canalsiderenovation

I've now had an uddated referral bonus from anyone who signs up to the (free for the first year) Gold Rewards Card 27000 reward points rather than the 20,000. This is an amazing bonus which you can use for a variety of purposes. If anyone wants a link do let me know. My hairdresser who opened a new business said he got some sort of incentive to take American Express. I'm not sure what fees are involved. I used to have a Platinum Card (not business) but the fees kept getting raked up to make it completely ridiculous. I think it's now over £500.

Hmm could be an option. Need to weigh up this and speak to the builder about costs and the quote.

Pole fit - not pole dancing like you would get in strip clubs! Pole fit is difficult and really hard work. I doubt it! I'm always cold..... When I used to do pole fit in a studio we all wanted the heaters on. Women and the cold.....? No solar on it - no budget for this unfortunately and EV charging is not needed. We already have power to the existing garage/outbuildings but need to make sure we forward plan for electric gates.

Good point, although unlikely I wouldn't rule out some gym equipment and a pole (before renovation I had a pole for pole fit in the living room as we weren't concerned with damage to ceilings etc but it's not an option now)!

I don't know! Do we? It looks a reasonable size double garage from the plans. The other half would probably put her car in there, especially when she upgrades to a nicer car. The rest of it is needed for lots of garden related items as we have a large plot and when we get a boat (long term future goal) lots of boat related items no doubt and if we do end up with a sink and toilet in there it will be useful if we are gardening etc. I'll have to catch the builder this week and go through things and see if there is any room to negotiate - he will probably expect it from me anyway!

Yep it's not entirely clear - will have to double check!

I actually wonder why they have quoted for a full filled cavity. It's only a garage and we don't need a full filled cavity.....

We are in the process of getting quotes for a double garage. This is the first one - thoughts? We asked them to exclude the double door, side door and window (one not two) as we will get these ourselves. Also to connect up to water/sewage for a toilet in future (but not connect toilet/sink as we can get these at a later date and do them ourselves after our experience with the plumber I'd rather do it ourselves)! I've no idea what sort of figures we should be looking at so any advice would be great.

Exactly that but the range Intu offer for tilt and turn windows are far less than for normal windows. Perfect Fit offered a huge selection but the white frame just doesn't appeal.

Thank you. I think the problem is as it's for tilt and turn windows the colour range is very limited for Intu. The normal range has pretty much every colour going! There was definitely no lime green!

Thanks that's good to know. I just wish they had blackout ones or their hive ones had different colours. I'm hoping to see the profile of Luxaflex or at least get some prices from comparison.

I just don't like them, they either look very commercial or just really odd looking!

I'm not a fan of the roller blinds but do like the pleated ones. I hate venetian blinds too. We have a Luxaflex dealer coming back with some prices too so will be interesting to see how they compare although I've not actually seen the Luxaflex product yet.

So far the quotes we have had are include fitting, local companies. I'll only give the glass sizes of the windows rather than the frames as the only seem to measure the glass. The glass sizes are as follows. Five windows in total - W129*drop 93, w129* drop 98 (two) w86*drop 98, and w129 x drop 98. Total price for Intu Micro Infusion (the one with the string not honeycomb) £1052. Perfect fit were a little more expensive by £20 but with three blackouts.

As much as I love the fact from our bedroom window anyone going past can see the mountains of nepal on the canvas we have strategically placed SWMBO is insistent we get blinds on the bedrooms and dressing room after an incident with an Amazon driver..... So, we have narrowed it down to three bedrooms, the office and the lounge. I thought this may be useful as a comparison to anyone looking at blinds for Tilt and Turn windows and if anyone has any other suggestions please let me know. We have had a couple of companies round and the options seem to be Intu or Perfect Fit both which are screwless and don't damage your window frame rather are fitted into the seal with a clip. There was minimal price difference with Perfect Fit being cheaper. Perfect Fit In essence these are a frame in which the blinds sit which is then fixed onto your widow frame so you end up with a frame on a frame. I don't like the fact you could end up with dirt and bugs on the ledge inside their frame. On the plus it does come in far more colours and they do blackout. Intu These just clip in too but don't have the big frame like Perfect Fit and just the top bit which sits in the frame and the . They just pull down from the top so the only space they take up the window is the top. The picture shows the micro infusion which has the string bit in between the pleats which can let in light. They do a honeycomb kind version too called the micro hive but only in three colours - white, ivory or a dark grey where the infusion does come in a few different colours. Frustratingly they don't do blackout blinds in either the hive or infusion.

