ProDave

On the Howdens quote, each item lists the % discount applied. They seem to have applied 65% to the cabinets and up to 85% from the appliances. Should I be negotiating for more discount from the cabinets?

Lamona, from Howdens, £450 plus VAT, and I though that was expensive. No reviews at least none that I have seen. There is this one on ebay for £300 but it does not tell me what make. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Instant-Hot-Boiling-Water-Kitchen-Tap-3-in-1-Cold-Hot-Water-Heating-Unit/192074602857?hash=item2cb889d969:g:pSkAAOSwi0RXzKr8

We want a separate microwave and oven, not both in one.

Thanks, the indicative prices on their website are about half what I have been quoted so enquiry sent.

We are getting prices for our kitchen, So far have approached Howdens, Magnet and a couple of the sheds, and had a look at DIY Kitchens. Howdens are currently cheapest, but still over budget. Some negotiating / redesign needed. My questions relate firstly to appliances as this may be where we can shave the costs. So does anyone have the "best price" for the following: Built in single fan oven (best price so far £350) Built in matching microwave. Note this must be a proper built in unit, not a free standing microwave with a front plate to try and make it look built in. (best price so far £550) Boiling water tap (i.e boiling water, domestic hot and cold all from one single hole tap) (best price so far £450) Island recirculating cooker hood (best price so far £290) Second question relates to a granite / quartz or similar worktop, cut to size with hole for under mount sink and hole for tap. I have never had one of these before, but I seem to be told you get a price for a blank, and then a price for "fitting" which means cutting it to size and cutting all the holes on site. Is this normal? If so then as this would be a "supply and fit" I would expect it to be invoiced at 0% VAT as it is going into a new build house. Is this gernerally what people find happens in practice?

It does vary tremendously. We had no depth stipulation other than we had to dig through the thick layer of top soil down into the sandy clay sub soil. But for some strange reason our SE specified reinforcing mesh in the concrete strip foundation pour. No doubt it will be stronger but never seen that before. Less concrete and more blocks will usually be cheaper. Also has the advantage of more room to correct things if the concrete pour is not dead level.

Would a buyer want a "boiler service" or a "gas safety certificate"? I paid £75 for a gas safety certificate when we let or old house, and that was money for old rope, took them no longer than an hour, though why it needed 2 people is beyond me. I would suspect that is what most buyers want, to know the gas installation is safe and does not leak. You can show the boiler working if they ask.

I have only been to Barrow once, out of curiosity. It lives in my memory like Merthyr Tydfil as a place that begs the question, why would anyone live there? (sorry to all residents of those places ) Run down does not begin to describe it. I am not convinced bargain basement properties have much potential to make money. Polishing a t**d springs to mind.

When people mention "ECO" I always think of the house at the top of our road. When last sold it was advertised as an "ECO" house. As far as I can tell the only "ECO" thing about it is it had (not especially good) tripple glazed windows. It has an EPC rating of D, is the first house in the street that the snow melts off the roof, and the present owners complain how high the heating bill is. Are estate agents not supposed to ensure the claims they make are accurate?

The point is, if you build a house properly, you are not relying on the sockets to make a seal. You have an air tight layer around the inside of the house, then a service void inside that sealed envelope before plasterboard etc. It would make no difference if my sockets were removed. I work in plenty of old houses where when you remove a socket, a howling cold gale comes out, it is truly shocking that the wall structure is open to the roof or the floor to let cold air into the building fabric.

Another vote for find and fix the fault causing the "rising damp" I bought a 1930's semi that was very damp in one corner, made worse by the fact the owner had tried to hide it by lining that corner with polystyrene tiles and wallpapering over it. The fault was just that the pebbledash was bridging the damp proof course, coupled with the ground being too high in that corner. Once that was fixed it dried out and I didn't even need to re plaster. That didn't stop it being a cold and expensive to heat house. Knowing what I know about houses now, I would not be in a hurry to go back to one like that.

You are lucky around these parts to have spring water that does not come out the colour of weak tea from all the peat. We have mains water that comes from Loch Glass above Evanton. It's lovely pure water but before they built the new treatment plant a few years ago, used to come out of the tap with a slight tint when the wind was in a certain direction and srirred up the silt in the loch. Am I the only one that when you mentioned bottling it thought of "Peckham spring water"

The Joys of small engines only used occasionally. I needed to use my wacker plate for about 15 minutes work. Took well over an hour to strip and clean the carb to get the damned thing to run. Perhaps @Onoff has the right idea with an electric one?

It wasn't an accident, he was messing about. I managed to hack into his security camera and found the footage

If my words are not typing proper;y it;s brcause of all the tee I just spreyed all over my keyvoard.

Yes I think it was Citizens advice. I phoned TS and they transferred me to another "department" that may well have been Citizens advice.

Hadn't seen those before. I thought screws would be too big hence secret nailing, and glueing as nailing is never perfect. So is the consensus to glue the boards to the joists, or glue tongues and grooves together, or both?

I ask because it must not creak. Let me spell that out MUST NOT CREAK. So thinking it needs glue as well so nothing can move in relation to anything else.

Engineered structural floor, 190mm wide planks with an Oak finish. Laid on joists at 400mm centres as a structural floor. Is it best just to secret nail the tongues? Glue the planks to the top of the joists? Glue the tongue and groove between adjacent boards? Or a combination of those?

Wood burners is a marmite subject here. You love them or hate them, no inbetween. We are having one more as a lifestyle choice and we usually have plenty of free wood. You have to be very careful not to oversize it, so a monster from a previous poorly insulated house might not be a good choice. The other "must have" is a room sealed stove, i.e. the air intake is ducted in from outside so it is not drawing in room air. Several have fitted the little Burley Springdale (or firebox) which at 3KW believe to be the smallest room sealed stove available, though we are fitting a slightly larger one at just over 4KW. Ours is going in the large room, and there is potential to leave the double doors to the rest of the house open to let heat out if (when) it gets too warm. And I don't expect to be burning it often or for long.

Yes selling the old one is only viable to someone who can collect it. I believe carriage is something like £80 with Palletways so a big cost to anyone wanting it from afar.

The list price of the new one is a LOT more than he one I bought, but then the list price of that was a lot more than what I paid. I very briefly toyed with the idea of paying to fix the old one and selling the new one, but that would just be silly.

It's not our fault we have a stupid system. I still believe a much better system would be simply to pay you a slightly below retail price for what you export, but that would mean everybody having a meter that measures export separately o import.

Another "wrong end" way to look at it, is you want to bu the kit as cheap as possible, so keep your eye out for bargains. Something may come up as a particular bargain and what is available cheap may end up dictating what size of system you install. For self usage there are 2 basic things that will go a long way. First is use the big appliances like washing machine, dishwasher and fluffy towel machine one at a time in the daytime. The other is excess power diversion to hot water heating. Another one to keep an eye on but I don't think we are there yet, is battery storage. There will come a time, and I suspect not far away, when that will be viable to store excess power for the evenings.

I now wish I had tried this as soon as I got it. All I did was power it up and establish communications with it's built in user interface. I now wish I had rigged it up with some hoses to a water butt and tried running it to make sure it worked.