I have no experience of buying property, so buying an 'abandoned bank' has been a bit of a learning curve. From trying to work out what to do with a vault door that weighs as much as a small car (nothing) to dealing with a jungle of brambles and a collapsed wall in the garden. What I wasn't prepared for was the weird way the previous tennant (Barclays Bank) or their agents have made actual effort to break part of the building. For example, telecoms and networking infrastructure in the building was simply cut, rather than being left or properly removed.

However, the biggest surprise was the way the air conditioning and heating system was left. It was electrically isolated (which makes a degree of sense) in a number of places, but more importantly the coolant liines were disconnected or cut inside the heatpump unit. This is fixable, but also means we don't know if other lines are vandalised inside the building. And the only way to check is to fill it with expansive, environmentally damaging gas and hope it doesn't all leak out into the environment,

The cut pipes suggest to me that whoever 'decommissioned' it didn't capture the extremely potent greenhouse gas as the law requires, but just left it to disperse into the atmosphere.

The rear of the building is very cool but the front, which is mostly glass, is obviously very hot and needs aircon, especially as it's a dog groomer and community fridge (which need cooling for different reasons), so we'll need to fix, prime it up and get it running.

Will let you know how it goes.