LeserattePD

Yes, ground condition NOT structural engineer - need to determine appropriate foundations.

I know it’s a bit late to answer this - for me, the porch and hallway seem to serve redundant functions. Getting rid of the hallway and opening that up with the lounge would be one option, but the front of the house clearly signals this as the main entry. So I would be reconfiguring the porch area. Do you really need a 2nd entry area with a door to the outside here? I’d think not. So I’d wall up that door and make that usable space. The toilet could potentially go under the stairs, though in built storage under the stairs would also be an option. If you want to retain the toilet in that area, can you unify it with the utility room in some way? Two very small rooms or one bigger room with the utilities hidden behind curtains or in a cupboard? Door to be next to front wall of the porch. The kitchen/dining room wall could go easily, that would give you more options regarding the kitchen. If you move the toilet to either left side of porch or under the stairs, you now have that extra space for the kitchen. I assume the weird thing in the kitchen attached to the stairs is the fridge? I’d definitely remove that. All of a sudden you’ll have a nice L shaped kitchen with space for an island or a U shaped kitchen. 🤷 that’s what I would do there

Hi all, Can anyone recommend a ground condition surveyor covering Middlesex? Need the survey to support the design of the foundations for our extension and adjoining retaining wall.

🤔 that may make us reconsider the underfloor heating but we mainly need the cooling upstairs (at least with current setup). UFH heating in the extension would be easy to do, and the ground floor in existing house would be doable since currently there is no insulation on the floor plate and the existing underlay&flooring will be replaced anyway in refurb to add such insulation. The ground floor temperature in summer is ok - though that may change once we actually have insulation between floors. Currently the heat just accumulates upstairs. On the other hand, the extension includes a garage and downstairs bathroom on the south side so should add further protection from heating up; though the new upstairs bedroom will be above the garage. All big windows will be either east or west side, with any on south side smaller >170 cm high horizontal windows to avoid overlooking neighbours. We weren’t looking at UFH on first floor - I’m not sure our supporting beams would deal with the necessary load, plus head height is limited to 230cm. Everything in this house is late 1980s Wimpey’s cheapest… see the too thin floorboards that are bending all over the place and the 2xplasterboard “walls”. Thank you for pointing out the need for fan coils if we do not use UFH.

Oh I understand now - the heat pump probably won’t happen during refurb as we’re prioritising the solar PV and also aren’t currently eligible for the government grant - EPC out of date plus the recommendation on that is more insulation as far as I remember, again something that’s going to be fixed during the refurb. For example, there is NO insulation on our floor plate 😢 or in between floors - so downstairs is freezing and upstairs toasty all the time - we don’t even run the upstairs radiators except in the bathroom. Honestly we bought the location, NOT the house 😂 it’s at the end of a cul-de-sac in a little estate around a village green with 5 min walk to the tube station/local High Street but incredibly quiet. The double width garden was the selling point because we always intended to do a side extension. We’re interested in a heat pump long term partly because of the cooling option in summer. As the SW facing end of the terrace, the SW bedroom gets unbearably hot in summer, we’re hoping that increased insulation will mitigate that to some degree and planning to have climbing plants on both the south and west facing sides to help. That and it’ll look nice too and help the local wildlife. We’re keeping the current cylinder for the time being and then will change it during the refurb. I don’t mind the tanks in the roof space either as that is unusable for anything due to the hip roof with only about 50cm straight line. The two story extension as currently planned will have a slightly lower hip (a hip-to-gable roof conversion on the main house was denied by the planners) - but the advantage of the hip is that will give us pretty optimal positioning of the solar panels to SSW and the slope is going to be pretty optimal too. I had read about the lower flow rate heating and that is definitely something we want, though we had pretty much decided against underfloor heating.

Thank you so much for your response! I had read about boiler modulation, but what are S and Y plans? Yes, we weren’t considering solar thermal panels - I meant that we wanted to feed in electricity from PV into the cylinder when it is in excess of the normal house and proposed future electric car charging needs. We are thinking of having a battery to store electricity as well. Thank you for confirming that an unvented cylinder appears to be best for us - I’m an amateur trying to decide these things and feel rather unsure about my conclusions from what I have read. Interesting that both you and Nickfromwales prefer these over the Vaillant and WBosch the boiler service guy who decommissioned the boiler immediately mentioned - what are your reasons here if I may ask?

Thank you for your response! Yes, I meant solar PV - planning to have a fairly big system for a future electric car as we live in NW London and we also both currently work from home on computers. I will definitely look at the Intergas system boiler - interesting that W/Bosch and Vaillant are your last choices - any particular reason? We’re not keen on a combi boiler as we definitely would have shower and kitchen use at same time and I’ve heard from friends who have one that you end up with a cold rush in the shower when the kitchen tap runs, but maybe their boiler wasn’t specced properly 🤷🏻‍♀️ So I kinda had arrived at the conclusion that we needed a system boiler but really wasn’t too sure. Do you by any chance install boilers in NW London? Thank you for the tip about magnetic filter - all the radiators will be changed (they’re currently abysmal old style ones!) and some will be repositioned during the refurb but not right now. The refurb will be a big job anyway as we want to get rid of asbestos artex ceiling and the floor boards need to be replaced since they are too thin. We don’t even have stud walls, just 2 layers of plasterboard stuck together. So basically the refurb will be a tear down to wall and support beams 😂 I expect I’ll have loads of questions on these forums…

Dear all, Our boiler had to decommissioned yesterday for a CO leak - it was a Baxi WM70 that we hoped to nurse along until we can do an extension/refurb and replace it. Unfortunately, after more than 2 years, we’re still having planning issues with the council. So we need to replace the boiler but ideally with one that will accommodate what we want to do with the extension/refurb. The house is a 1990 end terrace - the current hot water system is gravity-fed - the water pressure we have means that the bathtub can be filled in a reasonable time, but showering upstairs is only possible with the power shower (on it’s own pump) we currently have in the single (upstairs) bathroom. For the extension we plan to have a pressurised system to address these issues, especially as we’re adding a second bathroom on the first floor. We are also planning to install solar PvP. My understanding is that we need an indirect thermal store for the future solar power to be used and this would be via a new storage cylinder when that is installed. This I understand excludes combi boilers. We do not want to change radiators or piping until we do the refurbishment if at all possible. So we are looking for a boiler that can be installed now and use the current setup but also accommodate our intended pressurised system and solar PvP, and maybe a heat pump down the line (not currently planned but would like to leave the option open). What boiler can you recommend? Also, any recommendations or comments on the future heating system plans would be appreciated.