Its been a while.... things have been progressing very slowly, and costs have been escalating to a point where we've had to scale back on the ambition somewhat! Oh, and christmas... and skiing.... and hobbies... :cP
We've (obviously!) had a little disagreement with our structural engineer regarding the supporting "non-supporting" wall, however this has been resolved with the installation of an RSJ - its only taken 2 months...! I should explain how this has happend.... On originally viewing the house, there were some fairly substantial cracks on some of the internal walls, however the previous owners had commissioned a structural survery showing that these walls were non-supporting, and the cracks were therefore superficial. We had to commission another report on buying the house, and asked about removing one of the walls completely. We were told it was OK, so thats what we did.... Only to find a supporting beam on top of the removed wall.... Doh! I think it was a fairly easy mistake for the engineer to make, and he has put it right, but it has set us back somewhat....
The biggest problem is that this has held up any work on the ground floor - such as plastering, laying the floor, unpacking, etc.... so we've effectively been living out of boxes in what will be the study! We're hoping a plasterer can start next week, which will mean we're finally able to start making the house ours! Effectively we've been living in a building site since August.
The first floor bathroom has also had a few problems with wrong parts being delivered again and again! I think its driven the plumber mad...! However the room fabric is now complete, and we just need the shower tray to be laid, bath levelled, sink installed, room plastered, tiled, electrics installed, and then the shower fitted...! Not much huh? We're also going to try to self-install a glass brick shower screen - for which the glass bricks arrived this morning.
So maybe - just maybe - there is light at the end of the tunnel.
With regards to the environmentally friendly stuff... well...
Using sheeps wool seems to have gone out the window for the moment, and we've resorted to using recycled glass fibre wool instead (at only £6 for 2 large rools of it from B&Q it would have been silly not to, particularly with our increasinly tight budget) , but we have fairly effectively insulated the loft space. We've also floored it using insulated floorboards from B&Q, so hopefully we've effectively added another 200mm on top of the 150-200mm that was already there. We now need to figure out the best way of insulating the eves.
The plan for a solar collector system has also had to be put on hold, but we have had a 210l solar twin coil cylinder installed! This has been heavily subsidised by the plumbing company due to the number of errors they made in supplying one that would fit where we were originally installing it. Its now installed in the bathroom which is not ideal - it does take up a fair bit of space, and required a redesign. However we got a lot more for our money than we would ever have expected!
I'm going to come back to the solar collector thing in a later topic - there is so much conflicting information and belief out there!
So why am I disillusioned? Well... It seems that to save money, and to try to be as environmentally conscious as possible, you've got to have money to spend on such things - They're not cheap! They're not particularly well subsidised either - except perhaps - currently - basic rolled fibre insulation (and only because the energy companies have been forced to subsidise it!). Thats all very well for insulating your loft, but what about walls, eves, floors, etc?
Insulation is of course the most cost effective thing you can do to save money, and is really a precursor to installing such things as solar, heat source, etc. Perhaps the companies who provide solar or ground source should be providing free complete insulation as standard - then they could start to justify their hugely inflated prices
I'm also disillusioned by the disinformation, and the way well known companies try to exploit their potential customers. Maybe thats just to be expected of door-to-door sales though?
However its not something I'm going to give up on! I just need money...!
Wednesday, 25 November 2009
Monday, 31 August 2009
We're in!
We're in! Finally moved into our house, however we are kind of living in a building site! Not a lot has really changed, as we've been waiting on the trades to start on the bathroom, however we have managed to remodel the ground floor by removing one non-loadbearing* wall, and putting a door in another.
We have had our quote back from the local underfloor heating company - I'll come to that in a later post, however whats interesting is that their quote to install underfloor heating, ground source (or air source) heat system, all the associated gubbins, and solar panels comes to less than the first undiscounted quote from the "specialist" solar heating company / rip off merchants for solar panels alone!
Living in the house does make you look at things differently. For example, our upstairs shower-room is too small to swing a cat in - unfortunately with our hot water switched off, its the only room we can wash in as it has an electric shower! We'll be remodelling this room as soon as we have our proper bathroom....
We did plan on insulating under the floorboards, however it never occured to me that they would be tongue and groove floorboards, and therefore next to impossible to get up! I'm not quite sure how to deal with that now..! :c(
The other thing I've found interesting is quite how windy it is here! We are on an exposed west-facing hill, with not a lot between us and Dartmoor, so it makes sense being that the prevailing wind direction is westerly. I can't help wondering how effective a wind turbine placed at the bottom of the garden would be.....
