The build

Must be so frustrating for you (sorry for stating the obvious). Hope you can sort something out as I'm eager to be "bored" by your progress.

Well if everyone is having rain stop play in the garden department and you fancy a challenge. Try this.
See if you can find a company that will deliver a 1000mm wide biofold shower door to the island of mull for less than the price of the door! I’ve tried several times/days/hours. And my brain is melting! Let’s not worry about hight or style. Just see if you can find somewhere. Good luck. And thank you to anyone that’s board enough to try it.

Had a little look and can understand your problem.  On IOW the ferry does a system where suppliers deliver to the mainland terminal and lorry takes it on the ferry and on to delivery address. I don't suppose CalMac do the same?

CalMac can barely organise the ferries! We have several local Courier (based in Oban ) that all the national couriers  drop off too. If the nationals are willing to go as far as Oban that is. Then we get the other jokers that insist they’re going to deliver it them selves and not hand it to a third party . Only to discover the third party has actually got our delivery. Because they’ve phoned us to let use know when they’ll be bringing it over. Which is exactly what happened on Friday with our battery for our solar panels. It’ll hopefully be here Tuesday. As of last Thursday the natural courier was still feeding us a line, they were having trouble booking a ferry.  Even the company that the battery came from didn’t know where it was for almost a week until Bob told them it was with a third party courier. If it wasn’t so infuriating it’d be funny.

Sounds like SNAFU. Paul got very excited when you mentioned battery for the solar. He's been looking into that for several years with no takers for our situation. I think he wants one that will switch over automatically or at least with a switch indoors to battery supply (not going round switching plugs about) when there's a power cut. No one could supply that, especially with our constraints with space.  I think the reality was they weren't really interested if you weren't buying loads of panels at the same time.

I’ll get Bob to explain what we’re doing. But I think in my very dumbed down version. That ours will switch automatically ( I may be completely wrong of course, I do slightly glaze over when it’s being discussed) and I have no idea how or where the switching between mains & battery will take place ( I probably was told, but it just turned into white noise). I do know the price of them had dropped considerably in last couple of years (hence the very soon to arrive battery). I also know it’s going to live in the garage in its own ventilated cupboard. Can’t even remember the capacity it’ll store I think it 16 or 20 ………somethings??.
It’s electrics , I don’t really get it. Same as the kinetic light switches we’ll be having in a couple of places. Not a clue how they work. But it sounds cool.

Ok, THIS WILL get boring.
The set up we are getting is a 4kw solar array with a 3.6kw hybrid inverter, grid tied and coupled to a 16.1kWh battery.
What this means .. obviously the solar panels will produce power when there is sufficient brightness, in reality that means April to October in our northern latitudes.
This power then goes to a hybrid inverter (Sunsync ECCO 3.6kw) which either converts it to 240v and feeds it to the house, uses it to charge our battery (fogstar energy 16.1kWh 48v) or sends it to the grid.
The other thing the inverter will do is provide power during a powercut, now because we only have a 3.6kw inverter it can't power the whole house (boiling a kettle will use 3kw) but we are planning on hooking it to the ring main that powers the lounge and 2 bedrooms so we will be able to have a couple of standard lamps, TV, router while the powers out. This I think will switch automatically once the grid power shuts off.
During the months of darkness will will theoretically be able to charge the battery overnight on cheap rate electric, however due to the shear incompetence of the idiots in charge of smart meters we don't receive the signal that allows our smart meter to be smart, this means we can't access the smart tarrifs offered by the likes of octopus energy. We are in discussions with our provider to get this sorted but thats another total nightmare that I won't get into.
So you'd think we would get paid for the excess electric that we send back to the grid but that can only happen if you use an MCS registerd installer, because of where we live that would cost a fortune so we are self installing and our electrician is doing all the important techie stuff and signing it off for us. I really can't work out why the power went supply is worth nothing when if we had someone else install the panels it would be worth about 15p per unit.
Costs for this are (very approximately)
8 solar panels - £500
Inverter - £800
Battery - £2200
Other bits and pieces - £250
Electrician - £ unkonwn cos he's not done it yet ?
Hope that clarifies nothing

I’ll get Bob to explain what we’re doing. But I think in my very dumbed down version. That ours will switch automatically ( I may be completely wrong of course, I do slightly glaze over when it’s being discussed) and I have no idea how or where the switching between mains & battery will take place ( I probably was told, but it just turned into white noise). I do know the price of them had dropped considerably in last couple of years (hence the very soon to arrive battery). I also know it’s going to live in the garage in its own ventilated cupboard. Can’t even remember the capacity it’ll store I think it 16 or 20 ………somethings??.
It’s electrics , I don’t really get it. Same as the kinetic light switches we’ll be having in a couple of places. Not a clue how they work. But it sounds cool.

