The dehumidifier had been ran overnight downstairs instead of upstairs and I was attempting to measure how much moisture had been captured compared to running it upstairs 🤦‍♂️

Great question to ask! Humidity is a funny thing and works in different ways when you are feeling hot or cold. In this instance we had a mini heat wave and so we were feeling hot and bothered. By lowering the humidity the room is more easily able to wick away sweat from your body which leaves you feeling cooler - increasing the humidity when you already feel warm will make the same temperature feel hotter. The opposite happens when you are cold. A humid room with the moisture touching your skin will feel colder, and removing humidity will make it feel warmer. Does that help? In the winter months the lack of humidity will make you feel warmer.

@@GreenWhereItSuits thank you for your informative reply. So in your video, how did you find the room after running the dehumidifier for one hour? Was it warmer or more cold than that before running the dehumidifier? Thank you so much. Your feedback is really helpful

In this instance, the room was uncomfortably hot to be in and running the dehumidifier made the room feel more comfortable / cooler. I must stress though that if you have high humidity in a room that feels cold, removing the moisture will make it feel warmer. The reason being is that a high humidity level exacerbates how hot or cold the room feels.

Having had the washing machine overflow this year due to poor plumbing, and being concerned about the fire risk of leaving the tumble dryer on I don't think we would like to run either overnight but I do believe that would save money as those are typically the cheapest rates.

How are you checking your humidity levels? In the description there are links to the hygrometers I use in each of my bedrooms and living rooms including kitchen. Cooking, especially with gas adds to the moisture in the air, but so does breathing in general. My son has the smallest room and the humidity climbs throughout the night. Another thing to bear in mind is that you are likely looking at relative humidity which given the same amount of moisture in the air will read higher in colder rooms and lower in warmer rooms. Relative humidity is like a sponge that grows with air temperature and shrinks in cold temperature, when the room gets too cold the sponge can be squeezed to the point water comes out - which is what happens with condensation. Is your flat getting cold overnight?

No problem at all I’ll post a link to them below. They do come with an app that syncs to them via Bluetooth which means you refresh the monitors manually or you buy a hub and then it syncs for you and allows you to view the data outside the house - perhaps I should make a dedicated video SwitchBot Hygrometers : amzn.to/4e6OFrl

@@GreenWhereItSuits Thank you so much. It is very kind kind of you. I will check them.. best regards...

Thank you - if there is anything else you specifically would like to see do let me know - I have an update relating the small pump I had fitted. To to fit the outlet we cut the hole and then tied a washer onto some string and hung it inside the waterbutt and then titled the waterbutt until the washer came out of the hole - trying to hook it with whatever we had on us. Once through the hole we dropped the fitting down the string which led it to the hole, which allowed us to stick a finger in the fitting pull it through the hole 🙂 We did buy a low pressure inlet for the cistern but it was cheap and worked with the mains pressure inlet too. Check valves aren’t sufficient for preventing contamination, you need to have an air gap such as a type AB airgap. That was the intention for mine but the plumber forgot and installed them at the same level. The water lard signed ours off as there is an automatic overflow and with the float pressed down (to let mains water in) the overflow was more than sufficient to let water overflow without rising up and submerging the mains. I personally would avoid removing the mains as come summer you’ll be annoyed at filling the waterbutt and also, my Mrs wasn’t best pleased as to how slowly the toilet filled up on rainwater alone, so I have the toilet fed by mains at a slow rate to supplement the refill speed. I now have a small 12V pump that plug in which aids in the refill time, but I still won’t turn the mains completely off as it means that with the waterbutt dry the toilet cistern can still fill up. I recently came across my documents that were submitted when getting the toilet signed off so I can discuss that process and the types of airgap if that would help?

Thanks for all that helpful info! At present our cistern is exposed, made of ceramic and has a float to to shut off the water flow as it is filled. On your video there are 2 water inputs to your cistern. I suppose I would have to change the toilet to one with a concealed plastic cistern. In my case, to avoid changing toilet and cistern perhaps I would have to go the route of disconnecting the wholesome water (a compression fitting end stop) and simply connect the original input to the water butt supply. But as you say, tedious if I keep having to fill the butt by hose!

Our original toilet had a ceramic cistern which I had planned to keep before we decided to redo the overall room. That had an overflow that went out the wall. I was going to repurpose that overflow as an inter and fit an overflow that drains directing into the toilet bowl. Perhaps you have something similar?

I have it on the landing if our 4 bed house and it does a good job - see my other video to see it in action. If there’s anything specific you’d like to see I can record another test for you. I ran it overnight last night and it reached the target humidity of 50% that I set and maintained it. The tank was 3/5th full come morning.

I'm afraid I'm not sure what was meant by this comment - the Agile pricing or perhaps the power being drawn from the dehumidifier?

How did you get on? I ran mine overnight with a target humidity of 50% and it was 3/5 full this morning. I’m aware it kicked in and out as it reached it target.

@@GreenWhereItSuits I have set mine on 50 as well and last night went to the toilet it was off showing 48%, no idea what time it was tho. Now I had to empty out the tank full. So far very happy with it! House feels dry as it was 72% and now keeps around 50.

That's a great question and something that was a concern ahead of the project as I have seen peoples waterbutts in allotments burst after the water has expanded whilst freezing. In short - I'm not aware of it having frozen. The waterbutt backs on to the house which must help it get some heat, its also a large volume of water which freezes top down so it wouldn't interfere with my supply immediately. I can only speculate that its assisted by being connected to our downstairs toilet which gets a good amount of general use, and water being topped up frequently enough from the wet weather at that time of year. I did contemplate adding in a floating ball to help break up any forming ice but opted not to in the end.

