Keeping your home warm / heating / energy crisis / insulation etc

best way to block draughts from under skirting?

I'd recommend a good pair of tights.

Are things like this always DIY jobs as cost prohibitive as labour intensive? My living room is over an internal garage and downstairs hall and feels like it would benefit from the floor insulating and/ or a insulated garage door and improving the insulation between garage and living spaces

Which Stevenson screen do you have?

I've just bought a cheap Chinese 'solar radiation shield' from Aliexpress to house my heat pump's external temp sensor and mitigate solar gain, but it cost £5 and likely of dubious quality...

it's not technically complicated to do, IMO. It just takes time and can be messy - so ideal for DIY. Made harder if you have to lift your floor to get underneath.

my brother has bought a place, 1960s maisonette. Cavity wall, with insulation. Floor and attic with minimal insulation but they will improve that.

The place has electric storage heaters and no gas boiler or pipes for rads. Is an air to air the best bet for them? Anyone here have experience with that sort of set up?

The biggest issue will likely be where it’s sited, needs easy access for servicing/not at height, not near a neighbours window due to noise and not fall foul of planning/conservation/lease conditions.
Bit easier if they are on the ground floor.

don't think access will be a problem. Less maisonette than semi-detached now that I see it!

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Sorted then, they usually come under permitted development and there’s plenty of distance to the neighbouring property.

Do you mean ducted air-to-air or a unit in each room? An unusual choice (in the UK) either way.

And they're excluded from the Boiler Upgrade Scheme.

ducted or piped, yeah. It seems like a less expensive option that running plumbing and buying new rads when you can get a new A2A system for £2k including the units within the room

plus added benefit of providing cooling in the summer if need be

Air to air systems which can provide domestic hot water ought to be included under the BUS grant, but currently aren't, and aren't readily available in the UK in the first place.

I'd check their eligibility for the 'HUG2' grant first; if they're in a qualifying postcode then it's almost a given that they'd be able to claim for a totally free of charge A2W ASHP system without being means tested: https://www.gov.uk/apply-home-upgrade-grant

Failing that, I'd get a quote from a big energy provider for a A2W system, which will include all plumbing and rads. The total installed cost, after BUS grant, may be similar to an A2A heating system, with the bonus of ending up with a nice modern unvented hot water cylinder and cheap heat pump generated hot water.

Well you having to do everything from scratch, does the street have gas?

You'd need to weight up the costs and how much he has to spend.

It's one of these:
https://amzn.eu/d/1hwjXYn

Quality is decent as you'd expect for a German company and it works well, although isn't totally oblivious to direct hot sun (I think you'd need a much bigger one for that).

I got it from Amazon Warehouse which looks like it's still an option and was a lot cheaper.

Thanks!

My Aliexpress one has just arrived, so will experiment with it first.

I put that cling film on the windows, it looks as bad as expected. Cannabis farm vibes.

£12.99 for a new British army thermal undershirt https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/166948238124?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=9ETv2vXrRiu&sssrc=2047675&ssuid=0PDdBtKRSKe&var=466633114011&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

Anyone got a Hive booster knocking around that they don’t need? My boiler keeps dropping off the network despite it being mostly fine for the last couple of years. Looks like Hive don’t sell them anymore and I’m not interested in a smart plug.

Surprised. Is it the one that you tighten up with a hairdryer? Double-sided tape all around? Should be not exactly invisible, but inobtrusive.

Have a HIC question and hoping this knowledgeable crowed will be more help then HIVE support. Basically my thermostat box has died despite all the reassurance that this doesn't happen it has. The Hub and reciever all seem to work, as I have a green light on the reciever. Just no thermostat.

Can I just but a new one or do I need the whole shebang hub, reciever ,thermostat? The HIVE website seems to suggest I can but a new thermostat, but then it comes with a new reciever, which then needs to be installed.

I can kind of see mine but it definitely doesn’t draw the eye. But maybe I just don’t care enough

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I think it's more our windows are brown timber so it's quite visible.

Yeah it's the edges, ugly as sin, like mine.

Yeah to be fair I could trim them, I put them up in a hurry just to see if it would
Be worth spending some more time on. There are even worse bits 😅

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Mine doesn't look much better and I really tried to make it look good. Wouldn't waste further of your time!

Not sure it does anything for heat loss, but does help stop condensation

Can’t answer your question but we have an unused hive thermostat here which was a warranty replacement but never got fitted