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I heard a snippet on the radio news on the way home this afternoon that someone is now predicting the price cap for the typical house is now likely to be £6000 Why do I get the feeling we are going through some manipulation, with ever increasing unbelievable price rise estimates, to butter us up to accept the actual rise as "phew is that all"?

Repairs are to be applauded. helps stop landfill.

Grant Shapps is hopefully about to be kicked out of the window on the tenth floor by his miserable, self-serving, unethical arse. (Opinionated - moi?) He has abused his position as Minister of Transport to use the Civil Service to support sectional interests he supports, and cannot be trusted. Such an individual is not fit for a junior position, never mind a senior one.

Whilst Heat pumps are supposedly cleaner than gas and oil They always seam to be more expensive to run We have no gas available on our next build and an oil boiler is no longer an option due to the sap constraints It doesn’t seam to matter how much gas goes up Electricity suppliers seam to find a reason to keep pace

https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/grand-designs-houses/grand-designs-new-series-2022/?utm_medium=email&utm_term=&utm_content=READ MORE&utm_source=Grand Designs Magazine&utm_campaign=New TV series coming soon! Here's what to expect... I'm particularly interested to see how a three-storey, 5 bed, 7 bathroom curved cantilevered 700m2 house with an initial budget of £700k turns out! 😂

Just had an Email from octopus advising of impending price cap rise, their usual bill for fuel per year is £1.5b but this year is more like £9b. They have never made a profit and won’t again this year!!! Worrying times, I am on a flexible rate 🤯

I'm on Oh Bugger AVRO Went Bankrupt ! Just pv panels and a house - no Car or Battery. So the potential gain for me is to do either a divert device and water tank with a feed of pre-warmed water into the Combi, or export at full price. Or potentially a house battery, but they are on lead times and I may not need it. My current challenge is to avoid using gas for heating this winter.

To rule the foil out just bring the doorbell inside (assuming it can be battery powered) to the same room as the router.

Thanks @Dreadnaught. Yes, I think the foil membrane must be a major issue here. We had damp on the wall and this was part of the solution a RICS surveyor recommended. Seems to have worked well in that it is allowing the damp to dry out without affecting our plaster, but I just didn’t factor in the potential affects on wifi. Just didn’t even consider it. No, the only other items nearby with radio waves are some hue bulbs, but even with those switched off the problem persists. Incidentally the hue hub is right by the Dream Machine and although the external bulbs do connect to it, there was one that struggled, so maybe the fill in the wall is also contributing to that. in addition to the UDR I have two Ubiquiti in wall APs, but they are on the upper floors and checking the topology of my network on the Unifi app, I’m sure they are not the issue. So I guess it’s the foil. I think I have two options to fix this then: 1) Replace the doorbell with the much more expensive PoE version and then: (a) lay Ethernet internally to the location of the doorbell and drill through - this will require about 2m of wall chasing and replastering and repainting a bit of wall; or (b) instead of relying on Ethernet, use a power line plug to make use of a 13A socket that is conveniently located very close to the doorbell (on inside of the wall) so will save a lot of chasing, plastering and painting. I will still need to do some, but more like 40cm worth rather than 2m worth. 2) drill through near the router and install an external AP pointed at the doorbell. Seems like a stupid and expensive way of fixing this, but the problem with option 1(a) and 1(b) is that a ring PoE doorbell is stupidly expensive, so it may actually be cheaper to buy an external ubiquiti AP. They are pretty ugly though, and the front of my house looks so nice!

We have been using an exhaust air source heat pump since June 2020 and I am very happy with it. Cheap capital cost, cheap running cost! We use it just for domestic hot water for a family of four. It has a back-up immersion heater but we have never used that. It works well for us, because we don't need space heating due to having reasonable levels of insulation, good solar gains and a centrally placed wood stove for winter evening heating. The majority of our wood comes from wind blown trees and sticks which I collect during the year. I have ducts set-up to our ensuite, bathroom and utility. You get a much better average COP then an external air source heat pump as it's always extracting heat at room temperature. I was worried in the winter that we would lose heat into the system. This has not been issue for us, as the 'free' heating from the stove replaces any reduction in heat loss. You can buy the mini air source heat pump as a separate unit, but most have this integrated with the cylinder so make sure you buy a good quality cylinder. Some of the cheaper ones require regularly changes of anodes, this can depend on your water you have in your area. I store my tank in a cupboard in the utility room, no noise issues. I have never recorded how much electricity the tank uses, but all our domestic electricity for a family of four, averages at 10 units a day over the course of the year. I have no PV. If the £400 rebate goes ahead, my electricity bill from October to March will be zero.

Words of wisdom.

Sorry, I don't know enough about piling to add anything useful, but piles are usually designed to transfer load vertically to load-bearing strata. What you appear to have is a plot that's sliding down hill, which perhaps may potentially put lateral stress on the piles. Personally, I think your SE should be designing the foundations and then you can put the approved design out to tender.

I try and keep in touch with all our customers, pictures of the property for marketing purposes is pretty standard within T&C's but I always ask out of politeness and if refused I honour their wishes. However, we do look to use our clients homes as a show home so to speak. We know that it is intrusive but we also know clients don't always mind showing potential clients around. It gives them a chance to talk about their home and offer bits of advice. However, we don't expect it for free. So if the potential client signs up, we'll give that customer £250 as a thank you. We're honest about it and pay when they do sign up but if they don't, they get no monetary reward.

I measured ours in a shop to make sure. Our plates are part of a Villeroy & Boch set so we didn't want to replace them with something different (smaller). You could always take a plate in if you didn't mind risking the funny looks!

