Jeremy Harris

But how long will any smartphone battery last on standby? The Nokias we have will easily sit switched on in standby for three or four weeks when we're away on holiday. As I understand it, the very best smartphones manage two or three days on standby before they need a charge, which for us, would be a significant additional hassle, as we only want something to receive and make 'phone calls.

But we can't get a mobile signal at home, never have been able to (since we left Scotland in 1997) so would be reliant on the landline, anyway. If we succeed in getting FTTP, then I may ditch the landline and switch to VOIP, but at the moment it's unclear as to whether we can succeed in getting FTTP for a reasonable cost.

Just to put this into perspective. I turn my mobile 'phone on around once a week, if that. I have no good reason to ever feel the need to turn it on more often than that, nd it often sits in the glovebox of my car for several weeks without being turned on. I have no real need for it, apart from emergencies when out and about. From what I've read, no smartphone has a battery life that exceed a day or two, which is frankly ludicrous. My Nokia easily lasts at least a month between charges, sometimes a lot longer. Why should I buy something extra, that I don't need or want, get another SIM card, put up with charging the damned thing every day or two, just to be able to use online banking? It just doesn't make any sense to have all this extra hassle just to be able to set up a payment to someone every now and again.

The snag is that neither of us have any use for one, other than to enable online banking to work. We'd still keep our old Nokias, as the long battery life is a really big plus point as an emergency only phone in the car.

Thanks very much for confirming this, @jack

At first Santander were great. Switching from the RBS to Santander was really simple; everything from my salary payments through to various direct debits, were seamlessly transferred very quickly. IIRC, they took around a week to sort everything out. I think they gave us around £100 to switch to them too, which was a useful bonus. All was fine, we had zero problems with Santander, excellent customer service, etc, until we came to start our self build. I went into the local branch and met the mortgage adviser. We had no mortgage on our old house, so I wanted to borrow around 1/3rd of the value of that house as additional funding for our self build. After going through a half hour or so of questions, I received a firm mortgage offer, and paid them the arrangement fee, fee for the mortgage valuation etc, all of which went OK. We received a formal offer of mortgage, and as soon as I had that I signed the contract with our frame supplier. A few weeks later, when I had to pay the first stage payment, I went into the bank and requested draw down of our approved mortgage, only to be told that the bank had changed its lending criteria, and had now cancelled our mortgage offer (I'm still battling with them for a refund of our arrangement fee etc). Needless to say, our stress levels went through the roof. We ended up paying through the nose, via Build store, to arrange another mortgage with the Leeds. The killer was the massive fees that Buildstore charge, which are simply outrageous, but we had no real choice. So, would I ever bank with Santander again? Not a hope in hell. They still owe us around £500, have never even given us the slightest apology for their appalling behaviour, and I suspect we'll end up writing off our loss. The only satisfaction we have had is finding out that the mortgage advisor we used was sacked shortly afterwards, allegedly for miss-selling.

So, does that mean I have to fork out a few hundred quid for a wifi enabled smartphone, simply to use First Direct online banking? I know that neither of us would have any use at all for a smart phone, other than to access online banking, so that makes it a very expensive way to just use a banking service.

I did this in our house in Scotland. I had the advantage (only slight) of being able to crawl into the undercroft, as the house had been built above a concrete slab, with a 3ft space underneath, accessed via two floor hatches. I used fishing net, stapled to the underside of the joists, and packed rockwool in to fill the space between the floor boards and the netting, as tight as I could get it. Bloody awful job, but I was installing central heating at the same time, so ran all the pipes in under the floors whilst I was doing it. Made a heck of a difference to the oil heating bill.

Yes, it would be useful occasionally, but I just can't justify the cost of a smartphone just to get this feature, when we pretty much exclusively use the landline for 'phone calls.

