AliG

For some reason I wasn't getting notifications on the thread. The new outside is a massive improvement on where you started, good job. FWIW I would keep the door the same colour as the windows and add colour through plants etc. A different coloured door is very unusual nowadays. Now the interior, my OCD is going crazy. There must be a better way of designing the stairs. I had to keep going back and forward between the section and plans. So it seems that the reason to go down four steps and then back up two to the kitchen is partly that if you only went down two steps from the front door to be level with the kitchen, then you would not have 2m head height below the upstairs lounge floor. I was going to suggest other changes but you cannot do anything if you cannot solve this issue. Having looked at it long and hard, I think that part of the issue is that the front door is not level with the kitchen. It looks like it was initially, but then two steps up to the front door seem to have made it into the final approved plans, I also don't see how this meets level access requirements and also I am not sure how WC accessibility would be seen, but arguably it is no worse than before. Anyway if you bring the front door down to level with the kitchen then things get a lot simpler. At the moment you have four levels in the house and a fifth for the front door. If you move it down two steps then you can come in and have a stair on the left up to the main lounge. You have a stair down to the family room past the kitchen entrance. Bedroom 4 is accessed off the family room to avoid the diagonal step. You put the stair from the main lounge up to the bedrooms back where the stair down to the kitchen is currently. This way I think you can fix the head height problem , although it may need to go a little further back where the cupboard is outside one of the back bedrooms (or just a void on the plan, not sure what it is)so that you step down outside the kitchen before head height becomes an issue.

It is a horrendously inaccurate piece of research using numbers that are wrong with even a few minutes research. Clearly EVs are not zero emission, but they are definitely lower assuming that you are comparing similar sized cars. https://www.transportenvironment.org/news/electric-car-‘hatchet-job’-debunked

This is very interesting, previously I looked at various economy 7 type tariffs and they were pointless as the higher daytime charge more than offset the lower night-time charge. This tariff seems to have a low daytime charge so if a large amount fo your electricity usage is at night it will save you money. Having looked into it, only Octopus seems to be offering this, other suppliers continue to raise the daytime rate to the point where savings would only be likely if you could shift over 50% of your electricity usage to the nighttime rate. I have tried tracking our usage over a day, we have an EV which accounts for around 20% of usage, we have 5 kW of PV, we have MVHR, we have a lot of dusk to dawn lights and the pool pump runs 24 hours a day. I reckon I could get around one third of my usage into that 4 hour period which would mean a massive saving with almost no effort on Octopus Go. Further savings could be made by delaying the dishwasher etc but this relies on the family making an effort. As an aside when I just checked rates I could get gas for 2.65p per kWh and electricity for 14.1p, so electricity is currently over 5x the price of gas. Now I have to figure out if I can get one of these tariffs on three phase, I have a smart meter, but it does not have a wireless module I believe. Update- Having looked into it the state of smart metering is still a bit of a mess, new SMETS2 meters which remain smart when you change supplier are just being implemented but are not available everywhere and from all suppliers, I suspect it will be early next year before this is resolved. I have emailed Octopus to ask them the situation. Meanwhile I am going to switch tariff and save about £300 so that's good, I only set up the current one a few months ago, prices seem to have fallen recently.

There are two, one with the garage doors under the guttering and one with a window below. They both pretty much show the same thing with water coming down the roof so fast it flies straight over the guttering.

It is Lindab, it was powder coated to match the windows. That makes sense as the larger hole at the front is not round, it looks like it has been hacked out of the guttering

Box gutter pics, I cannot get a good pic of the end where the water is running off onto the roof so I also took a pic of the other side. The first video is the front of the house above the garage, the second video is the back above the pool. I had a look at the holes in the gutter. The hole at the front is way larger than the hole at the back. Despite having to cope with more water that gutter was not overflowing. So that is easily fixed, the builder can cut larger holes. Indeed one reason I checked was the gutters had just been cleaned and the guy who did it said that he thought the holes were too small. I do think that something to slow the exit of water at the end of the box gutter would help. The box gutter is so large that it never appears to have that much water in it so you can allow it to back up. I am thinking some kind of plate across the gutter with a small gap below it so that water runs out with a maximum rate but if it backs up too much it would go over the top of the plate. At the back of the house the water coming down the roof is from the end of the gutter above. One end of the gutter has a downpipe and the other end is open onto the roof. It might be necessary to put a downpipe onto the end or something to direct the water across the roof and not straight down. I think we can maybe slightly pull the end of the gutters out to catch more water also. I notice at the back the grout between the paving slabs has gone in the area below the gutter where the water hits the ground so it has been happening before yesterday.

At the pub. Will get a picture of the box gutter later. I suspect certainly that a box gutter is easier to alter. We have around 70sq metres of zinc roof above the hall with a wide deep box gutter around it that drains into the roof at each end. That’s where the mass of water is coming from. The gutter is enormous so I reckon you could easily slow down the exit of water with much risk.

