Unfinished Plumbing

### This is a Collaborative post ####

We live in an unfinished house and I fear it may be like that for sometime... 

Nice place for a bath...

The cobbler’s children go barefoot and all that…

I’m not too bothered about it (although my wife might think otherwise), and I am slowly working my way through the list of jobs. Although the list does tend to get longer rather than shorter.

Back In The Modern World

So by Friday night we were back in the modern world, We had a flushing toilet and central heating, two things we'd gone without for quite some time. Neither massively bothered me but it is much better for all my ladies that live with me. 

Still lots to do and lots of materials needed

My cousin, Ian, came round on Thursday to fit the boiler and the new toilet (this was in exchange for some work I did for him last year on his house). The toilet broke about 4 months ago (maybe more) so we've been flushing it with a bucket ever since, I hate plumbing jobs so kept putting it off. The toilet was so old I knew if I took it apart it wouldn't go back together again without leaking so I bought a replacement. I think the new toilet with all the bits came to around £50, I can't believe how little water it uses, much more efficient that the old one.

The heating was on as I got home on Friday night (I'd been working at my brothers but more on that in another post) and the house felt completely different as I walked in. The wood burner only heats so much of the house, the bathroom and bedrooms didn't benefit much from it at all so it was good to get rid of the damp feeling up there. To make matters even better it froze outside that night so we really felt the affects of it! 

My wife is much happier now we can get the house warm ready in time for baby number three arrival and the midwife might think that our house is more suitable than before! 

I've still got lots of work to do yet but slowly the list is getting ticked off! 

Am I Cruel To My Pregnant Wife?

I've been told that I'm cruel to my wife whenever she's pregnant and looking at the evidence I'm inclined to agree! 

 The first pregnancy (nearly four years ago. I made my wife move house when she was 8 months pregnant, three days before Christmas. She gave birth two weeks later to our first daughter, I still hear about that one. 

 The second pregancy I ripped out the living room as her maternity leave started, re plastered, laid an oak floor and fitted a new fire place.

 To be fair it nearly killed me but we were finished two weeks before our second daughter was born. 

This time I've destroyed the patio, started and not yet finished the porch and now ripped out the old boiler and replaced every radiator in the house. My cousin, Ian, has been here today helping me replace all the radiators ready for the new boiler which didn't turn up yesterday (don't use plumbnation if you want something to turn up on time). 

Ian Fitting a new radiator upstairs

Tomorrow we're digging through the floor, under where the boiler used to be to allow access for pipes. So should be nice and quite for the wife to relax and  enjoy her pregnancy...

I'm not cruel just not very good at timing!

Hopefully the porch, heating and first section of the patio should be finished before baby number three turns up! 

Busy Half Term & Trying To Get Heating Ready

Autumn has come all of a sudden this year, the leaves seem to have fallen off the trees in the last couple of days. 

I've had a busy half term, working on a job in the local town and trying to mop up a few projects here (sorry no posts). I've still got lots to do before winter properly sets in. With such a busy summer my I've probably only got just enough firewood in store, but as I've been helping my brother some evenings he's promised me that we won't go short as he has about five years worth stored up - a good job because at the moment that's our only source of heat! 

Last year I posted about our boiler and whether we should repair or replace. Luckily it lasted the mild winter out but now I don't really want to risk turning it on again and even if it works I doubt it could heat the house much if it turned cold. The plan now is to fit a new external oil boiler, but I'm going to fit it about 8m from the house and duct all the pipe work in. 

This means lots of digging &lots of muddy mess! 

The new boiler will go down where the wall steps, that way when the patio is built up you should really see it and any noise or smells are away from the house

So hopefully over the next week we're (dad and me) going to dig up the patio (or what's left of it) and run heating pipes to the new boiler site. We're also moving the oil tank and running in new pipe work to that as well. and an armoured electric cable. I'm also going to install a couple of empty ducts so we can pull in extra cables if we need to. I have plans to install a generator down there and put a change over with in the house at some point so having the ability to install extra wires or pipework will be handy. 

Our heating system is just a regular heating system and I've no plans to change that at the moment, this means that pipework in the house stays the same and it also gives us the ability to install solar in the future should we ever want or afford to. 

So hopefully by the middle of this month(ish) we should have some proper central heating installed and hopefully that will be before it gets too cold! Lots to do before I start working full time again next year! 

Combi Or Not?

What a great response from everyone yesterday! I couldn't believe what good replies I got to my questions. Thank you!

I had my thoughts about biomass confirmed and I think we'll be changing the boiler for another oil one, but situating it outside. Hopefully I'll be able to fit this with the help of a friend I've just done some work for, so plumbing costs should be minimal for the straight boiler swap, just the extra pipe work to take it outside (which I can do as well). 

