Kelvin

I did the NSBRC project management ‘course’. It’s not really a course but an overview of many of the things you need to think about doing a self-build. I tied it in with the airtightness overview and a few hours walking round the place looking at all the materials and products. I found it really useful as someone that didn’t have any clue about building prior to starting. As for managing it I just used a simple spreadsheet and an action log. I looked at PM software and job management software but I wanted it as simple as possible.

I considered that and looked at that very website but I still have to get it into HA. Anyway it’s up and running. I have several Philips Hue motion sensors in my stash of stuff. Handily they come with magnets so attaching it was easy. The SMLIGHT SLZB-06 ZigBee Ethernet adapter is POE and the post box is opposite a wall with some ethernet wall sockets. Quick proof of concept in HA and it works either by detecting motion of the parcel or light when the tray is opened. Also solved another annoying problem. There’s a gate right outside my office window that rattles back and forth in the wind. I’ve used one of the magnets from the Hue sensors to hold the gate striker against the latch.

You’re cladding the box around it just to be clear. 😂

It’s certainly better than most but it’s still a big plastic container right beside the house. You could box around it and clad in some nice wood to hide it or a planter in front of it and grow something to hide it.

I’ve never seen a pretty water butt tbh. I am lucky as the rainwater permanently runs through our plot via a burn so we use that.

I’ve bolted it to the ground now. It’s actually pretty good. Having thought about this a bit more adding a beam breaker will require a permanent power supply which is doable as I have power right beside the box. However before I go to the trouble of doing that I’ll use an existing PIR motion sensor I have and customise it so that it doesn’t detect motion when we retrieve something from the box and see how that works.

I fitted a ‘Smart’ * parcel box recently and obviously it’s not smart enough so want to overcomplicate it by adding some automation. It has a slot for letters and a separate tray to put parcels in it. I was thinking that I could add a beam breaker of some description on the inside so that when something is delivered it tells me. Anyone used a beam breaker and can recommend it? I’ll be using Home Assistant to manage it and have an SMLIGHT SLZB-06 ZigBee Ethernet adapter to connect it to. An alternative is to run BlueIris and connect the Reolink cameras to that (there is one above where the parcel box is) but that’s an extra level of complication. I might eventually do it but not right now before @Pocster suggests it. * I think they call it smart because it has a barcode on it that delivery folk can scan to let you know a thing has been delivered. However I can almost guarantee that not a single deliver person will ever scan it.

Just to add to this either (Loxone) or something else (Home Assistant) I have ended up adding a Home Assistant instance to the house running in a VM on my NAS alongside Loxone. As good as Loxone is its relatively closed environment means you can’t necessarily integrate everything you have either at all or very easily. For example I have a DAB water pump that has an app to allow you to see how much water and you’re using, plus some diagnostic info, setup into, and some minimal control options. The app is a bit crap and the only information I really care about is water usage. It so happens there’s a HACS integration for it so I can now monitor those sensors in HA. Similarly I enabled MODBUS in the Sigenergy system and have complete access to it via HA. It is possible to add the Sigenergy plant to Loxone via MODBUS tcp and access some of the sensors but it’s a lot more limited than the HA method of access. HA has also meant I could use a load of other sensors and home automation stuff I already had which is all in the garage. The house is pretty much 100% Loxone and the garage is a mixture of hardware from all and sundry but all in HA. It means maintaining two systems but once set up it’s minimal effort and everything in the garage is automated.

That just sounds like a lot of trial and error and wasted time unless you know a gynaecologist. Firehoods then it’s one and done.

I just made it up as I went along. It’s just a box made out of MDF (because I had a full sheet of it) lined with acoustic foam. I screwed and glued it together then sealed all the joints. There’s no difference in sound between the boxes I made and the firehoods it’s why I used firehoods for all the others.

Anyone can break any rule/law/guideline they like. It’s not possible for every single thing to be checked so it comes down to people doing the right things in the right way. There’s an ongoing issue in our local town where the sewer keeps overflowing in heavy rain because of exactly this issue. It creates a stinking mess for the folk that live there. Recently Scottish Water has had to station a large tanker on the road to pump the excess flow of water out of the sewer when heavy rain hits as forecast.

The speakers in the other bedrooms have never been used. My wife’s nieces stayed for several days recently and they both had Spotify. I told them about the speakers but they just listened to stuff on their phones or headphones. Same when my kids stay or friends. Bit annoying tbh 😂

Just as an aside. I was having a similar problem with the Zappi. It’s connected via WiFi and there’s no issue with the signal. Starlink will disconnect the internet occasionally through the night (software updates mostly but also for maintenance) I noticed that the Zappi wasn’t reconnecting with MyEnergi’s cloud servers after one of these Starlink offline events. It was still on the network as I could ping it. It required a reboot to fix it and very occasionally a power cycle. Frustratingly it doesn’t indicate there’s a problem at the charger. It still works but it breaks the Intelligent Go integration so my other half would plug her car in and it would look like everything was ok but it wouldn’t schedule a charge. However since swapping out the TP Link router this has also stopped happening.

