newhome

Nah, need to leave space for the critters to nest where no one can get to them

My bins were free, but I would gladly have paid £20 to get 4 bins! They don't collect glass here and nor do they collect garden waste. It's either recycling or non recycling. I just have the standard sized bins but next door got larger ones because they had 6 adults (and a baby) living there when they first moved in. The council did go in their garden one day when they were at work and snoop in their bins though (my hubby saw them and wondered what someone was doing in their garden so he went and challenged them). My neighbours were less than impressed about someone going through 2 gates to enter their back garden and snoop in the bins. Surely they're not allowed to do that? Up the road, in the neighbouring LA they collect food waste using silly little boxes that are not practical at all in a windy location right by the sea. They regularly blow all over the road. Really impractical for the climate here.

Oh I had assumed that 'average winter bills' coming in at £90 were indeed per month. There is no chance of an electric system being run for much less than that IMO as compared to the unit price for gas electric is way more.

Being on electric heating I have a similar spreadsheet and occasionally something strange happens that I try to make sense of. On the last 2 occasions when the daily tally has been higher than normal the following occured: 1. I set a new zone to heat that had been switched off before that. This always takes a bit of a hit until that zone is up to temperature 2. boiler came on in the morning unexpectedly as I had managed to set one of the zones to need heat first thing in the morning when normally the boiler stays off. So both spikes were explainable. My heating is a bit more predictable if the boiler comes on at the same times every day but there are occasional spikes as per the examples above. It's all about setting a system up in the optimum way for the occupants (this takes a bit of fiddling with to get it right), and then where there are spikes knowing what causes those spikes and adapting things as appropriate. That's my strategy so I would say you are on the right track here. Unfortunately whatever way you look at it electric is not a cheap way of heating a house. I also don't trust what people tell me so I would always ask for proof of bills during a house purchase. Water under the bridge now though. Not sure who your supplier is but my supplier's 10p rate (heating) has just been increased to 14p for 2019. Worth shopping about to switch suppliers if you can save money too. You say that the washing machine uses hot water? Is that the case? Most are cold fill only these day? Can it be set up to use the night rate too (and run at night clearly)? That looks to be quite a large tank for a (presumably) small house. I don't really know how economy 7 works but I thought that everything switched between night and daytime tariffs dependent on time of day? I think you need to work out how long the water needs to be heated to provide enough hot water for them to shower and set the heating to only heat to that level (via a timer?) at the time when it's most economical to do so. I presume it heats the top of the tank first for DHW? Mine does. When I want a shower in the summer I just stick the boiler on for 30 mins to heat enough water to shower. The bottom of the tank is still relatively cool after 30 mins but the hot water draws off the top and provides enough to shower. The water does cool down during the day but I don't use much hot water outside of showering other than for washing hands etc and there is just me here anyway. If I want a bath I need the boiler on for an hour rather than half an hour. Keeping my tank continually topped up and hot would not be economical at all. Not sure what caused your spikes but was there something odd like a power cut that may have caused it to go a bit haywire? If I had gas as an option here I would be switching to gas like a shot. A modern combi boiler should be much more economical and convenient for your parents.

Guy at work has accepted a quote for an ASHP in a draughty old house (MCS install so more expensive). The heat pump needs to have a larger capacity than many on here to deliver the sort of temps needed for high temp rads (and factor in the heat loss) but as long as it's sized correctly it should work I guess. His is sized at 16kw. @PeterW contacted these guys and said that they sounded reasonable enough and they sell some relatively high capacity heat pumps as supply only. https://www.ebay.co.uk/str/Cool-Energy-Shop?_trksid=p2047675.l2563 You could fit the solar thermal at the same time .

Yep, if you are good at DIY that's probably the way to go even if it means you don't get the RHI. If you're not it seems to come down to whether you can get someone do it, regardless of whether it's MCS or not. I have only managed to get a single quote (for 14.6k). That's RHI eligible. Even if that's the going rate I would like a second quote to validate this. No one here seems remotely interested in doing it.

I don't think you could argue at £22, sounds great! £175 OTOH is off the scale! The bin men here never look at what's in the bin TBH. I do get away with chucking garden stuff in there sometimes. There is no garden collection here so I would have to drive to the tip plus the car gets (even more) filthy ...