Thank you very much for your reply and detailed explanation.

If you check out this video I provide a link to it in Amazon and the keywords I search for it in the description - I’ll have a look to see where I actually bought it from for you Rainwater Toilet Installation: A Sustainable Solution for Eco-Friendly Plumbing ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE--9g2QYC3ogI.html And yes I did find a pump that’s working great, however, I haven’t set up a dedicated power supply to it yet so I run an extension lead on dry days at the moment!

You’ve got it spot on 👍 To avoid the waterbutt from overflowing the rainwater needs to be able to drain down the main drain before the waterbutt is completely filled. It was a task conveying this to the guys that installed it for me as part of the toilet renovation but it all worked out in the end. The small inclined pipe does also fill with water and I need to be mindful of when I clean the J spout/bend as I don’t want to do it after the waterbutt has been completely filled - I should be doing it regularly anyway, but preferably before rain is due. The waterbutt only drains down to about half way via gravity alone but I’ve been powering a small 12v pump in dry days to drain the bottom half which has been going pretty well!

Pears are a great shout. My local ASDA often has fruit reduced so I’ll keep an eye out, thanks!

In my experience the more a banana ripens the more it sweetens but I don’t believe smaller bananas are less sweet?

Merry Berry suggests a wooden spoon or an electric mixer to mix the batter so I thought I may have under mixed it! The mixture filmed was the light enough but do you think I should try another batter with less mixing?

@GreenWhereItSuits Well, I would still keep this recipe. I think that any banana bread recipe, or even pancake batter, cake and cookie recipes, are supposed to be *only* mixed just until everything is incorporated. I would not mix everything all at once. It's easier to just assemble and mix the wet ingredients first, then add the dry ingredients mixing just until all is incorporated; about a minute or two by hand. I like 2 bowl recipes to seperate wet from dry. Use a large bowl for mixing wet ingredients first. Then add dry ingredients to fold in. You can look up differences between common hand mixing terms. I saved your recipe only because it's so straight forward and I know these things and would not overmix. Personally, I prefer light and fluffy banana bread. Also, I would use a spatula to scrape all of the batter out of the bowl into the loaf pan 🙂

I've made this a few times since your comment and have determined that as long as the banana is sufficiently squished up and the butter soft enough to mix through it will turn out just fine. If you don't you get clumps of banana which isn't an issue for me, but having people in the house who do not like bananas 'raw' does become an issue. If the butter isn't sufficiently mixed you can get a greasier outside as the lumps of butter on the outside just baste the bread! Adding the wet ingredients first followed by the dry really does help to avoid the issues mentioned above. Thanks again for your constructive comments :)

Some were pulling off the stem with ease whilst others would ‘ping’ off - is that what you mean by mushy or do you mean by giving them a little squish?

A float switch would work to fill the waterbutt/tank but the question I’d ask is what problem does it solve?

​To automatically switch to main water if rain water is out.

If you're willing to use mains water as a backup, a cheaper solution with less maintenance would be the option I have gone with which is to have two inlets into your cistern (at appropriate heights above water). The mains is restricted and fills up alongside your rainwater. If he waterbutt is dry it still fills up from the mains - slower rate you have specified. This approach allows you to better track your rainwater consumption (if you intend to) as topping the waterbutt up means you would need to meter the mains going in to determine what consumption was mains and what was rain.

The stand would need to hold 650kg, and not have the waterbutt look like an eyesore :D

It will depend on your cistern. I will upload a video eventually but we had a porcelain cistern that had an overflow I felt we could use to plumb in the rainwater feed and overflow into the toilet. If you have a plastic cistern like we now have, you could have an additional inlet added by someone competent - just be sure its at the correct height for the flow rate!

I had originally thought about having wall mounted tanks high up on the wall, but soon realised the capacity just wouldn't be there and it would sit empty for long periods of time. As you mention, if the tank was any higher it would foul the cladding and possibly look bad (or worse than it is for those thank aren't to keen on it haha). Thank you for your kind comments. I enjoy doing my part for the environment especially if I think it may help the bottom line of running the house, and even if it doesn't its a relatively cheap hobby/experiment and allows us to be somewhat self sufficient. I hadn't actually thought about how it might be reducing the amount of rainwater being carried off, and therefore reducing spillages of which affects us quite a lot living so close to the coast!

We have a Type AB Air Gap. An employee from Portsmouth Water came out and inspected the height of the water level after a normal flush with just mains, and then held the valve down to see what the critical water level would be. The integral overflow that discharges excess water into the cistern does a really good job of keeping the water level down meaning the height of the inlet was sufficient to not allow any risk of backflow. Also, the rain water is gravity fed at a max of 0.1 bar so the additional water coming in was seen to be negligible. If I were to pressurise the system I'd have them come out and check again to be safe. As it happens, since the test the mains supply to the toilet has been restricted to make more use of the rainwater, which decreases the likelihood of the cistern filling up to a level that would submerge the wholesome water inlet. I hope that helps.

Thank you for the info. Much appreciated.@@GreenWhereItSuits

I don’t know if it helps or not but I have a new video up where you can see the internals of the cistern. If you need other angles let me know 👍

I believe I bought this from freeflush.co.uk