NotJustANumber99 posted:

He was only there for the blocks and bricks, nothing else and doesnt last quite that long

NotJustANumber99 posted:

. I've never spoken to the newly moved in rich fence having neighbour, only her 10(?) year old daughter who often appears to question me when I'm on the roof as to when am I going to get all this finished and how many children and dogs will live here?

NotJustANumber99 posted:

NotJustANumber99 posted:

NotJustANumber99 posted:

Anyway... I dunno paint it on.

Vim Fuego posted:

It wont make any sense as I can't explain my actions

NotJustANumber99 posted:

The house has two central locations, the house brain and the house heart.

The brain is also next to the lungs (the MVHR), not the heart.

The nervous system of the house terminates into the brain in the loft (attic). The brain is inside the insulated envelope so I need to have all the different cat6 nerve endings come into that space whilst maintaining the airtight threshold. You can buy some push through gasket thingyies but I need like probably 60 plus penetrations which doesnt seem easy. So I'll make my own.

Already got some sheet metal, bought a bunch of rubber grommets. (by the way I'm still posting things on imgur? Is that dumb what should we be using now? Like this isnt porn. i guess some people might get off on it)



centre punched and drill out





ok so that'll go there (ran out of grommets)



now start running all the nerd cable to the various locations. Actual network sockets in rooms, a bunch of sensor data collection places and also cameras and stuff with power over ethernet.



These cable rolls come in 305m crates.

Not really sure what the finish is going to be here so plasterboard and skim joints myself which serves if nothing else to remind me I defo need an actual plasterer to do the rest of the house.



lol I go through i think 3 boxes and still run out. Find a guy on ebay selling 4 partly used ones with leftovers and collect that too. He's a policeman so if its stolen at least I'll probably get away with it.



Paint the server cabinet inside and get some cheap laminate for the shelf



Lol all labelled up. just under 72 lines

Right, onto the house heart, the plant room

Got the 100mm trunking run through to where the consumer unit will be. Already have the main house power routed in under the floor.



Now time to run some wires. So. obviously need an electrician to sign all this off, but I'm not paying some dudes money just to push some little wires down some holes. How hard can that be? So I'm running everything in singles like I did in france because I think its better. So I'll figure everything out, run it all then call in the electrician I spoke to... 3 years ago and assume he's still cool to sign all this off. Like I've googled a lot and done some calculations and I will provide documentation for everything.

So best purchase has been this reel roller thing off ebay



Works great



I'm running all my various wires in my various trunks through walls etc





So all that metal trunking will get earthed and lids attached to provide the mandated second level of physical protection to the single sheathed wires

But. Its all a massive ballache. when youve got things like this to navigate round. in the loft. climbing up and down, pulling and pushing, fiddling and faffing



Get in the wall



Get outta the wall



So I'm not doing the typical UK rings, I'm doing radials. Youtube said they are better because rings only exist because of wwII. But actually having looked at radials, they arent even really radials so I'm inventing my own radials.

Things are kind of naturally sorting themselves out into different elements of the wiring, which ultimately will sort of translate into the different ways on the consumer unit. I've had to do a bunch of calculations to spread load across the three phases and to decide what heft of cable to run in certain places and what gauge of trunking/conduit they need to be in given grouping factors and overheating in insulation, then the uprating of the cable you need to do and so on. Being an electrician is rubbish. Fortunately I'm not one, so onward we go.

In the west wing bedroom of the L I will have 3 power rings except not, radials instead. But that would mean running 4mm cross sectionally area wire to each socket and back out on like a bus. Which is a lot of expensive wire. And also probably will not fit down my 20mm conduits I've run down from the variously 50/100mm trunking. I'll have to run down and back up my conduits as I'm not prepared to wall chase horizontally around my walls, as I think they'll fall down.

Ah! but my new even more radial radial avoids this. I will utilise my loft space as an area I am prepared to put accessible junction boxes in. Run 4mm wire from plant room consumer unit to 3 junction boxes, then disperse from there in 2.5mm to each socket/ appliance as necessary. Not a ring so no need to return and there should be no confusion for future morons trying to adapt things as any investigations would reveal a non ringed 2.5mm apparent spur. Plus it will all be documented properly like a new build house should be in the house manual.



I think this is the most sensible way to do what I am trying to achieve.

In three locations in the loft I am beginning to collect the wiring runs local to that area.



And they will be collected in these junction boxes that will be served from the consumer unit in the plant room. And physically accessible via plasterboarded push to release access hatches. The junction boxes themselves require a screwdriver to open which satisfies building regs regarding electrcs not being accessible without tools.



They are mounted on some timber in front of the trunking carrying all the wiring behind and linked with two turns of 32mm plastic conduit.



Then mounted on the rail in blocks of Wago connectors to link up lives, neutrals and earths.



start connecting in the wire vomit



sexual wiring on toast, electricians will want to be me



concentrate and dont lose track or it can all look a little... hairbrained



So most of these runs are just to various sockets, but some are for particular things that require fused swiches. So I'll collect those together in the loft and provide another access hatch to power cycle/problem(there wont be any)shoot those.



So thats Family bathroom, shower, bath, shaver socket, and front door as handy. then run in flex or whatever down to the actual appliance. fitting? dunno the right terminology



Here is one of the three loft junction boxes complete with lid and laminated instructions/labels as to what everything in it is and where it goes and what it does.



