Jeremy Harris

We've stayed the odd night there, cooked there, used the shower and toilets there, so the house has been pretty much lived in over the past year or so. I'm usually there all day weekdays, as I've set up my main "office" over there, although do suffer a bit from the slow broadband. Showering pushes the bathroom temperature up, much as it does at the old house, but it cools a lot faster. Same goes for cooking. Using the hob isn't too bad, it's having the oven on for a fair time that tends to warm the kitchen up. However, the extract rate from the kitchen is way higher than the regs stipulate (that was done mainly to try and help stop cooking smells get into the rest of the house) so cool air tends to flow in quickly through the kitchen door to bring the temperature back down. I have (so far) always remembered to put the MVHR on boost when cooking - I do need to knock up a better way to do this. I'm thinking along the lines of a simple remote control, so a portable remote can be used anywhere to switch on a timed boost.

I'm 100% certain this is just ass covering because they don't understand the science and are reluctant to say yes to something that hasn't been fitted and tested for 10 years or so. The science is pretty obvious - reduce the IR emissivity and the glass runs cooler when it's sunny and the internal stresses are a lot lower, end of. The stresses in any glass, even laminated, will be when the temperature differential across it is at its highest - it's why pouring boiling water onto ordinary glass breaks it - the face subject to the boiling water heats up quickly and expands, the other face is cooler and takes time to heat up, so there is a pretty high shear stress inside the glass, as the heated side tries to rapidly expand whilst the co0ler side expands far more slowly - the glass literally tears itself apart. Lower the emissivity of the outer face of a glass sheet with a film and it will never get as hot in sunlight as a glass sheet of standard emissivity (which will be around 0.8 to 0.9 - glass absorbs long wavelength IR pretty well, much the same as a wall. FWIW, some glass manufacturers now produce glass with an external low emissivity surface, specifically to reduce overheating in buildings. There is a high demand for this in offices, where overheating is often a problem and costly to overcome with air conditioning or chillers. Pilkington Solar -E, for example, behaves just like glass with a low emissivity film on the outside, and it's available as laminated glass. There's no technical difference between coating the outer surface of the glass with a low emissivity coating and applying a low emissivity coating using a film that I can see, other than one is a bit neater, If you're glazing units are Pilkington, then perhaps what they really want it for you to change them for Solar-E, which may well be another reason to say no to a low emissivity film...

But simple logic suggests that if a film lowers the temperature of the glazing, and reduces the range of temperature that the glazing sees, then the stress must be lower, and hence the risk of cracking must be lower. External low emissivity film MUST reduce the glazing temperature, and hence the stress in the glass, and it makes no difference what the glass is, as the external film has to result in it running cooler.

No, ours is toughened, but that makes no difference, as it runs cooler with the external film fitted and so is subjected to lower thermal stress. The films reflect the heat away before reaching any of the glazing elements, so they all stay cooler - it's pretty simple physics - the external film decreases the long wavelength IR emissivity of the very outer surface, so as a consequence heat is reflected away before it reaches the glass, so the glass stays cooler.

Not at all sure. I can state with certainty (based on measurements made of the glass surface temperature) that both the inside and outside panes of our glazing now run a great deal cooler with the external heat reflective film than they did without it. In other words, the external long wavelength IR reflective film has reduced the glazing temperature swing by a lot - at least 20 deg C, possibly more, and this, in turn, has significantly reduced the stress in the glazing elements. The opposite would be the case if we had tried to use an internal long wavelength IR reflective film - that would have definitely caused the glazing to run hotter in bright sunshine. It's why it's critical to make sure that the analysis is done with the film on the correct side of the glazing.

Thanks very much for that, @ProDave and @newhome. I should have been more diligent and checked further rather than just trusting the word of my accountant after an ad hoc enquiry (I was seeing him for my annual "dump a box of paper with him" session and only mentioned CGT in passing). In our case, if it were not for the 18 month relief period the gain may have been substantial. The difference between the purchase price and the sale price is about £140k, so, depending on the complex sums mentioned, plus the fact that we both own it, then there could, possibly, have been a fairly high liability. No need to worry about it now, though, as having found out that our house is being bought by a charitable religious trust I think there's a very slim chance that the sale could fall through.

Thanks for that, it seems I've been poorly advised. I spoke to my accountant about it about three years ago, and it was his advice not to move until we'd sold the old house that I took as gospel. I'm due to see him next month to check though my consultancy earnings and try to find a more tax efficient way to manage them - this year has been a bit of an exceptional one, with me earning around five times more in six weeks than I normally earn in a year. I will raise this with him again and see what he has to say for himself, especially if it turns out to be as you say and there is an 18 month relief period. He led me to believe that there was a 6 month discretionary period, during which, in his words, "HMRC tended to turn a blind eye", but even that wasn't guaranteed. Admittedly he deals almost wholly with sole traders and the self-employed, rather than property taxation, but I'd have still expected him to give me sound advice on this.

