Owning your own home

How high a fence can I put up at the front of the house?

I have 12/15ft high evergreens, but the fuckers are coming down to make way for a parking area at the top of the garden. I’ll replant the strip vacated by the conifers with laurel, but they’ll take a little while to establish and we still want to maintain a level of privacy

laurel

Yew will give you a denser hedge.
London?
Many local authorities have a formal limit of 6ft.
I have seen few enforcement notices issued for 1ft concrete gravel board and 6ft fence panel.

Nope - Bristol way

@roythame wanna be within walking distance of town/ g road and probs harder to rent a room out there. All my non-work mates and the grads at work are in this area or redland/clifton. I am going to explore though and would seriously considered Easton especially near the station. Will organise a Bristol ride and beers when it happens haha. Cheers

They could but I'm not sure they'd see much distinction between cafe and small supermarket - both viable high street uses. I feel like they might say "no offices without applying for permission" but anything customer facing is probably fair game. I don't know what's happening on the ground though, it's a pretty new (and major!) change.

Yeah I went for garden and constant noise from above*. Not sure I can recommend it as a great life choice.

*Actually not constant, usually about 5 minutes after you've gone to bed.

I'm thinking about a 6-7ft fence around our place, we're on a corner so don't get any privacy at all... OH was against it because "it would spoil the look of the house from the street", which seems absolutely daft to me... She's come around to the idea since the neighbours did it a couple of months back... 🙄

Completed on a house move on Monday, immediately noticed a hissing sound on the pipework around the interior stopcock. Plumber's conclusion - a leak on the main on the way in to the house. Heard from the neighbour (on a shared exterior stopcock) that the previous owners had been investigating a problem in January. Bit pissed off to be honest!

If you close the stopcock does it stop? If not your plumber might be right

Generally speaking you need planning for anything over 6ft, although some local authorities do differ so worth checking with yours.

That would be sensible yes. What demographic are they - retired couples or people with kids don't tend to have banging parties etc. But your neighbours can always move.

Basically this:

Try to avoid having people living above you if you can.

If you close the stopcock does it stop?

Nope! It only stops when the main from the street is turned off.

Are you on a water meter?

Moved into a new build house in November and just got our first electricity bill through. It comes to about £175 per month (~933kWh/m). The house is a 3 bed detached and entirely electric with heating and water running off an air source heat pump, but even so this seems a bit high.

I'm just wondering what a typical electricity bill for such a house would be?

Lockdown means we don't really know many of our neighbours yet but I've seen posts on the local FB group with people complaining of high bills. Just trying to work out if we're unusually energy hungry or if there is something wrong with our hot water/heating system?

Possible that they've started you off on a really high estimated usage and it'll come down in time? We're in a new 3 bed detached and expecting bills to be around £90 a month, though that is with gas central heating.

That is about the same as we pay for 4 bed, old detached house (elec and gas heating)

It wouldn't surprise me if that's about right, sadly, depending on how well insulated the place is and what tariff you're on.

It's a lot more than my MiL is paying (4 bed bungalow, ground source heat pump), but she's in Ireland and on an Economy 7 tariff which is very cheap on the overnight rate.

Are you on a water meter?

Fortunately not.

Call the water company and let them know the stop cock is non operable and they’ll come out and repair it.

Might be the chance to consider replacing the supply and getting your own feed if you wanted if your considering digging down.

Few options I suppose.

A bit more clearance/making up for neglect. Made the garden about 30% wider. I didn't even know we had a path!

1 Attachment

We paid roughly that for a 4 bed terrace, dual fuel. But I think our central heating pump is running 24/7 due to a stuck valve so I am hoping it comes down when we get that fixed. 2 people wfh doesn’t help power consumption either.

turns out what i thought was an induction hob is actually a standard electric ikea hot element hob thingy. fml.

Good going! That looks like it will be well nice when fully fixed up.

Ta, the pile in the background is about halfway. Plan is to clear as much as possible up to about there and seed the lawn. The strip down the side will likely get a wildflower seed bomb. Then the big laurel behind the pile will be trimmed back, the area behind it cleared and a shed/workshop built. The other area at the back will be kept slightly wild for the local fauna and because I think it will be nice for mini_com to go blackberry picking in her own garden. There's an immature but big enough to be annoying sycamore you can see in the back ground too that'll be going.

Picking up a shredder tomorrow so will see how that deals with what I've amassed so far. Signed up for Croydon's garden waste service too but there's up to a 12 week wait for bins at the minute.

Will have to fill in the unused fox burrow I fell through yesterday while trying to remove a particularly evil rose hip bush.

1 Attachment

Top floor flat points duly noted. This and this are like 10 doors down on a lovely road. Identical size/layout, though Number 1 has no garden. Number 1 is lovely inside. Number 2 has a barren wasteland of an outside space which is overlooked (GFF has a bit of it fenced off) with an asbestos looking garage, less period features, a dated kitchen, dated bathroom, needs decorating, but is 50k more asking (having been reduced 10k already). Why? Premium on end of terrace flat and a derelict garage & 'courtyard' can't be that much. Number 2 has been for sale for 4 months, reduced once, and the guy has moved to Brighton.

Don't even know why I'm looking at number 2, but do just think if it was the right price could add value (redecorate, new bathroom + kitchen), and then in time try and sort the outside space and rebuild the garage.
How low a number can I pass to the estate agent whilst making these points? I have viewed it about a month ago and said words to the effect of its overpriced I'm not interested.