Owning your own home

That's a fairly Victorian attitude.
You need 2 people to do it safely, and even then it's still high risk.
You need to factor in their travel to your place, no matter how small - they didn't teleport to your house.
Kit and insurance, regardless of whether they have it or not.
How much would you want to get paid to do the same thing? Would you rather pay half the price to someone who's prepared to take more risks to benefit your pocket?
And if they do use ground-based machines, someone's got to pay for that

That's a fairly Victorian attitude.

That's why I get small children to do the work.

Their rubbery bones allow them to fall from greater height. For free. What's not to like?

Excellent

Pretty sure that wouldn't cut it these days.

I had one installed a couple of months ago and no RCD on the ancient CU meant the electrician had to connect it via one of these in the hallway...

Well my electric towel rad I had installed has a timer outside the bathroom which is also a fused spur.
I would check the regs rather than assume anything.

Like anything in the bathroom it needs to be a suitable IP rating for the zone it's in and should be protected by an RCD. It's very often not the case though especially in tiny London bathrooms.

There should be no spur, switched, fused or otherwise installed within zone 2 of a bathroom. (ideally)

an IPX4 rated unswitched FCU on a 30mA RCD is scraping by the regs though. They still frighten me when I see them head height above the bath though.

Mortgage is leaving a fixed term in a few months and need to sort a remortgage out.
Last time it was close to the wire and the valuation on our gaff was lower than we think it should be, but our broker suggested the difference in LTV would not be worth delaying the mortgage as the interest rates were going to jump the following week, so we just went with it.

This year we have a bit more time, but I have no idea how to value our property.
Looking at "similar" houses up for sale in our area, they are about what our mortgage was based on, but they are shitholes requiring tens of thousands spent on them, lack off road parking and don't have a garage (ours is all refurbed in the last 5 years, garage and parking for at least 2 cars)

When you go to Remortgage with current lender, what do they estimate its value at?

we have a lower ground floor where there is damage to the walls from water somehow getting in. we have had this problem for ages and first tried to fix it by getting the steps leading to the upper ground floor re-ashpalted. when we redecorated after that the problem reappeared. we have since had the external wall repainted and tried adding sealant in a suspicious area next to the steps but there is still some dampness in the walls.

i've always avoided the damp survey companies that give out do free surveys because i've been told that they are cowboys that will find lots of "problems" that they can expensively fix but someone told me recently that it's possible to trace where the water is coming from with some sort of camera scan. does anyone know any experience of this? any recommended companies?

Got photos of the exterior / interior?

Painting the external walls seals damp in so it tries to get out via the inside surface.

Materials like concrete are porous and will allow moisture to travel into adjoining surfaces.

Modern plasters trap moisture in brickwork until there's enough to pop the plaster off the wall etc...

Camera scan sounds like hoodoo.

Plenty of surveyors specialise in damp, and have no self interest in selling fixes.

You need to look for an independent PCA damp and timber surveyor.

i think it must be this sort of thing: a thermal imaging survey

eg. https://advanceddamp.co.uk/thermal-imaging-survey/

does that not sound quite reasonable? the damp areas will be colder so you can trace it on the inside and the outside

https://www.themodernhouse.com/sales-list/hassett-road/

£1.125m for a 3 bed in Homerton

F**k me. Insane. Droopy guttering.

It's been like this for ages tho. At least this one's nicely done inside.

For that much money they could have done a good job with the bricks on the rear after it collapsed.

Those square wash basins will be good for collecting soapy skank in the corners.

Idk there must be at least couple hundy in basic birch ply.

*baltic

basic bitch ply

Lulz

‘Kin hell. Late 90s (when i should have bought but spent on booze instead) that would have been around £100k ish…..

In Carlisle it is still £100k!

Probably shouldn't be surprised in London, and that looks like a nice place, but that's insane.