Whilst we have 3 phase power, everything basically runs on a single phase, you just jiggle the about between which phase they are on. Briefly consider a 3 phase hob and maybe ovens as maybe it helps some of the calcs and maybe they do that in europe (?) but ultimately no. Single phase it.

The car chargers are 3 phase. So they are 10mm cross section cable x 5 (earth,neutral,phase,phase,phase). Which will allow two 22kw car chargers. except that breaks the limits if everything else is running lol. So even on 3 phase I probably will have to have one 22kw charger and one 7kw. But I'll put the wiring in anyway. The model 3 and Y can only charge at 11kw AC anyway.

these are fat wires



Turns out even though the calcs say they will fit in the trunking, I cannot physically get them to run through the wall in flexible conduit and into the trunking at 90 degrees and turn round and get the lids on.

Need to change and run the car chargers all the way down the access triangles in their own 32mm plastic conduit before terminating into the 100mm trunking straight on rather than the 50mm at 90degrees.

You can kind of see the same issue here behind the junction boxes where I haven't yet bent the wires round into the trunking and got the lids on.



Right so thats most of the wiring in the bedroom wing sort of explained? I feel like?

Seperate to that, but in the same house, this one, and having to terminate in the plant room is all the lighting in the main room, which I am now calling the great room. Theres going to be 36 spot lights arrayed around the oak beams, and, I want them individually addressable. Each light will run a 1.5mm c/s live, neutral and earth from the light back to a lighting box next to the consumer unit in the plantroom.

This fits in the calcs, which can also be approximated by the 45% fill rule. as in the wires should take up less than half the volume of the trunking.





As mentioned though this is all a massive ballache. like the wires fall out and get stuck on everything going meaning I have to climb up and down a million times more than should be necessary.





But.

I have a problem with the calculations. they're fine when things are straight. but when things go around the corners in the trunking with the big fat lid fitting etc it all gets very tight.



I've removed the lids to get access and used cable ties, but theres no way this is going to work.



So new plan. Need to maintain individual addressability to each light. But we can just share all the neutral and earths and just leave lives as individually switched back in the lighting control unit. so like this:



removes like up to 2/3rds of bulk of wiring. should really have thought/done this before.

Unfortunately I have only realised this halfway through the first half of the vaulted room wiring. so I need to pull back everything i've done there, seperate the lives from the earths and neutrals, retain and resend the lives whilst redoing the the earth/neutrals as essentially a radial bus. pulling back and through all the conduits and trunks.

Its moments like this that you really enjoy being a self builder.

drag all that poo poo out in the plant room to figure out whats what



Collecting up and labelling the live wires (like when I say live, I don't mean actually live, I mean eventually live lol)



Stripping back out and collecting up all the wasted earth/neutral, I'll reuse best I can



Anyway I get that all sorted and loom together a big old live wire loom for the south side of the roof spotlights and send it through. A lot of work to redo. I'm weeks now into this wiring. I know I suck but looking online at other peoples quotes I do think an electrician would be quoting 30-50k for all this, and I can understand why cos design aside ultimately you've got man hours just poking things up things.

Mum and dad arrive in the camper which means the new break room has a fridge with beers, wine, gin and tonics and whisky and gingers so progress drops to a new low but also a new high



Literally today I've got my second spotlight ceiling live loom finished







Obviouskly been recording all this on site in great detail



but updating at home each night



Things are a lot tidier on the trunking runs, but yeah theres stil a lot there





Getting there. Just really the utility room stuff and bedroom lighting to do. Then like the whole connecting them all up and stuff.

gently caress me.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

I'll just take one of my building site plastic chairs in there and sit on that

Fidelitious posted:

. Some required design limitations were put in place in the 80s when construction science and materials were not what we have now so there's things like worries about condensation in super-airtight homes that are not an issue anymore but

Elem7 posted:

, but at least on this side of the Atlantic that airtightness is done at the exterior.

Jaded Burnout posted:

They *want*

NotJustANumber99 posted:

he was ignoring everything I was saying and planning in his head how he was going to do it differently.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

... so manually unload the second pallet to behind the first pallet so the first ones still wrapped and a bit weather tight. I can already envisage asking the plasterers to start with the behind pallet only to be ignored and really wind myself up. Maybe it wont happen and only a silly a little nothing thing but of course it will happen.

vanity slug posted:

lol, told you

Jaded Burnout posted:

Jaded Burnout posted:

It became quickly clear that I hadn't sealed the wood well enough before the winter rains came, so it's going to have to all come down and perhaps be replaced entirely.



Electrical box being pushed out of position in a slightly worrying way that I'm going to ignore for a while. I'll probs go find the breaker though. I'll add that to my list.

BonerGhost posted:

Why in the world would you do this?

bred posted:

The top waterfall miters are much more visually important than the lower two joints so I'd have butts on the bottom with end grain facing the floor. This way you can make the walls long and sneak up to a good miter. It is done when it passes inspection with a combination square and straight edge. After that practice, make the top to width allowing material for some mistakes. Cut the sides to height after the miters are finalized.

So cut with a circular saw and straight edge to 45d and rasp work to the gauges. Join with screws and plugs or biscuits or floating tenons or whatever.

Leperflesh posted:

make it more mysterious
"Thread ID 3999215" with no other context. Let them go nuts trying to figure out what the gently caress that means, but also have the incredibly glorious feeling of revelation if someone ever figures it out (and this site is still here somehow, which, lol).

NotJustANumber99 posted:

.

So lets just give up wondering if things are going badly and get on with working.