Took some pH readings at the start of the mash.
05 mins in - 5.31
20 mins in - 5.39
Here's a pic of the pre-sparge wort. Gravity reading (corrected for temp) is 1.074. Lovely and clear too.

Sparge is done and dusted too. I used a jug to gently pour on top of the grain bed. In future I'm going to look into raising the sparge pot high enough to gravity feed the sparge water. Would save a bit of effort.
I ended up taking the top part of the center pipe off for the sparge and slightly pushing the plate on top of the bed. Had no trouble with the sparge running through.
Plate is off here, just before I remove the top pipe.

Top pipe removed and top plate put back on top for sparging.

Hand sparging!

Here is the volume pre sparge. I took out the malt pipe for a quick look once all the water had drained.

And here is the post-sparge volume. Like I said before, I'm not sure ho accurate these marks are without the grain basket in place. I also lost a bit by not being patient waiting on the sparge water to fall. I can see there's an extra ~1.5L in the bucket I put the basket in after I was done.. feck
