Cheap Effective (Rental) Home Improvements

missrlr

Justamum wrote: »

Aren't they all? Quite happy to take your money, but reluctant to actually spend any of it on THEIR OWN PROPERTY!

Erm hang on a bit there , I am a landlord and I have had a new condensing boiler, 40 cm loft insulation, new double glazing, cavity wall insulation and thick underlay under all new carpets throughout the place put in my rented out place.

Oh and spent over £4k putting the house back to rights after a tenant (I leave you to adjective them) left the boiler with a leak for 7 months without notification or letting me in the place and a tap running and destroyed the kitchen, living room and dining room having to have professional drying works done to the fabric of the house.

So I would be very pleased if you would keep your sweeping generalisations about landlords out of print.

OP try all the above but if you have damp ish cold issues then try a dehumidifier , works great and not too expensive to run.

thriftwizard

Philtgilly, check that your tenement doesn't have shutters. I lived in one in Edinburgh and didn't have a clue that the white-painted wooden bits with knobs behind the curtains were actually just about the best & most effective draught-excluders you can get! They hadn't been opened in years & the hinges had been painted over, but once we freed them they were brilliant. I'd love to install them here, but don't have the right kind of windows.

bluebag

I don't live in a rented place, but a 112 year old difficult to heat terrace. The whole front wall is a massive ceiling to floor bay window.The ceilings are 10 foot high and the front room is open plan.
The building is single brick with obviously no cavity ( might as well be a shed in terms of keeping heat in)

I use a curtain on the front and back doors with the extending poles from WilCies that don't need any drilling. Lined curtians on all the windows.

I have foil behind one radiator the only one we have on an outside wall.

I keep the bathroom door shut as this has the only radiator without a thermostatic valve ( safety heat dump) so the water returning from that radiator isn't cooled too much triggering the boiler thermostat to ON.

I use a de- humidifier most days for about 4 hours it costs me about 10p a day it uses 200 watts an hour , btw a humidifier is one of the few appliances that puts out more heat than it uses in electricity, so I get about 300 watts of heat from it for those four hours. It resolves the condensation and damp problems of drying washing in a single brick house.

I line dry washing or use the dryer rather than have too much drying on a maiden as damp air requires more heating.

I keep my heating at about 19 to 21 degrees downstairs and 16 to 18 in bedrooms constantly, but not right through the night, as this house takes an age to heat up from cold. I did an experiment and found it wasn't much dearer than using it in twice daily bursts for a few hours but the comfort level was much greater.

I have draught excluders on all internal doors downstairs, bubble wrap flaps on letterbox and keyholes and all frosted windows( just wipe the glass with a wet cloth and the wrap will attach itself)

As gas heated water is about half the cost of electric heated water I have shallow baths, barely a few inches rather than long electric showers, if your shower water is heated by gas then a short shower would be cheaper for you.


I make sure the hedge is well trimmed back before winter to allow as much sun as possible to enter and use solar heat catchers in the windows ( a huge peice of cardboard with a black bin bag taped to one side and cheap tinfoil on the other) place in the window with the foil facing into the room, it can raise the temperature in the room by one or two degrees on a sunny winters day. Free.

I use a fleecy electric blanket on the bed to preheat it on cold nights costs about 15p a week to run, best investment in the world.

I have fleece blanket for each seat in the living room to put over the knees and keep the chills off and large heavy fllece blankets on the end of each bed in case it feels too chilly in the night.

Just a few tips that may help. Thankfully we have a gas supply here as I know oil, solid fuel and electric heating are much more expensive.

Justamum

missrlr wrote: »

So I would be very pleased if you would keep your sweeping generalisations about landlords out of print.

I'm only going on my own experience and that of my parents, and also of many people I know. You are probably in a small minority, luckily for your tenants.

bluebag

missrlr

A good many of the houses in my street are landlord owned, trust me you are the exception to the rule. Brilliant for your tenants. It's good to know there are some good landlords out there.

The few I've had dealings with ( house next door has had 3 different landlords in 3 years) are utterly useless and quite honestly couldn't give a fig as long as the rent is paid.

kunekune22

We're living in rental in Australia and I smiled at this thread. And not for the reason you might think. We're at altitude and in the winter - yes, winter - severe frosts are common. But if you think houses in the UK are badly set up for the cold weather, you'd have a shock here.

