reddal

Hi, I have an Octava 4x8 HDMI Matrix switch (one of these - about 5 years old - discontinued now but they do newer versions). It is installed in a central comms room and has 4 HDMI inputs (SatTV, CCTV, Media streamer and Blu Ray) and distributes the video/audio and IR over CAT6 throughout the house. It was bought from https://tmfsolutions.co.uk/ as above - and I'd also recommend them if you are looking for something similar. It works pretty well - and avoid us having to have lots of extra boxes in each room. Particularly we get the full range of sources in rooms where we wouldn't have bothered otherwise - like spare bedrooms etc - which is cool. It doesn't work for Games consoles as the controllers need to be near the screen. If planning to install one of these - be a bit careful about the cabling - particularly if the length of your runs is long (over 30m) - as the HD video distribution over CATx is more sensitive to any noise than typical IP applications. i.e. avoid using patch panels and wall plates - terminate both ends of the cables with RJ45 plugs so you can get a direct connection from device to device. As others have said, the industry is moving away from this kind of solution - though I think the alternatives are still a bit immature so a video distribution system could still make sense for someone that doesn't want to go that way yet. Even if you decide not to go down the video distribution route, I would probably recommend to lay some extra cable runs of CAT6+ of from a central point in your house to each TV point. You can always reuse the cable for IP/ethernet at a later point (in 10 years time new TVs might only have IP inputs - and wireless solutions have their limits). It costs hardly anything to lay a few cables during a house build, but retrofiting cable runs in a completed house is a nightmare. - reddal

Yes - this is what put me off attempting some kind of DIY solution - ie : 1. I've no idea what spec the conductor / cable / strip needs to be - I remember looking at something like this https://www.electriccable.co.uk/earth_cable_150008.html (120mm2 earth cable) and thinking it might work. 2. How do you attach the conductor to the rod on the roof - without this being the weak point? I'm sure with the right clamps or whatever it can work - but I wouldn't have been confident of getting it right. 3. How do you earth the conductor to the extent that a skyfull of electricity can flow through without getting jumpy. I guess it needs more than a standard earth rod? Just out of curiosity - I'd be interested to hear from more knowledgable people whether you think my DIY lightning protection would have likely actually worked - or made things worse. - reddal

When we were building our house we got a quote for installing structural lightnight protection (conductors etc) from these people : http://www.etechservices.co.uk/ It was going to be expensive (£4k if I remember) - and they made it clear that normally they don't install this kind of system in a domestic property unless there was a high risk because of its location. I didn't have a high risk so I didn't bother with it. Hopefully won't regret that... I did think about doing something DIY instead - ie getting a massive copper wire or strip - attaching it to a rod on the roof - running it down the side of the house and burying it with a really good earth connection. Then I realised I didn't have a clue what I was talking about and might just make it more dangerous so didn't bother with this either :). Would this have helped? I did get a surge protection system installed on the incoming AC - which might help. - reddal

We have 3 boreoles - 2 for GSHP and 1 for spring water. We have our our fair share of issues with the GSHP over the last few years (maybe more than our fair share!). it was an expensive solution and if I was doing it again I would look very carefully at cheaper solutions. Also for a long time the GSHP was very noisy (eventually mostly solved now after much grief) but don't assume they are always quiet... They key thing that persuaded us to go with the borehole / GSHP combination was the ability to do effective passive cooling in summer. This part does work quite well - however for the extra cost you could buy a hell of a lot of active cooling in one form or another - so think about that carefully if its your motivation.

Cool project! By co-incidence I was just doing something where this kind of device would have been really useful. I have been creating a 'curing chamber' for drying chorizo. Basically you need a chamber with fairly precise control and monitoring of temperature and humidity that the chorizo cures in for several weeks. I've done this using a fridge with a heater, humidifier and dehumidifier inside it. The power for all those is attached to a clever little box that switches the fridge on if the temp is too high, the heater on if the temp is too low, etc etc. That way it keeps the temp and humidity in the box in a fairly tight range throughout. However the control box is a commercial product - and it doesn't do any logging or anything to allow monitoring - so I needed a seperate way to be able to check its working and graph changes etc. By chance I happened to have an old environmental monitoring device left over from a data center. This has sensors for temp and humidity and does data logging and alerting. However it also connects to a LAN and broadcasts the current values as SNMP (a network protocol that allows devices to make monitoring info available). The nice thing about the temp and humidity being available on SNMP is there is loads of nice and free software tools you can run on your PC that know how to do logging, graphing etc etc for SNMP sources. (the one I'm using is called PRTG). It works really well. However - that relies on me having the env monitoring device lying around unused - it would be too expensive to buy for this purpose. I can't see a sensibly priced alternative to achieve this? You guys should build you RPi device that takes an arbitary number of DS18B20 inputs (and the equiv for humidity etc) - does basic logging - and makes the data available over the network. You could sell that for £100 each would be my guess :). Loads of people would find such a device useful - but most aren't going to have the skills to build one themselves (myself included).

