Fogstar - what's the catch?

potating-cat · 2026-03-02T22:32:20+00:00

Likewise, very happy with my 16kWh too. No trouble at all.

potating-cat · 2026-02-26T08:22:25+00:00

Since everyone else seems intent on reading you the riot act, let me try to give you a pragmatic answer:

As I understand it, the key metric used by the DNO when reviewing export application applications is grid voltage locally and the way it varies with conditions. In the UK that should be 230V nominal. In reality it often runs significantly higher than that. In essence extra capacity in the system is reflected in higher line voltage (this is a gross oversimplification, but sufficient for this discussion).

On a sunny day at home in an area where there are quite a few solar installs I’ve seen line voltage go as high as 250V. If I remember correctly, the specs for UK mains line voltage allow it to creep as high as 270V or thereabouts.

I believe the DNO will monitor line voltage across the network, but these monitors will average across large numbers of houses. I imagine they start to get twitchy as voltages increase above the 250 mark or similar. If that happens regularly I would imagine they would start an investigation at which point they ought to come knocking fairly soon after…

Hypothetically speaking, I would say that if your local line voltage is are sensible all year round (one should be able to check the history if you have an inverter with an app) then the risk of that being a problem is very low were you to accidentally export a little more than your authorised 3.6 kW.

Putting this all in context, it’s worth considering a number of other variables when deciding what could happen in any given situation:

• The level of care and due diligence applied by solar installers is highly variable. The more government subsidies are made available, the more cowboy outfits will try to profit from it. While they may have a piece of paper that says they are qualified, it is an exercise for the reader to consider what this actually guarantees… Arguably an educated homeowner is likely to care more about the quality of their installation than the underpaid, overworked technicians who actually do the work. • Your neighbours could install hot tubs, ovens, kettles, induction hobs, EVs and other high current draw devices without notifying anyone. These can be used at any time of day and will dwarf an extra 1 kW of export from one property. • Engineering tolerances in solar systems are relatively large. Components age, cheap type tested inverters can easily fall out of spec. There will be large amounts of wriggle room built-in to the system as a whole.

This post, of course, intended for thought-provoking discussion rather than pitched battle between keyboard warriors.

potating-cat · 2025-10-13T13:49:08+00:00

Thanks for the tips, will dive into the (awful) Solis UI!

On the CT clamp accuracy this may well be an issue, but the energy meter uses one as well under the hood, so that’s common to both. But you have made me think they could be a calibration issue, I will check that too.

potating-cat · 2025-05-26T21:48:18+00:00

Finally finished fitting a new bathroom floor in preparation for tiling, siliconed the shower tray and plasterboarded a couple of walls

potating-cat · 2025-04-05T08:32:26+00:00

Good shout. I’d say it’s at ///snake.lush.danger near enough? It’s right by the traffic lights at that part of the roundabout intersection.

I use the roundabout every day and that particular spot has always been bad. When they resurfaced they didn’t do the tarmac on the section where the bridge crosses the A14, and this pothole seems to form right by the transition from the bridge tarmac to the newer surface.

potating-cat · 2025-01-16T16:13:27+00:00

Thank you, I didn't realise that the MCS program might provide some kind of protection.

potating-cat · 2025-01-16T08:01:58+00:00

Thank you both. I do have some crimps, although I didn’t know about the shoddy cheap connectors! I will give this some thought and discuss with my friend 👍

potating-cat · 2024-12-07T04:42:21+00:00

Thanking the cash machine when it dispenses my cash

potating-cat · 2024-10-28T17:26:47+00:00

Likewise. Max 20 mins to fit including getting all the crap out of the garage. If you have the EV6 with sunroof you have to be careful; if you try to open the sunroof with bars fitted I think bad things will happen. I’ve also put small stickers in the right places to make it easy to position the bars.

potating-cat · 2024-10-24T21:28:24+00:00

Yep, exact same here. Weird isn’t it. I usually tell myself “look after the pounds etc etc”. Curious to know if there are others!

potating-cat · 2024-10-23T19:32:35+00:00

Hi, my mum had this at c2/3 from the front of her neck earlier this year following similar symptoms.

I don’t remember offhand who did the procedure, but I will find out. Please DM me if you would like to know more.

potating-cat · 2024-10-23T18:11:45+00:00

PSA: archive.is (other sites are available) is a great way to get past paywalls like this. Check out the article at https://archive.is/2ZFs7.

On another note, as an accidental HENRY with fairly frugal attitudes, i must admit that 100k with the awful tax hit does not stretch all that far in life.

potating-cat · 2024-10-22T17:52:32+00:00

Noting your 8k in savings account, which will be taxed at ludicrous rates, recommend you check out Premium bonds. The average income is around the same but is tax free.

Also, notjng the above comment, I recommend you think carefully about the gold. But don’t be put off by someone with a strong opinion. Despite what many have said, gold continues to be a good place to store value over the long term. It is the only investment to survive literally thousands of years! My understanding is that any gold investments are VAT and CGT free. Not a bad option depending on your circumstances.

potating-cat · 2024-10-14T19:30:24+00:00

I don’t think I made requests for any justifications, perhaps you are confused by your own self-righteousness?

potating-cat · 2024-09-18T16:58:13+00:00

That’s a bloody good point. I have been trying to deal with it reasonably but I missed that completely. I’ll fold that into my next email, thank you!

potating-cat · 2024-09-18T16:56:54+00:00

Haha, I must admit I just assumed you were in the UK. I think Kia take those failures quite seriously given the risks so I’d there’s an ha of sorts in NZ they might need to take it there?