I know of two, out of several dozen that I know of that have been poured (there may well be a lot more), where the slab wasn't flat and level. One was a case of a new sub-contractors first ever job, who wasn't aware of the tolerance requirement, and the problems were remedied. Not sure about the cause or outcome for the other one. Take ours as a typical example, bearing in mind that our build was, I think, only the fourth or fifth UK passive slab they had laid. The concrete was poured and vibrated with a poker to get the concrete around all the rebar. It was then levelled with a long trammel and tamped, then left a while to partially cure. It was then power floated for ages to get the surface both level and smooth. The slab surface was so level and smooth that I could lay flooring directly to it, and ended up with loads of bags of tile cement left over, as the tile cement estimating tool assumes a degree of floor unevenness that will use up more adhesive. Our tiler couldn't not find the highest point on our slab from which to reference his tile height, as after 40 minutes wandering around with his laser level he concluded the slab was dead level and flat, so he could start wherever was easiest.

Yes, mainly because we've been advised that if we moved before having the sale of our old house was well underway, there was a good chance that HMRC would no longer consider our old house to be our principal residence and it might then be classed as a second home. As we've owned it for over 18 years, there was a fair chance that we could get hit with Capital Gains Tax on the difference between what we paid for it in 2000 and what we sell it for in 2018. We've been going to the new house most days, doing small jobs, or sometimes me just working over there (I do some consultancy work), really just finishing off things and making sure it was regularly occupied during the day, to keep the insurance company happy, and doing things like keeping the grass cut, planting up more of the landscaping, doing some fencing, clearing stuff out we no longer needed, etc.

Did I heck as like!

I've told this tale before, but my car was banned from all our local (Wiltshire) recycling centres when I started clearing stuff from our old house (around the time I was re-doing the bathroom and downstairs WC, to tart them up a bit to sell). I made three visits over three days one week, in my old Prius, and on the third day I was stopped and told my number plate had been logged on their ANPR, they considered I was disposing of trade waste and needed to apply for a trade waste licence, pay the fee, etc. I refused, on the basis that I'm just a householder who pays Council Tax, drives an ordinary saloon car and couldn't get a trade waste licence as I don't run a business that produces any waste. They were adamant and the ban extended to all Wiltshire recycling centres I found. When I changed cars the ban still remained in place, as I kept the same number plate... My work around was to drive a bit further to Shaftesbury, which comes under Dorset Council. They have never caused me a problem, but I don't feel it's right to have to use the facilities in another county that I don't pay for. As it happens, I discovered recently that the ANPR ban on my car registration must have expired, as I risked using the Salisbury recycling centre and got away with using it without being stopped. The easy way for me to get rid of stuff would be to fly tip. There's an entrance to an wide byway just behind Old Sarum castle that I drive past most days, and that's always got piles of fly tipped waste in it. The council clear it every week or so, but it's always full again after the following weekend. My guess, looking from what's tipped there, that it's domestic fly tipping, rather than commercial, most probably by people who, like me, got banned for regular use.

It is indeed! That neighbour died last year and we now have a much more reasonable couple living there, which has made life a lot easier, and allowed me to erect the fence on top of the retaining wall that I had originally wanted to fit. The neighbour with the big vegetable plot is to the side, and has always been tremendously helpful and supportive, right from the very start of the build.

There's no doubt about the performance, but please bear in mind that we finished our passive house to a reasonably high standard (solid oak joinery throughout, mid-range kitchen and bathrooms, mix of travertine stone flooring and bamboo) for around £1380/m². That's pretty typical, "just meets building regs", type cost for a self-build, and for that we have a house that meets (in fact slightly exceeds) the PHI standard. Most of that is down to using a budget PH foundation and frame supplier. No one came even vaguely close to their price for the performance - the closest we had was a SIPs supplier who was a PITA to deal with and was going to cost around 50% more, without including the passive slab foundation. If you want to spec a "gold standard", then I think you MUST include companies that provide a full, project managed, service. Touchwood springs to mind as one such supplier, but they are a heck of a lot more expensive than we paid. I agree Huf House are really in a league of their own, but if we stick to comparing companies that will supply and install just a PH spec foundation and frame for, say, under £600/m², leaving the client to arrange all project management, design, architect or PM supervision, etc, then how many companies are there to choose from? Switch to brick and block and I don't think there is a single company anywhere in the UK that will guarantee PH levels of airtightness and performance at that sort of price level. There certainly wasn't when we were looking around, the closest were Potton, who were just starting to dip their toes into PH, had built one (I think) and we were looking at prices around 30% more than we wanted to pay, for a house with overall slightly poorer performance and without all the solid oak joinery.

