ProDave

Does your house insurance have anything to offer like they will pay for new locks in the case of a lost key?

I would tackle the issue another way. The PD height limit is from "ground level" Clearly there is a step in level between your harden and that of the gardens behind. So I would just regard the upper slab as "ground level" and work from that. If the ground level varies, then PD rules say you measure from the highest point.

Yes my house is cheap to heat because I built it well. Actually the extra costs of building it well are not that much. Extra insulation and 3G windows really. Most of what makes it good is the detailing to get everything right, and reasonable air tightness. Another £1500 to buy and install mvhr, with the cost of ducting etc exceeding the cost of the MVHR unit itself. I have said many times I don't see why MCS companies are charging so much for heat pump installs. ASHP from ebay new under £1K and Telford stainless steel heat pump unvented hot water cylinder for about £1K EVERYTHING else, pipe, programmers, pumps, under floor heating is the same as would be fitted if I had put an oil fired boiler in. I did not look at prices but I bet an oil fired boiler and a bunded oil tank would be not far off the cost of my ASHP and unvented cylinder. I have so far installed 2 ASHP's in new builds for others, and 2 days labour for both plumber and electrician should cover it, so with rates here that's under £1500 for labour. So £5K should cover it i.e. should be entirely covered by the BUS grant and cost the customer nothing. So I await an explanation why it costs the customer often £5K or more after the BUS grant has reduced it? But I agree the cost to properly upgrade older houses to get the heating load down low is high and it will be VERY disruptive. This is a problem the politicians don't want to talk about. Who is going to pay for that work etc. Except the Scottish Government have stated that by 2025 all rental properties must be EPC C or better. That will likely just mean landlords selling up and quitting the business and leave the new unsuspecting owner occupiers to deal with the old buildings. And they will later have a "surprise" when they find the SG expect all owner occupied properties to be similarly updated by 2033

Was the old one on a key ring saying "12 Laurel Avenue"? If not even if someone found it how would they know what house it fits?

I use under 1500kWh heating the house for a year. The solar PV generates more than that, but of course not when you need the heating.

Never ever put more than £85K with one provider. Except NS&I seem to offer unlimited protection. I am still slightly vunerable as we still have a little over £170K in a joint account with one provider, I am moving it out as fast as I can but the amount of bank holidays just now does not help.

Don't enlarge the hole in the wall yet. What's wrong with one of each of these: https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/368462-1-gang-two-module-data-front-plate-white https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/185171-10a-dp-1-way-switch-module-white https://www.cef.co.uk/catalogue/products/4872868-220w-1-module-2-way-grid-dimmer-white That would be pretty close to the others and a lot neater than two separate switches.

Ah yes I vaguely remember my short spell in the drawing office during my apprenticeship and being taught the correct way to fold a blueprint. This is when a drawing was drawn on an A0 board on film with pencil, stored flat in a plan chest and the blueprints were taken from that. For our build, the only actual large scale prints, just came rolled up as they came off the printer.

If it works that is great. To be sure the dimmer must be an LED dimmer, and both the transformer and the lamps must be "dimmable"

As explained earlier, the red core is permanent L feed which will go to both switches. Easy to do if you have a twin 1G back box. but I don't see what 2 separate switches achieves compared to the options already suggested?

Re inventing the wheel. It is an "electric storage boiler" A thermal store heated by a number of immersion heater elements, typically up to 4 of them for a 12Kw input so on E7 a storage capacity of up to 84kWh. I know several people with them, and none have a good word to say and the conversation always uses the phrase "expensive bills" More effective? That just means more able to heat very hot water to run small radiators to avoid upgrades, i.e. cheaper install. I can't see how it is cheaper to run than an ASHP. Unless you can still find an E7 tariff with the off peak rate 1/3 a normal tariff, i.e. about 10p per kWh at the moment. It's just spin from a manufacturer desperate to maintain a market for such a product.

Corrected.

I wonder why the plumbers did not diagnose that? Could it be they were not 100% sure and did not want to look silly / carry the cost if they replaced it and it did not fix the fault? As it happens it was blocked with debris so there was no cost in removing that to fix it.

Individual build plots here have not been viable for developers for a long time. And that is with plot prices being low. It is worthwhile for self builders because you get the house you want, or by doing a lot of work yourself you can build it cheap enough that you might get a modest profit if you sold. The problem has to be building land is being valued too high. It is almost like a ponzi scheme if the developers can only make money if the market rises so they can sell the house for enough to cover the costs and make a small profit? This was a big issue when at the start of our build we could not find a buyer for our old house unless we reduced the price, and that would have meant it would cost us more to build the new 3 bedroom house than we sold the old 5 bedroom house for. And sorry I could not stomach paying money to downsize which is why we did what we did.

