Owning your own home

Sorry bad day yesterday. Amazing place Will you clean the stone? Will look incredible if so.

Oh that might be handy, if they’re easy enough to dig out?

@skinny no need to apologise man. Not sure about cleaning it tbh! I'd thought about it, but going down the preservation rabbithole it's advised to leave it. A protective layer sort of thing. I reckon we'll do a bit more reading

at least pressure wash the stairs surely

As someone who lives in a rental property with these windows and faces a constant battle with mould/rotting window frames, get rid if you can!

Very aesthetically pleasing but a bloody nightmare to maintain.

Sounds like a problem with the house not necessarily the windows

London rental market, innit.

Reminds me of a random discussion I had about those awful plastic things inside double panes that try to make the windows look old.
I said they where terrible, and got the reply that it was way easier to clean than the real thing.

No way I would change those windows, they are awesome.

To be fair, I’m sure it’s fine if you can afford to heat the house properly or do the work to stop it happening. But, as I said, London rental market.

Oh yeah they’re a bit slimy, so we’ll do those but the soot marks on the walls will probably be left alone.

@returnofthestaff i reckon we’ll try and work with them for a bit. Ask me again in a couple of years though!

Is now a really really bad time to buy a new house (and selling our current)?

It’s in our area, which id given up being to stay in. It’s a decent bit more (+20%?) than our current place but a lot more sqm, needs a kitchen and looks like the last owners died. Mortgage might end this dream as my wife isn’t back up to full hours since having our twins last year.

Yes or no.
All down to circumstances really. If you can afford it with the mortgages available and you're planning on being there a while then go for it.

I figured as much. It could be a long long term house, potential for extension and loft doing. The condition it’s in, just making it nice would maybe yield a return. It’s not awful but dated and no kitchen units will put some off.

My worry is a significant slide in house prices and then deciding we want to move to Ireland in a 2 or 3 years

If prices slide your current place will slide too, maybe more than the new place, maybe less, who knows.

I’ve only ever moved in recessions / slow times because it’s much easier and calmer. Can’t be arsed battling with a dozen others over an average house, only 1 viewing, sealed bids etc.

no kitchen units

Watch this. Most lenders will not lend unless there’s at least a sink. Get a mortgage advisor who knows what they’re doing. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/4507547/can-you-mortgage-a-house-without-a-kitchen

My worry is a significant slide in house prices and then deciding we want to move to Ireland in a 2 or 3 years

This is the key point isn't it?

North or South? If the South then there's a strong chance of property prices not tracking England.

Obviously I'm not aware of the full financial picture, but I would say if moving is a realistic and likely event then I wouldn't do it.

Of course if you if you buy it, then by the time you've completed, moved in, bought a sink 2yrs will have already passed.

@Hefty - thank you for this, yes it has a sink just nothing else so would need to get some basic stuff in, ikea freestanding or something ahead of knocking some walls and getting the obligatory 40k jobby.

@hugo7 south, Galway my preference, might have to be nearer Dublin so Kildare or wicklow. A wait of a couple years could be good for the market over there. We were pretty set on moving at the start of the year, not so sure now. But you are right its more important that ‘market timing’ here.

I know this is a mildly contentious issue (boilers/plumbing) so I apologise for bringing this back up, but given that I think a couple of people on here have experience, I'm just looking for some advice.

My boiler had a water leak, water was dripping out at the bottom, but other than that it worked perfectly fine. After a few weeks, the water pressure would drop enough that were was an error and I'd open the valves to refill the pressure and it would resume working fine.

I called out a heating engineer and they diagnosed a leaking diverter. They ordered the part, came back to fit it and also serviced the boiler because it had been a number of years since it had been serviced.

Since they fixed it, it now struggles to maintain constant hot water and hot water pressure out of the taps has dropped.

This is manifesting itself as:

• If I turn on the hot tap on the bath and the shower, whichever one I turn on 2nd gets barely any flow. This isn't exactly a normal use case I acknowledge but I sometimes do this for 20-30 seconds when turning the bath on for my son's bath to let the bath tap get up to temp and to rinse off any residue/dust/hair in the bath before I lower the plug. I used to be able to do this fine and now I can't.

• Overall hot water pressure seems lower although this is subjective, I can't be sure.

• The boiler can't maintain a constant flow of hot water. After a minute or two the water goes warm and stays there for about 30 seconds then goes hot again.

• Once or twice, when I've been in the kitchen I've seen 1p1 error flash up on the boiler then disappear, but not in correlation with the above issues. A quick google shows "insufficient circulation" as the description of the 1p1 error.

I messaged him after a couple of days, I don't have hot showers so I didn't notice it and it took a couple of days for my wife to bring it up. He messaged me back to say "it's most likely a coincidence, if anything it should work better than ever", but he did say he could come round and have a look. Since then he's not replied to nail him down on when he's coming round and he didn't answer when I called him.

I'm just trying to work out whether it is a coincidence, in which case I'll just call someone else who will come fix this problem and not ignore me, or whether they are related and I should chase this guy up.

I understand that this could be a pre-existing issue and that by fixing the diverter it caused this issue to surface, I'm not looking for a free ride here, just seems incredible coincidence.

Look how long that post is. Maybe I was Jeez all along.

Jeez

Lol, had forgotten about that guy.

To your first post I am in no way an expert but it sounds a little like an issue we had with our combi several years ago. Diverter had gone (radiators heating up when showers on) and was replaced.

Led to crappy hot water pressure which was fixed by a different plumber discovering and replacing a part that had a very small orifice (fnar), can’t remember whether it was the replaced diverter or not.

Are all the valves fully open below the boiler?

It looks and feels like they are.

Lol, had forgotten about that guy.

How can anyone forget.

Is the main stop cock fully open? Circulation issue could be the pump, but its hard to actually figure it out without seeing it.

Ive had it before where the valve has broke and its been half open on the boiler but the lever was open as if it was fine

Yeah it is.

From what you've said so far, it's sounding likely that it's not directly caused by the engineer that did the last fix so it's not necessary to chase him up specifically.

Yeah sometimes one thing leads onto another and its a total coincidence, how old is the boiler?