Owning your own home

Part of a homebuyers survey is rating the services - as the surveyors aren't experts they rely on service certificates to provide a rating. Ours didn't, so we asked for the latest service report.

A new boiler is about £5k. Not worth negotiating over?

I dunno. I might be tempted to have an ask through the solicitor. Maybe dress it up as "based on the findings of the surveys we undertook etc. and so on"

A new boiler is around £1.7k. Having 2 blokes take a few days to fit it is the rest of the money. Do you need changes to the radiators or just a boiler + ancillaries swap?

Need to find that out.

Boilers don't even have to be that much. You can get a decent Worcester Bosch combi for about £1k. We are having a pretty beefy system boiler to fill a 300 litre tank and it is costing just under £1.7k all in. Labour to fit it is £900.

For flats/smaller houses with standard combi setups I don't see why a boiler and installation should cost more than £2k.

So British Gas are just taking the piss?

Blur songs and Timothy Spall voiceovers aren't cheap!

Yeah, they tend to charge about 50% more than independent companies/tradesmen.

That is very good to know.

Thanks.

New boiler depends on capacity. My Vaillant Ecotec was around £1k, and came to about £2k all-in to have all new radiators and piping fitted too, though my plumber was pretty cheap.

Depends on the value of the house (I presumed we were talking in/near London as it's a London forum), but at least for London, I don't think I'd be arguing about it.

5k for a boiler? U mad bro?

Like above, it depends on the household it has to deal with but for a 1 bed flat, you're looking at about 600-700 and less than a day labour.

I have a pal who lives in a Manor house out in the sticks. He paid £25k for a boiler a decade ago...

Was it called Sellafield?

I don't think anyone will be able to live at Sellafield once it finally gets decommissioned.

Did you see that BBC documentary on it? It was pretty amazing. One of the storage rooms, where the material is stored in tubes under 10 feet of concrete was noticeably warm.

At least you'd have underfloor heating. Non optional.

Granted, but fuck living there.

Just spent £500 on some taps.
Time to join ISIS.

We just paid to have the boiler replaced, moved from the kitchen to the bathroom and new central heating pipework throughout.
We kept the old radiators, but put snazzy thermostatic valves on them.

The least exciting way to spend £5k.

Got to watch what you say round there.

I would expect British Gas to be expensive for boiler installs because they are still, if not a monopoly any more, somewhat 'dominant' in the market.

That labour is some very good builders who are not cheap but are very thorough and do a very good job.

I'm no expert but £5k seems a hell of a lot to me.

Edit: Oh I just saw all the other replies. Awkward. What they said.

Boiler moved and new rads set us back 1500...

New boiler, 5 additional rads, 1 rad moved, unvented cylinder, all central heating and most hot water and cold water pipework replaced was ~8k including labour I think.

It'll all be worth it once we have the bathroom done and we have a working shower.

Just when we thought it was safe to relax in our home...

I pulled the sofa bed out this morning and found a pretty substantial crack in the wall (see below). It is right above where we got a new steel put in to support patio doors, and at the corner of a newly installed window.

We are trying to find builders to come and diagnose, and hoping we are not completely fucked.

Anyone who can reassure us our house is not about to fall down and be condemned, I would like to hear from you. Anyone who can tell us bluntly that we are fucked, please try and offer us a solution rather than just piling on the misery.

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You can't put your hand in it, it's not a significant problem. If you replaced the steel below and the wall below has dropped a little onto the steel then this is pretty normal. Is it following the roof line outside or does the crack go through the bricks?