Googled those light switches, you're right they do sound cool. Never heard of them...... neither had P 

Ok, THIS WILL get boring.
The set up we are getting is a 4kw solar array with a 3.6kw hybrid inverter, grid tied and coupled to a 16.1kWh battery.
What this means .. obviously the solar panels will produce power when there is sufficient brightness, in reality that means April to October in our northern latitudes.
This power then goes to a hybrid inverter (Sunsync ECCO 3.6kw) which either converts it to 240v and feeds it to the house, uses it to charge our battery (fogstar energy 16.1kWh 48v) or sends it to the grid.
The other thing the inverter will do is provide power during a powercut, now because we only have a 3.6kw inverter it can't power the whole house (boiling a kettle will use 3kw) but we are planning on hooking it to the ring main that powers the lounge and 2 bedrooms so we will be able to have a couple of standard lamps, TV, router while the powers out. This I think will switch automatically once the grid power shuts off.
During the months of darkness will will theoretically be able to charge the battery overnight on cheap rate electric, however due to the shear incompetence of the idiots in charge of smart meters we don't receive the signal that allows our smart meter to be smart, this means we can't access the smart tarrifs offered by the likes of octopus energy. We are in discussions with our provider to get this sorted but thats another total nightmare that I won't get into.
So you'd think we would get paid for the excess electric that we send back to the grid but that can only happen if you use an MCS registerd installer, because of where we live that would cost a fortune so we are self installing and our electrician is doing all the important techie stuff and signing it off for us. I really can't work out why the power went supply is worth nothing when if we had someone else install the panels it would be worth about 15p per unit.
Costs for this are (very approximately)
8 solar panels - £500
Inverter - £800
Battery - £2200
Other bits and pieces - £250
Electrician - £ unkonwn cos he's not done it yet ?
Hope that clarifies nothing

Paul says thank you (with enthusiasm)  not boring at all. Extremely fascinating and please let us know how you get on.

Ok, THIS WILL get boring.
The set up we are getting is a 4kw solar array with a 3.6kw hybrid inverter, grid tied and coupled to a 16.1kWh battery.
What this means .. obviously the solar panels will produce power when there is sufficient brightness, in reality that means April to October in our northern latitudes.
This power then goes to a hybrid inverter (Sunsync ECCO 3.6kw) which either converts it to 240v and feeds it to the house, uses it to charge our battery (fogstar energy 16.1kWh 48v) or sends it to the grid.
The other thing the inverter will do is provide power during a powercut, now because we only have a 3.6kw inverter it can't power the whole house (boiling a kettle will use 3kw) but we are planning on hooking it to the ring main that powers the lounge and 2 bedrooms so we will be able to have a couple of standard lamps, TV, router while the powers out. This I think will switch automatically once the grid power shuts off.
During the months of darkness will will theoretically be able to charge the battery overnight on cheap rate electric, however due to the shear incompetence of the idiots in charge of smart meters we don't receive the signal that allows our smart meter to be smart, this means we can't access the smart tarrifs offered by the likes of octopus energy. We are in discussions with our provider to get this sorted but thats another total nightmare that I won't get into.
So you'd think we would get paid for the excess electric that we send back to the grid but that can only happen if you use an MCS registerd installer, because of where we live that would cost a fortune so we are self installing and our electrician is doing all the important techie stuff and signing it off for us. I really can't work out why the power went supply is worth nothing when if we had someone else install the panels it would be worth about 15p per unit.
Costs for this are (very approximately)
8 solar panels - £500
Inverter - £800
Battery - £2200
Other bits and pieces - £250
Electrician - £ unkonwn cos he's not done it yet ?
Hope that clarifies nothing

Paul says thank you (with enthusiasm)  not boring at all. Extremely fascinating and please let us know how you get on.

P is jealous of the 16kw battery and agrees that the smart meter bods are idiots, he's had several arguments in that area.

Ok, THIS WILL get boring.
The set up we are getting is a 4kw solar array with a 3.6kw hybrid inverter, grid tied and coupled to a 16.1kWh battery.
What this means .. obviously the solar panels will produce power when there is sufficient brightness, in reality that means April to October in our northern latitudes.
This power then goes to a hybrid inverter (Sunsync ECCO 3.6kw) which either converts it to 240v and feeds it to the house, uses it to charge our battery (fogstar energy 16.1kWh 48v) or sends it to the grid.
The other thing the inverter will do is provide power during a powercut, now because we only have a 3.6kw inverter it can't power the whole house (boiling a kettle will use 3kw) but we are planning on hooking it to the ring main that powers the lounge and 2 bedrooms so we will be able to have a couple of standard lamps, TV, router while the powers out. This I think will switch automatically once the grid power shuts off.
During the months of darkness will will theoretically be able to charge the battery overnight on cheap rate electric, however due to the shear incompetence of the idiots in charge of smart meters we don't receive the signal that allows our smart meter to be smart, this means we can't access the smart tarrifs offered by the likes of octopus energy. We are in discussions with our provider to get this sorted but thats another total nightmare that I won't get into.
So you'd think we would get paid for the excess electric that we send back to the grid but that can only happen if you use an MCS registerd installer, because of where we live that would cost a fortune so we are self installing and our electrician is doing all the important techie stuff and signing it off for us. I really can't work out why the power went supply is worth nothing when if we had someone else install the panels it would be worth about 15p per unit.
Costs for this are (very approximately)
8 solar panels - £500
Inverter - £800
Battery - £2200
Other bits and pieces - £250
Electrician - £ unkonwn cos he's not done it yet ?
Hope that clarifies nothing

Paul says thank you (with enthusiasm)  not boring at all. Extremely fascinating and please let us know how you get on.

P is jealous of the 16kw battery and agrees that the smart meter bods are idiots, he's had several arguments in that area.

We have the option of adding more battery units to this if the figures add up once we finally start using the system
When we first looked at this about 4 years ago the battery would have been several thousand more, prices have dropped so much in the last couple of years

You see, exactly what I said, but more confusing 

I assume your fridge/freezer will be on the same ring mains as your battery, if full, should be able to keep modern fridge going for at least a week probably 2. We have a 1 kilowatt caravan kettle we can use to draw less power from a battery.