Owning your own home

I bought a roomba about 5 years ago (only £250 back then). Have had to replace the battery (easy job, they're modular so it's simple to swap parts) but other than that it's still going strong.

Works well, picks up a lot. It does take a lot longer than hoovering yourself but given you press the button and bugger off that makes no difference to me. It obviously can't do stairs, tops of skirting boards, etc so you may need to go round with a brush/portable hoover every so often.

I do have all wooden floors though, not sure how it would go with carpets.

Mine is costing £1400 for full rewire of a 3 bed end terrace, minus kitchen and new consumer unit (they were done a few weeks ago). I'm not in London though.

Interesting, sounds like something to investigate. I love the idea of having a robot do housework for me.

I've worked in the trade and it's only standard practice because people put up with this kind of bullshit. Unless the guy's been stuck on a roof without his phone for the last 1o days he's had every opportunity to call me and apologise for missing two appointments, even if he didn't have the chance to tell me in advance.

It's because we have such low expectations of builders that they get away with being unreliable and generally messing people about. I'm sure there's a shortage of roofers, I'm sure he's under pressure, but none of that stops him from making a call if he can be bothered. He can't, he's an arsehole...

Maybe I could program it to follow my cat around.

Your cat will shit in front of it and the robot vac will smear over a large area of floor whilst also baking it on.

I've seen threads about that and the subsequent strip and rebuild of the vac. Well worth a read if you delight in the misery of others.

that reminds me - i need a sparky to work out why half the lights in our hovel dont work in spite of sticking new bulbs in the lot of em.

heh... bulbs.

Saw the most incredible house today, a few grand over budget for us and it's already had an offer on it anyway... Spectacular place...

In other news, just put in an offer on the place my dearly beloved really likes... Fingers crossed...

Good luck boss!

You're basically right, you should avoid people like this. Thing is when there's only that type of person about what do you do? He's probably not bothered, probably got builders throwing work at him and doesn't need the hassle of householders. People have no option than to put up with this bullshit most of the time.

I won't get into the low expectations thing either because I've got 30 years experience in the trades and I know it's a mixed bag. I usually have a 6 month order book and I've had clients wait 2 years for me to do the work they want done. The way the trades are these days it's mostly expensive or you wait if you want it done properly.

Ring round Check-A-Trade and see how many roofers even answer the phone. I've had one or two come out and give a quote but they're usually 20% more expensive than the going rate with a 2 week lead time. They rarely agree on what needs to be done and almost always want to do more than necessary. I've seen 5 or 6 for the same job, every one gives a different diagnosis, different solution, price ranges by £10k.

I've mainly been looking at houses but saw a flat I liked in walthamstow today. 93 year lease. What's the process of extending this etc?

93 years is plenty long enough, but get ready to dig deep if you really do want to extend it.

Where's @jeez when we need him?

The estate agent we've been dealing with has been nothing short of a grade 'A' cunt... She's almost completely put us off the place on several occasions, tempted to go knock on the seller's door and complain...

Put offer on yesterday, she hasn't even replied to our email... Weirdo...

Is that in the Lloyd park area by any chance? They were doing viewings on a place a couple of doors down from us yesterday...

Ours was down at 72 years when we bought it. Cost 15k to slap another 99 years on. That sounds a lot but we paid considerably below the market value for the flat even with that expenditure. Short leases put timid buyers off.

No don't think so.

I don't think we'll get this place but if we do or don't I'll stick it up once I know.

You can all laugh at me then and tell me I got lucky or just agreed to pay £xxx,xxx for a fucking flat in Walthamstow!

Offer accepted about an hour ago... They tried to come back asking for an extra $2k but I told them to fuck off... Conveyancing and pest inspection all sorted, just need to find a building inspector now...

Spoke to my bank, the guy was biting my arm off... So I'm guessing we'll be fine for finance, seeing gf's bank tomorrow as well as a broker later this week... Tropical peninsula living is about to become our day-to-day reality! #semiretired

congrats ts :)

Nice TS.
Does anyone else have the pleasure (not pleasure) of electrical heating. We've got individual controlled electric heaters and they're super shit, both for the environment and for actually doing anything. There's no scope to put gas in, I don't think, but what I'd really like is a nice fancy controlled from an tablet set of heaters so my wife can put them on before she comes home and everything is better.

Essentially (TL/DR)- does anyone have a recommendation for heating installation firms- ideally that specialise in turning shitty electric heating into slightly less shitty and more user-friendly modern systems?

Nice one!

You want one?
I haz.

yeah ping me number m8, solid.

Tell me about it! The ones on the wall are 10 years old and essentially just shit.

I have the same heaters, @eyebrows - annoyingly in a flat that was built only ~6 years ago. Because the place is so small I tend to just put one on when I need it. Would be nice to have a central fancy thermostat thing but don't think it's possible. Once when I was a journalist one of these new startups working on such things offered to install one for me. I described my setup and they said it wasn't possible.

This is along the lines of what I was thinking:
http://www.farhouk.co.uk/nexho-nt.php
The issue- as with all home automation is that upgrades are unlikely for 10yrs, meaning that condsidering how dated that app looks...