Kelvin

Yes part of the Bosch and Siemens Home Appliances Group.

That looks similar to our Neff (which had a 3 phase wiring option too) I had to use one of the links (single phase bottom pic) plus there was already a link in place.

You then have the height problem inside the house rather than outside. Plus the need for a hatch which you could maybe conceal. Our vaulted ceiling would need a tower. It has a flat section but there isn’t enough space above it even if you brought all the optimisers or micro-inverters together. Therefore I’d need to drop the ceiling a bit. You also have a bunch of electronics locked inside a relatively small space that you can’t easily access. Not for me. I’d just fit them on the roof under the panels. If you have a fault then a tower scaffold will be enough to get access to it rather than a full scaffold.

We fitted a slightly deeper worktop and moved the cabinets out very slightly too which took up some of the extra depth of the washing machine reducing it sticking out which also meant we didn’t need to try and push as far back as possible. It helped that we had the washing machine on-site before buying the utility room cabinets and work top so were able to put it in place then plan around it.

Contact Solax to see if they have a Take Back scheme and their support to help diagnose the fault. Contact your local recycling centre and ask them if they’ll take it (unlikely). Contact a company like Wastecare who take batteries although generally its bulk smaller batteries. If you google battery recycling you’ll see there are quite a few companies doing this so hit the phone. One of them will take the battery. Recycling home storage batteries is going to become an increasingly bigger issue and also a business opportunity over the coming years. I don’t know anything about Solax, does it support the Modbus protocol? There’s a lot you can do with Home Assistant if you can connect to the hardware.

I have a full water testing kit. I might run a sample through it.

It surprised me how clear it is. pH of 7 too. It’s likely better quality than the rainwater going into our other drainage field.

It shouldn’t ever be that full that it could flow out. It’s quite a pronounced bubbling sound as it lifts the water up the pipe into the sampling chamber. I have an SVP after the tank (best practice Graf install) and that’s where the sound is loudest.

Here’s video that explains how their air lift system works. As @crooksey says the Graf system would work perfectly well with no extra pumps in the tank. It’s all done from the compressor.

Used Frontier on the last house and Home Protect (Axa) this time. First year was quite dear £700 but has come down this year to £550.

Agreed a very neat integrated looking install. Looks similar to some of the new builds on the road to Dundee. They look like part of the roof rather than plonked on top of the roof.

The Graf system discharges the water twice a day using the compressor ‘pump’ the water out of the tank into the drainage field which makes quite a loud bubbling noise so I wouldn’t want it right near the house. It also has a built in sampling chamber.

Neat job. In case it’s not sorted.

Has SAP10 been recalibrated like the energy rating for electrical items has been? Incidentally based on those costs my install wasn’t too bad. £15400 (before grant) for 8.45kWp, 24kWh battery storage, gateway, bird mesh and G99 application.

The builder often puts such a covenant in place for vans and caravans to make their houses easier to sell. They are quite often time limited. Even if they are permanent who enforces it? The builder won’t care after they’ve left site. The neighbours? They might club together I suppose and threaten legal action. Unlikely in most cases as who wants a neighbour dispute hanging over their house. Maybe a management company if there is one. I’d be surprised if this place will have an EV only covenant however. It’s being described as a new town so not just a housing estate. They could make the whole town a low emissions zone of course. Wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Folk that install PV (and battery storage) probably put a bit more effort into trying to get the most from it. Folk that buy houses that happen to have PV on the roof are less likely to bother (sweeping generalisation obvz). I have a few friends in the latter category who have never looked at what their PV system is doing beyond ‘free leccy’ when the sun shines. The system I have has various operating modes by default and then a relatively comprehensive custom mode. But it also has an AI mode where you tell it what you want to maximise and it then works out what to do to achieve that based on whichever tariff you’re on, demand patterns and weather. Not tried it as I don’t have the export MPAN number setup yet so just configured it as self-consumption. From what I can see running it in AI mode will cycle the battery more frequently as it will start to export the battery charge (down to whichever base SoC % you set to hold for power cuts) ahead of the cheap window starting then re-charge the battery. The battery warranty is both time based and energy throughput based. In the almost 4 weeks it’s been running it’s generated 694kWh and I’ve exported 168kWh and imported 200kWh (which was 90% EV charging) This Kentish Town design takes all of that complication out of it for the vast majority of people that don’t want to be fannying about trying to maximise their setup. I can see the appeal of that for most people.

Car charging will likely come from the grid or if there’s excess solar being produced it will divert to the car although that’ll depend on how the system is configured. My charger is installed at the meter (so before CU) Consequently the energy controller can’t see the EV load so it doesn’t dump the storage battery into the car. However when the system is exporting (which is generally only with excess solar) it will charge the car if I let it. But 95% of the EV charging comes from the grid at the cheap rate.

Doesn’t seem unreasonable. I’m fairly certain that the home owner will have enough control over the EV charger to ensure they have what they need for the following day. If they don’t and it’s all a bit of a lottery then it’s not going to work. I also can’t see how a covenant on what type of car you buy is easily enforceable so that seems unlikely too. The challenge will be twofold. Is it any cheaper than the average and will it technically work with little input from the homeowner. Our system doesn’t require much input from me but equally it also isn’t fit and forget.

Up here it’s a different part of the council that produces the address (the letter head suggested as much at least but they could all be in the same room) but they will likely flag it to the council tax people. What happened with us was it then goes to an assessor (which was in Dundee) to determine the banding which took a few months after we had moved in. The amount was calculated pro rata for the year but back dated to the date we moved in. It was slightly more complicated because it included water and waste water (both are private) so I had to fill another form in which got reviewed by Scottish Water to approve it before the council removed that element of it.

Section 75 should hopefully be successful. The kitchen company had our kitchen for several months fully paid for. I then noticed they were late with filing their accounts and I thought great here we go. I did eventually have it delivered to the house which was a pain trying to work around it.

Our plot has a basic survey. However I did a full land survey before buying it. I paid a professional to do this as it was useful to get it in the right format for later SE work and I lived 400 miles from the plot. It cost £700 as I recall and was worth it to us.

eBay would be a reasonable start. I would really try and adapt the kitchen to take a wider range of fridge freezers if at all possible. Things fail and it’s better to fix the size problem now when you can get the kitchen components than years from now when you can’t. what a pia though as it’s just theft effectively.

It is indeed open to abuse but I did have to provide some evidence to the assessor that at least some of what I was claiming I had actually done. Agreed though literally no one will ever ask me for the EPC other than it has one at selling time because it has to.

It seems to vary a fair bit. Our house was all but finished and we didn’t pay council tax on it until we moved in. (Perth & Kinross) I

Agreed. Ours is a bit deep. I warned the bath taker of the house but she was insistent. In her defence there’s been no moaning about it.