are there drains on my plot?

[scottishjohn]

On 14/10/2019 at 08:59, Amateur bob said:

how many metres of distance was that 10k? whats excessive voltage drop?

i got a quote couple of months ago for a new supply 80kva 3 phase  from an 11kv 3phase pole

with me digging trench   130m --the quote was 23k!!

 so thats you first job get a REAL quote from DNO 

 usual cost in scotland i have been told is 10k per pole and at 400m the size of cable you will  need for underground will be huge,

quick rough calc says you need 185sqmm conductors --so that will be £90 per metre for cable --call it 4k for cable 

 get a quote --hope i,m totally wrong ,so get a REAL quote

 anything under 40 k --suck it up -it will be better in the long run 

Edited October 15, 2019 by scottishjohn

[Amateur bob]

2 hours ago, scottishjohn said:

i got a quote couple of months ago for a new supply 80kva 3 phase  from an 11kv 3phase pole

with me digging trench   130m --the quote was 23k!!

 so thats you first job get a REAL quote from DNO 

 usual cost in scotland i have been told is 10k per pole and at 400m the size of cable you will  need for underground will be huge,

quick rough calc says you need 185sqmm conductors --so that will be £90 per metre for cable --call it 4k for cable 

 get a quote --hope i,m totally wrong ,so get a REAL quote

 anything under 40 k --suck it up -it will be better in the long run 

ive also a plot 130m im considering but thats worrying as i haf reckoned 5k for it, ive asked for an estimate from SSE should i have asked for a proper quote?

[Amateur bob]

im looking into water connections now, it seems the mains runs through one of our fields does this mean i can simply connect to it or do i have to ask scottish water for permission?

[Jeremy Harris]

3 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

im looking into water connections now, it seems the mains runs through one of our fields does this mean i can simply connect to it or do i have to ask scottish water for permission?

 

 

You have to go though much the same process as for electricity, which means going to SW.  You may find that the pipe across the field isn't a water main, but a communication pipe.  This may change things a bit, as although you have a right to be connected to a water main, no such right exists for a connection to a communication pipe.

 

I ran into this, as the nearest water main to us is 140m away, up a single track lane.  There's a communication pipe that runs down the single track lane, right in front of our plot (literally 4m away), but we were prohibited from connecting to that, and Wessex Water wanted us to pay for a new pipe to run down the lane in parallel with the existing one.

[Amateur bob]

3 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

You have to go though much the same process as for electricity, which means going to SW.  You may find that the pipe across the field isn't a water main, but a communication pipe.  This may change things a bit, as although you have a right to be connected to a water main, no such right exists for a connection to a communication pipe.

 

I ran into this, as the nearest water main to us is 140m away, up a single track lane.  There's a communication pipe that runs down the single track lane, right in front of our plot (literally 4m away), but we were prohibited from connecting to that, and Wessex Water wanted us to pay for a new pipe to run down the lane in parallel with the existing one.

140m isnt that far for a water pipe though? itll be far cheaper than the electric cable? is there anywhere i can find a map of mains water pipes to check?

[Jeremy Harris]

5 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

140m isnt that far for a water pipe though? itll be far cheaper than the electric cable? is there anywhere i can find a map of mains water pipes to check?

 

The cheapest price I could get to run 140m of water pipe down the lane was nearly £24k.  That was using a contractor (approved by highways and Wessex Water) to dig the trench, lay the pipe, and make good, and Wessex Water doing the connections, installing the meter etc.

 

You have to ask Scottish Water for the map.  If they are anything like Wessex Water their maps may well not be accurate, though.  They sent me a copy of their map by email, but when we came to dig across the lane to put a drain in we found a pipe that they denied was theirs, until I called them out, whereupon they admitted it must be one of their unmapped communication pipes.

[Amateur bob]

2 minutes ago, JSHarris said:

 

The cheapest price I could get to run 140m of water pipe down the lane was nearly £24k.  That was using a contractor (approved by highways and Wessex Water) to dig the trench, lay the pipe, and make good, and Wessex Water doing the connections, installing the meter etc.

