Month: March 2014 (Page 3 of 3)

Update on RHI

March 6, 2014 / stephen

I went to three seminars today at Ecobuild 2014 on RHI. A lot of the information that was presented in these session has been seen before. However, there were some new snippets:

The launch date for domestic RHI has still to be confirmed, however, it is expected to be Spring 2014. A number of the speakers referred to the date being finalised in the “next few weeks”;
The domestic RHI payments will be “deemed” (i.e. estimated) rather reliant on using installed meters. The estimation will be based on the calculations completed as part of the MCS installation;
There are a couple of situations were meters will be required. This is where the property is either a second home or there is an additional form of heating (e.g. gas boiler). The metered payments will only be able to adjust the payment upto the deemed value, i.e. the metering will only be used to adjust the deemed payment downwards;
Applications for RHI will be administered by Ofgem. Applications will be made on online and it is expected that applications should take 20-30 minutes to make. In many cases, the decision of the online application will be instanteous;
The applications will require details from your MCS certification as well as your green deal assessment. Hopefully, this will speed up the application process as details will be pulled in from these documents;
The government reserved the right to reduce the tariff by up to 20% should the RHI be over subscribed.

You will find more information on the Renewable Energy Association website.

Lighting circuits in the kitchen

March 4, 2014 / stephen

With our home automation kit, each room has a number of lighting circuits. These circuits can then be turned on and off independently. In addition, some of the circuits can be dimmed (as long as they are connected to a central dimmer unit).

Some areas of the house have been fairly straightforward to sort out. Others are more complex. The kitchen is a good example of where there are multiple lighting circuits – gone are the days when there just used to be a fluorescent strip in the middle of the ceiling!

We are just sorting out all of the lighting in the kitchen and I am amazed to find that we have a total of 8 lighting circuits here.

Wall lights – small rectangular lights shining up and down on the reclaimed stone;
2 sets of suspended wire lights – each with 4 x 5w bulbs. The two strips are controlled independently;
4 x LEDs under the breakfast bar;
7 x LEDs along the canopy of the tall kitchen units;
2 downlighters in the square window that separates the lounge and the kitchen;
an pendant light in the tall window;
And finally, there is a LED strip underneath the plinth of the main units. This is DMX controlled and we will be able to change the colour and the intensity (brightness) of the LED strip.

However, we don’t need 8 switches to control 8 lights (although you could if you really wanted to!). With the Loxone system, we can define scenes. A scene is a predefined set of lights. So for example, you might define an “eating” scene or a “cooking” scene. Each of these scenes might use a different combination of lights. Some of this we are going to have to set once we are living in the property. The scenes should also be set when it is dark as lighting looks completely different in daylight.

These are Collingwood lights. There are four along this wall. 1w up and 1w down. We have used the same lights in the parapet wall in the hallway so that they line up. These lights are hardly noticeable when they are not on.

Suspended wire lighting from SLV. This all runs on 12v and we can put up to 6 lights onto each pair of wires. Currently we have 4 on each.

These LED lights were installed underneath the worktop of the breakfast bar when the kitchen units were installed. Although installed by the kitchen fitters, these too are controlled by the Loxone kit.

Saxby LED downlights. These are IP65 rated and could be used outdoors. These are the same lights that we have used in the bathrooms elsewhere in the property. Each of the lights is 1w.

These two downlighters are in the square “window” between the kitchen and the lounge. They need to be pushed back up into the holes, but have been left down while the decorators are still working in this area.

A straightforward pendant light. There will be a piece of artwork here in the long term.

Ecobuild 2014

March 4, 2014 / stephen

It is Ecobuild this week in London. On Thursday, there are a couple of sessions on RHI (Renewable Heat Incentive). This is a government scheme that provides funds for those people installing renewable forms of heating. This applies to ground source heat pumps (as well as air source heat pumps).

You will find more information on RHI in previous blogs entries.

While the incentive has been in place for non-domestic use, the domestic scheme is due to launch next month. While the overall framework for the incentive is well understood, there are a number of details still to be clarified. I am hoping that the sessions at Ecobuild this week will help provide some answers.

Update on the kitchen

March 1, 2014 / stephen

All of the kitchen units have been installed this week. This includes the units that make up the island unit. All of the electrics are in place as is the plumbing.

Once all the units were in place, it was a case of cutting templates for the granite worktops. The templates are cut out of hardboard and marked up with the relevant details.

Next week the worktops will be made using the templates. They will then be installed the following week – along with all of the appliances.

The appliances will be installed when the rest of the kitchen is finished off. The island unit has been wrapped up to protect it over the next week or two before the installation is finished.

All of the kitchen cupboards have been installed this week. We now have a week’s break while the granite worktops are being made before the kitchen is finished off.