Kelvin

Agreed the more complicated it is the more likely things will stop working and anyone not familiar with everything will soon be a bit lost. It does take a little bit of time to figure Home Assistant out but it’s fairly user friendly nowadays and the interface is greatly improved. Its flexibility and openness also makes it slightly harder to use for sure. Our system is setup such that the folk I live with never need to use an app to do anything. I kinda think a home automation system fails if you are relying on apps to do stuff. It should either be genuinely automated reacting to whatever is going on in the house, operated via a switch without screwing anything else up or voice activated. My other half won’t have any of these apps on her phone anyway. There’s a central iPad just in case she needs to for some reason but never has. I do exactly as you are doing with our battery system but it is automated within the Sigenergy app.

Yes the building warrant is what allows you to start building and is what you are more familiar with in terms of building control. In terms of timescales it’s at least 8 weeks for planning and then circa 12 weeks for the building warrant with a gap between them to prepare the building warrant drawings although you can start some of the drawings before you have planning approval with the obvious risks. In my case it took 12 weeks for planning approval, 8 weeks to get the warrant drawings (the structural engineering drawings took weeks to get) and then 8 weeks to get the warrant approval. I’ve founding dealing with our local council BCO to be a positive experience. He’s very pragmatic, genuinely wants to see you get the house built, easy to get a hold of, and quick to respond. If you’re using an architect they’ll typically do all this for you. The councils also use the Scotland eDevelopment platform make the various applications and upload the required documents.

The advantage of using Home Assistant is you can mostly ditch all the proprietary apps and expose all the sensors. How you do it varies from platform to platform. For example with Zehnder there’s a Home Assistant integration that uses the Zehnder Comfoconnect LAN C box to integrate it with Home Assistant. Once it’s in HA you have the ability to automate it how you like. I’ve added our Sigenergy PV/battery system to Home Assistant via the MODBUS in the inverter. This gives me complete control over the system independently from their cloud based app which means I can still see what’s going on if their cloud service goes offline.

Sure but the DNO provides you with a plan of what they need and you do that. I was assigned a Project Manager with SSEN so I sent him what I intended to do and then pictures. Leave the trench open at the pole end and seal up the duct. Tell them about your concerns about water ingress into the kiosk because it’s downhill from the pole.

If you’re using it with Hue bulbs you don’t need the relay. Of course if someone switches it off at the switch then the Hue light stops working. I use some Loxone lights within my Loxone system and it works well enough. I have the same problem that if you switch the lighting circuit off in Loxone the Hue lights become unavailable in the Philips app (Home Assistant if you plan on using that) However I never control the Hue lights separately from Loxone. I’ve set the colour temperature I want (or the colour in one case in the TV Room) and configure the Hue lights to remember the last setting after a power loss. It might be challenging to use them where you have multi way lighting circuits though. Where I use one there are two switches to control a single light and you can wire that easily enough although it took me a couple of goes to get it right. You can get around this by installing the Sonoff at the ceiling rose rather than at the switch and they do a couple of types depending on how your wiring has been done.

I use one in the garage. Straightforward enough. My switches are surface mounted so plenty of room to fit it inside the switch although they are pretty small. You can still operate the physical switches plus automate it how you like. I have motion sensor in the garage, and two door sensors it comes in automatically, shuts off after 20 mins or I can tell it to switch off.

Turning the lawn over to a more general purpose mixture ends up being a lot less work in the long run I’ve found. I set the lawnmower to cut the grass but leave the low flowering stuff. I named our new lamb Thistle because of all the thistles on the bank plus he nibbles on them.

The problem is the standard of new build houses is poor largely because of all the self-policing and what’s built doesn’t match what’s designed. You see enough examples of that on here when folk post my builder has done this does it look right. If you want to raise the standard you need to be able to check houses are being built to the highest standard as far as building regs are concerned. You either achieve that with an army of assessors or documentary proof for each house built. However this particular example seems really heavy handed.