 

You have to ask Scottish Water for the map.  If they are anything like Wessex Water their maps may well not be accurate, though.  They sent me a copy of their map by email, but when we came to dig across the lane to put a drain in we found a pipe that they denied was theirs, until I called them out, whereupon they admitted it must be one of their unmapped communication pipes.

why did it cost so much for water pipe? my plots going to be unviable if im 24k just for water then £50/m for elect

[Jeremy Harris]

8 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

why did it cost so much for water pipe? my plots going to be unviable if im 24k just for water then £50/m for elect

 

 

Just the cost of laying 140m of pipe down a single track lane, that's all.  I shopped around for the best price, from two or three approved contractors, but all were within a few hundred pounds of each other, or the price from Wessex Water for them to do the whole job.  They wanted an additional £14k to run another pipe up the lane for about 85m to take the foul drain.

 

I ended up fitting a treatment plant to deal with the foul drainage (cost ~£3.5K installed, I think, including the drain laid under the lane to the stream) and had a borehole drilled for a water supply (cost around £8k, plus another ~2k for the treatment stuff).  One advantage of the borehole and treatment plant is that we don't pay any water or sewerage charges, which more than makes up for the small running cost of both.

[scottishjohn]

1 hour ago, Amateur bob said:

ive also a plot 130m im considering but thats worrying as i haf reckoned 5k for it, ive asked for an estimate from SSE should i have asked for a proper quote?

yes fill in an application fo0rm and get a written quote .

 bob:

you been messing around with this for months now 

just get some forms and make real applications and get real quotes 

no point in doing anything  and that includes  you keep asking same questions on here  until you have them  and   you know your services costs

no one can give you any real answers on here -just guesses

Edited October 15, 2019 by scottishjohn

[PeterW]

47 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

why did it cost so much for water pipe? my plots going to be unviable if im 24k just for water then £50/m for elect

If it’s on your own land you can dig your own and do it for the price of the pipe and a digger. If you’re into the roads, it gets pricey as road opening, traffic management etc doesn’t come cheap. 

[Amateur bob]

1 hour ago, PeterW said:

If it’s on your own land you can dig your own and do it for the price of the pipe and a digger. If you’re into the roads, it gets pricey as road opening, traffic management etc doesn’t come cheap. 

ive 130m to run it too but over a field we own should this lower the cost?

[Amateur bob]

1 hour ago, scottishjohn said:

yes fill in an application fo0rm and get a written quote .

 bob:

you been messing around with this for months now 

just get some forms and make real applications and get real quotes 

no point in doing anything  and that includes  you keep asking same questions on here  until you have them  and   you know your services costs

no one can give you any real answers on here -just guesses

just trying to gain knowledge before rushing into it, awaiting an estimate from SSE energy but might go back and ask for proper quote, been on scottish water website today but all quite complicated big forms to fill in theyre asking about sewage/drainage etc ill just be doing an on site treatment plant its in a field

[Amateur bob]

1 hour ago, JSHarris said:

 

 

Just the cost of laying 140m of pipe down a single track lane, that's all.  I shopped around for the best price, from two or three approved contractors, but all were within a few hundred pounds of each other, or the price from Wessex Water for them to do the whole job.  They wanted an additional £14k to run another pipe up the lane for about 85m to take the foul drain.

 

I ended up fitting a treatment plant to deal with the foul drainage (cost ~£3.5K installed, I think, including the drain laid under the lane to the stream) and had a borehole drilled for a water supply (cost around £8k, plus another ~2k for the treatment stuff).  One advantage of the borehole and treatment plant is that we don't pay any water or sewerage charges, which more than makes up for the small running cost of both.

would part of the cost be digging up tarmack on the lane? ill just be across a field, thanks!

[PeterW]

2 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

would part of the cost be digging up tarmack on the lane? ill just be across a field, thanks!

if the water main is on your land then you’re in a very good place as you can basically dig the whole lot yourself. 