I also need to concrete a little pad outside and install drainage under it for a downstairs loo before I do, so it will have to wait until it's dried up a bit first. In the mean time I'l do a little maintenance on the oil boiler to keep it running until then and use the wood burner as much as possible.

Ripping up floor boards in our last house to change the system to a combi.

 But that poses another question - to change to a Combi boiler or keep with the hot water tank system we've got? A combi heats the water as you need it for hot water, whereas the system we've currently got keeps stored hot water in a tank in the airing cupboard, indirectly heated by the water from the boiler.. I'm not sure I want to change the pipe work around to have the combi system as it means ripping up carpets and floor boards, although I'm sure a combi would be more efficient. We only use the hot water for washing our hands, baths for the children and washing up so having a tank might not be the best but if I start altering upstairs before Christmas it might cause a divorce! And it''s more work than I've currently got time for.

Thanks again for everyone's advice and experiences on the last post, I really enjoyed reading them and they all had some good advice in.

Boiler - Repair Or Replace?

Our boiler sits quite inconspicuously in our little pantry, chugging away when we have the central heating on (not that often now we have the wood stove) or hot water. 

Lately It's not been working all that well. When we set it to heat the hot water it takes an age to do it and then it likes to put the "lock out" light on and stop anything from happening.

I've been shown how to fix this problem and I have got it working a little better now but it doesn't hide the fact that it's an old boiler and probably hasn't got that long left anyway. 

My question is this - Is it worth repairing and to keep messing with it? 

When we build the extension we'll need a new boiler anyway and I want to have it outside the house rather than inside, taking up valuable space. In fact where the boiler currently sits will, eventually, become the downstairs loo.

A new boiler would be much more efficient as well, making the expensive oil go that bit further. Last year was exceptional in the fact that we used hardly any oil at all but we're quite exposed here and although we have the log burner it doesn't really heat upstairs, so we still need our central heating (or so the wife tells me). 

So we're currently toying with the idea of changing it for a new outside oil boiler and I've just done some work for a friend so fitting it will hopefully not cost too much. This will help spread the cost and the work load of the extension, getting a few jobs out the way early. 

The other option is to go for something like a ground source heat pump or a biomass boiler although I don't know enough about these to comment (although I'm trying to learn).

The extension will have another wood stove in it so I'm hoping in the future a large proportion of the heating will be done by burning wood but it's good to have a backup system and one that can heat the water.

Which way would you go? there are quite a few government grants about at the moment for using some of the "alternative" heating systems but they have quite a high up front cost to them before you see any return.

What Is Your Thermostat Set To?

We went to a friend’s house for tea on Saturday night and I came to the realisation that most people have their house a lot warmer than ours.

I grew up in a house with no central heating, as did my wife (a different house that is!) and as well as this I work outside most of the time so I'm not a massive fan of being too warm.

So when we got back Saturday night the temperature said the house was 15 degrees and we decided that it was fine and didn't turn the heating on, but I wonder how many would have.

Our thermostat is pretty much set to 17 degrees but even then the heating doesn't normally warm it up to that as we switch it off before it gets to temperature!

We haven't had our heating on a timer at all this year. It only goes on if we feel cold enough which hasn't been that often. We put a jumper on first, then if we're still cold we light the fire. Normally on an evening we just have the wood burning going to warm up the whole house, although I know it's been mild this year, and it's saved use a fortune in heating oil, the gauge has barely moved since October.

When I was at college doing building studies we learned that the modern house (which ours isn't) built to the current regulations doesn't need central heating but, due to market pressures, no one would build it on a large scale as people expect to buy a home with central heating.

We also learnt that the colour you a paint a room can affect the temperature you feel by one Degree Celsius. So a bathroom painted blue would feel one degree colder than a neutral colour compared to one painted a hot colour like red or orange, which would feel one degree hotter.

The standard for working out the heating requirements of a house was 18 degrees for a bedroom, 20 degrees for living areas and 22 degrees for bathrooms. This is no hard and fast rule just what we given to work out radiator sizes for each room and the averages might have changed since I was at college! I’m happiest at around 15 – 16 degrees I think, but I’ve worked in all sorts, you’ve just got to dress right.

So how hot, or cold, do you have your house and what temperature do you feel comfortable with?

Central Heating On For The First Time This Season

Well last night I got talked into putting the central heating on for the first time this season.

More to see if the boiler still works after having the last six months or so off (I think it might be older than me) and also to heat the parts of the house that the wood burning stove can't reach - The bathroom is not a room you want to hang about in after your shower at the moment!

The wood burning stove has been great so far this season and saved us loads in heating as it really takes the chill off the house, some days my wife has had it running all day and you can really tell the difference. It has been mild this autumn so that's helped with heating costs and we all wrap up warm before going for the heating - well I write this in a T shirt but apparently I'm not normal!

Everyone else fired up their central heating?