Gone West

IMHO the most pleasing finish there is.

He was an architect and couldn't deliver his own house on budget, God help any of his clients.

It will never be as efficient as radiators, because however much insulation is under the floor, some heat will always be lost by conduction into the ground.

It's looking good, keep the pictures coming.

Is that the MGB GT you mentioned. You've got plenty to keep you busy then.

We used it all up and then used the immersion. A couple of blokes took the tank away for refurbishing.

Yeah, we were getting low last week, so we gave in and ordered 500l which was £509.20. If I'm right that's about 10p/kWh, I think.

As above we had an Isoquick insulated slab installed and they left an earthing tab which the electrician said wasn't needed so we cut it off.

That's excellent, well done. It's certainly worth thinking about a self build.

Back in the nineties I used, well actually Wendy used, a scutch hammer and comb to remove distemper from a couple of brick walls prior to plastering. It took a hell of a long time but I'd rather do that than use sugar soap.

The CU, RCBOs etc were MK but all the switches, sockets etc were Schneider.

I will, yes. I did that at our last place.

Yup, but I don't know if that is contributing to the number of short power cuts we get.

I had to look that up. That's interesting as arcing I would have thought would be a major cause of fires in CU. I shall have AFDD as well as SP then, thanks for that.

We bought our shed racking in 2010 from Rapid Racking and it's still going strong. We bought the basic grey metalwork and fitted our own chipboard. It fits together quickly with a mallet, no bolts needed. https://www.rapidracking.com/en/rra/rapid-shelving-range#productBeginIndex:0&

A power cut isn't a surge but power surges can occur after an outage and we seem to being a lot of those. So if replacing the CU, fit one with surge protection. That sounds like a good idea then, thanks.

We haven't lived here a year yet but so far we've had several short power cuts of five to twenty seconds. Is fitting a retrofit SPD in the CU or even a new SP CU worth the effort. We currently have the computer equipment running off a SP extension board. https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/HGVM02SPD.html

It all depends on how good your plasterer is. A friend had to do a lot of filling and sanding on his barn conversion. We were very lucky and found a plasterer who was a perfectionist and we didn't have to do any.

We used Lindab and didn't have any problems. It's a very different system to plastic but if all the cuts are made with hand tools it works ok. I was sceptical about the galvanising creeping over the cut surfaces, as explained in the instructions, but we didn't have any rust.

+1 I bought some of those from TLC in 2014 and they had three or four different angle lenses which was very useful.

I had to look that up.

Yeah we hate them. Noisey, bulky and inefficient.

Problem is the oil boiler is an Aga which is inefficient and takes up space in the kitchen. In round figures at the moment oil is about 10p per kWh which means a SCOP of more than 3 for ASHP or new condensing oil boiler which should be much better than the Aga.

Who knows. If I get another eight years I will have lasted longer than my Dad. Thanks to Eunice I've got a bit more to do this year. If I can remove the extension across the back of the bungalow, north side, fit new windows, re-render, remove chimneys and fit new boiler and DHW system I'll be happy. Not the landed gentry like you but we've got just over half an acre to keep tidy as well. Except for the garage we did all the heavy garden work after we moved in last year.

I've done a sketch of this place with the wall thicknesses, it's not straightforward I know. As far as I have found out it started off as a pair of 1840ish Victorian semi cottages. They were knocked into one house in 1970 and then converted to single storey in 1971.