Stephen Edwards makes a really good point about the thermostat, and it works both ways (ie causing the heating to come on when you don't need it, as well as going off when you do!). Thermostats are often placed in the hallway, which can be colder than the rest of the house by cold air coming in through a draughty front door. It sounds like you have systemic problems to solve, but once those are sorted out you could look at draughtproofing, paying particular attention to anywhere that affects the thermostat. If you identify your letterbox as draughty you could look at fitting one of our letterbox solutions (we do a lovely stainless steel front letterplate as well as an inner letter box draught excluder), and if you have a pet that's going in and out through a draughty, rattly old catflap we do a pet door too. Hope you get things sorted in time for the cold weather!

I am about to have electric UFH by ukwarmfloor.com - a norwegian system that has been around for ages over there. ( I do not work for them in any way!) Running costs are MASSIVELY cheaper than our versions. Over there, they instal the mats under roofs, drives and on the decks of icebreakers - they know a thing or two about snow and cold, and so I am giving it a whirl in my guest bedroom and large en suite. This is a response from the man answering all my many questions: "The system as shown would use a total of around 375Wper hour to keep all the areas heated to a constant 26C at floor level. By way of comparison the most efficient cable underfloor system would use 975W per hour to achieve this, whilst a boiler & radiator system would use 750W per hour. Comparisons in terms of BTUs can be a little confusing as most standard tables stating average BTU requirements for domestic situations are based on the heat output of traditional radiators etc. So our system only uses 375W (given as approx 1279BTUs in traditional thermal conversion tables)to do the job that a traditional boiler/radiator system would need 750W to do(given as approx 2559 BTUs). Our system is primarily designed specifically to produce the same air temperature in a room as other systems but to use less power to do so. The two basic reasons for this are: The heating element is self-regulating - only ever drawing the minimum required power at any individual point across the floor to maintain the set temperature. 2. The heating element heats the entire floor area and so effectively turns the whole floor of the the room into a radiant surface, heating the entire volume of air in the room from the bottom up. This is unlike radiators, which only heat a small surface, typically at the sides of a room, or a cable or piped underfloor system which can only heat thin strips of floor, leaving most of the floor surface unheated. Because our system heats the entire area it need only heat to 26C to produce effective air temperatures in the room. Other systems have to heat to much higher temperatures to do this and so require more energy to do so." I have spent an inordinate amount of time reading everything on their system, and I am going to use it. There is also a video of a customer installing it on youtube and the link is on their site somewhere.

You have already improved the look of your home. Well done! We put on external insulation but did it at the same time as window replacement and we replaced windowsills and the gutters and facia at the same time. We were doing this anyway as we were fully renovating our house. You will be adding around 100mm to the outside of the house so you need to consider there will be a difference between you and your attached neighbours house and some of the features you have will need to be replicated which may not fully match what you have at present. The brick samples we looked at were a bit fake looking so I went for full render instead. Silicone render is the best. Grants are available so look that up in your area. In terms of heat retention, our house is snug and cozy so we have no regrets. It is however expensive. Read this article and shop around. We found significant variation in cost and quality of suppliers. https://www.houzz.ie/magazine/10-key-considerations-when-youre-planning-external-insulation-stsetivw-vs~73261580

Thanks Rob and Sarah L Now it seems more clear Anything I can ask the builder to do? To strenghten that wall? Even if it does mean having to overengineer the place Also, can’t seem to understand the role of the decorative wall. Was it put up after the cracks surfaced, to sort of brace the wall and provide support? Or , this may be fetched, the cracks appeared while taking down that wall? Specially with the power tools used, 1500w drill monsters I will never know as long as it’s reinforced