Owning your own home

For £225 you’ll feel pissed when they are at your gaff for 30 minutes

Just paid £85 for 3rd storey flat roof. £225 is hefty.

Bulb is now holding over £600 from me

I'm in exactly the same boat.

So much this!

The window cleaner in Lincoln cleared the gutters for me on our 4 bed for twenty quid.. (it's Lincoln, don't get excited about golf club)

and me, to the tune of nearly 900 quid.

We paid about half that for our regular end of terrace 1930s place.

Amortised over the 7 years where we did naff all, I wouldn't have felt too bad paying what you were quoted, just not every year.

Had another quote for the same price.
Access is tough so I don’t fancy it myself - lots of glazing to fall thru

friendly reminder to check your boiler pressure and bleed rads if needed.

only by chance spotted ours was at 3.4 bar when heating (max should be 3 bar for this one) - and was still about 2.5 bar when cold(ish).

fortunately was just a case of going around the house and letting the air out of a couple of the upstairs culprits - now back down to reading 1.3 bar cold.

Keep an eye on that though. I had pressure issues at one point and went about solving them this way but the issue was the expansion chamber which had failed, eventually the over pressure valve blew and they often don't seal properly after they've blown.

I'm probably breaking some rules by pointing out that you can test an expansion chamber even if it's integrated in the combi. Sometimes people replace them as it's a plumbing job that doesn't involve gas. Not sure that's allowed though. Integrated ones vary but mine cost approx £130 a couple of years ago.

Not sure that's allowed though.

It is. You can even do your own gas work if you are competent. You only need to be registered if you are working on someone else's gas. I wouldn't but it's not illegal.

ah great - will keep an eye out and see if it keeps happening more quickly than expected.

it’s a 6-month old Vaillant, so if it is an issue with parts, then I should be covered by the warranty fortunately

That would be early for a failure like that. I have seen failures on Vaillant within the first year but they are pretty good about warranty repairs.

Thanks for the heads up. I'll have to look and see what the qualifies competence.

Noticed some cracks on a wall that I’m fairly certain weren’t there a couple of weeks ago. They are thin (less than a fingernail wide), but one is very long from skirting to ceiling.

Now this room and an adjoining bathroom have both had an issue with heating which we discovered during the recent cold snap. Basically the radiator in here doesn’t warm up much and the bathroom not at all. Bleeding hasn’t helped so we have a plumber coming over on Tuesday. So I’m wondering if the recent very cold weather and the fact the walls are exteriors mean the plaster has cracked? Hoping it’s that and nothing structural obviously, but would appreciate any thoughts.

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ps. Room is in need of decorating, but as it’s not used much at the moment it’s going to happen in the spring

Personally I would say some who is competent is someone who has done the ACS and has the relevant qualifications but some of the folk doing it now dont give a fuck which is pretty insane, but you'll struggle to get someone else to sign off on your work as they then take the risk if something goes wrong.

I have the opposite problem. Pressure slowly dropping from 1.6ish to 0.4 over the course of a week. No obvious leaks. Signed up to a 6 month valiant service plan and engineer replaced a few bits including pressure release valve which I'm fairly sure wasn't sealing correctly as Airhead mentioned, but problem persists. Engineer coming out again next week but it's there any way I can check if the problem is in my pipes?

could try asking the Vaillant person if it’s worth adding something like Fernox F4 leak-stopping-juice and hoping that solves it?

Good one, hadn't heard of this stuff.

less than a fingernail wide

Cracks you can fit a fingernail in - no problem

Cracks you can fit a finger in - yes problem

Thanks. Won’t stress it

I used this the other day as I was getting a really similar slow leak. Just popped in like 200ml into the magnet filter (cleaned it out while I was at it).

Seems to have fixed it - need to add some inhibitor back in at some point this week as I must have lost a while systems worth during another… problem.

Had my boiler serviced recently and the engineer passed everything with flying colours, even going on to say that he rarely sees boilers in better condition.

Fast forward to the next day and I finally turn the central heating on. Grinding sort of sound coming from the boiler, seems to happen at some point during the heating cycle. I'm not clued up on boilers but thought I'd open it up to have a peek.

There's some metal in the casing that probably shouldn't be there. Can anyone help me identify what it could be? Possibly nothing to worry about but I've not used this boiler engineer before so not sure I 100% trust he's done his job.

It's a Potterton Gold combi I think.

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Looks like ‘sprue’ excess solder from the joint above

Ah I see, thanks @Mr_Smyth. I was imagining something had for some reason sheared off. At least it shouldn't be anything to worry about then.

I'll live with it for the winter, it's not terrible, but equally not going back to the same person for its next service.