You do for SAP 10 assessment and EPC in England since June 2022 and Scotland since February 2023. It was changed because you could just make it up as you said and to bridge the gap between as designed and as built.

They didn’t. I had them all ready to send just in case. We’re in Scotland and the new regs didn’t come into force until 1 Feb 2023 so still SAP 2012. I have geo tagging switched off on my phone. I thought geotagging wasn’t mandatory but you have to show they are unique to the house? eta Just quickly glanced through the SAP10 conventions document and it says in there geo location ‘should’ be enabled. Should and must mean different things. It also has a very detailed list of how to take photos of each build element. I’m glad I missed all of this! I assume the issue is because there are two buildings?

Hence the requirement for these pictures as documentary evidence. The BCO attended our site at the key stages and signed it off.

What a pia. I’m in the final stages of getting the completion certificate. I got the as built SAP EPC a few weeks ago. I have shedloads of pictures of every stage of the build but I don’t think they would meet this high bar. This is going to catch a lot of people out.

Our field was wrecked after the groundswork was completed. I levelled it out bit with a borrowed digger and just left it. It became overgrown but once I started cutting and strimming it I was surprised at how quickly the grass that had been left untouched took hold and spread. It was a grazing field prior to us buying it. It’s not a lawn thankfully so I care a bit less about what makes up the green stuff.

Our plot is all over the place with slopes, terraces, a burn and a cliff etc so not convinced a robot lawnmower could cope. But cutting the grass on the ride on is my favourite chore. Headphones on, a beer in the caddy, and off I trundle for an hour. The bits I can’t get to the sheep take care of and I strim the steeper bit of the garden. I might eventually buy a robot mower though as strimming it will eventually become too hard. If you live in an area where there has been a prolonged dry spell and the grass all around you has gone brown consider planting drought tolerant grasses. Grass rarely dies due to drought as it’s very tough and recovers well. Robot lawnmowers are good because they mulch the clippings which is good for the health of the lawn.

What he meant was the stuff they specifically specified was black and had to meet certain standards. He said the linesmen won’t look at the specification stamped on the ducting. The slightly annoying thing was they brought ducting with them as they thought they were putting it in the trench I dug and it was the same stuff I used 😂

I used this stuff to seal each end of every duct in our build. Our kiosk is higher than where the pole is so not a problem. However I dug the trench from the pole to my kiosk and left it open at the pole end and sealed it once they had pulled the cable. The one duct I didn’t seal, leaving it to the ASHP installers who used silicone sealant, failed within a few weeks so I fished out the big plug of silicone and used the red stuff instead. https://www.filoform.com/filoseal Just take the duct up into the kiosk and don’t use a hockey stick. Speak with your DNO and discuss with them what they need you to do and how much flexibility there is. They should also send you a guide as part of the project plan. In my case the service cable from the pole to the kiosk was more or less a straight run so dead easy for them to pull the cable. Our issue was the cable from the kiosk to the house as I made it much harder than it should have been because of where I put the kiosk.

The black hockey sticks have a bigger diameter (38mm) than the white ones which are more common.

You can. I ought to have done for the house mains as it would have made things easier. The SSEN guidelines were really specific about the ducting to use in the trench which I couldn’t get. I called them about it and they said go with the guidelines. I spoke to my sparkie son in law and he said as long as it’s black the linesmen won’t care (and they didn’t).

I used quality semi-rigid to the manifold which is really easy and quick to install. It’s also quite easy to damage if it catches on any sharp edges or random nails so some care is needed. We’d never have got rigid through the building. One mistake I made was not allowing quite enough room in the ceiling for the manifold, attenuation and pipe work to the MVHR unit. With a bit more thought I could have mostly hidden it. However it’s all in the plant room so not a big deal. The other issue we had is the MVHR unit is in the single storey part of the house so getting the ducting through into the other side of the house was a right pain. The design of the house made no allowance for this.

