G and J

Having the meter removed is free. Is having the supply cut off at the road that costs the money.

I wish I’d known that 6 months ago.

Da Bungalow we will be demolishing has gas heating. We want to be good little eco-peeps so early on we decided to go all electric with a heat pump. Which means we need to get the gas pipe removed, so I phoned up to discover that the cost is ‘from’£2k, I presume plus vat, and that there are no grants or subsidies that I can claim towards the cost of being a good citizen. There is, however, a subsidy towards having a new gas connection. The agent was super helpful, and they suggested that whilst they don’t condone this, a lot of peeps just leave the pipe capped off in situ, especially as that means it’s easier to return to gas if the heat pump doesn’t live up to expectations. In the following discussion the agent disclosed that a growing number of peeps are doing just that, though they were yet to talk to anyone with a ground source heat pump who wanted to return to gas. Our neighbours are concerned about our plan for an ASHP. It requires us finding a trustworthy MCS person to not simply inflate the labour cost to hoover up the grant for themselves. We will be spending more money to locate the pump half way down the garden. I know the heat pump will also cool the house, and that will either prove vital or pointless. But I wonder. The heat pump route will cost us more capital at a time when spare capital is not sloshing around. It will also cost us a cupboard for the DHW cylinder. It is likely to cost about the same to run as a small gas combi, which our neighbours would prefer anyway. And I could plumb things so that converting to an ASHP later was relatively painless. Or maybe I should simply leave the damn gas pipe in place, capped off, and work around it. So why am I making life difficult for myself? Why not simply go gas day one and let society/government wake up to the effect of their policies….

Ok that’s sounding good. The sound of swifts ‘skweeing’ overhead is the sound of summer and holiday all rolled into one.

Do swift boxes need clearing out? I love the idea of such things but one of our basic design starting points is as little maintenance as possible and definitely no ladder based maintenance. Odd really, cos I love monkeying around at height but the older I get the more risky that is.

I prefer my cheaper and lower stress approach based on a phone call. The CIL thing is only one consideration, but you might find your area’s CIL people are just as helpful as East Suffolk. Remember to smile when you call ‘em. That smile does somehow make it to the other end of the line.

We’re facing a similar question for our build. We’ve both a garage and a bungalow to demolish. We’re going to declare a start to the CIL team (ours are lovely and helpful on the phone) before we do anything but shrub clearance. The CIL team were happy that we declared a start way too early - their attitude was better too early than too late. It’s a similar thing with our party wall agreements, we’ll be notifying of a start well before the main demolition event takes place, but there’s lots of prep to do and we don’t want to risk an accusation of starting before giving notice. We cleared trees before planning was granted, which was a good thing. Site insurance is a consideration. We’re currently insured as an empty house till mid January, and may well start site insurance then rather than renew. But that means we are wary about doing stuff that would be questionable re the house insurance before then. With any luck, we’ll have building regs approval and planning conditions sorted by mid Jan and can start demolition after that knowing we’ve got our ducks in a row.

Does that mean you are just becoming an irritating teenager?

As a kid I dismantled a flashgun. The most obvious way to remove the pcb was to grab this cylinder looking thing (the biggest component on the pcb), my finger and thumb at each end of what I now know to be a capacitor. Ouch. Couldn’t instantly let go and had to fling out my arm to dislodge the pesky thing. My hand hurt for days. Presumably this tester is a little more gentle? Of course I’m now tempted to buy one just to play with it….

Lordy. What have I done?

Presumably this tester squirts a high voltage across the probes. Is that ac or dc and is it tiny enough so it won’t act as a defibrillator? Or should you shout ‘Clear’ just before each test?

We’ll done, Ummmm, is it polite to ask what it is that you’ve created? I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…. (but bear in mind you’ll be waiting a long time to see mine!)

If you hold the two probes onto something, say maybe a piece of damp wood - which clearly won’t be highly electrically insulative, what does the display say on test? If a perfectly insulated cable gives a ‘1’ then so perhaps might a duff test lead. I would assume that shorting the probes won’t damage the device, (but I can’t guarantee it as I’ve never used one of these things so I’ll let others comment on that), but if I’m using a normal resistance meter the first thing I do is hold the probes together and ensure that the display reacts accordingly. Testing for an absence of a reading is always a bit dubious.

Your daughter is a higher rate tax payer?

+1 As an iPad junky who powers up a windows (pan!j laptop as soon as the required diagrams get above v basic I second this question.

Welcome Nottingham Ted. Surfacing as in driveways? (Of course I’m now thinking Boomtown Rats….)

My MVHR knowledge is limited to planning our forthcoming build, so please bear that I’m mind when reading the following: You state that you find the master bedroom quite stuffy. I’m assuming that simply opening windows and turning the heating up (which was our architect’s suggestion when I mentioned my intention to instal a MVHR) isn’t an option, as you’d have done it by now. May I ask how airtight your house is? I ask as I think this is a fundamental….

I am sitting in front of a woodburner, nice and toasty. The rest of the house is circa 15/16C, because it was mild outside today. I grew up in a house that in winter had frost on the inside of the windows. As kids we used the heat of our fingers to draw faces, etc. in the frost. Life was f cold for half the year apart from short burst of lovely and warm. So it’s no wonder that millions of brits struggle with the notion of continuous comfortable temperatures. I can’t imagine living in a house (i.e. the one I’m planning to build) where it’s not cold first thing. It’s alien to me. Perhaps I should cut myself (and others) some slack in not understanding how such new fangled systems will work. Perhaps I should buy a few more pairs of shorts too.

Interesting, no DPC under the block and I assume under the beam ends. So the block and beam are ok being damp? Or is that relying on the blocks or beam ends not absorbing water and hence the majority of the beams stayed dry. I had assumed as the beams were steel reinforced then they should be kept dry with their ends covered.

I don’t either, but I don’t trust my intuition on this one.

True. Fancy watching cars going round in circles. Beggars belief.

My razor sharp wit has detected that your question indicates that I have something wrong. Bugger. Where is my DPM supposed to be?

Nothing, apart from the fact that it's carcinogenic and terrible for the resources that it's production uses. Tastes good though.

We had a top floor flat in an old maltings. Vented tank in cupboard heated by E7 and storage rads. Hot water tap flow rate was pitiful as there was no head. Maybe that’s why there is a shower pump.

Then student life is very different nowadays.