First time home owner - any tips?

[PureAppleJuice]

My recommendation is to visit at different times of days / different days, just to get a sense of what the area is like.

 

[Graetzbridge]

Some odd things.
In our first house the owner took all the electric bulbs. Including porch light. Not a biggie but inconvenient. They also took flowers from the front garden. There were too few sockets (receptacles)

 

[dirtychinchilla]

Bear in mind that in any GD thread, you'll get so many responses to a question like this that the only answer will be to move to a private island with a perfect house.

 

[Angilion]

[..] I'm surprised the gas board were that relaxed about that leak angeilion, that's really poor of them.

I was surprised myself. I'd rung what was explicitly labelled as an emergency gas escape number. I wasted some time repeating myself in different ways, assuming that the person on the other end somehow hadn't understood that I was reporting a gas leak. It was quite strange. Thank goodness for the fire brigade.

I'm also disappointed that the meter reader and service engineers for the boiler etc had never noticed it, IIRC they're meant to look for signs of damage/tampering as part of the job and report it, I would have thought a missing cut off handle should have been an immediate safety issue and a replacement fitted.

I've never had a boiler service engineer check the meter. They only check the boiler. It hadn't even occured to me that they would check the whole gas supply from entrance to my house.

The meter reader...I don't know if I'd had a visit from a meter reader at that point. They're extremely rare.

 

[m@rty]

Some odd things.
In our first house the owner took all the electric bulbs. Including porch light. Not a biggie but inconvenient. They also took flowers from the front garden. There were too few sockets (receptacles)

Probably wanted more money for his house, so decided to take a tantrum

 

[Angilion]

Some odd things.
In our first house the owner took all the electric bulbs. Including porch light. Not a biggie but inconvenient. They also took flowers from the front garden. There were too few sockets (receptacles)

Oh yeah, sockets. Good call. Check how many there are and where they are so you'll have a good idea of whether you'll have enough of them where you'll want them for plugging things in. It's irritating to find that, for example, you can't put a lamp where you wanted it because the nearest plug socket is on the other side of the room. Or that you have to swap mains-powered appliances around because you have 3 of them close to each other and only 2 plug sockets in that area. Etc. Things you can be sorted out, but not immediately. Things that will add extra irritation when you move in, when you won't want it. Even something as minor as having to charge your phone in a different room because there aren't any spare sockets in the room you're in can assume a disproportionate importance when you're stressed. Far better to have an electrician add extra sockets to a room before you move in and/or have some decent many-to-one plug socket things before you move in.

 

[Angilion]

On a more light-hearted note, twirl around your house proclaiming "This is mine" like The Cat from Red Dwarf

 

[Werewolf]

I was surprised myself. I'd rung what was explicitly labelled as an emergency gas escape number. I wasted some time repeating myself in different ways, assuming that the person on the other end somehow hadn't understood that I was reporting a gas leak. It was quite strange. Thank goodness for the fire brigade.



I've never had a boiler service engineer check the meter. They only check the boiler. It hadn't even occured to me that they would check the whole gas supply from entrance to my house.

The meter reader...I don't know if I'd had a visit from a meter reader at that point. They're extremely rare.

The british gas guy who does ours always does a flow test, which involves running the boiler for a set time with a reading before and after.
I think the idea is that they know what the boiler should be using, so if it uses more than that there is a possible problem, and they've been good in the past checking things like if the gas pipework was earthed so obviously on the ball.

We actually had the cut off valve replaced a couple of years back as at the time they were putting a plastic liner in the old pipes and I think had decided to replace the cut offs at the same time if they looked old.

 

[DireEmblem]

My only advice would be to:

1: Check the condition of everything when you move in.
2: Take a snapshot or video of your electric/gas meter as soon as you have the keys.
3: If you don't have any furniture, start looking now. It can take weeks to have a sofa built/delivered.

 

[Diddums]

Some odd things.
In our first house the owner took all the electric bulbs. Including porch light. Not a biggie but inconvenient. They also took flowers from the front garden. There were too few sockets (receptacles)

This is customary in Holland. When you move house, you take everything out. Was odd when we moved there

 

[potatolord]

Also if you do have a cut off, make sure it works! As I found out when I moved into my house over the Christmas week 5 years ago. Once we'd got everything in, I was sure I could smell gas. I went to cut off the gas only to find out that the handle was seized solid as the regulator was so old. To be fair, Transco were on the ball and were round in about 30mins after I called them however they just condemned the regulator and capped off the supply. It was January before they could come back to fit a new regulator and then I still needed to get the gas engineer out to replace the old gas pipe running to the boiler which was faulty. Having no heating, hob, hot shower or hot water until the middle of January in the depths of winter when we'd just moved into a new house was great fun. Tempers were very short!



And while you're up there, check for holes in the roof. When I bought my first house, I didn't check in the loft until after I'd moved in and was putting some stuff up there. Seeing daylight and rotted jack rafters was slightly worrying.

Heh, my first house i never checked the roof. Went up the attic for a look when I sold the house. I found one if the main roof beams was resting on a loose half brick.

I was very pleased the buyers didn't have a survey done...

 

[bainbridge]

We bought our first house last spring and out of the hundreds of items we've puchased the most useful has been a dozen house bricks. We've used them to temporarily:

Hold things down
Prop things up
Hold things open
Keep things closed

 

[Orangeade]

The main thing is to enjoy it and not let the inevitable niggles take the shine off things. It's a great experience, wish I had savoured it a bit more myself.

 

[Werewolf]

We bought our first house last spring and out of the hundreds of items we've puchased the most useful has been a dozen house bricks. We've used them to temporarily:

Hold things down
Prop things up
Hold things open
Keep things closed

I'm laughing, but at the same time nodding away to myself

We've got some bricks (both decorative and normal) that have been kicking around the garden for years/decades and they get used to prop up the mobility scooters whilst changing tires, holding the gate open, when we want to cut a bit of wood but can't be bothered to get the workmate out etc.

 

[potatolord]

I'm laughing, but at the same time nodding away to myself

We've got some bricks (both decorative and normal) that have been kicking around the garden for years/decades and they get used to prop up the mobility scooters whilst changing tires, holding the gate open, when we want to cut a bit of wood but can't be bothered to get the workmate out etc.

My bricks are being used to raise my desk a few inches, due to working from home.

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Ensure that the living room has a maxi-flexed space efficiency design whereby two corner sofas can be operationalised at the same time. Three corner sofas on the other hand is absolute insanity and is best avoided.