Kelvin

I can vouch for Gus as I’ve met him 😂

Put them on the roof but I don’t want them on the roof.

The vertical panel suggestion is good and something I considered a while back but vetoed early on. The panels need to be invisible “or we aren’t having them”. This really limits my options. What I’ve done is dug out a flat area and used the earth I dug to create a bank behind where the panels will go which effectively hides them but only if I used something like the Renusol Console type system.

It’s aluminium

Yes steel pipe would work well enough too. I’ve been told by my client (wife) that it can’t be as ugly af whatever I do because there will be a seating area down there eventually.

Ah ok. I’ll review how it’s configured. Incidentally I’m using the same battery as you.

The bridge idea is great and I happen to have a load of old hefty scaffold boards that I’ve no idea where they came from. Scaffold pole also a good idea and I happen to have one the scaffolders left behind. There will be an inverter down with the panels.

Hi I need to make decision in where to put the PV installation. I’ve decided not to put it on the roof so it will be ground mounted. I have two places where it can go neither are ideal. One is on a bank so will require terracing to get some flat ground to mount it. It’s overshadowed by some trees which would impact early morning sunlight. The other location is on top of a bank. It’s already quite flat and ideally located for maximum sun exposure. However, it’s on top of a small cliff with a burn beneath it so I’d need to get the cabling down from here and across the burn. From there it would be in a trench back to the garage. The digger is at the right most side of the panel location which will then run left for 21m approx, then down that small cliff, across the burn and into a trench back to the garage.

We had a similar setup in the previous house with an all in one PC I won in a raffle. I was the only one that used it everyone else just used their phones. I have buried power and an ethernet cable in a wall to the right of that wall above in case I change my mind and add something like you have back in.

Interesting you barely use it. I planned for one then canned the idea for exactly that reason. I couldn’t really see the benefit of a dedicated screen taking up wall real estate that I figured I’d barely use. I’ll have a touch screen in the plant room instead. What I really wanted to do was fit a recessed wall of screens here that could display whatever beautiful scene we wanted or even camera views of the outside. But vetoed in place of a fancy tile. Women eh! 😂

Great effort well done. Looks really good.

Yes exactly that.

Yes it’s an insulated steel garage/workshop. Sheets come in various thicknesses of insulation starting at 40mm. Mine is 80mm. I probably wouldn’t go less than 80mm. It’d be much dearer than an insulated container of course. Needs to sit on a foundation so there’s that cost too. I put 100mm of insulation under the concrete slab. It’s unheated currently and quite useable as long as you’re doing something.

It’s my favourite tactic when dealing with companies quoting their nonsense back to them. Companies write these things because they think it’s the right thing to say without giving any thought to are they actually doing it.

Go to any website of any of the big builders and they’ll have a similar why choose us page. It’s all mostly just words on a page.

I completely agree. I’ve built a much better house than if I had gone turnkey with the timber kit company. It could have been better still now I know a bit more. Has it cost substantially more? Not really. I could have built the fabric for a bit less. Air tightness is more about careful detailing than cost of materials so it’s mostly some extra labour. The trades don’t have the patience for it. I showed them how to tape corners correctly for example (by making up corners) for the next build they were moving onto. I asked the apprentice if they did it how I showed them and he said no. They also didn’t tape up the ductwork through the walls either after me showing them how I did mine. Consequently the air tightness score was just within the regs.

In which case nothing will change and the UK will continue to build sub-standard houses. Commercial buildings are typically built to a higher standard so the building industry is capable of doing it. If you can’t test every house or substantially enough of them randomly with no notice then the regulations mean nothing which is exactly where we are today and why we have the example that started this thread. The culture change can only come from the boards of the big building companies. Like I said they need to think about their ‘just cause’ and configure their businesses to meet it. Here’s the Taylor Wimpey why choose us page, match that to the opening post. I doubt it’s a one off example of that particular set of TW houses. They will all be the same or similar. https://www.taylorwimpey.co.uk/why-choose-us/why-taylor-wimpey Knowing what I now know about building I’d advise no one to ever buy a new build as you can be reasonably certain they are mostly all poorly built.

I don’t really have the room for all that either. My cables all come down from the ceiling and through the plywood so it’s mostly all hidden.

I understand that but how often are you going to be doing that vs the neatness of the install. I wanted my plant room to be as neat as possible. It’s not worked out quite like that as I’m a bit spaced limited and I never put enough detailed thought into it.

All my lighting circuits will come into the Loxone cabinet with a single isolation point in the CU. Electrician didn’t have an issue with this. It seemed the most logical and neater way to do it.

They can demand an air tightness test but what then? It’s not really fixable after the house is up without taking it apart. The regulations need to change so that every house is tested and signed off as it’s built. I disagree with the argument that the regulations can’t change until the current regs are enforced. You do both so that you are enforcing to a better standard. Current air tightness regs are very poor anyway so enforcing to that standard doesn’t really improve things that much. There also needs to be a culture change in the industry across the big builders so that they have building efficient houses as their ‘just cause’. Given none of them are doing it, it seems to me to be an opportunity for one of the builders to set themselves apart. It might make their houses a bit dearer but the sell is better houses that are cheaper to run.

The regulations are hardly difficult to hit. Builders can do the bare minimum and still get within them. We need much tighter building regs and yes enforcement of them.

Great that you will be able to line everyone up and have them all on-site at the right times and actually follow the construction drawings. I did mine as discrete work packages too. However everything overlaps one way or another and very few of my work packages have been fully completed in one go as it requires something else to happen before that piece of work can be completed. I’ve found getting people back to finish something off a real trial. I look forward to reading about your progress. Will be a short thread unlike mine 😂

I have that problem too but if there’s a creator they are benevolent as my eyesight is shit so can’t see it.

Having borne witness to a supposed quality team this isn’t in the least surprising. They genuinely think that because there’s a lot of insulation in the building then it must be good by default. When I explained that leaving gaps or even small bits unfilled significantly reduces the U value of the wall/ceiling it just went over their heads. Air tightness was like the dark arts. They are building houses with very little appreciation of building physics. Until the regulations tighten up and every house is properly tested then this isn’t going to improve.