Wise words indeed. I've played around with electrical systems professionally (usually aircraft trials instrumentation - often one-off custom built stuff) for around 25 years, yet still had to learn new skills when making up all the network connections in our new house. Cabling the house out with Cat6 was a very late decision - somewhere here there is a reference to me doing it the day before the plasterers arrived to board the place out! I was going to use Wi-Fi, but I'm incredibly glad that I opted to run cables around the place. Wi-Fi performance in the new house is not good, the insulation seems to really attenuate the signal, even though it's timber frame with internal acoustically insulated stud walls. There's literally no Wi-Fi signal outside at all, I needed to fit an external wireless access point in order to get the signal out into the garden.. I ran as many runs of Cat 6 from the study (which is where the home server, router, switch etc is located) to every other place I thought I might need a cable, but even then missed a few and wished I'd put in more runs, especially outside, to run IP CCTV cameras. I only used Cat 6 because I happened to acquire a load of wrongly fitted cable from my last job. They flood wired the building with the non-low smoke and flame Cat 6, so had to rip out several kilometres of cable and they just left it in a giant ball as scrap, so I helped myself to a few hundred metres. If doing it again I'd still use Cat 6, even though it probably overkill, simply because it's a heck of a lot stiffer than Cat5e, and so a lot easier to pull through without kinking (Cat 5/5e is a bloody nightmare for kinking if you don;t take a lot of care with it).

There's talk of a "gold standard" here, which I think is wholly incorrect. The "gold standard" in terms of timber frame companies are people like Huf House, at around £4,000/m². A frame company that supplies and erects the foundation and frame for around £415/m² (which is around what ours cost) is, frankly, right at the budget end of high performance timber frame and foundation suppliers. They don't pretend to be anything other than what they are, and do need some project managing, as I and everyone else has learned. If you don't want to project manage, or employ and independent project manager that you know little about, then go for someone like Huf House, who will pretty much manage every aspect of the build. I'd just add that our house was built be the same company and all of their work is damned near flawless. Mind you, I was on site practically every day, even if only for an hour or so, just to make sure things were OK, and I did pick up a handful of things that only I, as PM, would have spotted, and so they never turned into problems as they were caught very early on.

Yep, had some superb raspberries a couple of weeks ago?

I'm sharing my private water supply with a neighbour; I put a garden tap next to her vegetable garden, as she was concerned a couple of years ago that any hosepipe ban might leave her unable to water her vegetables, plus she's on a water meter, and was worried about the cost. Given that our water is, to all intents and purposes, free, it seemed unreasonable not to share it around, although I did have to put a notice on the tap saying that it was not drinking water - failure to do that could have got me into all sorts of legal problems, not to mention needing to have annual water tests at £120 a go.

Just heard from Octopus, who have acted quickly, confirmed they are my energy supplier and given me the account number I now have with them. Pity it took a strong email to their complaints people to get a response - the effing numpty on their telephone help line could have actioned this, had he been so inclined, rather than making me go to OFGEM and then through the Octopus complaints procedure. Anyway, our conveyancer now has the details of the account and Octopus will be set up to switch/close the account as soon as we tell them our completion date. I get the feeling they are like a lot of the smaller suppliers; running right on the very edge, and often taking on more business than they can handle. Bidding to take on all Iresa customers to OFGEM may well have overloaded their ability to provide reasonable customer service.

There's another interesting quirk in that any Irish citizen has a permanent right to live and work in the UK, a right that's existed for decades before either the UK or Ireland joined the EU. All those old agreements that cover trade, free movement etc, between Ireland and the UK are still in force and still apply, and if you read through them you have to wonder quite why such a fuss is being made about the Irish border WRG to Brexit. I've crossed that border in pre-EU days many times, and the only time it wasn't wholly open was during the troubles, when some border crossings were manned simply as an an anti terrorist measure.

The key here is that Octopus aren't confirming that they will, quote: This is what I rang to check, and they said the time period was open ended, that they hadn't yet received any data from Iresa and couldn't estimate when they would either receive the data or be in a position to switch our supply to Octopus. OFGEM support that quote, it's Octopus who told me, very clearly, that they could not honour it, in effect.

