Immigrating to the UK

Previous place we lived in for over two years had no condensation on the windows in the mornings and no miff anywhere. Windows are soaked every morning here and have miff spots showing up now, so thankfully my new dehumidifier arrives tomorrow.

Double-glazing definitely does the trick - don’t have the heating on and it’s a cozy 20C.
 
The Voice said:
Previous place we lived in for over two years had no condensation on the windows in the mornings and no miff anywhere. Windows are soaked every morning here and have miff spots showing up now, so thankfully my new dehumidifier arrives tomorrow.

Double-glazing definitely does the trick - don’t have the heating on and it’s a cozy 20C.
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And that's why you have humidity issues.
You need to let the cold outside air in every now and then. It's a lot drier than what's inside.
 
Sinbad said:
And that's why you have humidity issues.
You need to let the cold outside air in every now and then. It's a lot drier than what's inside.
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I open the windows regularly here to try and get rid of the moisture but it doesn’t seem to work well enough. It’s not like we’re doing anything different in this place compared to the previous one, there just seems to be a LOT more moisture than usual.

Even had to get hygrometer. Wake up and it’s like 70%, crank open all the windows and it drops down to 40%. Close them again and it’s up to 60% after a couple of hours. Rinse, repeat. Old place none of this was necessary, and I can’t figure out why.
 
Messugga said:
Sitting around freezing point all day. Typical for winter here, and it plays havoc with my energy bill. Hopefully I can buy a house next year and do the proper upgrades with regards to insulation and whatnot, to make keeping the place warm a bit cheaper.
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Mine has pretty much doubled with the heating and this place I am in is insulated rather poorly, yesterday I ran the heating for almost 6 hours throughout the day
 
The Voice said:
I open the windows regularly here to try and get rid of the moisture but it doesn’t seem to work well enough. It’s not like we’re doing anything different in this place compared to the previous one, there just seems to be a LOT more moisture than usual.

Even had to get hygrometer. Wake up and it’s like 70%, crank open all the windows and it drops down to 40%. Close them again and it’s up to 60% after a couple of hours. Rinse, repeat. Old place none of this was necessary, and I can’t figure out why.
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Sounds like lack of ventilation to me if opening the windows helped.

We have an HVAC heat exchanger thing in the loft that works wonders, but the thermostat in it blew, leaving it dead. It's a pain to find someone to repair it anytime soon.

So we have a window at the back of the house and a window in the front cracked open by around 1 cm at all times to allow a smidgen of airflow, and it's been excellent--humidity has been maintained between 45%-50%.

We also have the heating set to 21C, and any heat loss from having the windows a smidge open seems marginal. We spend around £2-£3 a day on gas heating (including heating the water).

We initially tried a dehumidifier, too, but it was constantly running and desperately struggling to get the humidity below 60%.

Determined that having the windows cracked open a smidge was cheaper and more convenient--no noisy appliance, and no water tank to keep emptying.

So, I runno if that's helpful advice, but it's a helluva lot better than whipping out the bleach to tackle any mould.

Hopefully the HVAC will be sorted in the new year. When it works it's sublime, but the loft gets too hot in summer and knackers it.
 
Lycanthrope said:
So we have a window at the back of the house and a window in the front cracked open by around 1 cm at all times to allow a smidgen of airflow, and it's been excellent--humidity has been maintained between 45%-50%.
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The house I'm renting has separate vents on all the windows, I sort of just assumed it was common here? I think you call it a trickle vent.

Anyway I am quite curious about my energy bill, being here for only a month it was around £150 for gas and elec. Not sure if that's a lot but looking at the interwebs it seems sort of average?
 
Priapus said:
Fair. But my point was that getting the money back in 3 or 4 days is not really accurate.
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Yea it probably wouldn't be as accurate for someone that just lands there. I've been doing business with the UK for about 10 years now and only just hitting £1000 day rates (deduct tax!) and even those are like 2 - 3 days a month.
Paul Kemp said:
Yeah it’s extreme but I take it @heartbroken meant it in a “why overthink it” way and i find it hard to disagree with the sentiment. Buying a home is a far bigger hurdle than the visa and nhs fees.
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This is it, the potential to earn and do business in the UK is exponentially higher than in SA - you will have access to opportunities you don't here. Excellent point on housing, expect to pay 3x more for 50% less than JHB
 
heartbroken said:
Yea it probably wouldn't be as accurate for someone that just lands there. I've been doing business with the UK for about 10 years now and only just hitting £1000 day rates (deduct tax!) and even those are like 2 - 3 days a month.

This is it, the potential to earn and do business in the UK is exponentially higher than in SA - you will have access to opportunities you don't here. Excellent point on housing, expect to pay 3x more for 50% less than JHB
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Why haven’t you moved there?
 
I've found a neat way to game Octopus Intelligent Go electricity :D

If the car's plugged in, and I want to run the washing machine or dishwasher or something, just turn the car's climate control on for a minute and then off again (via the tesla app so super convenient). That half hour block, and the next one, are billed at intelligent rates (7.5p/kwh) ...
Hope they don't figure it out and close the loophole

1701361351772.png
 
Lycanthrope said:
Sounds like lack of ventilation to me if opening the windows helped.

We have an HVAC heat exchanger thing in the loft that works wonders, but the thermostat in it blew, leaving it dead. It's a pain to find someone to repair it anytime soon.