In both cases the run is around 10m of 125mm linden guttering with a downpipe at each end. Cant add new downpipes but I think the box gutter could be directed onto the cashing and not the roof. Is that hole a standard size running into the down pipe or can it be made bigger?

At the front we have a flat roof with a box gutter that doesn't have downpipes it just exits onto the roof. At the back it is a gutter that exits onto the roof and I think we could add a small downpipe. I would have to replace around £1500 pounds worth of guttering so was hoping for a cheaper fix.

I thought in today's heavy rain I would check how the guttering is coping. We have two areas where water runs from guttering onto the roof and then down to another gutter. In heavy rain so much water is coming down that it just flies past the gutter. There are also areas where the water is not running away fast enough, can I just get the builder make the holes bigger to the downpipes, they look quite small at the moment. To stop the water flying past, could we cut back the edge of the tiles slightly, or do we need some way of slowing the water down? Should I also worry about such a large amount of water running down the roof, other than that area sometimes getting dirty, I don't see any ill effects so far. Or should I not worry about it as it rarely rains this hard? IMG_7464.MOV IMG_7466_TRIM.MOV

OK, called the Post Office and it is a 1 month rolling contract so I will stick with them. Also they answered the phone quickly and seemed pretty efficient which may come in handy if problems arise.

Virgin can certainly offer faster speeds, but at the moment they will try to tell you that their 100Mbps service is faster than anything that you can get on a copper line so it's harder to argue about the price. This is no longer true(assuming you are in a G.Lite area). If you want the faster Virgin speeds then they have more of an argument that you have to pay up as no one else is offering them, but they can no longer argue that you cannot get 100Mbps elsewhere. When I called Virgin and Sky they both slagged off each other's broadband. Sky told me that Virgin lie and you won't get the speed that is promised - I have had 100Mbps Virgin for over a year and never seen the speed drop, it actually connects at around 106Mbps, similarly Virgin told me that it was not possible to get over 63Mbps broadband without using them whereas I can get a guaranteed 100Mbps connection now via BT(Sky are not yet doing Ultrafast), my parents have FTTP and can get 330Mbps from BT. I can get all the way to 516Mbps from Virgin now, but the reality is that an hour long TV show takes less than 1 minute to download at 100Mbps so I decided that paying for a faster speed was just for boasting terms but of no practical use to me. They would discount the 100Mbps service more than the 200Mbps service, so it was £11 a month extra for little real benefit.

Thanks, looks like £40.30 to install a line, but no cash back. However they do not hold you to a contract, so I could use them to get the line installed then cancel after 30 days, giving me a cost of £51. I am in the 14 day cooling off period so can cancel the Postoffice order. Freeola are also offering an earlier appointment and its a d ay that I will be at home. Reading how this has worked for other people it will almost certainly go wrong as someone will turn up and tell me that they cannot connect the line to the pole, then they will have to organise that and come back, luckily I do not actually need to get the service up and running.

Ah, the Post Office will allow you to order just a phone line on a 12 month contract So that's £11.50 a month, plus £60 up front less £40 cash back, so £158. When I finished the order, it wasn't clear if there would actually be a 12 month contract. If not I will cancel after a month. I will report back on how it goes.

Replying to my old thread. A BT landline costs £20 a month for 12 months plus £70 upfront, so effectively £310 to get a line installed. A Plusnet basic broadband line costs £210 for 12 months plus £50 upfront and has £70 cash back available on Quidco so £190. TalkTalk and The Postoffice seem to be a similar price to this. You could argue it is a waste, but I would like it to just be connected and the cabling sorted out. On the bright side, I just called Sky and Virgin and cut my combined bill by £51 a month.

Hi, I got Virgin to install broadband to the house before we moved in as I suspected that they would be a lot more responsive than Openreach. Indeed they were and it went reasonably smoothly. We don't use the Virgin phone line, I have never connected a phone to it, we use mobiles and WiFi calling as the insulation and triple glazing kill the signal inside the house. Later I did contact Openreach as I wanted a phone line into the property just in case. Also it makes it easier to play Virgin off against Sky. So Openreach left us some cable and gave us a site reference. The builders ran conduit from the nearest pole to the plant room and the cable is in. I contacted Openreach and asked if they could connect it, but they say I have to order phone service to get it connected. Is the best way to do this to order phone/broadband via BT? It looks like to do this I would have to sign up to something I don't need for 12 months, but at least they would wave the cost of a new line if I do. I just went through this farce at my parents's place and BT were catostrophic in their ability to get a new line installed. Despite their already being an Openreach modem in the flat it took 2 months and they mixed up properties etc. Is there a cheaper way to do this or someone who may make a better job of it than BT? BTW BT are now rolling out G.Lite, called Ultrafast. They are offering me a guaranteed 150MB in London and 125MB in Edinburgh with 100MB guaranteed. This means that Virgin cannot tell you that they offer a faster speed. When I called them last week to get a better price they told me that BT could not do more than 63Mbps. You can get even faster speeds if you have FTTP. Thanks

I like 21-22, hotter than that and I start to feel it. As an aside, I don't know where the Committee on Climate Change got their recommended 19C number from (they are saying set thermostats to 19C to combat climate change), what percentage of people set their thermostats at 19C. I think this kind of suggestion totally misunderstands people, climate change needs smarter solutions than turning back the clock to when people used to be cold and uncomfortable and just heat one room in their house.

