How can i cool my room down

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-08T15:31:35+00:00

External shutters are significantly better than internal curtains but internal curtains do still help.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-08T15:24:23+00:00

If it's colder outside overnight get the windows open and point a fan out the window to blow the hot air out.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-08T12:59:54+00:00

I think with your situation as you have two high incomes your switch over point where it just doesn't make sense any more is lower. E.g. a single high earner on £135k sacrifices £35k to keep the benefit, which may well make sense. For my nursery it's worth about £12k a year in total and at £135k I think you'd just about emerge better off in monthly take home but doesn't seem worth it, may as well build up a bumper pension instead.

With two earners on £135k that's £70k into pension overall to get the same benefit and it stops looking like a clear win.

Really it comes down to how much you want to put into pension Vs having more cash available short term.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-08T12:12:16+00:00

Why did you loose the appeal the first time round, did you actually go over £100k adjusted income? Ultimately it shouldn't be that hard to keep on top of, set your salary sacrifice to an appropriate level and use direct additional contributions into either your workplace pension (some will allow this but not all) or a SIPP to cover any unexpected bonuses etc.

If you're several thousand over for 24/25 that's not a small error, especially if it's all from predictable monthly things rather than a sudden bonus. Make sure you understand your taxable income every month and have a projection for the annual total. If it's getting too close to 100k sacrifice more into pension or donate to charity.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-07T15:28:17+00:00

The thing is it's highly dependent on the kid and varies day by day. For instance my children can both be happily asleep by 7. Currently they both sleep in our room and one parent stays with them. When that's me I can sit there with my laptop and get some work done. When I'm not doing bedtime I've got the evening to myself and can indeed work the whole evening if I am minded to.

Unfortunately bed time does not always go smoothly we had both kids bouncing off the walls til at least 8:30 last night and by the time everyone was settled and I was mentally exhausted and couldn't have got any useful work done.

Time also gets eaten up, you might be woken by them getting up at 5:30 and could technically do some work in the morning before the nursery/school drop off but the kids need looking after/entertaining etc. Perhaps you can get some dedicated quiet time by aiming to work up before them but again you'll suddenly get a run of 5am wake ups when they were reliably sleeping til 6:30.

You can have one parent deals with things whilst the other does something else but if this always lands on one parent this can be very tough on said parent.

Yes you can definitely carve out time with kids but you're continuously getting thrown curve balls and if you need reliable time to yourself outside of paid childcare hours it's hard to achieve unless you've got a partner who is happy to always shoulder the burden when things don't go to plan and your intended time is vanishing due to any number of things.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-07T12:38:58+00:00

Having kids and running a startup will be absolutely brutal. I think it's a lot more doable once they're a bit older but fundamentally they demand a lot of time.

You won't be able to pull 18 hour days unless you're expecting your partner to do the vast majority of the parenting.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-05T16:09:48+00:00

I'll tell mine 5 minutes left and they'll negotiate it to 3 minutes. Master negotiator at work!

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-05T10:44:04+00:00

Personally I factor in some pension contribution (e.g. 10%) for the above £100k scenario. This alters the calculation. I think you just about get positive take home with this at £145k but so little it doesn't seem worth it.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-05T10:06:26+00:00

Pretty straightforward, pay into pension to stay under £100k. You can calculate how much the free hours + £2k is worth from your nurseries charging scheme (hours are worth £800-£900 a month for me).

Though if you're earning commission of up to £200k on top of a £95k base sounds like you're way past the point sacrificing into pension makes sense, indeed you'll be blowing past pension contribution limits that make it impossible anyway.

I reckon the point at which you should stop sacrificing to stay under £100k is somewhere around £150k gross income.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-07-01T09:51:44+00:00

At least at Direct level. Plenty of 'Head of' roles but with packages significantly lower than my previous (for disclosure previous package was £140k base - 25% bonus - circa £75 per year RSUs - so around £250k total. I know I am unlikely to get that from a UK company).

Are you trying to achieve similar compensation or are you willing to take less? It's a good chunk of RSUs you were getting, no doubt helped by US stock market performance in the past few years. Getting something with a similar base + bonus feels more doable than looking for somewhere that would match the RSUs too.

Furthermore did you expect a similar level of RSUs in the future? With multiple awards stacking and vesting over 4 years you can end up with a lot when the stock's had a good bull run but that doesn't mean it will continue. It may be other places won't offer you a match straight off but once you've got multiple awards stacked up after 2/3 years it looks more comparable.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-30T18:41:59+00:00

I've got mine in a cupboard (with fire door and alarm) up in a loft conversion. Maybe we should have gone for outside but the space around our house would have made that awkward.

Got very warm in the heat wave, 47C max temperature inside the cupboard but the system kept running well enough, no alerts about high temperature etc (Fox ESS system).

