Owning your own home

I now don't have mains gas and have a completely crap electric shower and not really sure what to do about it!

We're thinking of moving out of London, but not sure when as it's dependent on finding a job, but it would probably be September 2023 at the earliest.

We have single glazed wooden window frames which need replacing.

Aside from the insulation and soundproofing benefits we'd enjoy until we sold the place, is this a daft thing to do, or is the £10-20k it would likely cost (it's a corner house with double bays) going to be money we'd be able get back from selling it?

If the fucked windows were the final piece of the 'how do we make this house fucking great' puzzle, I'd be tempted to do it.

If the place is still middling before you'd sell it, I wouldn't bother. It'll make the other flaws in the house more obvious. And you'd have to redecorate around them. Probably.

Might be worth renovating them for £5k?

I guess it depends exactly how bad the windows are, do they open/function? If they're so bad that they would be mentioned by the future buyer's surveyor, then it may be worth doing as they may push for a discount on the asking price because of them anyway..

Otherwise probably worth leaving.

Given today's mortgage market you may well not see that investment back. If it were me, I'd not do it.

Before selling, I'd do any cosmetic only work to the existing windows so they look in good condition to prospective buyers

I replaced/refurbed the ones in my old place at a cost of about £10k a year or two before I sold.

I doubt I got the price back as such but the previous windows were knackered with a few of them held together with duck tape so I suspect that leaving them in that state would have made the whole place harder to sell.

If they're knackered enough to make buying the place unattractive then I'd think about it. If they are just not great then I wouldn't bother. Or, if the rest of the place is amazing and they are standing out as not then I'd consider it.

Thanks for the input.

Our survey actually did mention that one of the window frames in the our living room bay window was rotten - and we've done nothing about it.

They do mostly open, but they don't all close again without a bit of a struggle.

They are very obviously single-glazed though and look quite old-fashioned. We'd been in the house about two weeks when I tried to open one of the rear windows, and most of the frame swung open but the glass stayed put.

When we bought the place, it was one of a list of expensive things we knew we'd have to do at some point - alongside rewiring, a new boiler, a couple of new radiators, redecorating, etc. It's pretty much the only major thing left now (though I wouldn't describe the rest as amazing).

I live in a tiny ex-council 2.5 bed flat that barely gets cold enough to turn the heating on (we haven't had it on yet) and 1 bathroom. I don't think we need to worry too much about two showers at the same time, when this boiler was working at 100%, the hot water pressure and consistency of temperature delivered was satisfactory so I'm happy to replace like-for-like in terms of kW and L/minute.

Assuming you have decent cold water flow elsewhere and it’s the shower throttling it you could potentially get a more powerful shower.

Your current shower should have a rating on it somewhere, you may need to unscrew the front. If it’s 7 or 8kw then a 10kW+ new one will defo make a difference.

Potentially a job for an electrician tho, you’ll need to be sure the existing cabling is up to it.

Are the existing ones proper sash bay windows?

No, they're casement windows. Timber-framed but not nice-looking or special enough to try to restore as far as I can see.

If they were timber sash windows I think we would go down that route.

If they were sash I'd say leave them as they are and let someone else pay to restore them in the future. If you sell up next year or even the couple after that I doubt you'll see a £20k return on the cost of replacing them. So I'd guess it's down to how much will it improve your life within the next 3 years to get them replaced now vs how much of a hit is it to lose 20k from the savings account.

I then got a completely overpowered boiler (50Kw)

Did you also get the decent version of the controls that let it modulate its power so that it condenses more?

Sounds sensible!

Interesting. I have an electrician coming for other reasons so I'll ask him about that too, thank you!

Yes

Would appreciate thoughts on what I'm missing here.

Dead timber kitchen conservatory (as demonstrated by recent rain) needs replacing. Bog standard 4.6m wide terrace with outrigger. Original plan was to do the full side return job but increasingly I think we will move from this house in <5 years so the payback on cost & disruption doesn't really work.

Feels to me like a minor upgrade would be to slap a bigger conservatory on the back of the outrigger that would give us space for a bigger table at the end, per the diagram below. Should be much cheaper than messing around with steels and party wall agreements. Would need planning as there is no wall between the kitchen and the existing conservatory, it has a radiator and we are in a conservation area. Neighbours have built further into the garden than us (red line on the plan).

I can't find any precedents for this online in the usual places, so there must be a reason that it doesn't work.

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Looks like quite a good idea given the cost of extensions etc, presumably modern conservatories could be a bit warmer and maybe have more advanced shading to prevent summer overheating. Potential permitted development if a house?

Potential permitted development if a house?

Probably not in a conservation area, particularly if the LA have made an Article 4 direction.

what is the question ?
I think you will need planning permission.

I will 3rd that view and add that I think you’d be better to bosh down the conservatory and build the kitchen out to full width without the extra length. Much more useable space, bigger garden and probably not loads more money to do. Probably.

I am almost 100% sure it needs planning.

The question is whether it’s a useful halfway house and, if so, why you don’t see it done more often.

For context, initial quotes from D&B companies to do a fairly basic spec side return are north of £150k at current materials and labour prices.

why you don’t see it done more often.

Probably because you aren't really allowed to do it - unless it complies with the regs around conservatories, i.e. run on a separate heating system, have doors separating them from the other areas of the house etc.

I’m pretty sure the existing structure isn’t non-complying (we checked planning and building regs when we moved in c. 2 yrs ago). It is formally an extension (orangery?) not a conservatory for the reasons you describe.

I’m pretty sure the existing structure isn’t non-complying

Well, maybe, maybe not. Your Building Control cert (or the lack of one) will tell you.

But that's not the point. Point is, if you ask someone to build a conservatory, it has to comply with the regs for conservatories. Nobody will build you an extension at conservatory prices that looks like a conservatory and get you a BC cert for a legit extension.