House buying: 'Minor but ongoing movement and a mine shaft with 'Unknown' treatment

Dan-Dan

ocelotcat wrote: »

We pulled out!! The wave of relief I felt after doing so told me that was the right thing to do. It's a great house but not worth all that risk. Your comments here really helped us to come to this decision so thank you all for taking the time to give an opinion; I'm really glad I posted this.

I noticed the house has been relisted as having evidence of 'historical' movement and with no mention of the mine shaft. Not impressed with that.

We are now in the process of buying house number four. This is the best one yet so it worked out okay in the end. It's in the middle of the countryside But then it's completely off the gas grid so comes with it's own problem of expensive electric storage heaters. Apparently we don't like to make things easy for ourselves.

Oil heating ?
Air or ground heat pump?
Your not restricted to electric storage heaters

moneyistooshorttomention

Not oil heating methinks - at the level oil costs and as for the level oil is likely to cost in the not too distant future:eek::eek::eek:

Solar panels?

Dan-Dan

Oil would have to go some to reach the costs of heating by electric heaters

DaftyDuck

Oil pretty much levels out over time to be slightly more expensive than gas, Money, but it's been cheaper than gas for a while, and still (just) is. Long term predictions for oil in the next ten years are reasonably low on average -peaks will always exist.

If the OP is out in the sticks, oil would probably be most practical. Solar hw and pv aren't commercial at the mo. Combine oil with a wood stove, if they can get wood easily.

Mind you, with the OP's luck, this house will burn down any minute now ....

ocelotcat

I have been researching various options for heating. My first thought was solar panels (large roof - south facing) but with the feed-in tariff payments now having been cut by quite a lot I'm not sure this is so feasible. An LPG system might be the easiest to implement and most cost-effective. Next door have oil central heating but I'm too worried about fluctuating costs with oil, and the set-up/maintenance costs for that kind of system. Biomass seems to give you the best energy efficiency (and is eco-friendly) but costs a fortune to set-up and sounds like a right faff to keep it running.

The electric storage heaters will have to do initially (because we've plundered every last penny of our our savings to buy this new house) but now that the coal plants are being decommissioned, meaning the Economy-7 tariff will no longer exist once they're gone, electricity for heating will become crazy expensive. I'm saving this problem for the future when we actually live there and have a better idea of our energy usage.

DaftyDuck - I would not be surprised one bit if a tornado suddenly took the house off to Oz. I'm getting better at not getting *too* excited now. I never knew it was this hard to buy a house.