To wonder how holiday home owners regulate power usage?

[Giggorata]

Times is 'ard and it looks as though we might have to let out the Scottish cottage for the holiday/weekend trade.
We've only ever rented it out to friends/friends of friends/family before this, and by rented, I mean usually asking for contributions to electricity and council tax.
Now that both are going through the roof, this probably has to change.
So, I am wondering how we can ensure that an electric fire won't be left on for two months, for example, (looking at you, DS2).
Is there any way of doing something remotely? Via smart meter, Hive or something?
We live 4 hours away by car, and fuel is also rocketing…

[quote Gjd60]Topical article here…
www.thewestmorlandgazette.co.uk/news/19829938.tim-farron-mp-sets-plan-stop-lake-district-housing-crisis/[/quote]
That's great he's calling for it, but didn't mean it's going to happen.

*doesn't

@Seeline

I remember staying in holiday cottages as a kid where you had to take a pile of 50p coins with you to feed the meter......

We stayed in a holiday cottage four years ago where we had to put £1 coins in the meter, the problem was the meter took the old £1 coins and the owner only had ten of them. She gave us the ten coins and said that if we used them all to knock on her door and she would come and empty them out of the meter and we could buy them again. The tens coins lasted until two hours before we were about to leave, I'd put the dishwasher on and five minutes in the electric went. We decided the cleaner would have to sort out power and the dishwasher and left. It was a good stay apart from that.

Holiday homes are inherently immoral.

@Tontostitis

Holiday homes are inherently immoral.

And financially lucrative.

No one ever says its immoral for Londoners to be priced out of their home city. I wonder why.

Anyway, in response to the OP, I never quite understand why the cost of the fuel/heating is worried about by holiday home owners when the cost of renting it runs to 4/5/600 for the week. Its one of the outlays and of course you try to reduce those but its the cost of the business.

Having said that the majority of places we have stayed at (and we only ever go self catering in holiday homes, never hotels, cant stand hotels) are way too hot. Recently stayed somewhere with underfloor heating and it was boiling, seemed to have been set for 22 degrees, I had to have the windows and front door open, I was sweating and it was difficult to sleep a lot.

We have however stayed at places before where it really was too cold and its pretty miserable when its like that. I wouldnt stay anywhere where you have to pay extra for heating.
If its a rural scottish cottage you could put a stove in, then the guests bring their own fuel or buy it locally.

Holiday homes also feed the local economy and give cleaners/ laundrettes work Tontostitis.. so its swings and roundabouts.

OP you can't just let a place out for holidays. You have to meet certain requirements, E.g. insurance has to be changed, you need an electrical safety certificate and a fire safety procedure, PAT testing for all electrical appliances etc

@Jellykat

Holiday homes also feed the local economy and give cleaners/ laundrettes work Tontostitis.. so its swings and roundabouts.

Some do- some dont

Some destroy communities
the school goes
the post office goes
the shop goes
the pub goes

I'm sure thats true in some places TheHoptimist, but here in Pembrokeshire we'd be pretty buggered without tourists.. Its 2nd homeowners that get my goat, empty houses for the majority of the year!

@Saucery

One of the cottages we stay in has the heating set remotely but you can message the owner/manager to alter it if you want. Another one has instructions for the thermostat (WiFi) but the owner cleans as soon as you leave so she can turn it back down . I usually find cottages too hot and turn down the radiators. Only use wood burners etc on the very coldest evenings and there’s usually only enough wood for one evening anyway - I’d never go out and buy more.

Don't do that (require someone to message you to turn the heating up). I would be very pissed off if paying to stay in a cottage and had to message the owner like this. It would make me very uncomfortable.

We rent holiday properties regularly - in the past 12 months we've stayed in Dorset, Chester and Belfast, and have another week booked in Aviemore.

I would definitely expect wi-fi so if you're thinking of renting out OP you'll need to add it. I would not expect to have to feed a meter with coins - we're not in the 1970s any more. I also personally would hate having heating which the owner controls and you have to text or email asking for it to be switched up/down. I don't want fancy, or apps, or smart whatever - just a very simple to use boiler (with proper instructions) and thermostatic valves in the radiators so I can switch the temperature WAY down in the bedrooms.

I would agree that it's the job of the cleaner to come in after visitors have left to "reset" the heating to standard settings. Or turn it off/down if you know you're not expecting guests for a while.

I think all the "holiday homes are immoral" people won't be happy until we're all going to a state sponsored gulag for a holiday or something. Or camping. They're the sort who are always going on about what fun it is.

We invested in units on holiday sites for my DC when exH passed.

We ended up converting them all to card meters. Thus the power is paid for and we don't have a retrospective bill to contend with.
It works for us because the on-site shop can top up the cards: it may not work out if you don't have a local corner shop which can help. You just need to get the turnover team to make sure that there's at least X on the card as each new booking arrives.

Is there any way of doing something remotely? Via smart meter, Hive or something?

Yes

Also if you run the cottage as an Airbnb then you may find that as a business making less than £15k you’re not liable for council tax - do check this out

@ivykaty44

Is there any way of doing something remotely? Via smart meter, Hive or something?

Yes

Also if you run the cottage as an Airbnb then you may find that as a business making less than £15k you’re not liable for council tax - do check this out

Not if you also want to stay there.

