Owning your own home

Can recommend you my heating engineer - should cover hackney.

@sacredhart might know someone who can help you out with that.

Interesting, I wonder how that works legally. I would assume they would need some national change in law or does the lease allow for changes like that?

With H&F they occasionally forget that I'm a leaseholder and a contractor tries to strong arm entry to the property under some bogus rights they don't have. I'll be sharpening the pitchfork if they start down this route with me over gas safety certs.

I'd query what right they have in law to impose that requirement.

Alright kiddos. I'm about to rejig my kitchen, and as we've got a concrete ceiling, it's going to be a pain in the bum chasing in all the electrical cables. Is it a good idea to look at a suspended ceiling instead?

How high is the ceiling now? Can you afford to lose the headroom?

I was speaking to my dad who loves an argument even more than me about this last night and he said the same. I argued that it's not worth my time, but he highlighted if they decide to do the same for electrical safety certificates then it's not £50 it's £250, so I'm going to investigate.

Depending on the aesthetic you’re going for, you could do galv conduit and surface mount spots like these.

https://www.illumination.co.uk/lucide-delto-spot-09915-05-31.html?___store=illumination_co_uk&refSrc=38684&nosto=nosto-page-product1#

Just don’t, for the love of god, do a spider of loopy black cables and low power filament light bulbs.

Electrical certification is a more complex subject. Most existing installations don't pass current standards but are not dangerous. If you wanted to increase GDP you could insist that all installations need to meet current standards, then you would probably need to train 1 in 5 of the population to be electricians!

It's a 2m ceiling - not super high, but it's a small kitchen so it feels higher. We're only considering dropping it by around 6cm so I think we can afford to lose the headroom. Just a bit worried if there are any gotchas with it.

I do love that industrial look, but we're going for a bit of a cottagey look in our kitchen so I don't think it'd be appropriate. Mostly I think the value is in not having to chase cables into concrete ceilings / walls but I've never really known any dropped ceilings to look anything other than super modern. Basically I want our lights to be traditional pendants over key areas with under cabinet lighting for the worktops. Can dropped ceilings look anything other than modern? I've only ever seen them used to recess spots.

Rogue, but for that cottagey look put in some 'faux' beams and run the cables through the beams?!

Just had a look at the documents regarding this and it seems that the lease allows them to change the rules and regulations and the requirement is very clearly listed in the rules and regulations. So it looks like you need to do it.

I wouldn't worry too much about the electrical stuff coming next though.

Most existing installations don't pass current standards but are not dangerous.

I thought that was the same with gas, in that you get a bunch of safety warnings on an existing install that don't need remedying but the owner should be aware of.

Conduit hidden above wall cabs / behind conicing with a short run of flex from the wall to a hook? I reckon that’d look fine with pendants, just make sure it’s nice and neat and the flex runs are straight / square to the wall.

Pendants with a 2m ceiling doesn't sound a great idea if anyone over six foot is ever in the kitchen.

Good call, you can get some really nice fabric flex in interesting colours too, which might be a nice pop of colour. I'll explore this.

Ha yes, sorry, it's 2.5m. Brain off moment.

Old school tech, I love it. We're not quite that cottagey (it's a 1930s art deco block) but if I ever get myself out to the country, that's definitely happening.

Brain quite thoroughly fried by 'Brexit' moment.

Fixed. :)

It's complicated. I don't know enough about the gas safety cert requirements to make a proper comparison.

It seems to me from the electrical side that a condition report is very different from a gas safety cert and an electrician is only required to remedy very few dangerous faults or shut the system down if the owner refuses to have the fault rectified immediately.

2.5m? You’ve loads of room then.
Cross batten at 400 centres and then plasterboard and skim, takes out about 40mm of your available 2500.
Battening creates a nice void for cables to be safely run in.

Moving day tomorrow.

As with the last two times we've moved, paying people to pack for you is the best money I've spent on the whole house thing.

Good luck. Look forward to obligatory key shot.