Cheery's path to fulfilment - finishing the DIY, looking after myself, appreciating the garden 🌻

Humdinger1

May I ask what the presets savings pot covers @Cheery_Daff? Loving your diary, as ever Humdinger xx

Cheery_Daff

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81878005#Comment_81878005

Ha, it's just a typo, should be presents 🎁 😂 So birthdays through the year and saving for Christmas. I add £50 a month, and it usually covers most of it. I did consider upping it a bit, but at the minute it's a nice round £1000 that gets transferred to the pots account and I'd rather keep it that way for now.

Met up with a friend last night- not seen her for over a year so that was lovely. We just met for coffee after work but we were having such a lovely time we ended up staying out for tea. Luckily the place we were in did a lovely sweet potato and lentil soup, so £9.40 spent each for soup plus two drinks each which felt like a decent bargain!

Back to the office today, via a visit to a heat pump. Offered by a kind person I've not seen for probably at least 10 years, maybe closer to 15 😱 very lovely of her to offer. She also has ducks so we shall be visiting those as well 😁 No doubt we'll come back with more questions than answers!

Right, yoga 😊

teapot2

Sounds like lots of lovely catching up with friends. I watched a Guy Martin programme on Ch 4 last night called The House with no Bills. It was looking at insulation and the way new builds in particular are often thrown together and not energy efficient. He also covered new innovations and simple [MSE type] ideas to cut energy bills but there was a section on heat pumps too which I found interesting as I didn't really understand how they work but he simplified it a lot.

Cheery_Daff

OoOoh, interesting @teapot2 I shall investigate, thank you!

Heeat pump visited, (and ducks, and friend of course 😂). Good to see it in person, to hear about various things that arose during installation, see the app etc. Outside was smaller than Mr C thought, and inside was bigger than both of us thought - really not sure where it'll go in our house, we'll have to see what they say. Looks like many of our radiators will be alright though which is good, although there may need to be some shifting and changing.

Anyway, lots to think about. Good to see it in action though.

Humdinger1

Of course @Cheery_Daff - this is what comes of posting in the middle of the night! Onwards and upwards love Humdinger xx

greenbee

I have someone here at the moment measuring up for heat pump design. Some of my radiators need to be bigger for 'standard' temperatures, although they are fine for what I need, but we're working on the basis that it can be a long term project and we make a note of what needs upgrading as each room is done. It's not going to be cheap though as it's a big house. But when I said my aim was to get rid of the stinky oil boiler and the stupid small oil tank rather than save money (this house will never be cheap to heat!), he was OK with it.

He also doesn't want too much space for the plant room.

Cheery_Daff

That's interesting @greenbee so will they fit it WITHOUT upgrading the radiators?

Friend this morning said the Octopods had insisted on a larger radiator for their kitchen (she's an architect, and had done all the radiator calculations herself previously with ongoing renovations, so knew she was right). When the installers raised with the compulsory new radiator, it was exactly the same as the exiting one - it turns out they'd measured it wrong 🙄 Fortunately they did let her keep the perfectly sized one she already had! 😂

themadvix

If it doesn’t meet the requirements for the BUS grant, then it’ll have to be upgraded to get the grant. I don’t know what the reachable temp has to be, but presumably sufficient for an elderly/vulnerable person to be kept warm.

🙄 to 🐙!

greenbee

I think what we've arrived at is because the temps I want are lower than the standard 20 for bedrooms, 22 for bathrooms, 21 for everything else, he can design for 50C flow temp and run it lower. His initial heat loss calculation needs a bit of adjusting, but is about 14.5kW. So rather than putting in a 16kW pump that would then struggle in spring/autumn as it will only modulate down to around 6kW, we're potentially looking at a cascading system with two pumps (neighbours have this) - which also means they can ramp up slowly and there's less of an issue with a very sudden high energy draw on the electrics. So he can do the calculations so they work for the grant, we then adjust the flow temp down, and upgrade radiators as they need doing.

He also very kindly repressurised the hot water tank (I asked him if it was urgent/unsafe and then told him that if I'd realised it was that easy I'd have done it myself!). He also said not to worry about the plumber not having done the magnetic filter/inhibitor as he'll do a powerflush as part of the project.

I've told him I want to pay him for the design work as soon as it's done, so that if there is any delay on the project he's not out of pocket. He's clearly already done a lot of work and was here for two hours. He said the design is the hardest part, installation is easy - and as far as I'm concerned that's the right answer :) We just need to work out where the hot water tank is going to go - less heat loss from tank to tap where it is now, but it's a long way from the pump.

He prefers to us Mitubishi kit - which I'm fine with, particularly as he'll be the one looking after it…

Cheery_Daff

Thank you for all your detailed heat pump conversations @themadvix and @greenbee Keep it coming!

In the meantime, it's house insurance renewal time! Woo hoo. Still not had a renewal letter for John Lewis, and there's no online portal to log into. I suppose it's not actually due til 11th March (I thought it was the 8th) so it'll likely arrive in the next few days.

In the meantime, I now have the CtM app thanks to the car insurance, so it has automatically generated me some quotes based on the last time I used it (and of course nothing has changed in relation to the house).

Last years price was £932 (increased from £735 the year before), and I don't know what the renewal will be yet.

Cheapest through CtM is £375, but I've learned my lesson with cheapo quotes here (the cheap one last year told us they couldn't insure us (after 2 weeks!) because we had a public footpath running down the drive.

Cheapest one I've actually heart of is Admiral at £557, including accident cover, legal assistance etc

Post office is £579 (or Gold cover at £749), AA is £642. Tesco, for some unfathomable reason, want £1800 :lol:

Checked MoneySupermarket too - their cheapest is £791 (not heard of them), and the cheapest I've heard of is AA Gold at £917 (seems to inclue £10m of building cover - my house is certainly not worth that! :lol: )

Also checked Confused.com (We got one of the car insurance policies through them) - cheapest one I've heard of is AA platinum at £550 (why is that wildly cheaper than gold?! and why is silver more expensive on the same comparison site?)

Anyway, it's looking like we'll be able to get something substantially cheaper than last year without any bother. These were all including the fact that we've got large trees within 5m of the house as well. Nobody's asked me about footpaths, and most T&Cs that I've looked at don't have anything about footpaths anyway.

Not doing anything else in relation to this tonight. Apparently cheapest time for home insurance is 15 days ahead (as opposed to 26 days for car insurance) so I shall sit tight for a couple of weeks and wait for the renewal notice from the existing provider.

And in the meantime, I'll go and make myself some tea and start thinking about the weekend :)