According to OFGEM. Octopus now have a little under 3 weeks to complete the transfer and ensure that I have the new account details, but Octopus wouldn't agree they could do that when I spoke to them, and refused to even estimate a date by which the transfer would be completed. Thankfully we're still with SSE at the old house, more out of laziness than anything else, as I just haven't bothered switching as the bill is so low. I'm looking around now for deals, but I'm strongly disinclined to use any of the small, flaky, companies, given my experience with Iresa and now Octopus. Even SSE are better to deal with, and that's saying something!

I can't be bothered with Octopus right now, I've made a complaint and hopefully they will resolve things. However, the glitch has been cleared by the conveyancing people now, just took a quick phone call. As long as Octopus get their act together before completion it won't be a problem, apparently. Whether or not Octopus are able to do that remains to be seen, but I've put a rocket under their backside for failing to comply with the terms of their contract with OFGEM, so I'm guessing that they will want to sort this simply to keep OFGEM off their backs. Re: the Irish nationality thing, there was an agreement reached as a part of the formation of first the Irish Free State, and then the Republic of Ireland, that stipulated a lot of things. One was that the Bank of England would be the back of last resort to back and support the Irish Punt (which it was for decades) and another was that anyone born on the island of Ireland was automatically entitled to Irish citizenship. Another agreement allows anyone with a grandparent born in Ireland to be granted Irish citizenship by a very simple process of providing the evidence so their name can be added to the register in Dublin. It's a pretty quick and easy process; the hard part is getting hold of birth records, as they weren't centralised or well controlled back around the time my grandmother was born, back in 1898.

They seem to be able to do a lot of cross-checking. I sent a scan of both our passports, and mine's an Irish one, which I expected to throw a spanner in the works. Instead they just requested that I show that I was also British, which meant sending a scan of my birth certificate and driving licence. That seemed to happen automatically, and as they also had our bank account details I'm guessing that their system was linked to something like one of the credit rating check services in order to help with the proof of ID requirement. Anyway, despite being a dual national, something that's changed since we bought this house (I was prevented from holding dual nationality all the time I was working, so was just a UK national at the time we bought this house), their system just seemed to take this without a hitch. That may well be because everyone born in Northern Ireland is also automatically entitled to dual Irish/British nationality, and to hold an Irish passport if they wish, so this particular form of dual nationality is extremely commonplace.

I'll wait until things have moved along a bit further before casting judgement. So far my view is that the estate agency side of Purple Bricks has worked extremely well indeed, and that alone has saved us well over £2,000, and got us a very quick potential sale at a good price. I really can't find fault with them at all, except that if I was being really picky I'd have to say that their "For Sale" sign is a bit of an eyesore. On the two previous occasions where we've used an estate agent that we've engaged (most of our house sales were via a relocation company) the service was no where near as fast or efficient as Purple Bricks have been. Their agent has been on the phone practically every day for a short chat to check we were OK with progress, give advice etc, something I can never recall happening with either of the other two agents we have used in the past. With regard to conveyancing. Purple Brick have sub-contracted this to a large conveyancing company, who have developed an app to deal with 90% plus of the work. As you say, this app falls over if you have something happen that it isn't designed to deal with, but then, realistically, how often does an energy supplier go bust just at the point where you're selling a house? I'm going to speak with a human being there later (with luck) and see if there's a work-around. I'll report back here as to how well that goes.

From what I can gather, they automatically do some form of database look-up check to validate all the data that you enter. For example, when I put my wife's name in as joint owner, they immediately flagged that her name had changed from her maiden name (which I hadn't been asked to enter) and asked me to scan in a document showing proof of name change (marriage certificate did the job). The interesting thing was that their system knew her full maiden name already, something that's clear because she never uses her given first name, and abbreviates one of her middle names that she does use, yet her full maiden name came up on the screen. Not a problem to sort, it just meant scanning our marriage certificate and uploading the scan to their system. Likewise, when I entered Iresa as our energy supplier, along with the account number, it spat it back very quickly as being an invalid answer. It won't accept Octopus, and just shows that we are not listed as an Octopus customer, so my guess is it does some checking. Some of this checking is pretty helpful. For example I scanned our passports as proof of ID, and sent an electronic bank statement and within an hour the system reflected that we had passed the anti-money laundering ID checks, something that can be a real PITA with people like banks and other lenders. Wait until you speak to the numpties on the helpline. Flaky. ill-equipped to do the task and downright unhelpful is the polite way to describe them. Nothing would induce me to do business with Octopus Energy, especially after speaking with OFGEM who informed me that Octopus had a contractual requirement to give me the information I'd asked for, and which they'd said they not only couldn't give me, but coudn't even give me a timescale by when I would have the information. My plan is to talk to a human being at the conveyancing firm today and see if they can get around the log jam. I suspect they can, but by the time I finished trying to deal with Octopus, OFGEM etc yesterday it was too late to call them.