I'll eventually post some pics of the house and location, and will try to break down each of these at a later date!
(* this non-loadbearing wall in fact is.... despite what the structural engineers report said.... We now have an unsupported section of first floor, which is being held together by the pressure of the surrounding beams! Its quite safe in the short term, but we'll now have to get an RSJ put in following the line of the now ex-wall! I think I need to have a word with the structural engineer, cos sure as hell we're not paying for it!!!!)
Monday, 10 August 2009
Busy Busy Busy!
Its been a busy week!
Now we have the keys to the house, we need to get as much of the heavy work done as possible before we move in on the 20th August.
Whilst I do want this house to be as energy efficient as possible, there are a few more fundamental changes we want to make to the house. Firstly, we are installing a bathroom and velux window into unused "eves storage" (what was in effect a large unused room + airing cupboard and bedroom cupboards) on the first floor between the 2 main bedrooms, and secondly we are removing a non supporting wall dividing the sitting room / dining room on the ground floor, and installing a door between the sitting room and the 3rd bedroom (which is becoming the study).
We have a builder carrying out the building work, but we have me doing the clearance and demolition!! Fun!!! We've got an electrician on board too, and I need to find myself a plasterer.
However we are still waiting on a quote from our plumber, which is fairly fundamental to a bathroom build!!!! The delay has been caused by our interest in alternative energy and our need to replace our hot water cylinder... The plumber has a mate who installs solar / ground source, and because I want to know about it, he will be bringing the guy round on Wednesday to have a look. Whilst we need to get the bathroom started ASAP (and almost sod the green stuff!) to be fair, it would be pointless getting a quote for one thing (single coil cylinder) when I in fact ultimately want another (twin coil cylinder to take an alternative heat source).... so hopefully we'll know by Wednesday how much this will cost us!!!
Funnily enough, whilst driving to the house on a day off last week, I saw a renewable energy company building on the outskirts of the town! They turn out to be one of the largest suppliers of ground sorce heating in the country...! So I dropped in to see them, and had a very informative chat with a lovely lass called Jo about ground and air source heat pumps and solar energy! We are getting a quote, which I'll cover all this in another blog later, however on the solar question she suggested you'd look to pay around £3500 for a solar system, and it will NOT give you the moon on a stick, but will complement any other systems you do have. So that goes to show the door-to-door double glazing approach aimed at old folk truly IS a rip-off!!!
The Building Control Officer is coming out on Wednesday to check the new velux window, and the plans for the new bathroom and any of the other planned works (thank god the non-supporting walls aren't covered!!!!). I'm kind of dreading this - whilst I have been told they're very helpful people, I've also been warned that they WILL pick up on the tinyest, most irrelevant and most insignificant things. As much as I want to do this on the cheap though, I also want to do it right. I have a worry about some of the roof members that had small sections taken out of them but hopefully the replacement support is OK.
I'll update on this, the alternative heating sources, and the potential insulation plans later...
Now we have the keys to the house, we need to get as much of the heavy work done as possible before we move in on the 20th August.
Whilst I do want this house to be as energy efficient as possible, there are a few more fundamental changes we want to make to the house. Firstly, we are installing a bathroom and velux window into unused "eves storage" (what was in effect a large unused room + airing cupboard and bedroom cupboards) on the first floor between the 2 main bedrooms, and secondly we are removing a non supporting wall dividing the sitting room / dining room on the ground floor, and installing a door between the sitting room and the 3rd bedroom (which is becoming the study).
We have a builder carrying out the building work, but we have me doing the clearance and demolition!! Fun!!! We've got an electrician on board too, and I need to find myself a plasterer.
However we are still waiting on a quote from our plumber, which is fairly fundamental to a bathroom build!!!! The delay has been caused by our interest in alternative energy and our need to replace our hot water cylinder... The plumber has a mate who installs solar / ground source, and because I want to know about it, he will be bringing the guy round on Wednesday to have a look. Whilst we need to get the bathroom started ASAP (and almost sod the green stuff!) to be fair, it would be pointless getting a quote for one thing (single coil cylinder) when I in fact ultimately want another (twin coil cylinder to take an alternative heat source).... so hopefully we'll know by Wednesday how much this will cost us!!!
Funnily enough, whilst driving to the house on a day off last week, I saw a renewable energy company building on the outskirts of the town! They turn out to be one of the largest suppliers of ground sorce heating in the country...! So I dropped in to see them, and had a very informative chat with a lovely lass called Jo about ground and air source heat pumps and solar energy! We are getting a quote, which I'll cover all this in another blog later, however on the solar question she suggested you'd look to pay around £3500 for a solar system, and it will NOT give you the moon on a stick, but will complement any other systems you do have. So that goes to show the door-to-door double glazing approach aimed at old folk truly IS a rip-off!!!
