Semi-detached property, hosted by James

We live in the Bournville Village Trust (BVT) which has strict stipulations (mainly about being 4m from the boundary!) and a design guide regarding the presentation of a property. They also consult your neighbours. It wasn't too onerous to do, but it did add on a couple of months to the process for us, once I'd sought advice from the BVT and made the application. Neighbours were absolutely fine with the whole thing.

The heating system was a mess of 1970s/1980s radiators and pipework that had been bodged to fit a combi boiler in 2010, so a mix of sizes and materials. This meant all nine of the radiators were replaced with eight larger ones to enable lower flow temperatures. Pipework was replaced to put a cascade of 28 to 22 to 15mm where required, however there was a lot of 22mm and 15mm copper in the house already, so we were able to re-use quite a bit of that, so most of the replacement pipework was under the landing to replace the plastic pipework that was bodged in, as well as new drops to the downstairs pipework. We had two of the downstairs radiators moved to different walls (partly down to size, but actually preference dictated it). 
Apart from the large radiators, the only other noticeable thing is the primary pipework that is boxed in in the kitchen. 

The install took five days, with a half a sixth to come fix a small leak under the downstairs floor and some additional air removal valves. 

Our Heat Geek, Jon, and his team were fantastic. Answered questions (before the install, during and after), fixed things I'd spotted snagging, without any pushback. Absolutely what you want from trades in your home. They would have put floorboards down each night, but as I wanted to run some networking cables when they'd gone, I said leave them up, family stayed with friends. All the carpets went back down and it's basically un-noticeable that they've been in the house. The only things we have to do is a bit of basic decorating, where old radiators have left holes in the walls and new pipe boxing needs filling and painting.

We've only needed hot water so far... installed in May there hasn't been much of a need for heating, yet!