Owning your own home

Cheers, It'll be mentioned in the tender drawings

I don’t even know what that is, should I?

Fixed price mortgage expires in March... Not looking forward to this. Guess I'm going to ride the variable for a chunk of the year to see if things improve.

I think that maybe possibly might be sensible.

This time last year a 5 year fixed was ~1% above base rate, they’re now ~4% above because lenders are building in the prediction of the base rate rising. So if you fix now you’re paying as if the base rate is already 5%, which it might not get to.

Or it might.

Or not.

But giving banks 3-4 times the margin they were happy with a minute ago feels daft. It’ll settle. Right?

HSBC have already signalled that rates will come down again from next week. Not a lot but better than going in the other direction.

The chance there will be another fuckup between now and march is high though.

There you go. Lenders need to lend and it’s a competitive market, HSBC will drop 0.25% and see a rise in applications, then someone else will want a piece of that and undercut them and on it goes. We’ll all be eating foie gras again by Christmas.

Hot water tank - at mains pressure. So you can run more than one shower at once without the pressure dropping off a cliff.

Obvs. requires good mains pressure! Or you can go nuts and have a non pressurised tank and a driver pump. This is the best, but it's complex and requires loads of floorspace as you need a hot water tank and a feed tank for the tank....

Unvented cylinder was a revelation here. We had loft tank and electric shower when we moved. There was also a pump by the old HW tank to push water up to the loft shower (which we never used, as it was fucked). Getting unvented, throwing in a thermostatic mixer and rainfall shower over the bath gave me more pleasure that it had any right to. Downside was that the loft shower was SO fucked, that even though it wasn't being used, the shitty old mixer bar basically exploded from the new, higher pressure overnight. I then had to very quickly learn where the water shut off was, far too early in the morning, in my pants. Turns out there isn't one in the house so had to faff around with the main on on the pavement out front.

Lenders need to lend and it’s a competitive market

I saw an interview a couple of days ago where one of the banks was saying that at the moment no-one wants to be that lowest priced deal that everyone goes for to limit exposure.

People round us have electric showers in the loft because there's not enough water pressure, but they're shit and are currently a very expensive way to have a shower with the cost of electric.

A combi on its own is unlikely to give you good enough pressure, but you can add a tank to a combi system and if that doesn't work add a pump. Basically what @Howard said, that's what we had at our old place and I reckon it'll work.

But talk to a good plumber, they can measure your pressure (but we both know it will be crap at the top of the house) and advise on the best solution.

depends on how often you're using it, a power shower is more expensive to run so you wouldn't want one to be used daily but it's significantly easier to install than getting an unvented cylinder installed.

Are the tanks heated with an immersion or just use the combi and store it? Anyone got a link to the type of thing?

Turns out there isn't one in the house so had to faff around with the main on on the pavement out front.

We had this once, when the hose to the washing machine burst.

The outside stop cock was, of course, seized pretty badly too. And full of spiders.

Turns out that the stop cock was on the inflow by the boiler, and was the first thing that I had looked at.

But didn't turn it off, because it had a yellow handle.

Its cheaper to heat it with a boiler than electric.

You can find tracker rates with no ERCs at less than your lender variable rate typically, so worth switching so you’re waiting at a lower variable rate.

Both. You decide which in real time. Our boiler does a scheduled heat every evening but we could do it with the immersion coil if we wanted to burn money.

Look up megaflow.

Being duel fuel They are ideal for storing solar energy.

Yeah I know but I'm trying to reduce gas use. Still interested in the tank solution however!

That sounds very interesting, thanks.

Yeah. I want a solar kit for ours. Probably the best bang for buck you can get with solar.

Cheers. I’ve heard many different stories about pumps and combis. I’ll look into a tank, the pressure off the mains is decent.

I want to put an electric shower in one of the loft conversion bathrooms to be independent of the combi. Are the the 10+ kW ones any good? Going from one bathroom to three and dont want a huge combi or additional cylinder ideally.

There are two types of electric shower:

1. A heater... the electric takes the existing water pressure and heats the water.
   
2. A pump... the electric pumps the water to add pressure.
   
   

It's going to depend on your water setup already... if you have a tank and hot water storage in the loft already, then you probably are going to need the pump. But... it sounds like you do not have a tank as you have a combi boiler downstairs... and if you add a pump to the combi then you're going to be pulling water faster than you can heat it. Adding the first of these no longer makes sense... because you've got hot water but probably don't have water pressure (if you're sending water up to the loft and no tanks were up there).

To me... this doesn't sound like a cheap shower fixes it. It sounds like you're either investigating both pump and heater (more expensive to install and more expensive to run and more fragile as set ups go) or you're investigating water storage tanks in the loft to give you higher pressure and then a cheap heating shower to turn the water stored at that level into something you'd want to shower in.

For my money... a storage tank as high as possible with the mains cold water would be the way to go, with a power shower (heater) next to it. It's not going to feel like a fancy hotel (you typically want a negative head 3 bar pump for that)... but it will be warm, weak/adequate pressure, and will be good for 2-3 showers per day and the cost is reasonable.

If you were going for "give me hotel dream shower"... then 2 large water storage one for hot and one cold, the hot would be something like a Worcester GreenStore so it works with your boiler... then a twin negative head 3 bar pump to feed the shower. Your water would be kept hot giving an instant high pressure heated shower... but ugh, the space required and the cost is prohibitive.

Realise you're probably spending a fair amount to achieve a meh experience... so ask yourself how much you want the bathroom in the conversion and make sure whomever is doing your conversion has worked closely with a plumber to ensure it works.

But the relative steadying of the markets is because they have factored in a BoE rate rise in Nov which is likely to be a significant one. No lender wants to be exposed below the rate, so they aren't going to drop now.
Then we have the OBR forecast for how we (can't) pay for the tax cuts and the shitshow all starts again. It's impossible to call, but I don't think it's going to settle for a while and still Truss/Kwarteng opportunity to cause a Black Wednesday type event.

And I thought I retained a lot of niche knowledge

Well that's a turn up for the books. The builder's plumber has finally come back with his quote for a new combi system, and it's more than a heat pump system. Makes the jump to renewable a much nicer prospect.

Re. the chat above. I think ASHP tanks are mains pressure, so I should have 210l of hot water. Shame we'll only have one shower... maybe we need a Fox style onsen

Have you looked at this?

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/check-if-you-may-be-eligible-for-the-boiler-upgrade-scheme-from-april-2022

It’s not as generous as the RHI it replaced but could still be £000s of free money.