Oh ffs - I guess I am supposed to be getting my Kargester regularly serviced aswell. I dont have the fancy extra system - but looking on their webpage I'm supposed to at least do an 'annual desludge' (doesnt that sound appealing!). Well - we haven't done that in a few years... I dread to think what kind of 'over sludge' apocalypse is lurking in there...

We have had a Klargester Biodisc BA for a few years now. In general its been OK - however : after 6 months the motor died - however the feckless electricians had not connected the alarm for this properly (there is a box inside the house that is supposed to alert you if something goes wrong - and they had installed this - but failed to actually connect it to the unit in any way!). We had no idea until we were alerted by a bad smell! We found a more competant guy to fix it (proper Klargester service engineer) - and he replaced the motor under warranty and connected the alarm properly. after another 6 months the motor died again. This time the alarm worked. The service engineer replaced the motor again under warranty and this time Klargester provided a better spec motor they said should avoid the problem in future. Since then its worked fine. I didn't get too involved in the work to fix it (!) - however it seemed (from a distance) that it was organised internally so he could do the maintenance without getting into the 'thick of it' - ie the motor was in a relatively clean bit near the top. All in all I can't really complain about it. There again I've avoided having to go near the thing to date - if the day ever comes when it breaks and I can't just phone a man to come fix it I will no doubt be cursing it... - reddal

Indeed - thats what we found. One solution that was tried with our original install was to use the heat pump to get the TS up to 50c - then an electric immersion heater to boost it to 70c. However - there were also radiators coming off this TS - and we found that the immersion was on all the time keeping the rads hot - and the heat pump never came on at all. This cost a lot of electricity before we worked out what was going on. After much more grief we ended up with a TS and a seperate cylinder for DHW.

Yes you are right - its very simplistic. It also doesn't take into account any losses etc. However - I can tell you from experience that the basic idea is correct - that a TS temp will start to drop immediately and a cylinder much less so. Therefore if the TS temp is not much more than the target DHW temp it can only produce a limited amount of water at the target temp. In our initial installation, with the 300l TS at 50c - we couldn't get even a single bath or shower out of it before it wasn't hot enough. Once we added a (smaller) DHW cylinder it was fine. Thermal stores probably work fine for DHW if the heat source is high temperature (80c say). Be very careful if planning to use a TS for DHW with a heat source at close to the required DHW temp (ie a ASHP or GSHP typically).

Some graphs in this post that illustrate your point : - reddal

That sounds very dry to me? There is such a thing as burning too hot... I once used some kiln dried logs at about 10% and they were too dry for me - a bit out of control. I guess it depends on your stove, airflow, etc etc - but in general I stick to betwen 14% and 18% moisture in my logs.

The podcasts are good. +1 to that. - reddal

We have never cleaned the ducts... god knows what is lurking in them now... Its not going to be easy to do so I've been burying my head in the sand over that one... If I was doing it all again I'd make sure there was some more sensible way to access all the ducts to clean them. There are gizmos around that can help - but I doubt they will work for very long runs / twist and turns etc.

Hi, A few points : Is the ducting insulated? I think that is important if you want the MVHR to do cooling. Worry about potential noise from both the unit and the outlets - we initially had a lot of grief with this. Make sure you test this in any 'sensitive' areas like bedrooms - even what seems like a quiet hiss in a building site is a super annoying loud noise in the dead of night 6 months later when trying to sleep. Work out how you will clean out the ducts - which is necessary eventually - maybe immediately if you run the system for testing whilst building work is still going on. - reddal

At its steepest something like 1:8? Even a big lorry can get up it - but that wouldn't be the case if it was any steeper I fear.

