt to go for a demand side, not a supply-side, intervention. Free market Tories not transcending their inappropriate for these circs neo-Thatcherite limitations.