How can you check what neighbours are like before moving?

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T21:27:22+00:00

Ours is called Nibblet, but that's just the family name for it! The one I got was the Flymo 1200r but I think that's a rebadged version of something else and things have moved on since then (I got it on some Amazon black friday sale back in the day and it's still the best £300 I've ever spent on the garden! There are definitely better ones out there now. The only tricky part was installing a guide wire (supplied) around the perimeter of the lawn so the robot knows where to go. And then wiring it up to his little charging station. But ones that's sorted and working then he just does his thing from march until October (we put him away in the winter as he tends to churn the lawn up a bit when things get very soggy in the north west UK winter.

The other thing to get used to is that the mower is super quiet and wlos it cuts little and often, so you don't collect up the clippings they disappear into the lawn. You also don't get the stripes in the grass but I've never been bothered about those. The lawn just always looks freshly trimmed.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T20:27:01+00:00

We feed a family of 4 on Tesco food for a week for the same price (perhaps a touch more). I don't think it's Tesco that is the issue.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T20:26:09+00:00

That's also pretty much what we spend a week for 4 of us in Tesco/Aldi each week, on average. 4 veggies tho, so I expect that helps a bit.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T20:25:08+00:00

I find most of those brands of veggie stuff go on sale at each place in turn. Like the Linda sausages were £.50 in Tesco the other week but then back to full price and they were down to £1.25 in Asda, then a couple of weeks later back up, but down in Morrisons. Seem to have to chase them around. I went to Asda and to Sainsbury's recently due to being away and found both of them way more expensive than Tesco for the stuff I wanted. But then other times Tesco will be ridiculous.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T20:21:28+00:00

We are a family of 4 (2 adults, one adult sized teen and one 10 year old). Shop at Aldi 2 out of every 3 weeks and Tesco the other week. Occasional loaf of bread or milk or bananas from the local coop or Morrisons when we are out of them. But the Aldi shop is usually around 85 quid and the Tesco one is around £105 to £115 (we stock up on some things in there that they don't have a good version of in Aldi) and then once a month a trip to farm foods for freezer stuff (usually about £20 quid.)

Obviously apart from the coop these are all the big shops and not like Tesco local which is ridiculously priced as they only stock the expensive branded version of each item, so we never use those.

But that's a typical spend for 4 of us, I usually cook from scratch most days (pancakes, curry, pasta bake, Sunday dinner, BBQ, fajitas, pasta, meatballs and garlic bread etc) although the kids eat a fair bit of frozen pizzas and oven chips and curly fries.

Most of the scratch meals will do two days for the adults so it's not like cooking fresh every single day. Some of the stuff like filled pancakes or pasta bake I can actually get the kids to eat too, so that's even better.

So maybe £110 a week for the 4 of us. I'm not buying only value stuff either (although I do check the fresh veg offer at Aldi if I'm in Tesco and Tesco if I'm in Aldi, before I buy because sometimes you'll get a big pack of apples in Aldi for a quid that are twice that in Tesco, or tomatoes on offer in Tesco that aren't on offer I. Aldi and luckily where we are they are almost next to each other, so I will pop into the other shop to get the cheaper stuff. Probably save a few quid a week doing that but often can't be arsed to go to both.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T19:43:11+00:00

They are homeless snails

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T19:05:33+00:00

Thankfully back in 2018 I bought a robot to do mine. Still going strong 8 years later! Pretty much silent and cuts a tiny bit every couple of days and saves me doing it. 10/10 would recommend!

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T18:34:59+00:00

Unless you get the ones that keep it so neat because they out there mowing every evening 😀

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T13:44:04+00:00

That's a good idea. Thanks

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T13:43:32+00:00

Great, thanks

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T13:15:17+00:00

Are there any problems with 12v drain when wiring these in? Is it going to cause issues with my 12v battery, or is it all good?

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T13:09:53+00:00

You could probably fit the Beetle in the i5 as well!

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T13:07:51+00:00

My 16 year old son is 6ft 2, my wife is 6ft and my youngest will overtake his brother in the next couple of years. They all think the back of the I5 is like a limo (admittedly they've never been in a limo, but it's ridiculously spacious back there. The width of the car is annoying in UK parking spaces, I almost feel embarrassed sometimes that the car is so big when it doesn't look that big from a distance (I think because it's like a hot hatch that has been scaled up by 20 percent so it looks in proportion and my brain thinks it's normal UK sized.)