So we have a window at the back of the house and a window in the front cracked open by around 1 cm at all times to allow a smidgen of airflow, and it's been excellent--humidity has been maintained between 45%-50%.

We also have the heating set to 21C, and any heat loss from having the windows a smidge open seems marginal. We spend around £2-£3 a day on gas heating (including heating the water).

We initially tried a dehumidifier, too, but it was constantly running and desperately struggling to get the humidity below 60%.

Determined that having the windows cracked open a smidge was cheaper and more convenient--no noisy appliance, and no water tank to keep emptying.

So, I runno if that's helpful advice, but it's a helluva lot better than whipping out the bleach to tackle any mould.

Hopefully the HVAC will be sorted in the new year. When it works it's sublime, but the loft gets too hot in summer and knackers it.
Click to expand...

Just checked and all our trickle vents are open. Humidity sitting at 56%, but I’m home alone at the moment, haven’t started cooking, showering, etc. Latter is also a problem because the extraction fan in the bathroom is dogshit, and I guess that moisture has to go somewhere eventually.
 
Sinbad said:
I've found a neat way to game Octopus Intelligent Go electricity :D

If the car's plugged in, and I want to run the washing machine or dishwasher or something, just turn the car's climate control on for a minute and then off again (via the tesla app so super convenient). That half hour block, and the next one, are billed at intelligent rates (7.5p/kwh) ...
Hope they don't figure it out and close the loophole

View attachment 1627207
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Sneakfiend!

We're on Agile for general cheaper day-to-day prices. That's pretty impressive. I didn't realise that Intelligent could provide on-demand slots during peak hours. That's awfully generous and a wonderfully snazzy trick :)

prod said:
The house I'm renting has separate vents on all the windows, I sort of just assumed it was common here? I think you call it a trickle vent.
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I'm not fond of trickle vents. They were installed at a previous (rented) place many, many years ago and ended up allowing all kinds of noise in. Put me right off them. I'd rather either have my windows open or the HVAC doing its thing.

Though, I don't know. Maybe there are nicer ones since, but one of the advantages of double-glazing is that it's excellent at keeping noise out, and trickle vents seem to be a compromise that defeats that purpose.

I'm not really sure how common they are here. Perhaps in new-builds?

Anyway I am quite curious about my energy bill, being here for only a month it was around £150 for gas and elec. Not sure if that's a lot but looking at the interwebs it seems sort of average?
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We tend to average around £250 per month. I think £150pm is very normal, though I've heard some people managing on around half that, at £75pm. I can't imagine how.
 
The Voice said:
Just checked and all our trickle vents are open. Humidity sitting at 56%, but I’m home alone at the moment, haven’t started cooking, showering, etc. Latter is also a problem because the extraction fan in the bathroom is dogshit, and I guess that moisture has to go somewhere eventually.
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Do you have an extractor fan above your hob?

I ask, because it's one of those silly things I get a kick out of--most extractor fans here don't actually extract to the outside. Does yours?

If we're boiling water for potatoes, pasta, veg, etc. we have to open the windows in the kitchen or everything steams up :)

Another reason why a working HVAC is sorely missed.

But yeah, I feel ya.
 
We've got bad insulation in our kitchen and in our living room. We have double glazed double doors in both (living room is upstairs and has Juliet balconies each with a double door, made of double glazed glass).

The problem is that all of these doors have deliberately open gaps that we can't close. So cold air just streams in. There are no vents or anything, just literal gaps at the top of the door. The kitchen doors have vents, but we have no ability to close them. So its open 24/7.

So our kitchen is always freezing while the rest of the house is warm. We could fix this by replacing the doors, probably improving the insulation without sacrificing ventilation, but its EXPENSIVE.
 
Ancalagon said:
We've got bad insulation in our kitchen and in our living room. We have double glazed double doors in both (living room is upstairs and has Juliet balconies each with a double door, made of double glazed glass).

The problem is that all of these doors have deliberately open gaps that we can't close. So cold air just streams in. There are no vents or anything, just literal gaps at the top of the door. The kitchen doors have vents, but we have no ability to close them. So its open 24/7.

So our kitchen is always freezing while the rest of the house is warm. We could fix this by replacing the doors, probably improving the insulation without sacrificing ventilation, but its EXPENSIVE.
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Bet you don't have a humidity problem at least ;)
 
Ancalagon said:
We've got bad insulation in our kitchen and in our living room. We have double glazed double doors in both (living room is upstairs and has Juliet balconies each with a double door, made of double glazed glass).

The problem is that all of these doors have deliberately open gaps that we can't close. So cold air just streams in. There are no vents or anything, just literal gaps at the top of the door. The kitchen doors have vents, but we have no ability to close them. So its open 24/7.

So our kitchen is always freezing while the rest of the house is warm. We could fix this by replacing the doors, probably improving the insulation without sacrificing ventilation, but its EXPENSIVE.
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You get some products to fill the gaps. I fitted some, what looks like, really thick foam tape, around some window frames which produced a draft, and that helped a lot.
 
Lycanthrope said:
We tend to average around £250 per month. I think £150pm is very normal, though I've heard some people managing on around half that, at £75pm. I can't imagine how.
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Yea, I'm just still one person - I'm sure it's going to go up quite a bit when my wife gets here. She hates getting cold so the heating is going to run overtime. But I think this area is also fairly new so it should be well insulated.
 
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