Crofter

Soak the oats in a little water, then top up with milk. More economical. If the oats are cheap and coarse (we can't all afford Scotts you know) you might want to soak overnight. Pinch of salt, spoonful of honey. Two minutes in the microwave. Job done 👍

I used to think I didn't like porridge because I wouldn't eat it with salt. Then one day I picked up the wrong bowl and my life was changed forever.

How good is your electricity connection? Sometimes the max kw you can pull at any one time could be a limiting factor when talking about instant water heaters and electric showers. Seeing as the place wasn't previously a house it might not have a great connection.

@Chris HB whereabouts are you? I used to live on Lewis.

Not a problem in the Hebrides 🙂

You can't really beat boiling a kettle for doing dishes. And then you can do it on the woodburner if you want. I've probably spent the majority of my life using this 'system' (and still do today, albeit on a boat).

Our back wouldn't lend based on the full combined income. Best they would do was factor in 50% of the second income. I believe your numbers are also pre tax. So in the real world a three fold multiplier of a couple on NMW gets you to about £83k. Which might buy you a plot up here. Of course no bank is going to lend this hypothetical couple money for a plot, and they're not going to have any money to develop it. A related factor for those in NMW jobs is that they may lack sufficient job security for a bank to offer a loan. Single or dual income? Agreed. There's a minimum price to building any house. Whether it's one or five bedroom, the plot, fees, and services are going to cost almost the same. I built my cottage as cheaply as possible and half my budget went on those things. Planning isn't a big issue, we've never objected to a development, nobody objected to ours. It's a small community, everybody is either related or knows everyone else. It would be pretty awkward down the pub if you bumped in to your neighbour whose plans you had just ruined. Land ownership is something of an issue. Huge blocks of land owned by estates who will not sell off plots. Forestry Commission likewise. Still plenty of land but if it's nowhere near a road and services it's just not going to be viable. And such land is less likely to get PP if it's not part of a developed area anyway.

I'm sure housing affordability is a problem in most places. We simply build too few houses to sufficiently depress prices. But I'm really not sure that a couple on full time NMW can buy a house. At £10.42/hr and 40hrs a week, gross income is £21.6k. You can secure a mortgage on 1.5x that if it's dual income, so after tax that's £27.75k. Even at a generous 5x multiplier that gives you a loan of less than £140k. A tiny two bedroom house on my road (it's got coombed ceilings downstairs, that's how small it is) needing complete refurbishment recently went for over £160k. It's simply out of reach for anybody on a low income. Different issue to the lack of available (not just affordable) long term rentals for essential workers. A few years back I worked for the UHI and studied this very issue. I could look up the reports we published if anybody is interested. It's complex, and pretty far off topic for this thread. Cultural inertia (staying= failing); lack of opportunities whether work or study; lack of affordable accommodation. Most people we interviewed hoped to return to their rural area after maybe a decade away- but only a few do. It will depend on the location. A friend down in Argyll, who has been resident there for decades, couldn't get anybody to do cleaning let alone the harder to find maintenance and management. I hear it's also very difficult in the outer islands. We got lucky on Skye because we had some contacts. That's an interesting observation. There's a minimum amount that any habitable house will go for, but you get much better value as you go up the price range. This high demand for smaller properties is probably driven by the holiday homes and the lack of alternatives like flats. blockquote widget

It's a multi national company with sites in four continents. It's viable, but the local operations can struggle to recruit mostly due to accommodation. I'm not aware of the situation (you're in Cornwall?) but I would hazard a guess that in a more densely populated place, accommodation shortages simply mean longer commutes. I'm an hour from the mainland, and it would be another hour and a half again before you started reaching genuine accommodation options. It's simply not possible to work here without accommodation. Oh and of course almost zero practical public transport doesn't help. Another Skye poster gave some figures up thread, and it definitely is significant here. And it's worse on other islands. Back in 2005 when I was studying rural development the figures for Jura were 50% second homes. Correct, the only real way to sort things out is to build more houses. And we're not short of land. But building here is, as I've said, not cheap. Most plots are tricky to develop, services can be a good distance away, and obviously you need to sort out your own sewerage system. Materials cost more and certain services simply aren't available. What I would have given to have been able to nip in to Screwfix! It's a 250 mile round trip. If you want a specialist trade like blown cellulose insulation, good luck to you. And almost every supplier will add hefty delivery fees, that's if they deliver out here at all.

That there was no point offering a job to somebody who did not have accommodation lined up. You're just wasting everybody's time. It's got nothing to do with your place of origin, nationality, etc etc. You can't do the job if the nearest house you can rent is over a hundred miles away. There is close to zero long term rental accommodation here.