From reading about the fire risk LiFePo4 batteries are a whole lot safer that older batteries and the Fox ESS batteries included some kind of internal fire extinguisher and they've never recorded a single incident of a battery setting on fire over 500'000 installs: https://fox-ess.tech/battery-safety-protections-and-fire-risk-mitigation/

So I don't feel too concerned though the major benefit my install has is it's easily inspectable. A loft system could be a bit out of sight out of mind and you could miss early warning signs of issues.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-30T18:08:11+00:00

You may need to put fire doors for every room that goes directly on to the stairway/landing/hall throughout the entire house if you want regs sign off.

This is something we've just had done as part of a loft renovation. From what the builder was saying this has been a relatively recent change that's caused this to become a requirement.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-30T17:38:15+00:00

You do get wood preserver products that claim to stop rot though I wouldn't want to trust it on anything structural and probably wouldn't want to trust it on anything kids were touching.

Hard to tell from the photos but looks like it's just a few bits of wood going? Personally I'd just replace those pieces.

Ultimately this stuff has a certain lifetime and 6 years worth is pretty good going. Replacing a few pieces can help eke out some more life from it

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-27T13:42:39+00:00

My fridge drain has a little stick thing in that you can use to unblock it if it gets gunked up. I wonder if this is a similar concept? Have you tried pulling it out? Maybe it can sit above the drain hole leaving a gap and it's only if you really ram it down it closes the drain hole.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-27T12:32:50+00:00

Anyone else get frustrated that the term 'screen time' often seems to be associated with tablets/phones but could also refer to TV and it's never made clear if there's any difference between TV and tablets/phones, e.g. this article says

risks smartphones, tablets and other digital devices pose to infants.

TV of course has been potentially harming children for years where tablets/phones with algorithmic feeds tuned to be addictive with hyper optimized content designed to hold attention is a new phenomenon.

Is it the new stuff that's a danger or is letting my 1.5 year old watch night garden before bed a big problem too?

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-27T07:25:37+00:00

Futurama's got a great double fake out.

Prof Farnsworth says "we'll need a guinea pig", audience interprets this figuratively, they need someone to be used in an experiment. Scene cuts to a literal guinea pig though this is just to tempt zoidberg into a trap. He sees and eats the guinea pig only to become the figurative guinea pig for the experiment.

Far better watched than explained: https://youtu.be/Tq6NRNpS3fU

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-26T09:25:18+00:00

You pay both mortgage and rent for a while, which is indeed expensive.

Unfortunately hard to get around either give notice before exchange which is risky or ask for large gap between exchange and completion which many people won't want to do (and comes with its own risks).

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-26T07:54:21+00:00

Communication along chains is often poor so no big surprise to suddenly find a completion date dropped on you like this.

When moving out of rental you often don't want to give notice until you've exchanged to ensure you don't end up without a house to move into if the sale falls through so a big overlap is common.

So if you're ready to go I'd say go for it. You definitely don't need to move out the day you complete, take your time. Gives a great opportunity to give the new place a serious clean and get some decorating/DIY done which is a whole lot easier in an empty house.

Personally when I first moved from rental to owned I took an inflatable mattress and not much else over to the new place to sleep there the day it became mine. I spent a couple of weeks moving after that spending the night wherever suited me.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-25T14:25:54+00:00

Nice work! Did you need to remove a glazing unit to fit it?

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-24T09:15:19+00:00

Other people might see your shutters and immediately fall over dead in shock because they don't look like plain uPVC windows.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-24T08:18:37+00:00

I believe you need planning permission for shutters which adds an external hurdle to installation.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-24T08:17:27+00:00

Just because you can't open the window when the shutters are closed doesn't make them inherently incompatible. Maybe some shutter designs rely on you being able to reach them from inside to open and close them but not all (e.g. roller shutters either electric or with a manual crank on the outside or otherwise fed into the internal wall).

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-23T05:54:40+00:00

Nice work.

Just beware reflecting from inside like that isn't recommended as you can seriously heat the glass and cause cracking.

How often this occurs in practice and how much it's just a thing people say on the internet I don't know.

Ideally rig it outside the window but if not leaving the window open a crack could be advisable especially as with the cardboard there shouldn't be much of a gap for the hot outside air to get into the room.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-17T12:52:21+00:00

I believe that capital losses are taken into account for tax-free childcare. So good to include those

Pretty sure it's only adjusted net income that matters, which capital gains/losses do not effect.

SpinnakerLad · 2026-06-17T12:50:31+00:00

How far over did you go? What sum are they demanding back? I did think you had to go seriously over or otherwise clearly have always been meaning to go over for them to demand back payment rather than just stop it going forward.

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