+1 we bought our dishwasher from comet auctions (scratch and dent) long before they went bust, it's still going strong and as has been stated sorting the cutlery into sections means you can pick up each section in one go and put it into the drawer.

I guess one option is just to go low risk and ante-up for the maximum belt-and-braces solution. Alan

I never had a problem with smell from my previous onion tank. That was a loose lid sitting on top of a breeze block chamber. Nowhere near air tight. I assumed that all smells were vented through the soil pipe stack attached to the house, at the end of a 30m run?! I think you are right about having to wait for it to establish itself. I never fully emptied the old tank and always left at least a foot of sludge at the bottom. No rainwater goes into the tank but it was filled with clean water during installation so that the pea gravel that surrounds it, could be distributed evenly and tamped down. So, the idea that the tank currently has too much water in it, err, holds water!

I am now moving onto Octopus Agile Outgoing, which gives me a wholesale price for exports, and to keep my existing tariff for imports. Which at present seems a one way bet.

Been doing that for decades, and I get paid for it.

Surely that never happens 😜

Wouldn’t surprise me at all . Or they suddenly take stock and remove Cantilevers , non curved glazing , reduce glazing ; tell architect to stop using clients money to full fill his own ambition.

Don’t answer the door the next time they come round It’s unlikely that driving rain em will get under that

And being a Mitsubishi Ecodan, have a careful look at standby power consumption when it is not heating anything at all in the summer. There was a thread recently, some models have very high standby power due to a sump heater.

Your getting a CoP of less than two. I would be looking at flow temperature for UFH and hot water cylinder, you should be Getty a higher efficiency than you appear to be doing. Other things that effect efficiency Too many zones, cause short cycling To many many on/off cycling of heating timers and thermostats

I guess because a very large portion of electricity is generated from fossil fuel power stations which keeps the prices linked, bur electecitiy has the mark-up due to converting fossil fuels to electricity. Long term though, with new nuclear and more renewables should soften the link, and eventually the UK gov will load up gas prices more so then electricity to force people to convert. It's all a good long term strategy, and the right one for the country....but I'm still going mains has boiler over ASHP because mid term it will still be cheaper. We will just design it so an ASHP can be installed at a later date.

I'd suggest deeper too. For running a strip of "rubber" up there first so the edge of the glass has rubber on 3 sides.

The glass subject will be discussed later. I was expecting once I know sizes to get advice on thickness, laminated or toughened etc then go to the local glass supplier. Perspex may work but has a habit of scratching / going cloudy so while it may be cheaper and lighter, it may need replacing after a short while. The issue of the post warping and breaking the glass is solved by making the groove wider than the glass so it is not a snug fit and bedding it in clear sealant.

This thread may be of interest.

Okay, the ‘gap’ is finger width but is that a normal joint where the mortar has fallen out? Or is that joint significantly wider than other parts of the DPC course? Again it is very difficult to assess from a photo, wait for the SE to confirm. In the meantime don’t worry too much but think about what course of action to take in case he says it’s structural (almost anything can be fixed, at a price).

Iroko is a better option Looks like oak and Carrie’s a guarantee not to twist or warp Unlike oak

Often you see this type of cracking. The cracks down the wall seem to be of uniform width.. suggests at the outset shrinkage say of concrete blocks / render rather than settlement. If it was settlement then often the crack wiil be of a different width top to botom, not always, but that is a common feature. But .. where the roof meets the existing wall the crack seems to continue in the existing elevation? That raises a few questions as you would not expect to see this. @James traversPost more photos if you wish of what you have round about and if you have been slapping out walls... doing the open plan thing.. I wonder.. if you have an old house and slapped though to make the opening to an extension with good solid founds ..have the existing walls settled as you have added load locally to the old bits of wall either side of the slapping when you put say a beam in.. Look really closely at the crack and try and figure out what has moved down or up relative to the other interface. Look at the rest of the house wall and put your "Columbo" hat on. Have you had a really dry spell and the old building has dropped a bit more than the new extension? Don't always assume that the new extension is moving.. a good extension with "well" designed found tends not to.. but add load to an old found and the existing wall locally loaded for example by a beam over a slapping could well move a lot more than you think.. start at 15- 25mm for a shallow footed old building found in certain types of ground (clay) a bit less on sand / negligble on rock ! Help ma boab you may ask 15 -25mm .. but old buildings move a lot! That kind of movement is well outside say NHBC / BC tolerances but old houses are a living thing. If you build a modern extension with stiff founds that stays still these kind of cracks occur as the old building is moving about relative to your solid extension. Don't always assume that your new extension is the problem. It can be that it (extension) stays still and it's the house that moves up and down. And there is the rub.. BC want an extension built to be bomb proof with no account as to how you marry this into an old structure that moves up and down with the weather as it further ages.

Got to agree with the above, that roof doesn’t look bad at all

As above, register with all the local estate and land agents. Know your budget, and have all finance in place and readily available ( 1 months notice for the full amount for plot only ) so that you can move fast, not that critical if you can get a mortgage on an existing house that's on the plot.

Welcome WHat do you mean by this?

Registering with local land and estate agents is your best place to start Especially if you can tell them your ready to commit As good plots don’t hang around on the market for long The ones that you see coming one day and sold the next have usually been offered to buyers before being advertised Irlam Estates is a good place to start

Yeah that’s right . Most of my words have wisdom in them .

I was clarifying for Markc 😉

Thank you, that has put my mind to rest a little bit. 😀

Nice, but well over budget. Or on budget in some other alternative reality, like some of these builds on TV tend to be.