The Building Control Officer is coming out on Wednesday to check the new velux window, and the plans for the new bathroom and any of the other planned works (thank god the non-supporting walls aren't covered!!!!). I'm kind of dreading this - whilst I have been told they're very helpful people, I've also been warned that they WILL pick up on the tinyest, most irrelevant and most insignificant things. As much as I want to do this on the cheap though, I also want to do it right. I have a worry about some of the roof members that had small sections taken out of them but hopefully the replacement support is OK.
I'll update on this, the alternative heating sources, and the potential insulation plans later...
Monday, 3 August 2009
The Solar System
Todays post wasn't going to be about solar panels or evacuated tube solar collectors or anything as complicated, but... well...
A leaflet came through the door a few weeks ago advertising solar heating. I know its not a cheap option, and there are other much more cost effective things we can do to the house first, but it is something I am very curious about, along with Solar PV and Wind. However I have absolutely no concept of how much it would likely cost, so this seemed like the ideal opportunity to find out! The fact that the new house is still empty whilst we have some work done prior to moving in made it an ideal time to contact them - particularly as we need a new hot water tank!
So I phoned the number of the leaflet, and 3 days later a salesman arrived! I'm sure they can smell blood.... I was vaguely hopeful that it wasn't going to be a hard sell, but to be fair we'd still be interested if the price was right! So the system was explained, along with the benefits of such a system. Like all good double glazing sal.... umm sorry... solar heating salesmen, he had a jolly nice carrot to dangle in that they offered to make us one of their "solar homes" which would attract extra discounts (assuming the house and area was suitable), and if we managed to encourage enough people to get surveys, and enough of those people also purchased a system, we might even get a full refund! WOW!!!!!
Alas we had to put the chap off as we were running out of time, but that jolly nice sweet juicy carrot was dangling.... He gave me a call at work today and let me know that a slot had "conveniently appeared in his schedule for tonight," so could he pop round and go over the costs and benefits with us... It would only take half an hour! Bang on 7.30pm came a knock on the door, and so began the hard sell.... You know they have to go through their sales patter, so you nod and grin at all the right points as they explain the things you'd already figured out and wait for them to cut to the chase and tell you how much its going to cost! Funnily enough, and AMAZINGLY, our house was an ideal candidate for a "solar home" so we were entitled to a big discount! There's a surprise....
"Well Mr Blonde, the retail price of your system will be £11000.... how does that sound?"
GULP!
"Now Thats the retail price... obviously we would be offering you a discount.... We can take this off, and give you a £400 government discount, and a nice marketing bonus.... so the price you would pay would be..... £7500! I'm sure you'll agree that's much more affordable!"
GULP!!!!
To be fair, I had expected (call it intuition, or very superficial preliminary research) a solar heating system to be in roughly that ballpark, but its still £7K we don't have... but the temptation is still there! What to do..... Bank loan? Add to the mortgage? All would take time, and shockingly it turned out that he had 2 appointments in our town for tomorrow!!!!!!! That would mean if one of them signed up, we wouldn't be a solar home and attract the discounts!!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!
OK, OK, its all standard sales patter, I know perfectly well he is playing a game with me, but I need to do a bit more research, so we explain to him we'll call him back first thing once we'd done a bit more investigation, and I give my plumber a call.
"Mike, how much would you expect a solar heating system, twin coil boiler, fitting, etc to cost?"
"Oh I dunno, maybe £3500-£6000?? Certainly not much more than that - my mate does solar, do you want me to give him a call for you?"
"Ooooohhkay....! Yes please!"
So perhaps I won't be calling the salesman back tomorrow accepting the kind offer of a solar system for £7.5 - £11K!!!!
Moral of the story? They are the obvious ones - Do a little research, and don't accept the first offer that comes through the door! If it looks too good to be true, it usually is! Don't get me wrong, the salesman didn't lie to us, was friendly, and did tell us to assume there would be no discount, however many things were implied. A door to door salesman will always go with the hard sell - its their nature!
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Old Folk are the biggest customers for this company (and I'm sure companies like it!). The marketing did seem targetted for people less willing or able to do a bit of digging themselves. However, these are people who are less likely to see a return on their investment, people who are possibly more vulnerable to the hard sell, are less likely to do any research, and who perhaps are in the worst position to afford such a large investment! These are exactly the sort of people who live down our street, and out of whom we could possibly have gained a full refund if we didn't have any morals!