I think that's pretty much all we did. The council agreed to the name and then everything else sort of happened. We did ours early like you in order to get deliveries to the proper address name rather than 'plot 2'. We even got bins delivered way before we were ever paying council tax here. They just asked that we didn't fill them up with building rubbish.

I bet all they do is fill out the same damn form! Still someone has to pay the gold plated pensions.

I didn’t pay it. Never had any issues apart from the fact that some companies will only accept an address with a road name and none have a road name on the aporoach to the village. It’s on all but a handful of databases but I suspect that is more down to those companies not updating their system. I agree @ProDave the cost is excessive. It also doesn’t sound like the LA has a monopoly from this: https://www.poweredbypaf.com/my-address-is-wrong-missing-does-not-exist-or-is-not-recognised-what-should-i-do-report-it-to-royal-mail/

It could have been worse if your daughter had been into horses! You would have been contacting the local hunt to remove one dead pony ....!! Your missus actually sounds pretty reasonable TBH. My response would have been something like 'F me have you still not finished in here yet!' Time to start saving those pallets for stable replacement project 2019 - 2030?

I’ll likely do that. I’ve already mentioned the container issue to him but given that his system is being installed by Sunamp themselves as opposed to a reseller, and given that they have stated that they know the issues and can mitigate against them happening it shouldn’t be an issue for him, should it? Nevertheless I have suggested that he asks the installer how he will ensure that it doesn’t happen. The PV restriction is more concerning of course.

I wonder how Sunamp factored the unit’s restriction into their calculations when they quoted for customers. I suspect that they haven’t given that there is an assumption that no generation will be lost to the grid. Surely such a restriction would have a significant affect on the model required? Here is my colleague’s quote that states the assumption that there is no loss to the grid. This was used to specify the Sunamp he required.

I recommended it to someone too who has one stored at Sunamp until they are ready to install it. How do I tell him that the case may become deformed and it won’t store all of his excess PV!

Ick! ?

Yeah it looks good.Gap looked wider than a single mosaic in the previous photo, but fine if there are no awkward half bits

I just buy this one. Comes in little plastic bags sealed up that they chew through (just like they chew through every bloody thing else). I just lob them where I need to (corners of loft etc). Have used the loose bait too. https://www.toolstation.com/shop/Cleaning+%26+Pest+Control/d260/Pest+Control/sd3217/Pest-Stop+Mouse+%26+Rat+Killer/p85490 Lived in the SE of England before here and they've killed Scottish and English mice. I have no experience of Welsh though

That would be ace! Would love that! My outside PIRs aren't the best. They come on when I park the drive on the car but unless I leave the car pretty quickly they switch off before I reach the back gate which is annoying. And they don't trigger when I leave the back door until I get all the way across to the gate. I would have the light at the back door on a PIR out of choice too. Currently it's either switched on or off. . It reminds me of the original pod like superloos they installed in London decades ago. They flung the doors open when you were out of time!! Needless to say there was no damn way I was ever going to risk one of those!!

I think most of them would be within 600mm of either a bath or shower potentially but we had them outside in our last house (developer built) so I guess we were used to them being there anyway. The downstairs wet room is the one that isn't within 600mm but maybe it's not so clever to have an inside switch in a wet room that has no screen anyway. Plus having them outside means we didn't have to tile round them. I don't know for sure TBH as the hubby did all of the electrics here. I do know there are a few things I would change in respect of the socket / switches positions in general .

Well you can do that and stick snapper traps up there, or just stick some bait stations outside the house in the hope that they bugger off and die somewhere outside. I’ve always used bait as it happens and have never yet had a stinking rotting smell anywhere in either this house or the last one where the barstewards were in the loft. Might just have been lucky I guess.

I'd be getting anywhere in that house that I could (loft, ceilings etc) and lobbing those plastic packets of rat bait up there. Death to all vermin! ? ? ?

You're smashing it today! Go plain because having half squares of mosaics will show imperfections more and I doubt you'll get an even 2 squares in that strip.

Until it goes mass market probably ...

@PeterW I've added insulation to those bare pipes now but what is that black sticky tape you have used to hold it together elsewhere? I've tried something that I had here but I don't think it likes the high temperatures and just unsticks itself. I am going to buy some of the tape that @Alexphd1 suggests too to cover up the bits that are too small to use the normal insulation on.

Out of interest why do you have pull cords? I just have a standard light switch outside the door.