How much can I practically/legally DIY, and other newb questions

[Stinsy]

Good result!

The whole Part P thing seems to be a bit of a scam to me, if I'm honest. I've seen plenty of really poor quality work from supposedly qualified electricians that have Part P certification and suspect there is little oversight of their workmanship by the certification body they belong to. I had an electrician install our temporary building supply here, when I started building the house, and his workmanship was not only very untidy, but also downright dangerous. Rather than chase him up to do a proper job I chose to just rip all his dodgy work out and do the job myself. My thinking was that if I got him back to do the job properly there was every chance he'd still screw it up. I had a vested interest in making sure the TBS was safe and properly installed, as most of the time it was going to be me using it for the time spent building the house.

I've heard of dozens of stories about horrific work carried out by certified tradesmen. The certifying bodies have absolutely zero interest in hearing complaints though and only exist to take their slice of money from the pot.

I resent the implication that all DIYers are bodgers too.

[dangermouse]

That's always a worry when getting someone else to do work for you, whether it's electrical installation, fixing your car / motorbike or whatever. I'm usually a DIY kind of person, except I can't be bothered working on cars any more, getting too old for crawling around on the cold ground. And if you find a tradesperson you can trust they're nearly always worth the money.

In this case, I know the installation (simple as it is) well as I did it myself and I'm happy enough to pay the electrician £100 to make it all above board.

In case anyone's interested, this set up with a Sofar HYD3600 inverter and 4.8kWh of Pylon batteries cost me about £3500, including all parts and a few tools that I was lacking.

Next step is to wait for a smart meter for the dual rate tariff. After that, get some PV on the roof.

[ducabi]

Did you have any issue with finding someone happy to sign it off or was it someone you knew before? I was happy to pay someone to do the job for me and now my thread is 20 pages long and still not finished .

[dangermouse]

I phoned round a few local electricians listed on the NICEIC website. Some wouldn't even speak to me, maybe I got lucky but after about 4 calls I found someone willing to listen to what I wanted and with a sensible attitude.

But I think (I was told) that NICEIC doesn't allow certification of 3rd party work. The guy I found was happy to put it down as his installation as long as it was all surface mounted wiring that he could inspect - ie nothing behind plaster etc.

The other option is to get your local authority to certify it. Instinct tells me that could end up a more bureaucratically fraught route than finding a friendly spark.

[Oldgreybeard]

The cost of getting a building control company is a lot more than £100 I believe. I think they now charge around £350 to £450 for domestic electrical installation work approval. When I spoke with our LABC (when building the house) they were pretty hard over on trying to dissuade me from using them to sign off the electrical installation, seemed to me that they really didn't want to do it and would far rather I used a Part P certified electrical company.

[dangermouse]

And so my DIY journey continues... Having got the battery and inverter sorted out, I'm now investigating PV panels...

Just got a quote from a local company, to fit 10 panels, over £6k. I'm thinking that's a bit steep, for panels costing about £2k. I suspect they don't really want to do part jobs (they initially quoted about 10k for a full system).

It's not a good time of the year to get roofing work done, but I'll be looking around for someone who do the work if I buy the panels. Any opinions on what I should be expecting to pay for simply mounting 10 panels on a normal 2 storey house?

[Oldgreybeard]

A fair bit of the cost will be the scaffolding I think. Not sure how much that costs now, but back in 2013 I paid £1,287 plus VAT for a 2.5m platform height scaffold erected around our build (for the roofers). That included erection, 4 weeks hire and dismantling, with two fixed ladders.

[ducabi]

A friend of mine (electrician) said I could get a small scaffolding tower for £300-400 which would be enough to install PVs. I'm not planning any installation for the next couple months at least so haven't investigated it but I was also thinking about hiring some sort of lift.
Do PVs make any sense as long as we can charge for £10-15p/kwh?

[Oldgreybeard]

Do PVs make any sense as long as we can charge for £10-15p/kwh?

Depends. We have 6kW of PV, which generates around 6,000kWh per year. This year we've managed to self-use 98.3% of that, thanks to the battery and charging the car from PV whenever possible (the battery helps with that). At our cheap rate of about 17p/kWh that's a saving of about £1,000 per year. Our PV system was installed in March 2014, so paid for itself a fair time ago, which means that £1,000 saving is now just a free gift each year.

[nowty]

A friend of mine (electrician) said I could get a small scaffolding tower for £300-400 which would be enough to install PVs. I'm not planning any installation for the next couple months at least so haven't investigated it but I was also thinking about hiring some sort of lift.
Do PVs make any sense as long as we can charge for £10-15p/kwh?

If you mean, does PV make sense if you only pay 10p to 15p / kWh on a cheap rate ?

1) Import won't be as low carbon as having PV.

2) Come April and the energy cap subsidy goes bye bye, what's the cheapslot price going to rise to ?

3) You have to factor in about 25% extra on the inefficiencies of charging / discharging batteries from the grid.

4) if you put up 4kW and generate 4000kWh and use 3,500kWh, at 15p / kWh thats £525 a year. Say £4k for the install, thats about 8 years payback. Certainly over a 10% per year saving, so why not put it on a cheap credit card transfer like I have always done and it will pay for itself.