THE Prepping thread - a new beginning :)

[Deleted User]

Maryb, I have four tiers in my back garden, all gravels or slates. The three gravel tiers are graded from very fine to coarse. Top tier is pink and fine, second tier down is very fine and tan, looks like a beach, next tier down is rustic slate and bottom tier is the common coarse tan/beige gravel. None of them get soiled with cat doo da and there are many cats prowling, they do prefer any soil in the area

wrt preparing the gravel bed, go around with a large fork and step on it hard and wiggle it, then brush coarse sand into the holes. Handling gravel and sand is very hard work, we shifted more than 7 tonnes of it. It is very effective and our communal car parking is on gravel also

Yes gravel would be far far better Maryb but it is a big heavy job

maryb

Thanks Kittie. Your garden sounds lovely, will you try and recreate something similar if and when you move?

[Deleted User]

perhaps Maryb, I like hardcore if it is designed to create a pattern. It could never be the same garden though because this house is 3m below the field behind and to the sides and there are 2 1/2 retaining walls, two are wood. I think the garden may well sell the house but won`t be for a while as absolutely nothing new has come up for sale in the new area and I have been looking for two weeks. There are two properties but both are old heritage with beams and low ceilings and they scream high maintenance at me, so I have not even driven past. I don`t want dark inside or heavy beams

[Deleted User]

VJsmum wrote: »

Sigh - the best prepping advice I can give right now is to look after your drains....

My husband was a structural engineer and he often had to examine drains with cameras and many many times, there were collapses and problems, often caused by tree roots and sometimes by builders rubble

An inspection hatch is a very sensible idea. It is the tarmac that has caused so much flooding over the country, gravel is much better and the upside is that no self-respecting burglar walks on it.

VJsmum, I hope you manage to sort it permanently, houses can be money pits

beedeedee

An unwritten law of the land appears to be...no matter how much gravel you order - you always need more...

maryb

But you only discover that after you've raked over all but the last few square yards

[Deleted User]

I am blooming glad that I prepped in my sipp, which has to provide for me the rest of my life plus it is providing cash to add to savings to get that new home in the bag. The world uncertainty has gone up another notch overnight and ftse is marching down, slowly now but you just cannot sell anything in the market in a panic rush and I sold everything in the sipp last week, phew, all except three defensive funds and even those are down today so I will pull out of those too. Funds take about a week to get sold. So I am prepped for the buying of my house and my sipp is safe and I have ring fenced all I own

Kondo is going great guns too, it seems that the more I do, the more there is to do but the result is empty space and less to move, My aim is to stay in the green countryside with enough garden to have potential for veg and fruit and relaxation in case I get to an only-pottering stage. Away from the madding crowd, in my own bubble

jk0

Well done Kittie.

Anyone who does have investments might want to consider if they can get their money out at all if TSHTF.

I inherited some shares in a UK bond fund back in 1996. Presumably for tax reasons this is administered from Ireland. Back in January they notified me that they were amalgamating with another fund, and that my holding was below the minimum of the other fund. In Feb, they sent a contract note, for the sale of my shares. I did not look at it too closely, and it remained with my papers until I started doing my tax return this week.

I realised they should have sent me the £7k, but they had not. First I phoned, and they asked me to email. I emailed with my bank details, and they replied they did not have my bank details, and would I please write. (Ever heard of cheques?)

I wrote yesterday that I had now contacted them three times about this, and if a fourth was required it would be a letter before action to their UK branch.

I was just saying to someone, that if they were honest, they would either have sent a cheque, or written to ask for my bank details. Not just hang onto the cash and hope I forgot about it!

Cheapskate

Re flooding - we've lived in this house for 21 years and the back garden floods in a way that it didn't at the beginning. We're at the bottom of a gently curving slope/crescent, and more of the back gardens to other properties have installed decking, patios, conservatories, etc, thus less soakaway remains. Sometimes, after heavy rains or melting snow, the water sweeps down all the gardens, gushes through next door's fence (couple of feet higher than us) and whooshes across our land to next door other side. We often end up with an ankle-deep pond, as does next door, and the bungalow that backs onto them ends up with a lake in their back yard!!

Last winter, another neighbour 5 doors up had to use a small pump to remove water from the crawl space under their house that had seeped in during heavy rains, as it had nowhere else to go. She said the smell was revolting!

We have no stocks and shares, but some of the money I inherited from mum is going to knock off some of the mortgage - the reduction in outgoings will be far more than any interest earned in the bank. I want to hang on to some of her money as a safety net for the time being. DH will be in a position to draw down a bit of cash from his business, so then we'll be able to pay off more or even all of the mortgage, and still have a bit left in the bank. At least our home will be ours then, rather than hostage to the bank, and our outgoings much reduced, therefore bank balances will slowly rise - win/win I think?!

A xo

[Deleted User]

yes jk0, awful lot of scammers about, you really do need to keep alert, I had a very realistic e mail the other month, it made the children hopping mad, all these people who are scammed. I so hope that one day they get what is coming to them

re selling shares in a shtf situation. It is very difficult and there are nose dives, like in 9/11 when the sipp halved in value and I was at pets at home, I had to do a lot of hard trading afterwards to recover from that but like they say, it is the difficult stuff that teaches you the most.

I see that there has been something bad again in London

cheapskate, crossed posts, awful situation

I feel the drawbridges need to be raised again, just that intuitive feeling that I get