James Newport

As above, and less chance of the 47mm thick wood splitting when you fix into it.

My wall fittings had grub screws - but they have brass threads. The ceiling one with a chrome thread didn't come apart at all.

https://www.toolstation.com/search?q=wallplate elbow

There's usually a little grub screw you can undo with an allen key.

You had topsoil delivered to their garden?

Didn't Caractacus Potts already invent one of those for his father to use in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang?

My roofer used 1m. And 1.5m.

On the subject of Matter/Thread and interoperability... Home assistant have launched a crowd funding campaign for a new smart hub that will run Home Assistant, has built in support for Zigbee (so no more Hue hub or Ikea hub as well) and it will also support Matter in the future. More info here: https://www.crowdsupply.com/nabu-casa/home-assistant-amber

Polystyrene wallpaper? It's a couple of mil thick, you could stick up a few layers then plaster board. Not as good as the other stuff mentioned, but might be available

Celotex do a 12mm PIR board

With slates you have to nail every one because they'd slide off otherwise. But interlocking concrete tiles have a ridge at the top that hooks over the batten, and then the weight of the tiles above holds the row below down, and so on. On my nineteen sixties roof that I stripped, not a single concrete tile was nailed, although they had used tile clips(although I think these are just to stop the tiles rattling in high wind). But according to Marley - who made my new tiles - everything tile has to be nailed these days. Apparently it's windier than it used to be. You're also supposed to have double fixings at certain places, such as the eaves or the verge e.g. a nail *and* a tile clip. The tile manufacturer will provide a guide about exactly what they want. But the problem with nailing every single tile is that it's much harder to swap out tiles if one gets broken. So it's a choice between following the guidelines to the letter, or being pragmatic and making life simpler in the future if a tile ever needs to be replaced. One thing to definitely bear in mind is your location. There are different zones for wind strength around the UK. So here down south my original un-nailed roof survived for 60 years, but if it had been up in Scotland it might have been a different story.

It's this kind of stuff https://www.toolstation.com/30-minute-polyurethane-wood-glue/p52489

But it's not poking out, or even flush...

Hue works fine without internet. https://www.howtogeek.com/293341/what-happens-if-my-philips-hue-lights-go-offline/ What you lose is the ability to control them away from home.

I inherited a load of outside lights with PIR sensors and they were useless. - lights that only switched on when you were close to them, so anyone who didn't know the light was there was taking a voyage into the blackness until they were blinded by the light at the last second - lights that switched off if departing guests stopped to have a chat on the doorstep - lights you couldn't override and have them permanently on if you were expecting visitors I am sure you can probably get more modern versions that fix all of the above, but nuts to that. I've wired simple light enclosures back to the consumer unit and I control them with little wifi enabled switches. So dusk to dawn, motion enabled, or permanently on are all available without worrying about what the light fitting supports, or what it looks like. Standalone PIR sensors are available (e.g. https://www.philips-hue.com/en-gb/p/hue-outdoor-sensor/8718699625474#overview). Eventually I'm going to put this, or something similar, halfway down the drive and use it to illuminate guests/the night people with the glare of my million spotlights.

Her in South Wales, our joiner called it scotchboarding.

Counter battens that follow the line of the rafters, then fix the tile battens to those.

Sound great, but these things take longer than a year to become a widespread standard. (https://xkcd.com/927/)

There are automation systems (e.g. Home assistant) that acts as a unified control system for different types of smart bulb. You can pick and choose which hardware you want for whatever requirements you have and then use home assistant to tie it all together. The barrier to entry with something like Hue is low, so long as your pocket can stand the hit.

You could go with something like Phillips Hue. Leave all the bulbs powered on and then control it from their app. You can create different zones, and different routines e.g. light things automatically at 7pm. It's probably the least technical solution, but it gets pricey, especially if you buy their own bulb enclosures. What's also nice about this is that you can set different bulb colours or brightness. What I have done for my outside lights is divide the house exterior into a number of zones, then wire each zone back to the consumer unit. I then use an app controlled wifi switch to turn these on or off. This means I can use cheaper bulbs, but they are all on or off in a particular zone.

I've used the Shelly 1 switch linked to temperature sensors wired under the floors, and it's pretty robust. Doesn't support the SHT30 or SHT31s you mention though. I occasionally have to cycle power on one of my Shelly switches when it loses wifi connectivity. This might be true. I've just checked out the temperature graphs from my Shelly HTs, and the ones connected via USB report far more temperature changes in small increments, compared to the ones on battery only.

A few random things I didn't realise before I bought my first cameras You can save bandwidth, CPU, storage etc by dropping the megapixels - do you really need 4k resolution for every camera? The focal length of the lens is important. Wide angle lenses cover lots of area, but resolution is poorer because the lens is covering a wider area Couple of useful pages (and more) are here https://www.cctv42.co.uk/help-advice/buying-guides/camera-buying-guide/hd-1080p-lens-comparison/ https://www.cctv42.co.uk/help-advice/buying-guides/camera-buying-guide/3mp-4mp-4k-resolution/ Blue iris is great The array of hikvision products is maddening Make sure you remove any cameras before any clumsy oafs with sledgehammers start demolishing things, because the vision of clumsy oafs is based on movement toward the kettle, not the presence of expensive cameras Don't mount cameras up too high otherwise all you'll get is the tops of dodgy blokes heads

I haven't done it yet.

In case you haven't found it, there's an API which is documented here https://shelly-api-docs.shelly.cloud/ I don't think you'll be able to wake the device up remotely. If it's asleep then there's nothing listing for API requests, which is what the app uses to communicate with it.

I ditched using their app to set them up and always just go direct to the Shelly's IP address and set things up there. The battery powered humidity sensors do go to sleep quickly, but there's a button inside the you can use to wake them up. They're designed to only report when there are changes in temperature or humidity. So if nothing has changed they will stay asleep. I'm not sure if this is the same if they are powered via USB. You can put the open source tasmota firmware on the Shelly 1 switch if you're not getting on well with the stock firmware. So far I haven't needed to do this.