What's really sad is the way RBS went down the pan so quickly. When we were living in Scotland we decided to move house. We had been with the Abbey National for years, so when we found a nice house in Portpatrick, I popped into the Stranraer branch to get their approval in principle for a small change to our mortgage. I knew it was a formality, as we were well within they lending criteria, income, LTV etc, but needed written confirmation that the mortgage was agreed in principle before submitting our offer (as you do in Scotland). The manager of the local Abbey National branch was away on a training course, and they apparently had no means of dealing with her absence, so were unable to provide us with the required letter. After three days of hassle, I gave up and started walking around town seeing what the others could offer. The Bank of Scotland were a shambles. They wanted to see my passport (which I didn't have with me) before they would even discuss the possibility of a mortgage, as they needed me to open an account with them before they would discuss anything. The Clydesdale weren't much better, either. The RBS were a breath of fresh air. They called their mortgage adviser back from lunch early, who sat down with me, went through my earnings, history with the Abbey National, price of the house we wanted to make an offer on that day and I walked out after around 40 minutes with a written agreement in principle for the mortgage we needed. I went straight around to see our lawyer and submitted an offer that afternoon, an we ended up buying the best house we've ever lived in, in a truly wonderful community. Throughout the whole process RBS were outstanding, as was their banking service. That continued for years, with really excellent customer service. Two examples: I was going to the USA to buy some light aircraft parts, and had arranged with the RBS to pick up a fairly large wedge of US dollars before I went. There was a cock-up, and the currency didn't arrive in time, but the RBS pulled out all the stops, and whilst I was driving to Heathrow, they couried the dollars to Thomas Cook, and gave me a password to collect the money from the Thomas Cook booth at Heathrow. This worked like clockwork. Second example. We were in Florida at an airshow and I'd arranged to take a prospective customer for one of our aircraft out to dinner. All went well until I tried to pay with my Barclaycard (even then it was a platinum one), when the card was refused (anyone who's had a card refused in the US will know how you're treated). Luckily I had enough cash, but we lost the aircraft sale. I rang Barclaycard, and they told me they had blocked my card because I was using it in the US, and they had sent me a letter, to which I needed to reply, in order to get it unblocked. Of course this letter was sat in our home in the UK... In desperation, at around 2am local time, I rang the RBS 24 hour helpline and explained the problem. They were brilliant. They agreed to send me an RBS card as quickly as they could. The next morning we went back to the show, and when we got back to the hotel at around 6pm, there was a package waiting for us from the RBS, that had been sent express delivery from the UK. One phone call to the RBS to activate it and all was well with the world. Sadly, a few years later they ripped me off big time with some investments, breached their own rules, and after a six month battle with the FSA I got all my money back, plus compensation for miss-selling. I promptly closed all our accounts with the RBS and made another mistake - jumped from the frying pan to the fire by opting to switch to Santander, who turned out to be the biggest bunch of bastards I've ever encountered, but that's another story...

Unfortunately not. As we've never been able to get a mobile signal for the past 20 years (new house is the same as the old one, no signal, a common problem around here, with most of the villages down in deep valleys) so we don't really ever use mobile phones except when out in the car. Neither of us has ever been allowed to take a mobile phone into work, either (although I retired 8 years ago now), so the opportunity to use a mobile has always just been in the car (hands free) and when on holiday. As a consequence, we both have really basic, call and text only Nokia mobiles, (cost around £10 IIRC, but they easily last a month on a single charge) on PAYG SIMS. There's no point in having a smart phone that doesn't work for 99% of the time, and anyway I can't be arsed trying to do things on a small screen. I noticed my wife's started using a hand held magnifying glass to use her iPad recently, so a smart phone screen would be just impossible. I use a 24" screen on my PC, and there are plenty of times that I could do with a larger screen!

So far we have ONE Sunamp with a very badly distorted top panel, and that one may be due to a problem specific to that unit, based on what @Nickfromwales has said. My Sunamp had a very slight bulge (see the photo I posted earlier, you can just about see it if you look closely) and that went away when I re-trimmed the insulation so that it was a better fit. The question is really is this an endemic problem or just a minor issue that will be resolved easily? I'm inclined to the view that it's a non-issue as far as I'm concerned, as my unit looks to be fine now.

TBH, it's only a cosmetic thing, anyway, so it's never going to impact on performance or reliability. It's a bit like making a fuss because the sprayed foam on the outside of a DHW cylinder is a bit rough looking, or needs trimming around pipe connections. As an example, I bought two Newark tanks, both double thickness spray foamed, and both needed insulation trimming around pipe connections during installation. I suspect that I'm far from alone in finding that I couldn't get fittings on without a judicious bit of trimming with a sharp knife, and Newark have been around making cylinders like this for decades.

My card got blocked last week, during my first attempt to pay Royal Mail for the redirection service. Took me nearly an hour of hanging around on the phone to get it unblocked. The reason it was blocked was because I didn't drive back down the hill fast enough, and found I was locked out of the payment verification screen. I tried again later, drove a lot faster, and just made it...

