Owning your own home

I just looked at the EPC list and found someone half a mile away - think they popped around a day or so later and it cost about £40. Probably can't ask them to give you a better score on the basis of 'trust me, I'll do it' though. I got the impression most of them were one person bands given how many of them were just 'bobsEpcCerts@gmail.com' and a mobile number

It’s out of date due to Loft insulation/triple glazing/Lot20 compliant heating being fitted along with a change of rules, I want that better rating to help sell it.

@duncs didn’t realise it was that cheap! i’ll just find somebody local.

without doxxing myself (and i will remove photos in a few weeks), my new home has a garage. While this is great news in itself, it isn't flawless:

1. The roof is asbestos
   
2. When it rains very hard water comes in from the back due to shit guttering
   
3. When it rains very hard water also comes in through the roof due to asbestos not actually being 100% water impenetratable (sp?) and I think this is made worse due to the vast amount of undisturbed moss on top of the roof which seems to soak up and hold water
   
4. There is no electricity and thus no lighting or ways to charge di2 / tools etc.
   
   

Therefore, I want to get some people in to replace the roof and then get electricity wired over from my house (it is only next door - not impossible). Question is, given it is sheets of asbestos across the neighbouring garages, is it actually possible for someone to replace only my section of roof? I have no idea who owns the other 5 or 6 garages, so managing to orchestrate a mass re-roofing will be a nightmare.... photos of said garage below - welcome any input whatsoever

Seem to remember you can get an EPC just by filling in a questionnaire online… might be wrong though

In before the mass of responses to the garage...

Anyone got a eufy discount code?

Anyone got a eufy discount code?

They've got some good discounts on their own site at the moment. I just got one of their 2k doorbells + homehub with £70 off

New rules so no not possible.

There's loads in the app (just a sample below) depending on what you're looking for. Although those prices are often mirrored on Amazon and stuff does get discounted pretty often (on their website and Amazon) so worth a look at camelcamelcamel if it's something specific and you're not in a rush

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Cheers

I think that type of building is "concrete sectional" if you need a key word. Has it been tested to establish it is asbestos and not regular fibre cement roofing?

It strikes me you have 3 options: 1) full Monty, 2) replace your panels and the neighbor(s) that share them, 3) spot repair.

My 2p is that it's worth the effort of identifying the other owners and trying to replace the whole roof. It strikes me as exactly the sort of thing where from 2yrs down the line until eternity you'll regularly bore your wife and kids about how; "I should have done it properly when we first moved in".

I may be naive but from a builders POV this strikes me as a lovely job. Reasonable size. Low effort. Easy access, not that visible/high ATD not required, rip off the old roof, chuck a new cement or corrugated iron one on. Maybe you could get fancy with new joists and a fiberglass roof. But even that's quick and easy. [edit: the Internet says this is a bad idea]

In my school those asbestos panels were in sections like regular corrugated iron, so it might just be garage 2 or 2 & 3 with the same sheet. But idk if there are issues with matching to new fibre cement panels. Worth exploring, but not certain.

If you have no luck there are roof sealing products - basically sticky gunk with fibers. You paint it on and it cures. So read the instructions, but probably cleaning followed by painting the whole area would make it water tight again. You could spot treat the holes underneath I guess, which would also bind any straggling fibers.

Ask @Dammit for his thoughts as he had a similar space.

There are also a lot of companies that specialise in garage roof repairs - they would advertise to me on social media when I'd been typing or talking about it myself.

Because garages that share a roof are not uncommon, they will presumably have worked on or at least come across similar problems before and would be able to tell you how/if it could be done.

My concern would be that any replacement of your roof that doesn't involve your immediate neighbour's roof as well might create another spot where water could get in.

Currently procrastinating and apparently you can get fleece lined anti-condensation corrugated iron panels. So it might be worth exploring various roof options. A mate has something similar and the condensation means you get drips that look like leaks.

Search on pistonheads and singletrack. They love this sort of stuff.

A mate has something similar and the condensation means you get drips that look like leaks.

