Owning your own home

You seem familiar with my chunk of cast iron without a PCB

Victorianpublicbathroom.com is notoriously expensive

If you're burning wood then you are releasing previously-sequestered carbon, and if you're getting your wood from a managed forest then you're also enabling more carbon sequestration.

i.e. you're not killing the planet. Which is just as well as it's the only way I can heat much of my house.

If you want something that looks like a real fire, and you want heat out of it, then get a gas one. We had a Gazco Hotbox insert in our house in London which was something like 60% efficient, which is as good as you can hope for with an open fire. You can get glazed in ones which are 80% efficient, but they just don't look right.

If you just want the look, and heat isn't important then bio-ethanol is what you need. There are companies who will sell old stoves retro-fitted for it. It's also the answer if you don't have a chimney.

£40 from Argos mate.

They are quite noisy. We have one but not used for the house heating.

I just got back from paying my house deposit ahead of getting the keys this Friday. Woop.

That's the same conclusion we came to - if we want the nice cosy look of a log burner we will buy a bioethanol burner. The other options don't stack up for us.

You’ll not need to worry, your back boiler or what ever it is will last probs a lot longer than you think unless the heat exchanger cracks and then your fucked but yiu still get all the basic stuff for them as they still make gas value etc

Super exciting. Congrats.

What do you use it for, hot water? Are you making money from the RHI ?

Some classic advice from a bloke off the internet there. "Kicking it down the road" perhaps not the best thing to do if you own the place.

If you would like to try and avoid future issues I'd suggest you cap and vent. A hit & miss vent can be used to reduce draft/heat loss a bit when particularly cold.

At the risk of Golf Club entry, we use it to heat our pool in the summer (so - yes, hot water essentially). It's very efficient once the ambient temp is over 15°, but obv we don't use it when it's much colder than that - April/May to Oct only. Ours is a bit away from the house, but you'd want to be careful with placement for you/neighbours because it's a very definite constant noise when it's on.

Feels so weird! We're going to have so much space we will lose each other, Nic is only tiny :D Haha

Other than an obvious point at which heat escapes from the place, what the future issues I need to avoid? The fireplaces are still present and we will keep them (or at some point in the future remove the breast completely). But I wouldn't be surprised if there's some kind impending disaster if fireplaces remain unused for long periods of time that I'm unaware of.

Woop. For sale sign is going up outside our house tomorrow. Time to get that bargain country mansion with purpose built bike display/museum area. There's a filter for that on rightmove yeah?

“Hey Siri, Where’s Nic?”

Are you going to come back down for a leaving party?

Yes.

"Hey Google" but same-same. 😂

Theres no even a risk, thats straight to the golf club thread.

Dealing with builders seems to be an absolute ball ache. I'm looking to complete a side return and knock essentially the back of the house into one room. The quotes I've received all seem to vary wildly. I'm unsure where to even start to be honest.

Yeah, I seen all those ones but we had one of those in the old flat and the kids fucking ruined it. They don't have the dexterity to open/close stuff without slamming it.

Finally booked a renderer to sort out my side elevation after multiple flake-outs. Guy from just up the road who is going to use K-rend and cheaper than the other quotes we had. Relieved is the word as we're already stretching the renovation budget over the next few months.

Where are you based? If North London... try mine: https://www.totalcarpentry.co.uk/

He's next level great, and will sort everything. I found him to be above the middle point of quotes I received, but the standard to which the work was done and everything that was included were exemplary... I came away thinking it was an absolute bargain. This was for the kitchen renovation work.

He lives North of London, so will only stray into North London.

For me: My criteria is how well someone can describe the job. Not whether they can repeat my words back to me, but whether they show they fully understand the job and can tell me something I didn't know about what they're going to do (the more detailed but varied, the more I believe their competence is going to be high because they've done this before).

Ergo, if they can't describe the job well they may not have understood it well and so the quote is probably not reflective of what the final price would be as they've probably missed something.

Thank you, also thanks for the Bark recommendations I'll perhaps give that a go.