There is no central heating, no double glazing and no insulation. In the toilet there is a louvre window open to the outside. There was once a woodburner but it is not functional. The only heating provided for a four bed/two living house with no hall/porch and no door between the kitchen and living rooms or the living room and the hall, is an unvented gas heater using lpg gas. We have bought a couple of electric heaters but there are not a lot of sockets so that limits where we can use them. At least it's cheap (the expensive houses aren't much better tbh) which makes us not quite so worried about the power bill.

Oh - and the final brilliant bit of design? The water boiler (new, in fact) is outside. The pipes are not lagged. If it goes below -4 (not unusual) the pipes freeze and we can't have showers until at least 10 am. At least the winters have quite a few sunny days and it's rare to stay under 10c all day, but clear dry nights are a real challenge!

Am collecting ideas from here ...

ps - was kunekune before coming over here

Chaos_Monkey

kunekune22 - I hear what you're saying! Although thankfully, we don't often get below 4*C here (SA) at night, it's still cold enough with no insulation or double glazing! We're lucky in that we have RC AirCon, but I don't really like it as it's like having a hairdryer attached to the ceiling and it causes quite a bit of air movement. Not to mention is very drying and makes me feel a bit icky!

I'm very glad we don't have tiled floors throughout - the bathroom and laundry can get bitterly cold!

Justamum - I've also taken offence at the 'all landlords are crap' post. We've done our best to be quick to deal with any issues in our property (in the UK), and yet our delightful current tenant is 2 months in arrears and hasn't done any basic maintenance (like cutting the grass) and by all accounts from our agent, the house is filthy, and he's caused condensation damp by not ventilating the house (this was not a problem when we lived there, or previous tenants, so it's not a fault of the house). So we're likely to get lumbered with a large cleaning, repainting and gardening bill, which we can't even withhold from the deposit as he's already in arrears more than the deposit. We are now trying to get him out, but even that is going to cost us money and stress, and could cost a lot if he refuses. LL's are barely protected by law, yet the tenants 'rights' are protected to the hilt. So no, not all LL's are terrible ogres. We also rented a few years ago, and never had any problems with our LL, and we don't have a problem with ours here in Aus, either. So your comments are extremely unfair and offensive.

kunekune22

Chaos monkey, we're also in the tenants/landlord double role! Our UK tenants seem ok, but there've been quite a lot of extra expenses. They've just asked permission to take up a counsel scheme to improve insulation, which I guess means they want to stay, which is good. We do what we can - we just replaced a cooker. And in some sort of karma, our LL here then replaced the one in our rental after I explained it was on its last legs. We're not perfect tenants, since we're busy and untidy, but we're also trouble-free and she wants to keep us just like we want to keep ours!

SpikyHedgehog

kunekune22, would pipe lagging help round the pipes, the foam stuff that is a cylinder but open 1 side to put round the pipe? If you can get it in Australia!? Or would it cause a problem with bugs, or when it does get hot?

Landlords: When I've rented privately, it's been a pain as the LLs haven't been into maintenance - we've been here in a housing association house for 5 years, and were 6 years before that in a private rented house, that we kept saying 'Please do something about the windows! The frames are rotten.' - Eleven years later, they are still rotten, and of course even rottener (we walk past it most days) - and it's been vacant for over a year now, becasue no-one wants to rent it like that.

My brother on the other hand has an absolutely fantastic LL, who keeps the building well maintained and works with the 4 flat residents in the building to sort out any problems. From loud music to damp to work needed to what colours they'd like tha shared spaces routinely decorated.

The problem for tenants is if you have a good LL, you don't want to move, but if you have a bad LL you do want to move, so more people talk about bad LLs!

flubberyzing

I do feel sorry for you OP! I spent 3 winters in a freezing cold 1960's end-of-terrace that hadn't seen any proper maintenance since the day it was thrown up. The front door didn't fit the frame properly, neither did the windows, it had storage heaters that would never be on when you wanted them, the cooker broke and it was a month before it was replaced, etc etc. At that time though, it was all I could afford.
Things that helped:
A electric blanket for my bed.
A draught excluder at the front door.

I also put bubble wrap over the windows, but I'm not sure how much of a difference it really made, and I kept the curtains/blinds shut as much as possible to keep the heat in.
I can't tell you how pleased I was to move! I now live in a very nice mid-floor flat, insulated from top and bottom flats and on 2 sides. Last winter the indoor temp very rarely fell below 19C, even without the heating on!