I think this actually could also be the issue if it isn't fully 'leaking'; condensation is occuring/being accelerated by the water ingress from the crap guttering

My first port of call is to review the guttering situation/clear blockages at my neighbours and then monitor the situation over spring. I have a flat roof above our extension which is pooling water ontop of it (ticking time bomb) so was hoping to get an opinion on the roof of the garage at the same time

The current garage roof doesnt actually seem damaged at all - but I want there to be less leaks/condensation so I can actually store precious bikes in there and get a turbo trainer setup :-) a bonus would therefore be to remove the asbestos

Looking to move in the next month or two and need to sort some movers. Any recommendations for a company to move a 2 bed flat about half a mile down the road in se6?

Also. If I get them to pack, do they just rock up on moving day and blitz the whole thing?

We've used MTC Removals a couple of times (info@mtcremovals.com) for this sort of thing. They charged £85hr (Nov 23) for two blokes (they seem to be exclusively Brazilian!) and a big Luton van with tail lift. As it was a fairly small job (2 bed flat in SE23 into a storage unit then back out 6 months later) I found this to be very economical. Some other fixed price quotes were shocking, well over 1k. They're very responsive on comms, turned up on time every time and do as instructed without complaints!

Also. If I get them to pack, do they just rock up on moving day and blitz the whole thing?

The company I used (these https://www.storkremovals.co.uk/ but I think they're north london) came the day before to do the packing. Would strongly recommend a packing service for ease (although does mean that you may not sort stuff out pre-moving and you end up bringing loads of junk to your new place).

Would recommend my old downstairs neighbour's company: https://www.bigredremovals.com/

Just moved a three bed flat 2 miles down the road (SW15 to SW19) for a good price. Really nice crew.

I used Roberts and Denny's for moving house a few months ago following a recommendation on this thread.

They pack, move, unpack. I would 100% recommend them. The cost of removers is about the only part of moving house that actually constitutes any form of value for money in my experience.

I'm doing my kitchen and I've just got the Howdens quote back - it's 22K for a kitchen priced up at about 9K on DIY Kitchens. I expected it to be higher, but I'm actually a bit shocked at the discrepancy.

It's so much higher and unreasonable that I suspect that any potential relationship with them might have been ruined but I'd still rather go with them if possible (not at that price obviously) as they're a mile up the road and easier to fix any issues come installation. Has anyone managed to use their (Howden's) price match against DIY Kitchens or (alternatively) somewhere like IKEA.

I recently fitted some diy kitchens stuff and the quality was great. I was late inspecting them for damage and found a tiny mark on one door that tbh i could have lived with but they replaced anyway very quickly with little hassle.

Did you go to Howdens direct or through a trades person? A tradey will get an instant 60% + plus any current promotions.

We went directly, but had to give our builders account to get a price so this kind of discount presumably has been applied.

Our builders aren't even currently aware where the units are coming from - it's wild to me that they'd get any money from the situation, it'd be like an unexpected £1000's bonus coming in from the job.

Does the discount mean that Howdens will charge my builders 40% of 22k = c8.5K?

FWIW our howdens quote was pretty high, to the point that the guy who was down to fit it said he could make one from scratch for the same or less. We went that route, which definitely helped when it came to some weird stuff in the shape of the room etc. Howdens did go on the hard sell with some discounts at one point but they waited far too long and we were well on our way with the custom kitchen

We're still going through this at the moment - just awaiting the Howdens quote.

What's putting me off DIY Kitchens slightly is that we'd want it custom painted to match a colour that Howdens do as (sort of) standard, which is going to add an extra layer of complexity if we want to return or add anything.

We also want a freestanding island on chunky legs (like below) which is possible with Howdens but not DIY.

But once we see the price discrepancy that might tip it back to DIY Kitchens, the quality seems pretty widely regarded as superior to Howdens.

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We're still going through this at the moment - just awaiting the Howdens quote.

I know why they do it, but it's so annoying the faff it takes to get a price out of them.

We have something similar - there's a couple of things on our Howdens kitchen that I can't replicate on the DIY kitchens planner.

If they don't scupper the sale by being weird about their price and I try to stick with Howdens I'm thinking of making a design at DIY that's a bit simpler than our Howdens one, without the features I can't replicate.

Then I can get Howdens to design that exact kitchen and get a decent price on it. Then upgrade small bits from the price matched one back to what I wanted in the first place.

However, this level of faff is a real turn off. As I'm typing I'm not sure why I'm sounding so committed to helping Howdens make a sale!