Thanks again. That's my understanding too, that they use a small unit that looks like a calculator, that you slide your card into, in order to generate an authentication code. Seems a damned site better than relying on a relatively insecure text message sent via a flaky mobile phone signal!

It's something the installers should be doing, and complaining about if they can't make a neat job of it, IMHO. Having said that, supplying an easy to cut rigid foam for the middle and top layers would work well, especially if the middle layer was screen printed with the cut lines for the different plumbing options. Replacing the middle and top layer of closed cell neoprene with XPS would be a significant improvement, as XPS tends to be easy to cut (not a PITA like PIR) and yet still has a lower lambda than closed cell neoprene, so would provide at least as good an insulation level as the existing arrangement, probably a fair bit better. Retaining the lower sheet of neoprene, which isn't touched during installation, would ensure that any air leaks around the insulation were minimised. Trimming insulation is normal. I had to trim insulation around fittings on both our pre-insulated water cylinders, and you simply cannot install a Sunamp without trimming the insulation middle layer to suit the particular pipe layout you choose when installing it. There are four push-fit stainless elbows on the top of the PCM cell that are already connected to the two heat exchangers. These elbows can be turned to allow the customers 22mm pipes to come out of either side, or even out the end panel (there are pre-punch marks there that can be punched out to allow pipes to come out that way). That means that there are several different ways the four pipes can be fed out of the unit, giving a fair bit of flexibility when it comes to installing the unit, which is a definite plus point. Frankly, cutting slots in inch thick closed cell neoprene isn't a complex or challenging job, as that layer of neoprene comes pre-punched with holes where the four elbows are, anyway.

The original lid that was supplied with mine (still have it in the garage) was a bit of powder coated heavy gauge alloy plate, with bends on the ends where the fixing screws are and no flanges at the front and rear. The replacement is a thinner gauge panel that's like a biscuit tin lid, and fits down over the top of the case. It's not as stiff as it could be, IMHO, but the flanges on the sides can't be any deeper because of the cut outs where the pipes come out. The gauge of metal used for the lid could be thicker. Making it the same gauge as the original lid (around 10g), but keeping the "biscuit tin lid" design would stiffen it up a fair bit. I had to bend my replacement lid back straight after I'd trimmed more insulation away to reduce the upward pressure, as it had a slight curve that had set in from when I first fitted it. It seems fine now, though. I did find that I had to cut the pipe slots out so they were maybe 15mm wider than the pipes, as when I was playing around trying to get it all to fit in neatly I noticed that as the top layer of insulation was compressed down the middle layer needed to be able to expand outwards in order to compress more easily. I agree it's all a bit too tightly packed. Another 10mm on the case height would probably completely eliminate the problem. Another thought I had was to remove the top and middle layers of neoprene and cut a bit of 50mm PIR to fit over the pipes, on top of the lower layer of neoprene. It'd be a much better insulator (around 2 1/2 times better than neoprene foam) and being rigid would keep the lid from bowing up. It would need a thin bit of neoprene around the edges, to get under the lip at the top of the case, but that should be easy to do.

Our conveyancer was pretty good, but I never knew quite who was being honest and telling the truth during the many delays. We started off by telling all interested buyers that we needed to fix a date for completion. We weren't too fussed about doing the process within hours or days, but we did need to have time for my wife to be able to arrange time off work, and we made this very clear to everyone who we thought was interested enough to make an offer, and instructed our estate agent to relay this when we he was sifting through offers for us and giving advice. As the process dragged on, I at first thought that our buyer was just a bit naive, then thought that the buyer was being taken for a ride by her surveyor (( still believe there's an element of truth in that) but finally didn't know what to think, as I was being told one thing directly by the buyer and our conveyancer was being told the opposite by the buyers solicitor/conveyancer. In the end I felt that our conveyancer was being pretty honest, and she was 'phoning me practically every day over the last few weeks, updating us on what was, or more often what wasn't, going on. I'm heartily sick of the whole process, and neither of us have the slightest regrets over getting rid of the old house at all, in fact I doubt we'll ever be interested enough to drive past it in future to see what's being done to it. We both just looking forward to being mortgage-free once again and having our savings pots topped back up to pretty much where they were before we started the self build. I might even get around to ordering the new car I've been thinking about for a while now; not yet sure what it'll be though. @jack, thanks for sharing your experience with First Direct, I'm pretty sure they will stay top of our list. Our main problem is that we do 99% of our banking without going near a bank, either with cards or online, but because we can't get a mobile phone signal we need a bank that doesn't rely on using text messages for verification of payments. Our current bank only provides an online payment verification/authorisation service by text message, and it's a complete PITA. To make any payment (like paying the Royal Mail earlier this week for mail redirection) I need to get it all set up online, turn my phone on, press the "submit" key, then get in the car and drive to the top of the hill in time to get the text message. I then have to rush back down and hope that the payment screen hasn't locked me out for not entering the verification code fast enough. Easy to use it is not!

