Owning your own home

Microwaves, talk to me.

I want with variable power, not just an on/off timer like most work.
Are there any out there where you can adjust the volume of the beep/alert?

the person that invents the microwave with just a 30 sec button and one beep will be a millionaire

any estate agent recommendations near brockley? I want to find out how much we could get for our place if we rent it out to try somnewhere else for a year...

Peter James (not actually used them, just heard they were good)

cheers dave

Zoopla do that I think

i can't face being called every 15 minutes after it all...

You just look online. It's pretty accurate.

i just had a look. a bit more than i expected.

what will the agent take?

5-10%

what will the agent take?

Your soul. Possibly your dignity.

they are welcome to that.

the place we want to rent is bang on the zoopla estimate for ours. we'd need the top of the zoopla estimate, if they were taking 10%, in order for it to be no cost to us...

Rent it privately, no agent. Bit of work, but nothing too onerous.

i have a mate that is looking for a crash pad in town. we could rent it to him and keep a room for us, but them we are stumping up the remainder to pay the rent at the new place.

the new place is in wiltshire. a 3 hour drive to change a lightbulb miight not work with a young family.

Private or not you'd be wise to remove all of the furniture and white goods, including, ridiculously, the bulbs. To avoid the scenario you describe.

Also there are property maintenance companies who can do more major fixes for you without you having to actually be there. The problem with agents is when things go wrong they will be spending your money and guess what they give no fucks about your money.

Very well said.

You need a Panasonic, as they are the only brand that have proper inverters (LG may license them too, iirc)

Can't help with the beeps though.

My Panasonic microwave can't even keep the right fucking time. It's fast by about a minute a week.

@BRM lost that years ago.

I've got an LG inverter microwave, it's boss...

I've got Richie's soul stashed in one of my guitar cases... That guitar is well fucked...

That’s right. I swapped my soul for a shot at fame in a pub on the Kings Rd in about 2011.

“How’d that work out?” I hear you ask...

I'm a my a conference all day, if you want to rip out a couple of "sold my soul woooo! Alright! How we doing Manchester!" Type recollections you've got an audience of at least one here.

Why do microwaves need to display the time? I never bother setting mine, I've got a clock on the oven and a clock on the wall, and that's already one clock too many. I don't need yet another fucking clock to set after a power-cut (or to slowly drift leading to my 9yo playing games of "But it's not quite 7pm daddy, you said 7pm! Look!").

And, no, having the microwave/oven/fridge/kettle/toaster/collander connect to WiFi to be able to set its clock using NTP is not a solution. It just means a new WiFi code means fucking around with $DEITY knows how many shitty apps that need to speak BTE to an appliance in order to make it speak WiFi to the network.

When I worked in catering we had microwaves with a big dial (digital, not a mechanical dial). You close the door and turned the dial and it came on. After years and years of using it I could set it to any desired time without having to look at the dial, just twist it the right amount from muscle memory. Bing!

My in-laws have a Fisher & Paykel microwave which I think has a single button press for a 30 seconds blast.