[Amateur bob]

5 minutes ago, PeterW said:

if the water main is on your land then you’re in a very good place as you can basically dig the whole lot yourself. 

yes thats what i hoped, i hoped the same for electric but it seems the cost of the cable (£50/m) is the issue

[Ed Davies]

Re PV generation across the year, well worth a look at PVGIS: https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html for your proposed house site.

 

On another forum I collated the outputs people were actually getting each month with what PVGIS predicted for their site. Generally speaking PVGIS was pretty reasonable but a bit pessimistic; about a quarter of the time the actual output was below the PVGIS prediction, 3/4 of the time it was above. PVGIS has been tuned since then with different radiation databases added so perhaps it's more accurate now.

 

An important consideration is that usually people optimize the angle of their PV panels to maximize production over the whole year [¹]. This results in the panels being at quite a shallow angle which does clobber winter production (though it increases summer production slightly). Putting the panels at a steeper angle reduces summer production slightly but increases winter production a lot. For off-grid you want to maximized DJF (December, January and February) production. If that's sufficient then you're laughing the rest of the year.

 

E.g., for my plot in the north of Scotland increasing the panel angle from 35° to 60° reduces the production in May from 121 kWh/kW to 108 h but increases the December production from 14.4 to 18.8 h. The gained 4 h of production in December is much more valuable than the lost 13 h in May when you're off-grid.

 

In other words, yes, there's a big difference between summer and winter production but the way people currently have PV set up exaggerates this effect.

 

[¹] or, more realistically, just accept the angle of the roof they happen to have which is typically quite shallow. If you're doing a new build then you don't have to do this - you can pitch your roof appropriately or ground mount your panels.

[Jeremy Harris]

1 hour ago, Amateur bob said:

would part of the cost be digging up tarmack on the lane? ill just be across a field, thanks!

 

 

Yes, a fair bit of the cost was to do with moleing up under the lane etc.

[Redoctober]

1 hour ago, Amateur bob said:

been on scottish water website today but all quite complicated big forms to fill in theyre asking about sewage/drainage etc ill just be doing an on site treatment plant its in a field

 

@Amateur bob We too used the services of SW and SP for our connections. We started the ball rolling via their respective websites - With regards to SW print off the forms they require you to fill in and then send them off. The forms can be daunting at first glance but believe me, we found the process for both Companies to be straight forward. Perhaps find someone who might be able to talk it through with you.

If you are developing an agricultural plot I would be very surprised if there was a Mains Water unit available. We developed such a plot and our nearest water mains unit was the other side of a single track country lane. We were able to tap into that and run the pipe from there into our plot. Total cost about £900. This was due to the road having to be dug up and the contractor had to be SBC approved.

[scottishjohn]

2 hours ago, Ed Davies said:

Re PV generation across the year, well worth a look at PVGIS: https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/tools.html for your proposed house site.

 

On another forum I collated the outputs people were actually getting each month with what PVGIS predicted for their site. Generally speaking PVGIS was pretty reasonable but a bit pessimistic; about a quarter of the time the actual output was below the PVGIS prediction, 3/4 of the time it was above. PVGIS has been tuned since then with different radiation databases added so perhaps it's more accurate now.

 

An important consideration is that usually people optimize the angle of their PV panels to maximize production over the whole year [¹]. This results in the panels being at quite a shallow angle which does clobber winter production (though it increases summer production slightly). Putting the panels at a steeper angle reduces summer production slightly but increases winter production a lot. For off-grid you want to maximized DJF (December, January and February) production. If that's sufficient then you're laughing the rest of the year.

 

E.g., for my plot in the north of Scotland increasing the panel angle from 35° to 60° reduces the production in May from 121 kWh/kW to 108 h but increases the December production from 14.4 to 18.8 h. The gained 4 h of production in December is much more valuable than the lost 13 h in May when you're off-grid.

 

In other words, yes, there's a big difference between summer and winter production but the way people currently have PV set up exaggerates this effect.