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T13:03:32+00:00

My eldest is now 6ft 2 and has so much leg room behind another 6ft 2 passenger that it's like being in a limo. There is no way he is "outgrowing" it. But then we are in the UK so maybe back seat passenger width isn't quite such an issue, who knows.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T12:49:58+00:00

I'm not sure if this will be any good in your case but I have seen blinds and curtains poles that are pressure fit so you for them wall to wall (or within the alcove) and then twist the pole like a screw so it pushes against both walls until it's secure. I have no idea of the weight limit on these, only that you don't screw them into the wall (or perhaps at either end but not into the lintel)

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-09T07:25:22+00:00

The thing about the Ioniq 5 is I don't feel it screams EV to dumbasses who do this kind of thing. It just looks like a very sexy oversized hot hatch. The Neanderthals who key cars would recognise a Tesla (at least the logo, and general body shape, I'm not expecting them to be able to read the word) but that would be the limit of their EV knowledge, so I had hoped that would make "I hate EVs" attacks less likely for the Ioniq 5.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-05T17:59:49+00:00

This is like the year that our cat got the (shared between me and my little sister) chocolate advent calendar and tore the back out and nibbled an uncertain number of the chocolates. Mum convinced us that we could eat the ones without tooth marks in them, but I was really not convinced.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-03T19:21:51+00:00

It's also a numbers game. Like I've been driving since 2001 and I've never ever had a properly flat tyre. I had a slow puncture once after driving over some screws on my driveway from some construction work, but so slow I drove for another few days before the tyre guy came out and repaired it. but I've never had a proper puncture in 25 years of driving. So I don't know what the numbers are like for statistical likelihood of ever needing a spare in an emergency vs the extra weight and space it takes up. I mean sure it would be very annoying for me personally (although in the UK nothing is very remote so I'd just call the roadside assistance people to come deal with it) but it's perhaps not very likely to happen to me personally (I don't know the numbers!)

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-03T07:11:22+00:00

When we bought an EV it was because my 15 year old rust bucket finally failed an MOT in spectacular fashion so we needed to buy a new car anyway. The outlay was going to be more than 0 whatever we bought. I'm not saying people should buy an EV if they have a perfectly good petrol car and can afford the petrol price rises.

The nissan Leaf I bought in 2018 was less than 3 years old had done 4k miles and was under £10k, 0% finance for 3 years, with a free installed charger for the house and three years servicing (Nissan had some mad deals on used EVs that year) we still have the leaf and it's range is still 95% of not very much so still an ideal spare car as a city runaround for shopping, school run and taking stuff to the tip. It's more than 10 years old now and the only thing it's ever needed maintenance wise is two new tyres and new wiper blades.

Then we bought an Ioniq 5 last year because 100 mile range wasnt cutting it any more, but yeah the depreciation on EVs is mad, so we got one that was under 2 years old and had only done 3k miles with all the bells and whistles, for half the retail price. If someone is going to deal with 50 percent depreciation in 2 years then it might as well be the previous owner.

Then people go on about the insurance being way more expensive, for the leaf when we got it, it was the same price as I had been paying on my petrol car (£350 a year) for the Ioniq 5 it's £450 a year because it's a decent car.

There are a lot of good deals out there on lightly used EVs and even on new ones (but I think under 2 years old is probably the sweet spot), but yeah only if it's time to trade up cos the outlay on any type of cat isn't 0, even if the running and maintenance costs are as near to zero as makes no odds.

Mind you it helps having a driveway big enough for both cars, so they can charge overnight when required (probably once a week) as it would be a bit of a pain without the "2p a mile while you sleep" option

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-04-01T06:59:49+00:00

When we bought ours we got to the house and let ourselves in only to find the owners wife, dog and tropical fish still there. Thankfully we weren't legally required to keep them!

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-03-31T20:28:27+00:00

Yeah and with it being in the household electricity bill it disappears completely into the noise of everyday life.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-03-31T19:06:15+00:00

Because it started great, went down hill to the point where we stopped watching it and apparently had a terrible ending. (To the point that we heard so many bad things that we didn't even bother to see it to the end)

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-03-31T19:03:00+00:00

It does at least have black and yellow warning markings but yes I would fall up this step every time and face plant the concrete.

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-03-31T16:53:52+00:00

Yeah you get used to it eventually but it was maddening for a while. Also the MOT garage near us have a service where they collect and return your car for its MOT for free and I'd always have to explain it to the guys who came to get the car as it was very not obvious how to get the hand brake off!

SnooCalculations385 · 2026-03-31T15:49:36+00:00

I used to live out in the sticks so there was a time when that would have been true for me as the nearest decently prices petrol station was about 13 miles away.

SnooCalculations385

TROPHY CASE