Keeping on top of the jobs that get expensive when they are left and knowing which ones are a legal duty.
Two engineers can charge the same money and only one of them takes the casing off. This is what is supposed to happen at a boiler service, who can do it for gas, oil and solid fuel, what it costs and leaves out and what a good service record shows.
Most jobs that go badly wrong were agreed in a few minutes on a doorstep. These are the checks that take twenty minutes instead: the registers that matter, the insurance to see, how to compare quotes and pay safely, your rights if it goes wrong and what to keep when it's done.
Planning permission and building regulations are separate systems asking different questions. A job can need one, both or neither. This guide sets out what common projects usually need in England, who signs them off and which certificate to keep for the day a buyer asks.
Condensation, penetrating damp, rising damp and plumbing leaks all get called damp, yet each needs a different fix. This guide gives a step-by-step check, a comparison of the four, what humidity readings can and cannot tell you, which professional to call and the records worth keeping once it is fixed.
A boiler usually lasts 10 to 15 years and a heat pump 20 or more, but most other appliances have no official lifespan at all. Here are honest rules of thumb, the signs something is on its way out, how to weigh a repair against a replacement and the records that make a repair or a claim easier.
Almost every expensive repair in a home starts out as a cheap one that nobody got round to. This is the plain version: what needs doing around a UK home and how often, a month-by-month calendar to run it from, the checks that are a legal duty for landlords and the records worth keeping.