However Solar is certainly something we will be looking into again. I don't think anyone doubts its capable of producing 60% of your hot water, and 30% of your heating needs. Behind insulating your home and upgrading your boiler, its probably the next best upgrade to make, and from what I've read, the best of the renewables. Perhaps this time it was all a bit rushed and last minute - not giving us enough time to do proper homework. Just the way a good hard sale (almost) works!
A leaflet came through the door a few weeks ago advertising solar heating. I know its not a cheap option, and there are other much more cost effective things we can do to the house first, but it is something I am very curious about, along with Solar PV and Wind. However I have absolutely no concept of how much it would likely cost, so this seemed like the ideal opportunity to find out! The fact that the new house is still empty whilst we have some work done prior to moving in made it an ideal time to contact them - particularly as we need a new hot water tank!
So I phoned the number of the leaflet, and 3 days later a salesman arrived! I'm sure they can smell blood.... I was vaguely hopeful that it wasn't going to be a hard sell, but to be fair we'd still be interested if the price was right! So the system was explained, along with the benefits of such a system. Like all good double glazing sal.... umm sorry... solar heating salesmen, he had a jolly nice carrot to dangle in that they offered to make us one of their "solar homes" which would attract extra discounts (assuming the house and area was suitable), and if we managed to encourage enough people to get surveys, and enough of those people also purchased a system, we might even get a full refund! WOW!!!!!
Alas we had to put the chap off as we were running out of time, but that jolly nice sweet juicy carrot was dangling.... He gave me a call at work today and let me know that a slot had "conveniently appeared in his schedule for tonight," so could he pop round and go over the costs and benefits with us... It would only take half an hour! Bang on 7.30pm came a knock on the door, and so began the hard sell.... You know they have to go through their sales patter, so you nod and grin at all the right points as they explain the things you'd already figured out and wait for them to cut to the chase and tell you how much its going to cost! Funnily enough, and AMAZINGLY, our house was an ideal candidate for a "solar home" so we were entitled to a big discount! There's a surprise....
"Well Mr Blonde, the retail price of your system will be £11000.... how does that sound?"
GULP!
"Now Thats the retail price... obviously we would be offering you a discount.... We can take this off, and give you a £400 government discount, and a nice marketing bonus.... so the price you would pay would be..... £7500! I'm sure you'll agree that's much more affordable!"
GULP!!!!
To be fair, I had expected (call it intuition, or very superficial preliminary research) a solar heating system to be in roughly that ballpark, but its still £7K we don't have... but the temptation is still there! What to do..... Bank loan? Add to the mortgage? All would take time, and shockingly it turned out that he had 2 appointments in our town for tomorrow!!!!!!! That would mean if one of them signed up, we wouldn't be a solar home and attract the discounts!!!!!!! NOOOOOOO!!!!!
OK, OK, its all standard sales patter, I know perfectly well he is playing a game with me, but I need to do a bit more research, so we explain to him we'll call him back first thing once we'd done a bit more investigation, and I give my plumber a call.
"Mike, how much would you expect a solar heating system, twin coil boiler, fitting, etc to cost?"
"Oh I dunno, maybe £3500-£6000?? Certainly not much more than that - my mate does solar, do you want me to give him a call for you?"
"Ooooohhkay....! Yes please!"
So perhaps I won't be calling the salesman back tomorrow accepting the kind offer of a solar system for £7.5 - £11K!!!!
Moral of the story? They are the obvious ones - Do a little research, and don't accept the first offer that comes through the door! If it looks too good to be true, it usually is! Don't get me wrong, the salesman didn't lie to us, was friendly, and did tell us to assume there would be no discount, however many things were implied. A door to door salesman will always go with the hard sell - its their nature!
Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, Old Folk are the biggest customers for this company (and I'm sure companies like it!). The marketing did seem targetted for people less willing or able to do a bit of digging themselves. However, these are people who are less likely to see a return on their investment, people who are possibly more vulnerable to the hard sell, are less likely to do any research, and who perhaps are in the worst position to afford such a large investment! These are exactly the sort of people who live down our street, and out of whom we could possibly have gained a full refund if we didn't have any morals!
However Solar is certainly something we will be looking into again. I don't think anyone doubts its capable of producing 60% of your hot water, and 30% of your heating needs. Behind insulating your home and upgrading your boiler, its probably the next best upgrade to make, and from what I've read, the best of the renewables. Perhaps this time it was all a bit rushed and last minute - not giving us enough time to do proper homework. Just the way a good hard sale (almost) works!