We also had a steep drive to surface. Its longer - maybe 150m in total - so cost was very definitely an issue. We got a quote for tarmac - I can't remember the number but it was prohibitive. We ended up getting the steep part (bottom 100m or so) done in concrete - poured in sections with reinforcement as above. Can't remember the spec - but it looks more than 150mm in places? Anyway its been fine for the last few years. The rest (non sloping bit) was done in hardcore with gravel on top. For this section we initially asked for quotes - and got back elaborate plans for preparing the ground, appying different layers etc - it was hugely expensive (the quote was something like £25k iirc!). We ignored all that and arranged it ourselves in a much simpler method for a tiny fraction of the cost. This felt like a big risk at the time since we didn't know what we were doing at the time. However it has been completetly fine! Good luck. - reddal

+1 to that recommendation. I bought a few oak worktops from them last year. They were reasonably priced, good quality, and made very accurately to the specs. - reddal

Hi, We did most of the lighting design ourselves - but did get a lighting design company to come in and give us some advice on some tricky bits. They came up with some good ideas and it was well worth the modest cost of getting them in. We then bought some of the fittings from them - which were quite a bit more expensive than the cheapo stuff we were sourcing - but turned out to be much better. If I was doing it again I would probably get them involved earlier and more extensively. - reddal

I doubt it will be a problem for the functionality of the CAT6 cable (assuming you aren't going to use them for anything really sensitive like long runs of 10Gb). In theory power cables can introduce interference but I'd be surprised if it caused a problem unless you twisted long runs together or something like that. Using shielded cables would make this even less likely... However its probably just good practice not to run high voltage and low voltage cables together? Someone with more expertise than me will probably be able to comment on that...

I can't tell you how to do it - but I would definitely recommend doing it. We have a big table in the middle of a room and its always got wires trailing around it because someone needs a laptop charger etc. A floor socket would have been much better.

Here are a few of my 'money well spent' items : boiling water tap in kitchen - how did I ever manage without one? Oak frame from these people. Wasn't cheap but they did a great job. Oak glazing panels by these people. Walk on basement ceiling windows from here Custom oak kitchen and lots of built in furniture from here High end LED strip lighting. At the time I wondered if cheap stuff would be as good - with hindsight I think it isnt Steel external fire door to garage from here . Looks good and seems very secure. Heavy duty racking for garage and store room from here Copper guttering Vast number of CAT6a cable runs throughout house. Should have done more though :). Wood burning stove in living room. Is nice to have all the time - but has saved us a couple of times when gshp wasnt working. - reddal

I could fill pages I suspect - but here are some highlights : gshp attached to boreholes. Yes its effecient - yes it can help with passive cooling - yes it also gives us our own spring water. But the whole setup was too expensive. some contractors that we paid a premium price so we could be sure of a good job - who turned out to be rubbish high end mhrv system - cheaper one would have been fine lime render system? A bit on the edge with that one - it works quite well and looks nice - but it took ages to put up and was expensive nhbc solo warranty - total hassle a load of expensive in-floor lighting that we tortured ourselves over but hardly ever use - however if doing it again I would redirect that money to other lighting rather than save it I think In fact - thinking about it there are more things that I wish I'd spent more on than less. However if I had - they would probably have ended up on the list above :). - reddal

We have copper guttering. I remember it being sold to us on the basis of how long lasting it was (no idea if this is true) - though mainly we chose it because it looks nice. We haven't had any problems to date with it (a few years now). When they were first installed they were very shiny and looked a bit bling to my taste - but quickly this softened and they are slowly changing colour. Some people clean/polish them to try to keep the shiny stage - but we are happy to leave them natural. Plastic would have been a chunk cheaper I'm sure. However with hindsight I'm pretty happy the extra money was worthwhile (I wish I could say this about everything on the build!). - reddal

I also bought a 'new' one for about £2k. I liked it so much I bought a second one. Really useful things containers - and when you consider what you get for the money they are remarkably cheap. You can get them a lot cheaper if you don't mind them being a bit beat up.

This. Wifi is not as reliable as a hard cable and has far more constraints on performance. Unless there was no other option I would try to run a cable. Then you will get gigabit performance with no dropouts or interference issues etc.