The installer HAS to open it up and remove the untrimmed insulation before connecting the pipes, though. It's pretty obvious that there's no way the untrimmed insulation is going to fit back in place properly without having the existing cut outs where the four push fit elbows pop up enlarged into slots to allow the insulation to fit back around the newly installed pipes. The thing missing from the instructions is a specific line stating this and giving a dimension to trim the slots too, as if the slots are made too narrow (which is what I did the first time around) then compressing the removed layer of insulation back into the case causes it to bow up. Make the slots wider, and the middle layer of insulation both sits down flat and has room to expand sideways when it gets compressed by the top layer of insulation. Look at the photo of my Sunamp above, just after I installed it, and when I'd only cut narrow slots in the insulation, and it's clear that it looks nothing like @Barney12 s bulging top at all. An day or so after that photo was taken I whipped the lid off and trimmed the insulation a bit more, so now the lid sits dead flat, with no bulge at all.

I agree, the instructions should specifically reference trimming the insulation, but TBH, it's pretty obvious when you come to refit the middle layer of insulation after connecting up the 22mm pipes internally that it ain't going to fit neatly without being trimmed! I took one look at it and worked out within about 30 seconds that wide slots needed to be cut to allow the four pipes to exit the case, and these slots can't be pre-cut at the factory as there is the option to run the pipes out either side of the case, or even some out one side and some out the other. A minute or so of trimming an inch thick layer of neoprene insulation isn't the end of the earth, IMHO.

Not really at all worrying in the slightest, IMHO, as it's only cosmetic and has absolutely no effect on performance or reliability. FWIW, they've already changed the design of the lid, and sent me a free replacement upgraded one without any request from me.

Thanks @Alphonsox, First Direct are currently top of my list to look at. We have a branch of HSBC locally, too, which makes them even more attractive for the rare occasions when we need to actually go into a bank for something.

That's a bit OTT, as the problem is really just one of not writing a clear instruction to trim the middle insulation layer (which has to be removed during installation) so that it has slots that are clear of the four 22mm pipes (that the installer fits) that exit out through the side of the case. For comparison, this is what my unit looks like: The slight bow in the top cover in that photo has now gone completely, as since taking that photo I trimmed the insulation a bit more neatly around the pipes, so the lid fits down even more neatly now. All that's needed is a single line adding to the installation instructions highlighting the need to cut fairly wide slots in the middle insulation, so that it has room to move sideways when it gets compressed into place by the upper insulation layer. I'll lay money that during development and testing they cut the insulation like this, but then just forgot to include specific details as to how to cut it in the installation instructions. That's a dead easy mistake to make with a new product, and hardly the end of the earth.

I'm now absolutely convinced that you're spot on. Previously I'd assumed that a cash buyer was least risk, now I'm not at all convinced that's the case. We've been kicking ourselves for not accepting a (higher) offer we had from a couple who needed a mortgage. We know the valuation on the old house exceeded the sale price, even for the higher offer we had from the couple who needed a mortgage, and as you rightly say, I'm sure the mortgage process would have helped speed up the conveyancing process. As well as having accepted a lower price from the cash buyer, we've also ended up paying out at least a month to six weeks worth of running costs, mortgage interest charges etc, so that's probably the best part of another grand wasted.

