Owning your own home

All court cases are a roll of the dice. Even if they agree you didn't get what you ordered they may consider the impact of the door being behind - which as you've proven is not an issue and hasn't restricted your use.

You'd expect door Co would want legal representation, so that's got to be what, £2-5k to start? So it's probably worth offering you something.

For me, I'd always avoid litigation as it's all consuming and a huge mental drain.

If you can detach yourself from it, have a crack. Ianal, but tactically your starting point should be both are wrong.

Anyone modifying their house to help with energy bills this winter?

Yes, although that wasn't the original motivating factor. I'm boarding out the loft and adding extra insulation so going from 100mm miserly new-build insulation to 250mm under the new loft boards, plus 18 solar panels and a 6.4kWh battery at some point - might take a while as the survey isn't until mid-October.

Some extra water butts and a crossbow and I'll be in preppers heaven.

Put the correspondence up, for those interested in commenting on my trials and tribulations.

I wonder if the answer here is something like

• we don’t agree
  
• You want my money
  
• I don’t have what I think I bought
  
• so a discount is in order - You can have %x of the outstanding balance
  

Yeah, that's the gist of my proposed letter:

"Given that Access Garage Doors is responsible for me not having what I ordered, I think that the order total should be adjusted to reflect that.

Therefore I would ask you to consider what would be appropriate, and to adjust the invoice accordingly.

Regards,"

Has anybody else's houses suddenly started showing cracks since the previous heat wave?

Rather worryingly*, we have a load of diagonal cracks appear (which have grown bigger) - the front door now sticks, and other door frames / woodwork has obviously shifted.

Watch this space for when the front of the house falls off.

* moreso than when the bay window shifted / settled a couple of years ago.

the front door now sticks

We had this. Solved by planing a bit off the frame but the house has definitely moved.

Where we are (W6) we are not that far above river level so I imagine the groundwater drying out has a serious impact.

Yeah - we are in SE27 and on a hill. We get seasonal movement which my wife freaks out about constantly.
Had a structural engineer over a couple of years ago when we did our extension and he said the house was fine, nothing to worry about.

Still looks shit though, and it's definitely worse this summer.

Considering whether to fill the cracks now or just leave it.

 the front door now sticks

Presumably once it rains.. if it ever rains again.. the door will swell back into its previous position?!

London clay drying out? I think I read something to suggest that it's going to be a real issue with the coming changes to our climate.

Considering the previous movement to our gaff (one rear window a perfect parallelogram and some of the timber by the front door out of whack), nothing of note has come up since we moved in 18months ago. I was even earlier today taking a look at one of the biggest cracks I filled by the front door (about 40mm wide and a good 60mm deep) as soon as we moved in, just with easifill, and it's still sound.

I wonder if it’s worth filling in crack the moment it appear or when temperatures go back to normal?

That fill was one of the first things I did, because it was so obvious. You could monitor to see when cracks are at their most noticeable I suppose, but I'm just going room by room when I have the time to do it. The living room for example, was covered in spidery cracks, mostly around the radiator so I knew it was just a drying out thing. I'm not exaggerating when I say there were hundreds of cracks, but from barely noticeable to about a mm in width. I raked them all out, sanded, filled, sanded filled, sanded and filled again and now at least a year later, there are no cracks in the living room, even around the bay window.

Jinx

Ceiling hairline cracks (ones you really have to look for) I will now be using the polycell hairline crack paint. I've had two rooms where hairline cracks reappeared after filling and/or full replastering due to flex in the joists above. I used that paint on both and haven't seen the cracks since. Warning though, it's billed as a Matt paint but has more of a satin finish so will need a going over with your standard ceiling paint. Still saves raking out, filling and sanding.

Apologises, I change my comment when I realise you already answer my original one.

A lot of cracks will be due to seasonal changes in clay ground. It's not so much the door itself swelling/shrinking as the wall/opening distorting. It should all go back again. Gypsum (modern) plaster on old solid brick walls will tend to crack more than the original lime plaster as it's more brittle/rigid.

Our only gas appliance is our hot air heating, is it a bad idea to turn it off and blow out the pilot light for summer?

Uses a suprising amount of gas considering its doing nothing

1 Attachment

Do you not have a hot water tank?

Electric

You'll still get the standing charge, so you'd save about £10 a month.

But soon £20/mo ..

Then you'll be running the heating so it will get lost on the noise of £400 month gas bills :(

Not so easy to find with the focus on the price caps, anyone know what the projection is for the electricity and gas p/KW prices?

This summer the London Clay is going to have desiccated to levels not seen since 1976 and I expect that there will be a big increase in subsidence claims for pre 1980s homes this year. Less worrying is that there will be cracks that haven't been seen for years opening up that should close again to some extent as winter progresses.

I wouldn't advise filling any cracks now. Wait until April to see how much anything has closed up and hope that there isn't another severe drought next summer. Any new cracks over 3-4mm, get a Structural Engineer in to advise on repairs.