I can only speak for my own experience but I didn't receive a single objection to my planning application. People in my area are generally aware of the shortage of housing and we have enough space that most development won't adversely affect other people's views etc. Building houses up here is quite expensive, plots are cheap but can be hard to develop. I spent half my budget getting the driveway and services in. I would estimate that most new builds are done by incomers. Those built by locals tend to be built in land owned by the family.

The problem is that teachers, nurses, and even doctors are unable to find accommodation. Private sector businesses cannot recruit because whilst there is no shortage of people will would take the jobs, there is nowhere for them to live. So the economy and the community suffers. Example- my local pub is only open a few days a week because of lack of staff. My last employer would be inundated with applicants for jobs and have to turn down promising candidates from outside the area, in favour of local school leavers who would often quit within the year when they left the island to study etc.

It's not a question of blame, it's a matter of market distortion. Properties are bought up by money from outside the area, money that people living in that area cannot earn. You then get the current situation where the available jobs and available houses are out of sync. This has been a problem in rural Scotland for decades. But in the past it was just wealthy retirees who could sell their ex-council flat in Birmingham for enough money to buy a four bedroom house up north. Local buyers couldn't compete. Today you have the added problem of these properties being potentially viable investments as STLs, which distorts the markets further. I imagine it's similar to the London property investment bubble but in miniature, and with predominantly English money rather than Saudi or Chinese.

I'm not even going to pretend I understand half of that 😂

This isn't really automation but I figured this would be the right section of the forum. I'd like to add WiFi enabled timers to various appliances (immersion heaters and space heaters) around my house, so that I can adjust things remotely depending on occupancy. The properties are used for holiday lets so can sit empty at times. Are there any particular brands/models to look out for, or to avoid? I don't to find something loses support and the app stops working (something which has happened with every WiFi enabled camera that I've had). In a similar vein, I'd like to add WiFi enabled thermometers, especially for the DHW tanks.

I've used glass rope or tape for that joint before. As the stove/flue heat and cool you'll always get movement there. Fire cement is very brittle and can't take any movement. You can also get high temperature silicone but from memory it's only rated to the sort of temperature seen on woodburners, and if you're burning coal then you might exceed that.

Looking good! What's going on the sides and the top?

That's perfect, thanks Steamy. I wonder what I'm doing wrong. I can't remember exactly what we were paying in previous years, but looking at the current rate the tracker has to be a good idea. We're currently on about 16/34p E7. Of course I can't switch tariffs until I get a smart meter. And I'm going to want to install a wifi-enabled timer for the DHW, so that I can boost the tank when the rate is good.

So if I'm reading it correctly, you're getting mean summer prices of: 2021- 22.4p 2022- 34.6p 2023- 18.6p Your 2021/22 numbers match mine, I don't know what I did for the 2023 ones. I'm going to have to figure out how much of my energy use is DHW, as the off peak E7 rate undercuts these figures.

I'm in the northern Scotland region. What I was trying to do was find the daily average price for the period 1st April to 1st November each year. So I tried SUM(Ex:Ey)/z Where X is r start date, y is the end, and z is the number of days in-between. But there's something weird going because the cell numbers and the number of days aren't matching up.

Does somebody fancy checking my homework? I'm trying to use Excel on a phone and something isn't adding up.

https://files.energy-stats.uk/csv_output/?_gl=1*18272gn*_ga*MjI2MDA0NzkuMTcwNDQ3MDA3Mw..*_ga_Z4Z11HYTZ1*MTcwNDU0MDgyNS4yLjEuMTcwNDU0MDkwMy4wLjAuMA..*_ga_M45TVRXZ04*MTcwNDU0MDgyOC4yLjEuMTcwNDU0MDkwNC42MC4wLjA.&_ga=2.196785900.1717887741.1704470074-22600479.1704470073 Maybe I've made a mistake, I just did a quick calculation on the excel sheet and that's what it returned.

On the other hand, we don't need to have things like fire exits marked. It's recognised as being a house in which a business is conducted, rather than business premises. So probably closer to a home office than a shop or hotel.

Don't know. I don't recall every being told that. Accommodation-based businesses do tend to sit between two camps. In some respects it is treated as a house, not a one bedroom hotel.

So I've had a look at the numbers and it doesn't actually look all that great. Our property tends to be occupied from about 1st April to the end of October, and if I average out the tracker rates over those months I get the following: 2021- 22.5p 2022- 34.8p 2023- 27.3p Some more research required but it's maybe not the easy win I was hoping for.