 

[¹] or, more realistically, just accept the angle of the roof they happen to have which is typically quite shallow. If you're doing a new build then you don't have to do this - you can pitch your roof appropriately or ground mount your panels.

correct -- i found the same with my solar thermal and in the end plumped for angle same as laltitude - which increased winter output-

a man in denmark has his hanginvertically to get most inwinter --this is solarthermal --so you get plenty in summer anyway+ it then cuts it back slightly which helps with overheating of water  ,but winter when yuo need it thee suns angleis very low 

[Amateur bob]

10 hours ago, Redoctober said:

 

@Amateur bob We too used the services of SW and SP for our connections. We started the ball rolling via their respective websites - With regards to SW print off the forms they require you to fill in and then send them off. The forms can be daunting at first glance but believe me, we found the process for both Companies to be straight forward. Perhaps find someone who might be able to talk it through with you.

If you are developing an agricultural plot I would be very surprised if there was a Mains Water unit available. We developed such a plot and our nearest water mains unit was the other side of a single track country lane. We were able to tap into that and run the pipe from there into our plot. Total cost about £900. This was due to the road having to be dug up and the contractor had to be SBC approved.

ill have another look at the forms today, we do have water troughs for cattle in our steading 130m away from plot i could easily connect to that myself and run a pipe to plot for next to nothing but dont know if this is legal? surely its just like adding another water trough to a shed or field, i dont ask permission for that and the cattle will use a lot more water, i should mention its us paying the metre for the steading anyway

[scottishjohn]

not trying to be a pain -

but you need to be sure the pipe is WRAS approved ,or you could get problems with building control etc,and they might want proof

 and it will need double check valves on etc --so cowshit in trough cannot be sucked up into your line

a new line from same place in blue mdpe sounds a better idea 

Edited October 16, 2019 by scottishjohn

[Amateur bob]

14 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

not trying to be a pain -

but you need to be sure the pipe is WRAS approved ,or you could get problems with building control etc,and they might want proof

 and it will need double check valves on etc --so cowshit in trough cannot be sucked up into your line

a new line from same place in blue mdpe sounds a better idea 

the cattle troughs have ballcocks so waters only getting out not in, a blue mdpe pipe comes out of the ground and runs up towards to the trough i could dig down and connect to it underground then dig a trench to the plot 0.7m deep, lay a blue mdpe pipe in it and fill back in? id manage this myself with no need to speak to water companies?

[scottishjohn]

6 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

the cattle troughs have ballcocks so waters only getting out not in, a blue mdpe pipe comes out of the ground and runs up towards to the trough i could dig down and connect to it underground then dig a trench to the plot 0.7m deep, lay a blue mdpe pipe in it and fill back in? id manage this myself with no need to speak to water companies?

sounds like a plan ,presuming its not 20mm mdpe -

-25 -32 is normal for house and if a long way maybe bigger and presuming its not climbing up  along way --maybe check flow rate+ pressure at nearest point to start with .

If so then accumlator and booster pump in house to get you good flow  and pressure

Edited October 16, 2019 by scottishjohn

[Amateur bob]

7 minutes ago, scottishjohn said:

sounds like a plan ,presuming its not 20mm mdpe -

-25 -32 is normal for house and if a long way maybe bigger

the existing pipe may be 20mm but i can put a t piece with a bigger size on it so i can run a 32mm pipe from that to the plot?

[PeterW]

31 minutes ago, Amateur bob said:

ill have another look at the forms today, we do have water troughs for cattle in our steading 130m away from plot i could easily connect to that myself and run a pipe to plot for next to nothing but dont know if this is legal? surely its just like adding another water trough to a shed or field, i dont ask permission for that and the cattle will use a lot more water, i should mention its us paying the metre for the steading anyway

where is the meter..?? Some of the field supplies installed have a restricter fitted at the meter end to stop huge amounts of water leaking if the pipe is damaged. 
 

You would be much better getting a new connection at that point and running it in a single new supply pipe - you will have control then as nothing worse than a shower slowing to a dribble just because Bessie the cow decided to step into the trough and bust open the ball valve ....