I just wanted to give some kudos to American Express. Not only after some Covid related flight issues last year and some difficulty with the airline did they refund over £1000 within 24 hours of me making a claim but they have just flagged something suspicious on my card which has saved me a significant sum of money. For many things house related I've used American Express and quite a few items came from local retailers. American Express frequently take part in Shop Small which is promotion of local retailers taking American Express and I had quite a few offers where it was spend £10 and get £5 credit. Currently there are a couple of good options where you can get some excellent value membership points for signing up which I wanted to mention, although it may be a bit of a faff for people I frequently repeat these between me and my other half regularly. If you are a business there is either the American Express Gold or Platinum charge card. The Gold is free in the first year (so don't keep it nah longer than a year) and if you spend £5000 in the first 3 months you get 50,000 reward points. Whilst the real value of these is in airmiles if you wanted to you could transfer the 50,000 points into Avios and then into 80,000 Nectar points which will mean you have £400 to spend at Sainsbury’s, Argos or eBay which is great news. You also get free travel insurance. The Platinum does have a huge fee of £595 but you can get 100,000 points but you have to spend £10,000 in 3 months. The fee is refundable pro-rata so if you wanted to spend, pocket the points and leave you could and probably only pay a fraction of the fee. I'm currently on the basic gold card which gets some of the perks above like insurance, two airport lounge passes a year (pointless in the current climate) and if you sign up for this and spend £3000 in the first 3 months you get 20,000 reward points which can be converted to airmiles with a variety of airlines or Nectar or even Amazon (the rate for exchange for Amazon is pretty poor at £4.50 per 1000 points). If anyone would like to use my link to sign up it gains me some membership points too. If anyone has any questions on American Express I'd be happy to help. http://amex.co.uk/refer/rACHECowGT?CPID=100338425

Builder says he can get 75mm. Do you think that would be an improvement. Obviously it will need to go around our windows. Anything to reduce our heating bills in winter has to be a bonus!

What would you go for? There is cavity wall insulation on our existing but should we go for more? Will it make that much difference? Obviously we will need to consider the overhang for cills and eaves as our windows have all been fitted and new roof etc etc. What would you recommend?

Oh that's reassuring. Presume the Aldi is a typo ?

Now we have pretty much sorted the inside snags inside and plumbing issues we can turn our focus onto the EWI and render and getting the house looking decent from outside. We are looking at 50mm of EWI and have settled on the pure white silicone Krend rather than the pearl as we prefer the clean white appearance rather than anything yellowy. Is there anything in particular I need to be aware of, e.g. should it be done at a particular time of year. Whilst I'm keen to get it sorted ASAP I don't want to risk any weather related issues.

She!! I'm a woman. Luckily our plumber isn't in Scotland but you are welcome to him. In fairness the heat pump seems to be the one thing we haven't had issue with in terms of fitting really, aside from sorting the settings and huge electricity bills but that's Alto.

We had in roof solar 12 x 320w panels in roof landscape. It was not as cheap as @ProDave as we had to pay for installation and the equipment was just shy of £2400 alone which included everything - the Solic for diverting the excess to the immersion, the in roof panels, inverter etc We currently only have our heat pump heating the water for a couple of hours a day on the Octopus Go Faster Tarrif (8:30pm for 4 hours of 5p electric) and we find the Solic pv heats the water in between (it's set at 48 degrees for the heat pump to heat it and a sunny day like today the excess pv diverted to the immersion and it's heated way above that and I've had bucket lots of hot water today as I've been cleaning windows and washing the car). Pics taken just now... The solar today and yesterday did well over 10kWh. Earlier in the month it was only around 5kWh a day. Today we have charged everything, had washing and dishwasher going. It's worth it for me but we both work from home and can really make use of the electricity when its there.

99! The initial sensor we had wasn't bluetooth but we got it swapped by Internorm today for a bluetooth one so it's easy to set up via the app now.

Us but it's one the main contractor uses we just paid him directly. It's a small place so they all know one another and within 5 mins of him leaving the main contractor has been in touch as the plumber spoke to him. They can argue it out who is responsible and what the issue is. Main contractor on site tomorrow.