Another update, and a tale as to why a cash buyer may not be as good as one who needs a mortgage. We accepted an offer from a cash buyer on 17th August, nearly 3 months ago, expecting that we would exchange contracts within 6 weeks and complete soon after that. Boy were we wrong in making such a bold assumption! We finally exchanged contracts, after a series of long delays and hassle, on 14th November... We're now set to complete on 26th November, assuming nothing else goes awry. The reasons for the delay are not wholly clear. Firstly, the buyer's solicitor seemed slow and not wholly on the ball, and needed chasing all the time by our solicitor (who frankly got as exasperated as ourselves). The buyers survey (a full structural survey) was done within a couple of weeks, and was completely clear, except that I made a tactical error that may well have contributed to a part of the delay. When the surveyor asked about the age of the electrical installation, I told him the truth, that it dated to when the house was built in 1986. My error was in adding that as I was going to remove the additional wiring in the garage/workshop, that was associated with the lathe, two milling machines, pillar drill, bandsaw etc I had in there, and as I'd be removing my car charge point at the same time, I would be providing the buyer with an Electrical Installation and Condition Report (EICR) prior to exchange of contracts, as an assurance for the buyer that the electrical installation was safe and OK after all this extraneous wiring had been removed. For whatever reason, the surveyor failed to pass this on to the buyer, but instead made a strong recommendation that the buyer should commission an EICR, and went so far as to recommend a company to do this. I have a VERY strong suspicion that this was a bit of mutual back-scratching, as the charge from the company he recommended was £320 + VAT, way OTT for less than half a day's work by one chap (who wasn't even a Part P ticket holder, it turned out). To say this was a bloody nuisance was an understatement, as it meant bringing forward the transport for my machine tools, removing my charge point much sooner than I really wanted and so causing us a fair bit of hassle. Nevertheless we went along with it, although I ended up lending the electrician some of my test gear, as otherwise some of the testing wouldn't have been done. As it was he didn't physically inspect a lot of stuff that, IMHO, he should have done. As expected (as I'd done a full EICR a few days before the electrician came around to repeat it) there were no problems found, and the installation was in damned good condition for its age. For some completely inexplicable reason, the electrician didn't send the report to the buyer for FOUR weeks. I have absolutely no idea why at all, as his multitester is similar to mine, in that it stores all the data and squirts it out in a form that can be copied straight into an electronic EICR report. I even gave him a copy of my EICR report so he had all the non-inspection and test info, like dates, names etc. So we are now around 8 weeks after having accepted the offer, and are keen to push on and exchange. At this point we learned that, although the buyers solicitor had (allegedly) received the deposit money from the buyer, he hadn't thought to start the money laundering or identity verification checks. Two weeks later, when we were getting increasingly frustrated at the lack of any will to suggest dates from the buyer (which we needed, as my wife normally needs 4 weeks notice to arrange leave, something the buyer knew full well) we were told by our solicitor that the buyer had been referred for checks under the "unexplained wealth" rules. This is something her solicitor should have done right at the start, but for whatever reason he waited until all the other conveyancing work was complete before starting it. Eventually whoever it is that checks out people spending cash on houses concluded that all was OK, and we expected (and were told by our solicitor) that we would exchange contracts on Monday 12th November. We waited all day for the 'phone call from our solicitor, which eventually came at 16:30, saying that the buyers solicitor had a query over the covenants that needed an answer before exchange. Some may remember that we had an issue with the first buyer pulling out because they didn't like the covenant restricting the house to being a dwelling and preventing the building of anything other than a single storey house on the plot. Following that, we made sure that every prospective buyer had a written copy of the registry entry with the covenants, so if they made an offer they were fully aware of them. To say I was just a wee bit pissed off on Monday evening is an understatement. We had answered the solicitors enquiries about the covenants around a week or so after we accepted the offer, so as far as we were concerned this had all been dealt with and accepted. We got our solicitor to remind the buyers solicitor the following morning that he already had copies of our answers to the questions he'd just repeated, and that nothing had changed in the intervening 10 or 11 weeks to change that. The buyers solicitor then said that the only delay in exchanging contracts was getting the deposit money from his client. I was told by the buyer than the deposit money had been transferred to their solicitor some 6 weeks earlier... Anyway, late on Wednesday the 14th November we finally had a phone call, followed by an email to confirm, that contracts had been exchanged. I had a bit of a post mortem chat with our solicitor, who suggested that things should have been a lot quicker, and that had we opted to accept the (higher) offer from the couple who needed a mortgage we would almost certainly have completed the sale at least a month earlier. The moral of this tale, IMHO, is that in the current climate it isn't always the best option to accept an offer from a cash buyer, especially one who seemed to be very inexperienced in the way property transactions operate and who also seemed gullible when it came to being guided by "professional" advice. I shall be well and truly glad to see the back of the old house in a weeks time, and start planning a nice holiday, well away from anything to do with building or house sales... The next challenge is to choose a new bank, as for various reasons the bank we've been using for all the house build related stuff is a total PITA. I'm going to put off doing that for a few weeks though, as I'm not sure my blood pressure can cope with another round of stress-inducing activity.