Thanks for all the comments. I was looking at CO2 loggers as I think it might be useful to log my parents' house, my house etc. I am sure I could get a bit of use out of one. On Amazon a decent one looks to be £100+, on EBAY there are some that appear to cost £20ish. Does anyone have any experience of whether or not these work. My parents can easily afford it, but when it comes to saving money, my mum's logic just breaks. She will turn off phone chargers etc which demonstrably would only cost pennies a year of left on. If something has a switch she will turn it off! As pointed out this issue has been raised on some new developments with MVHR. It seems that no one provides home owners with a manual explaining all the systems their home has and how they should operate them. The first anyone knows there is a problem is once things go wrong. Of course many people would ignore or not read the manual, but you cannot assume that people know how to work MVHR, UFH etc when they are not used to these systems. My dad is the opposite of my mum, the constant argument I have with him is that if you are cold you do not turn up thermostats to make it warmer faster, if left alone in the house or car he will have it at a stifling 23-24C. I keep telling him that if he turns up the thermostat it will just get too hot, but won't warm up any faster. He is not unusual in doing this. This was such an issue in my office at work with people constantly turning thermostats wildly one way or the other that eventually they disconnected the thermostats. Maybe whilst someone goes around gluing everyone's weep vents closed they can also glue all their thermostats to 21C!

It is a new developer built apartment. I think as has often been discussed people don't know the importance of ventilation especially as houses become more air tight. Before you could get away with closing vents etc as there was so much air infiltration, but not now. My brother was getting mould in his en suite and bedroom in a 20 year old apartment. I discovered that the extractor was broken in the en suite, they had all the window vents closed and they were hanging stuff up to dry. No wonder it was getting mouldy. They will have MVHR in their new place if we get planning permission for it.

Just central extraction. I have told them so many times. My mum is of the view that if you have had the heating on then you can never open a window or let any of the heat escape. They came to see us yesterday and she definitely didn't seem right, I think this is the reason. Thanks for that thread, I was looking for it as I knew someone had posted their levels. Mum said she didn't think it fell much below 700 which isn't crazy looking at the other numbers.

Hi, Since my parents moved into their new apartment, my mum has insisted in turning off the central ventilation system as she doesn't like the noise. I am sure it is partly also because she thinks it saves money and likes turning things off. Frequently I have gone to their apartment and found the air very stuffy. Today they called me and said that the CO2 monitor in their bedroom was red showing a high of 1664PPM over the last 24 hours and an average of over 1200. They haven't been feeling great for the last couple of days. Apparently my dad wanted to put the heating on and instead my mum closed all the window vents as she believed they were making it cold, thus the flat was totally sealed up. Would this CO2 level just be due to a lack of ventilation or should I worry about something else. They have been robustly told to stop closing all the vents!

What an idiot - blighted by crime etc. Under this system the value of houses would fall considerably. As build costs would not change, the value of land would collapse. I am sure a lot of us would be in the situation where the land effectively became worthless. I figured this out when they first mooted the plan, I have all the costs of my build and reckon there is a good chance the value of the house wouldn't be that different. Perhaps they are seeing it from a London centric view of the world where the starting value of land is very high. You could easily get yourself in a situation where house building collapses because of this, in the USA after the financial crisis new home starts halved, I calculated that in the area where my inlaws live, the price of houses fell below the rebuild cost. (I guess this would eventually bring down build costs due to out of work tradespeople)

Is the kit already made? I have 2 layers of block with a cavity, we made the interior bloockwork wider than the exterior leaf so we could fit the frame across the cavity, but behind the external leaf. I was very precise about this as I didn't want to lose any width. In your case I would think the correct thing is for the kit to have a wider opening than the external blockwork. You would put a cavity closer behind the frame over the cavity as you would with a window. If you cannot change the kit, you would probably have to put render board over the cavity and fix the door to the rear of the kit rendering up to the door frame. You could also fit the frame as shown in the in-between fitting but then you end up with a narrower door and the frame on display.

I haven't got mine yet, but the indication was, as people here are saying, a high B that might become an A when the PV is included. We all worry about it, because we think the effort we have put in deserves an A, most people have put in a lot more effort to this than me. But other than for how we feel, it will have no impact on the value of anyone's house. Most people don't seem to care, certainly not between an A and a B. So chill.

Many companies put such exclusionary clauses in their Ts&Cs. They are often not enforceable under the Unfair Contract Terms act or the Unfair Terms in ConsumerContracts Regulations. However, you would need to take to to court to rule on this. I think businesses just put in these unreasonable clauses in the hope it puts people off arguing with them. I would write them a letter pointing out how the above rules may apply to their contract and say that you will take them to small claims court if they do not pay up. You have very little to lose.