It's in German with no subtitles. I await a transcript from @ToughButterCup

I assume LED G9 lamps? If so try a different make. We have G9 LED's in a living room and bedroom light fitting. Only 1 lamp failed in 5 years so far. As it's IP44 it is probably quite well sealed. Try opening it quickly after it has been on for a long time to see how hot it is getting inside? That won't help lamp life if it gets hot. Perhaps the problem is leaving it on all night? All our G9 lamps are in open light fittings.

Your "2*4" will actually be 195 * 47mm Be careful. OSB sheets are available in 8ft by 4ft or 2400mm by 1200mm. As far as I know (someone tell me if otherwise) plasterboard is only available in 1200mm wide not 4ft, and usually in 2400mm long not 8ft (though can be bought in longer sheets) 16" is 406mm. So over 3 studs that will be 1218mm. By the second or definitely third sheet of plasterboard the joints will miss the studs.

Lots of interesting points raised. Still none giving me a convincing reason to buy a holiday let. The location we are thinking of is a place we have visited for holidays many times and like. But as everyone keeps pointing out, we don't know anyone that lives there. So the biggest challenge would be finding someone to manage the changeovers and the cleaning for which they would obviously be paid. Anyone care to take a guess at what someone might charge to clean, change bedding etc, manage the handover and then do the laundry ready for the next handover for a 1 or 2 bedroom holiday let? Then I could start running some figures. My view of the property market is somewhat tainted by what happened when trying to sell our previous house. Property can be an illiquid asset at times that you cannot sell unless you are prepared to give it away. Especially in a remote location like we are considering. There might well be scope for some form of holiday let where we live now. We still have the old static caravan, though that has a planning condition prohibiting it's use for occupation. But there might be scope for some form of holiday let in it's place. but we would only consider self catering, having previously run a B&B we found it too demanding and restrictive of your time. Still lots to think about.

Why 16" centres? 400mm or 600mm

Shame you have to buy so much of the 25mm pipe, I am sure I have some short lengths here

That is exactly what I had in that previous house. If you lifted a first floor floorboard and looked at the party wall, it was a 9" solid brick wall with poorly pointed brickwork. The perp ends are the perpendicular, i.e. upright ends of the bricks and there was very little mortar on them with lots of gaps. So the cooking smells from next doors kitchen could get up into the ceiling void, probably through light fitting holes, and then through all the gaps in the party wall through to the ceiling void in my house and then out into the rooms. Expanding air tight foam would be the easiest way to seal them but you would need the whole run of floorboards the length of the party wall lifted to get full access. The rest of the party wall was probably build with similarly poor pointing, but the plaster on the walls made that more air tight.

Yes constant slow running PIV into bathrooms and kitchen might ensure your neighbours smells don't enter. If the bathrooms are on a party wall, they may even benefit from your "exhaust air"

Yes there is a lot more to retirement planning than most people think. Conventional wisdom is just plan as much as you can in pensions aiming for the maximum pension income when you retire. There are 2 big flaws in that conventional wisdom. One is people concentrate on private pensions because they don't want to wait until state pension age to retire. But if you have sufficient pension to retire early, then a few years later when you reach SP age, you will probably have more income than you need. So your pension income needs to be more flexible so you can draw more at the start of retirement and reduce how much you draw when SP starts to pay. I seldom hear anyone else mention that. And retirement is not just about replacing earned income with pension income. Most of us will have a bucket list that involves buying big ticket items. You won't do that, with a pension based entirely on income. And that is what this pot of money in our case is for, those big ticket items on the bucket list, and the shorter term plan being discussed here is about preserving that pot against inflation until we are ready for those big ticket items, and possibly ticking one item of that bucket list (the holiday home)

The issue being mentioned here, is ASHP's are really simple things, they move heat from A to B. So in winter when heating the house they cool the air outside. In summer when cooling the house they heat the air outside. That is a waste. The issue is why does nobody seem to make a heat pump where there is an option when cooling, to put the "waste" heat into a hot water tank?

Oh the joys of living joined to other properties. I recall a previous semi detached house, where every Sunday, I could smell next doors cabbage boiling in their kitchen. A quick look under the floorboards showed very poor pointing on the party wall brickwork with most of the perps not fully buttered. Not a lot you could unless you wanted to take all the boards up along the entire length of that wall.