OP are you aware if the short term let legislation that has recently been passed in Scotland? If you rent your holiday house out on a commercial basis you will be required to meet similar safety regulations as long term lets, eg Electrical Condition Reports, EPCs, interlinked smoke alarms etc.

The legislation is very specific about the distinction between second homes and commercially let houses. Legislation restricting use of second homes will likely follow during this parliamentary term.

I stayed in a cottage in Scotland last year. It had a coin meter that was noted in the listing, and we were advised to bring a supply of £1 coins when we booked it.

The owner put some credit on for our arrival which lasted about half the week, but it did made us more mindful about turning lights off, not spending ages in the shower, minimal heater use etc., as I didn't want to feed the meter!

Yes @Chatwin, I have heard about and will be installing the interlinked alarms, thank you for the heads up. (I was under the impression that second homes required these already)

I now have some answers to my questions, and will certainly look into some of the helpful suggestions to convert from a second home to a holiday cottage or Air B&B (which I hadn't considered at all)

The cottage is in a rural but not madly touristy area, btw, not the Highlands and is one bedroomed, (although there is a large upstairs cupboard, which we use as a tiny bedroom, when needed.)
I also won the Battle of the Bathroom with DH, as it is a small room and we have just a shower and no bath, or else there wouldn't be enough room to swing a hamster.
The staircase is also made of stone, so care needs to be taken. We have a rule of bare feet or shoes, no socked feet, and I pinched a phrase from a previous Mumsnet thread “ No jazz hands on the stairs” Might not be suitable for a pensioner, or small children.
Quite limited letting potential, I'd have thought.

@Seeline

I remember staying in holiday cottages as a kid where you had to take a pile of 50p coins with you to feed the meter......

Yes, same, this was pretty normal in a holiday cottage. The key-meter of its day. My dad used to save up his 50ps from the minute the holiday was booked. You'd be watching TV of an evening and suddenly be plunged into darkness while dad scrabbled around for his little bag of coins.

We’ve stayed in a few Scottish airbnbs where they ask you to read the meters when you leave as they charge separately for energy. I’ve never had it anywhere else so assumed it was a Scottish thing - you could try that

@Giggorata

Yes *@Chatwin*, I have heard about and will be installing the interlinked alarms, thank you for the heads up. (I was under the impression that second homes required these already)

I now have some answers to my questions, and will certainly look into some of the helpful suggestions to convert from a second home to a holiday cottage or Air B&B (which I hadn't considered at all)

The cottage is in a rural but not madly touristy area, btw, not the Highlands and is one bedroomed, (although there is a large upstairs cupboard, which we use as a tiny bedroom, when needed.)
I also won the Battle of the Bathroom with DH, as it is a small room and we have just a shower and no bath, or else there wouldn't be enough room to swing a hamster.
The staircase is also made of stone, so care needs to be taken. We have a rule of bare feet or shoes, no socked feet, and I pinched a phrase from a previous Mumsnet thread “ No jazz hands on the stairs” Might not be suitable for a pensioner, or small children.
Quite limited letting potential, I'd have thought.

I wouldnt worry about any of those things, go into any holiday cottage website (sykes is probably the biggest) and do a random search of an area to have a look at what places there are, there are flats, bedsits, studios, shepherds huts (sheds), glamping lodges (sheds), lodges in the owners gardens (sheds) and any number of differen types of places

They all have various warnings about what to expect, low ceilings, narrow and steep staircases, terrible phone signal, no wifi, no parking, road noise, farm noise etc etc and the prices for all of them are through the roof. Just be honest, be clean, be comfortable and dont be stingy

@Gladioli23

I would be wary re main heating being by wood burner as well OP - maybe I am too pessimistic (and have only really ever had an open fire) but I would assume that people need to look after it, clear ashes out, keep it stoked and that if they didn't do that the wood burner would be unhappy or house could become pretty cold and uncomfortable - what plan would you have so if someone said they couldn't get it to light etc there was help available? It's all very well if it's just a nice to have, but if it's the main heating it's pretty high risk for the general public who may never have had an open fire or wood burner in their lives?

I have a cottage which is mainly heated by wood stove electric heaters in bedrooms, a bit of underfloor heating but not enough to keep it toasty. Wood stoves are much easier than open fires to keep going, they light easier and you just throw a few logs on every hour or so. The ash pan gets emptied weekly during changeover, kiln dried wood doesn’t leave a lot of ash and a bed of warm ash helps get the fire started anyway.

For guests that have never lit a fire you leave firestarter logs, laminated instructions and they pop more wood on. It’s hardly rocket science.

I think

No one ever says its immoral for Londoners to be priced out of their home city. I wonder why

Because city dwellers are all rich bastards with no feelings or sense of family and rural dwellers are pure souls with real families and communities, constantly downtrodden by the jackbooted city dwellers. Obs.

Meanwhile in real world the community I grew up in and the neighbouring communities no longer exist as locals were priced out, many of the properties bought as investments and sit empty or rarely used or provide mid week accommodation only for office days.

In the rural communities I know of most affected by holiday home/second home ownership the owners are not from the nearest big city, rocking up with their waitrose bags> Instead they are local landowning/wealthier families who initially used deregulation of labour to "privatise" the agricultural workforce and turned tied accommodation into holiday cottages, then bought up additional units on the back of the capital assets. The odd house might be owned by "outsiders", most are owned by a small number of local landowning families who do very nicely out of them.

Whoever does the changeover checks it.