Owning your own home

Yeah remote monitoring and control. I use nest for my cameras though.

Is it just the app design that is crap? or the whole kit?

Bit of both...

Anyone installed internal wall insulation in a Victorian brick building? I'm still deliberating methods and am at a loss between insulated plasterboard/PIR or wooden fibre board. Considering DIY as my money is fast disappearing on other renovations.

Do I need to meet regs with certain U values? Seems wooden board will not manage this.

Against an outer wall? In which case, yes.

I built a 2x2 stud wall against the outer wall, with a 2 inch ventilation gap (I've also put a few airbricks to the outside), insulated with sheep wool and then foil-backed plasterboard.

I'm blithely not considering any possible regs.

I considered using more breathable / traditional materials (wood wool board, lime plaster etc...), but realised that with an air gap, that wasn't necessary, and finishing would have been a drag.

Outer wall yes, well three of them actually, and there's a stud wall structure designed for the back wall but not enough space at the sides as door and window are in the corners of the room. Didn't think about ventilation though!

So after all that our buyers and agent insisted on getting a damp survey done by Rentokil, on the condition that if it comes back with work prescribed I can counter it with my independent. If he says there's something there I'll humbly hold my hands up and work something out, I want a correct diagnosis, not to cheap out on our buyers.

Anyway Rentokil said yeah m8 it's just condensation from where the sofa is pushed up against the solid exterior wall.

Is there an optimal distance for air flow here? We're getting a bit of that at the mo (chair mainly pushed back to be out of flight path of toddler).

I'd guess anything less than half a foot would create a microclimate. To be honest there's no smell or visible signs of damp so I'd just put it down to one of those things that happens at this time of year, probably just a little bit of moisture settling in the wall that set the surveyors detector off

Does anyone know what's happening with stamp duty ? Probably a silly question given no one has a clue about what is happening politically.
Thinking of delaying completion on our house purchase in case it disappears (looks like we can stretch it past election date anyway)....

House we’re buying has some wildlife and fungi.....
It’s a doer upper

2 Attachments

Has anyone built a brick shed in their garden?

Considering it

Post-brexit you will be self-sufficient in wasp larvae and mushroom risotto,
(assuming you have stockpiled rice).

looks like a job for @General_Lucifer

(see https://generallucifer.wordpress.com/201­5/01/30/142-clash-in-the-attic/ )

Do you have any sensible outside storage for bikes? We have none in our new place.

Asgard

Our house came with a brick shed, it's great. Bike store and shed in one, with power and lights.

What's a reasonable cost to have the front and side of a house repainted? Been quoted £850 all in (we have scaffolding up already) but they said they can probably do it in a day. The paint costs about £80 so that's not a bad day rate for two of them.

Alternatively has anyone had paint removed from the front of their house and had it restored to exposed brick? There isn't any pebbledash on there.

Our house came with a brick shed, it's great. Bike store and shed in one, with power and lights.

Same.

If you don't have one, building one may be overkill but it is very handy. I'd have thought a normal shed, fancy TW/Hovis shed, or an Asgard would be the sensible route. If it's for additional security you'd need to think carefully about a decent door as I'm sure our brick shed is as easy to break into as our wooden shed.

Alternatively has anyone had paint removed from the front of their house and had it restored to exposed brick?

@amey

Kinda, we got pebble dash removed then render then paint, in our last house

Can send you deets of the guy who took off our pebbledash - he might go paint. Was good value

Removing masonry paint is a bit of a PITA. The best way is to use a low pressure heated pressure washer, it's messy noisy and takes a log time but will save you maintenance costs in the long run as you won't need to re-paint periodically.