In the TV Room I use GU10 bulbs that have an adjustable beam angle. They push in and out to vary it between 24° and 35°. Works to light up the pictures on the wall or spread the light cone. The GU10 bulbs are from Aurora, Megaman, and Philips (master series for what it’s worth), all dimmable and vary in light output from 375lm to 459lm. Where I needed varying colour temperature I used Hue GU10 bulbs (400lm) The rooms are more than bright enough on full and I wouldn’t want them any brighter. I only use full brightness when cleaning the floor anyway. I found lighting the vaulted living room the hardest to do. The companies I used for lighting were: https://www.modernlightingsolutions.co.uk https://www.ultraleds.co.uk https://www.glowlighting.co.uk/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=20623605482&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20623605482&gbraid=0AAAAADMrSi0wTm1hTjB0kA1sFDeRRKaJw&gclid=CjwKCAjwz5nGBhBBEiwA-W6XRM_PagthUXkyDr8xPOi_Y1E1TsdTXHUzQ0G8R3tU3y8w-_C4TFembBoCCDoQAvD_BwE https://lumierehome.co.uk https://www.keslighting.co.uk/?gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=16298962484&gbraid=0AAAAADN3H7k_VqROvR-bGEh6G4Z76MlNP&gclid=CjwKCAjwz5nGBhBBEiwA-W6XRJXLAmzia9r7xxMAf0jjNpmxQ-vCoFDCmvWqOQRyT_13CjFqn-qTxRoCxmgQAvD_BwE https://www.ledbulbs.co.uk https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/?ad_position=&source=adwords-tlc&ad_id=388450449108&placement=&kw=tlc direct&network=g&matchtype=p&ad_type=&test=finalurl&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=207957677&gbraid=0AAAAAD-6GhluCawCTTUukum8zze2yKu6D&gclid=CjwKCAjwz5nGBhBBEiwA-W6XRNAE7eF6h5IZFyJPI3vuaAQgG3Rm1IoL72AsGwlnjB3jxeKlzUXltBoC_B8QAvD_BwE

This isn’t answering your question but do you really need the individual downlights to be smart rather than just the lighting circuits? (Assuming that’s what you mean) You’ll likely control the lights a less than you think once setup and automated. Our lights are mostly controlled centrally in Loxone. For the downlights in the open area 4 x 4 grid) they are organised as 4 separate lighting circuits all mains dimmable (I use three dimming settings - fully bright, 60%, and a nightlight setting) For all the other downlights they are just by room. I chose different colour temperatures to suit the room the downlights were in so warmer for the living area, cooler for the utility room etc. Where I needed more individual control I just used Philips Hue bulbs largely because I already had a shedload of them so wanted to re-use them. I have track lighting in the TV Room which is also where my desk is so the lights directly above my desk are Hue GU10 bulbs so that I can vary the brightness and colour temperature. All of the external lights are Hue bulbs on four separate lighting circuits per house elevation. It’s slightly less elegant to use in Loxone as you need to use Loxone and the Hue app but it’s all automated now so I never need to really use either app. I assume you’re using Home Assistant so it’s very easy with that. My garage/workshop isn’t part of the Loxone system directly (it is through Matter in a limited way) I used Shelly relays to switch the lights and various door sensors and motion sensors I already had controlled by Home Assistant with an SMLight POE ZigBee coordinator (highly recommended)

Good stuff. I found Graf more helpful when I called them. Their website is quite poor.

Indeed. Although neither of my bit sets had a security bit that fitted them hence the need to drill them out. Oddly they had been used to secure the feet for a TV that I wanted to mount on my garage wall.

Nope a real screw type. You can screw them in but not out although there is a tool to do it. Coincidentally I had to remove two the other day although I drilled them out.

Is it an anti-tamper screw? Difficult to see the head. What’s its intended use?