The stereo effect of in ceiling speakers isn’t great so a single speaker works fine. The firehoods also work fine rather than fitting the boxes and you can fit them through the speaker hole. Will save you a lot of work. A subwoofer in the ceiling would need substantial bracing to stop vibrations so I wouldn’t do that. I’m not convinced it would be that good anyway but I’m biased as I have a chuffing big sub in the cinema room. We only use the Audioserver for background music, the odd party, podcasts and the radio mostly. That’s why I’m not bothered about stereo in most of the rooms.

I used a mixture: A single Focal ICW8 for the master bedroom Single Bowers & Wilkins CCM362 for each of the other bedrooms and a pair of the same for the open plan area and 4 B&W CCM382s for the cinema room. All the speakers are either mounted inside a firehood or an acoustic box I made. This is important as without something the bass response can be quite poor. Of the two speaker types the Focal has a much better mounting system as it has a separate frame that the speaker mounts into. The B&W speakers have clamps that turn then tighten against the back of the plasterboard. It works fine it’s just that the separate frame of the Focal is a better design. My whole cabinet is powered from the Loxone PSU and backup. Tree Turbo is IP based and allows for much higher data throughput than tree. It can be used with the Loxone master/client speakers which allows it to transmit audio over much greater distances. The Audioserver connects to the Miniserver via the LAN. I’ve found the Audioserver a bit flaky with its network connection. I had no end of grief when it was first installed using a temporary spare router. The main issue being that if I rebooted everything it would often not reconnect to the internet or if it did connect I couldn’t access its Web-UI even though it was working. When I swapped out that router for my TP-Link router (when we moved) I couldn’t get it to connect at all so wiped it and recommissioned it which seemed to improve matters. However it would still occasionally lose connection if I re-started the network requiring a few re-boots to get it to connect. I’ve since replaced the TP-Link router with a Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra and it’s never done it with that and I can always connect to its Web-UI so seems resolved.

I was chatting with a Mitsubishi service engineer a few weeks ago. He was telling me that Mitsubishi are seeing premature failure of their compressors (at around three years) due to zoned system setup short cycling. So much so that they are considering extending their service agreements to include the UFH side but only if they can undo how the systems are setup which is similar to the above. They really ought to be educating their official installers on how best to install their systems to avoid this problem.

We went and looked at alu windows and we didn’t like the narrow profiles for our build. I could see them looking great in more contemporary looking house though. We much preferred the chunky timber frames and also the timber (Scandi) look so ours are clear coated too.

If you’ve never installed a new one you wouldn’t necessarily guess that dust can wreck them. There are likely millions of non-working smoking detectors out there. Essex fire service issued a report that said 70% of fire related deaths were in households with non-working smoke detectors.

I didn’t remove the dust covers until after we moved in as the dust can knacker them.

No it’s not direct it’s connected to your account so displays what the meter has sent to Octopus rather than the energy flows at the meter. I actually use Octo Aid though to look at the energy use data from Octopus.

This is an area where you don’t want to be relying on the Internet of Shit ‘smart’ devices. Have them in addition if you must. In Scotland it needs to be a heat alarm in the kitchen and smoke detectors elsewhere. We have AICO albeit mains.

I only use the corrugated stuff for straight runs, short runs, or if it’s easy to access which has all been in the garage or outside. You want the taped end to be rounded and smooth so it doesn’t catch. I personally wouldn’t use silicone lubricant. I bought some water based cable pulling lubricant because we had several large cables to pull through some tight bends. Any water based lubricant will be ok (Boots is your friend or the bathroom cupboard maybe 😉)

You suggest the conduit you’ve used is replaceable so if that’s easy to do then replace it with smooth wall. If not then all of the above. I found mixed success using a vacuum if the conduit is quite narrow. Taping up the end of the cable and applying a lubricant to it has generally always worked for me. Failing that I also have a fish tape wire puller that I used to get a cable across a ceiling at a friend’s house.

Octopus use an ESP32 in their Octopus Mini energy monitor which is surprisingly good. I have one inside a waterproof outdoor socket so it can pick up the meter stats and also connect to my WiFi network. It did work inside the garage but being a metal garage the connection would drop every now and again.

I have a Synology NAS but it’s in the office rather than in there as it’s too tall. I couldn’t fit the NVR in the cabinet either so it’s sitting on top of it. All the networking equipment is quite small so it is all in there. Recently upgraded my TP-Link router to a Unifi Cloud Gateway Ultra which is very compact given what it can do.