Sunday, 2 August 2009
I had a vision...
Ever since I was a teenager and the whole "green" movement really kicked off in the UK, I've been at least vaguely environmentally aware. I've even got a green Blue Peter badge to prove it! However as you move out of your idealistic teens and enter the real world, such thoughts quickly vanish... Certainly in my case they vanished for around 15 years, 5 house moves over 650 miles of glorious British countryside (or smelly noisy wasteland if you count Slough...), 4 jobs, and 9 cars. As I've gone on, I've perhaps grown less and less satidfied with my life as I've moved further and further away from my lifes ambitions...
Until last year, when in a magnificent show of defiance (or stupidity?), I said stuff it! I applied for and got a job I knew backwards for a company I believed in which resulted in a 160 mile move with my wife and dog, a large pay cut (and a complete career change and pay cut for my wife!), selling our house of 10 years in the height of a housing slump, and leaving all our established friends for a new life! We did of course move to one of the most picturesque parts of the country - sunny Devon. I had worked for this company in a previous incarnation, and we both had friends around here so it wasn't a complete wrench thankfully!
Having rented an 1830's Devon Cob house when we moved down here during the height of winter, we became very aware of how horribly expensive the house was to run, and of the increasing cost of both gas and electricity. I was again becoming more and more environmentally aware, but this time from the much more practical point of view of wanting to save as much money as possible rather than just an idealistic notion of wanting to "save the planet"
So we've spent the last 6 months trying to find the perfect house. The housing crash seems to have passed Devon by, but we did eventually find such a house in the most unlikely of guises! Not a period thatched cottage in a quaint village or a victorian townhouse by the sea, but a 1960's chalet style house slap bang in the middle of Oldfolksville in a nice market town in East Devon! We think we've reduced the average age of the residents in the street by 20 years...! However this house had so much scope, a large garden, and the most fantastic panoramic views all the way to Dartmoor! It was also rated C/D on the Home Information Pack - a document most likely ignored by most, but one that seems to have become increasinly important in my drive to save money!
The HIP recommendations are a good basis to start from, and a good basis on which to start a blog! My aim is to make this house energy efficient as inexpensively as I can! I don't have a big budget, I'm not handy, I have no knowledge of green or energy efficient technology - I'll hopefully pick all that up as I go along. I have a lot of preconceptions - many of which will be wrong! However I want to share my experiences as I go through what I expect to be a long and difficult journey, and I hope that if people do read this, that they contribute their own experienes and advice which may help me (and others) through what should hopefully be worthwhile endeavour!
Until last year, when in a magnificent show of defiance (or stupidity?), I said stuff it! I applied for and got a job I knew backwards for a company I believed in which resulted in a 160 mile move with my wife and dog, a large pay cut (and a complete career change and pay cut for my wife!), selling our house of 10 years in the height of a housing slump, and leaving all our established friends for a new life! We did of course move to one of the most picturesque parts of the country - sunny Devon. I had worked for this company in a previous incarnation, and we both had friends around here so it wasn't a complete wrench thankfully!
Having rented an 1830's Devon Cob house when we moved down here during the height of winter, we became very aware of how horribly expensive the house was to run, and of the increasing cost of both gas and electricity. I was again becoming more and more environmentally aware, but this time from the much more practical point of view of wanting to save as much money as possible rather than just an idealistic notion of wanting to "save the planet"
So we've spent the last 6 months trying to find the perfect house. The housing crash seems to have passed Devon by, but we did eventually find such a house in the most unlikely of guises! Not a period thatched cottage in a quaint village or a victorian townhouse by the sea, but a 1960's chalet style house slap bang in the middle of Oldfolksville in a nice market town in East Devon! We think we've reduced the average age of the residents in the street by 20 years...! However this house had so much scope, a large garden, and the most fantastic panoramic views all the way to Dartmoor! It was also rated C/D on the Home Information Pack - a document most likely ignored by most, but one that seems to have become increasinly important in my drive to save money!
The HIP recommendations are a good basis to start from, and a good basis on which to start a blog! My aim is to make this house energy efficient as inexpensively as I can! I don't have a big budget, I'm not handy, I have no knowledge of green or energy efficient technology - I'll hopefully pick all that up as I go along. I have a lot of preconceptions - many of which will be wrong! However I want to share my experiences as I go through what I expect to be a long and difficult journey, and I hope that if people do read this, that they contribute their own experienes and advice which may help me (and others) through what should hopefully be worthwhile endeavour!
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