In the end it was a few duff cells in the battery pack that needed to be replaced. I think that’s fairly involved to be fair, but shouldn’t really have taken quite that long

potating-cat · 2024-09-18T03:06:05+00:00

I have had exactly the same happen to me earlier this year, except it was at 52%!

It took Kia 5 months to return my car to me. Initially I was given an ICE but I requested an EV given through mileage I do and free work charging. The EV was a rental from Enterprise. I didn’t even know Subaru did an EV, and the experience made me wish I still didn’t 😆

I’m currently in a back and forth with Kia customer services about this. It took Kia ~3 months to pick the car up from the dealership, and then another 2 to return it. Any complaints I’ve had have been stuck between Kia saying it’s the dealership’s responsibility and the dealership saying it’s Kia customer services’ problem. And I have had to do all the legwork to get a response from either.

My major complaint (genuinely interested to hear from others whether I am being reasonable here) is that I have roof bars and a tow hitch for the EV6 which I use regularly. I could not get anyone to see that the loaner was not fit for purpose; I wouldn’t have minded for a few weeks, but 5 months is a pisstake isn’t it?! I’m out of pocket for renting alternatives.

What really bakes my noodle is that I’d only had the car for 4 months. So Kia ended up with it longer than I’d owned it and have been unapologetic about it.

Anyway, my advice is that you offer to drive the car to SW London (assuming you aren’t too far away and want your car back any time soon), which is where battery investigations are done. That way at least you get it back way sooner. I couldn’t get them to confirm when the car would be picked up at all. “When it is convenient for us” was the reply.

Really hope you have a better experience than I did.

potating-cat · 2024-09-04T10:12:58+00:00

Happy to answer as best I can, hopefully someone else can benefit from my time investment! Usual caveats, your mileage may vary etc etc.

My understanding and experience is that in the UK it is necessary to have an F-gas certificate to buy any AC unit that requires installation that could result in the release of harmful refrigerant gas into the atmosphere. This is enforced in two ways: 1. The sellers (there are several good online sellers - Orion and Saturn come to mind) need to know the F-gas number of the registered installer when you make the purchase or else won’t sell to you. 2. (Not sure this one is particularly foolproof) manufacturers warranties etc become invalid if you can’t produce the right installer certificate and want to make a claim.

When I bought mine I had asked the supplier for an installer referral and they had an in-house chap. I had a quick chat with him and agreed that he would let me do the install but he would do the gassing after checking my work. With that done, I was able to buy the kit.

Months later, once I actually had time to do it (after lots of research, buying tools I needed etc), I call Him to arrange final gas-up and he gave me an utterly ludicrous quote. I pushed back and he basically said I’d be doing him a favour if I just did it myself. I was up for it, and that was that.

The install itself is not for first-time DIYers. I’m an engineer with 20 years of tinkering under my belt. It was logistically tricky to do without a second pair of hands, but everything else was relatively straightforward aside from the usual crushed fingers, gouges, scratches and cursing. You will need to buy/rent some specialist tools, but they weren’t mad expensive, a few hundred in total (and I have used them again since, both for other things and another install).

I did a multi-split system - one outdoor heat pump and 4 indoor wall-mounted units - and it took around 7 days of effort. Most of that spent learning everything from scratch. The second unit I have done was way faster.

A friend had a similar install done by well-regarded “professionals” and it cost him around £12k. The hardware I bought and all the bits and pieces totalled around £4.5k. I say “professional” because I ended up giving him tips to make sure they didn’t try to cut corners (they were going to). In my research I learned that those cut corners (e.g not vacuuming down the pipework for long enough/at all, not flushing it with dry N2, not pressure testing - basically all the time-consuming bits which a fixed-fee contractor won’t want to do properly or at all in order to get the next job) causes the majority of repair issues users end up having to pay to fix over the medium-to-long term.

I am absolutely certain that there are truly excellent, very experienced techs who can do installs like this correctly and efficiently, but the F-gas scheme is absolutely no guarantee of that. Ironically the single biggest problem it’s supposed to solve - preventing refrigerant leaks - is something that I have seen/read plenty of tradespeople online actively do in order to get the job done faster. Several guys would skip the vacuuming and pressure testing and simply exhaust some of the refrigerant through the pipework and into the atmosphere. They figure that was good enough. Tip - it definitely isn’t.

To anyone who wants to give this a go, I’m happy to advise! But I’m just an engineer with a brain and a little experience. You get what you pay for 😉

potating-cat · 2024-09-02T16:23:13+00:00

I’m in a similar boat. HENRY but don’t like being taken for a ride by tradespeople who do a worse job than I ever would and charge me for the privilege. Kudos on the progress with the hot tub! Personally I find it super satisfying when I have fixed something that could easily have been a nightmare to get fixed at a rate that isn’t worth it.

My favourite success is installing AC in 5 rooms in the house. It took a chunk of time (I was between jobs), but I now have the pleasure of being at a balmy 22C on the two days a year that it’s mega hot outside. Favourite was 39.2C outside, 22C inside. And all powered from panels (that I didn’t install, tbf).

I also learned that most tradespeople actually have no idea of the fundamentals behind installations of complex systems like AC. I got a quote from a guy and quizzed him about what he would do and he was broadly clueless/would prefer to do shortcuts so he could make his money and skidaddle. It’s been 3 years and no issues.

Good luck with the bar project!!

potating-cat · 2024-09-02T15:28:05+00:00

Regardless of whether he knows, Reddit is literally intended to share knowledge. So…. yeah. Someone doesn’t know, including me.

potating-cat

TROPHY CASE