Hey friends,

I hope the storms haven't hit any of you too badly. It looked pretty gnarly up north this week!

Congrats to Ian, Mark and Chris who won the Trend Tools prizes. Despite me screwing up the end time for entries, that was pretty fun and painless. I'll keep an eye out for potential future giveaways.

🚿 Heating Systems

So what's going on with the bedroom? Not a whole lot unfortunately. After some more thought I decided that in the long run it would in fact be best to move this wall back in line with the door.

Like this (+future work/extensions):

The problem is I can't move the wall until I remove the current bathroom on the other side of it. I can't do that before I put in the new bathroom. And I can't do that until I sort out the hot water situation. 🤬

Heating and plumbing is not my forte so I write this next bit more to try to understand it myself rather than an explanation.

Our current system is open vented/gravity fed i.e a water tank in the attic feeding a hot water cylinder below. The vertical drop between the water tank and cylinder is probably not much more than a metre so the water pressure is isn't great, especially for the shower where the water has to work it's way up higher again.

To solve this the first option I looked at was unvented system to replace the tank and cylinder, like a megaflow. The issue here is that it requires high mains pressure. Ours is okay, certainly better than that provided by the attic tank, but not great. Low mains pressure can sometimes be caused by small pipe diameter from the road but in our case it's because we live at the very top of a big hill so there's nothing we can do about it. There may be a way around this to still have an unvented system. I don't know but this looks like a no-go.

The other option we could go for is a combi boiler. Again the water comes directly from the mains so the pressure would be improved. They work by heating up water on demand so on the plus side you don't run out of hot water but the drawback is that if two or more showers or taps are running at the same time, the pressure and/or temperature may drop (the school run could be a nightmare!). This seems to be the case even if we install it to only serve our hot water and leave our current boiler to deal with the heating. As we want to have another bathroom upstairs eventually this isn't ideal.

So I'm thinking that a shower pump may be the way forward, or as we're installing a bathroom from scratch - getting a power shower (same principle I believe). This would be fine as the only place we need higher pressure is the shower; it's not a problem to wait a little longer to run a bath. The power shower appeals on a few fronts:

• It's cheapest.
• Less disruptive than the other options.
• Allows us to wait out the heat pump debate to see if they're viable.
• The tank in the attic isn't an issue as we're not extending upwards so there's no additional upside to taking it out like with one of the other systems.

Am I missing anything obvious? Anyone else dealt with low water pressure?

I should mention that the downstairs shower room is an (out of action) electric shower. I like this as it gives an alternative for a hot shower if the boiler goes down but we're definitely looking for something higher power for upstairs.

💡 Getting Your Lighting Right

I've been listening to the Huberman Lab podcast. It's about wellness from a scientific standpoint and he pays a lot of attention to light. I'll leave the biological terms and explanations to the host but here are a few snippets I've picked up:

• Bright and blue light before bed is not good for us and delays our sleep cycle - we probably all know this now.
• However in the morning bright and blue light is very good for us and sets our circadian clock. However, a glass window filters out a lot of blue light so he recommends getting outside for 20-30 minutes in the morning. I'm really bad at this, especially in winter. I suppose that's a win for the commute to work.
• Most interesting and completely new to me is the importance of the location of light sources throughout the day. In the evening you don't want light hitting the receptors in the lower parts of your eye so downlights in the ceiling are not good for evening time and should be turned off in favour of floor lamps.

This all makes total sense. We evolved to be awake, alert and active during the day when the sun is high in the sky, bright and bluer in colour and then we sleep after the sun is low in the sky giving off soft yellow light:

Electric lights and screens have only come about in the last 90 years so there's no way we could have evolved to adapt to it yet, and we probably never will given that it doesn't affect our survival or reproduction. However we have been using firelight since, well, before 'we'. Homo erectus certainly used fire at least a million years ago so surely we must be adapted to having some light after dark. Thinking about it a fire is always going to be low down and gives off a yellow hue so again, what this chap says makes sense.

There are a lot of things in the modern world we're ill equipped to deal with: unlimited calories, processed foods, social media and these can require constant effort to stay on top of but getting your lighting right seems like an easy win as it's set-up-and-done, except that early morning walk.

📖 Rich Dad, Poor Dad - Book Review

If you've been tuned in to this newsletter from the start, you'd be forgiven for thinking I believe in rampant capitalism. It's not the case and instead I see it like this: I never chose to play the game of capitalism nor did I consent to its rules but I can't change the game, nor leave it. Frankly I'm not sure there is a better system. The best I can do is seek to understand the game and play it to the best of my abilities/motivation to do so. The outcome of which should hopefully insulate me from the game and the things that can go with it: financial stress, bullying bosses or lack of autonomy and freedom.

I listened to a podcast episode this week about how the economic and tax system is rigged in favour of the already-rich. The presenter relates it the book Rich Dad, Poor Dad which was the first finance-related book I read. The author uses his two 'dads' as examples of the difference in the way the game can be played.

It's quite easy to fall into the trap of thinking looking rich and having stuff = being rich; fast cars, snazzy watches, designer clothes etc. The argument made in the book is that these are liabilities (especially the car) and the real rich collect assets instead and then (maybe) accumulate the trappings of wealth later on. Even those with the same level of income can have very different lives after a few years:

'Poor Dad'

'Rich Dad'

In the second example you can see how the flow of funds from excess income can changes the game completely, just by reducing one's liabilities. The snowball builds and hey presto, the wealthy continue to outpace everyone else and the gap widens.

The book is a bit wacky and has some outlandish examples but this message is really strong - it's obvious to me now but was revolutionary when I was younger. Perhaps this is a piece I should have written prior to talking about the intricacies of investing in equities or property as it's quite foundational to all that.

👋

Since we're on a podcast vibe I've got one more recommendation. As I was looking through the entries for the giveaway I noticed a fair few of you are women. Not a huge number but more than I thought, probably around the same 7-8% that watch my videos. It got me thinking about the blogs and podcasts I link to which are rather male dominated. Being a bloke myself that's all fine and to be expected but to mix it up here's a fantastic finance podcast by Paula Pant. It's US based but the principles she talks about are universal.

Hit "reply" if you've got any comments on this week's newsletter – otherwise I'll see you next time. Have an epic week :)

P.s. If you think a friend will enjoy this newsletter, feel free to send them this link where they can sign up.

P.p.s. You can find all previous newsletters here.