What are you all up to
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About to have an early night, all these early morning (for us) starts are catching up on us!
Builders departed at 15.45 as they had reached a suitable point to stop for the day, so I was able to get the first coat of paint on the new ceiling. Arms aching now.
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OH off to help tile bathroom floor for daughter. Slow progress on the DIY front.
I was reading my one magazine subscription treat last night, Current Archaeology, there was a mention of the strangeness of our language, especially for foreign visitors. On a walk to a castle, two notices, KEEP TO THE PATH and further on PATH TO THE KEEP......
I presume it's cold everywhere today, keep warm one and all.
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Very cold here again, but sunny, so we have had solar power to do the washing, and sun to heat the house. The kitchen faces north so is much colder than the rest of the house, and the builders opening and closing the door in there does not help, so we ate our lunch at the table in the sun room. It was actually too warm in there after a while, so we retreated back to the lounge for our coffee and biscuit.
Builders have relocated the radiator pipes, and the basin water and waste pipes, and started the tiling and are getting on quite fast, tomorrow they will fit the shower tray and probably finish most of the tiling. Then it will be up to me to lay the flooring in the evening.
This evening I have the dreaded painting of the ceiling to do again.
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Brue, if you have not seen this I think you will find it very interesting.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-63860132
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An easy tow today up to our latest CL. We should have been here over Xmas 3 yrs ago, but had to cancel as it was when I fell and broke my wrist. Good to be able to get back. Great views from the pitches across the River Ure to Middleton Castle. Only one other unit, a M/H, on the site tonight. We did have the odd spot of rain but now have a clear sky and no doubt it will be a cold night.
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Should that be Middleham Castle Nellie? Have a good stay, we love that part of Yorkshire. 👍
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First heavy frost of Winter overnight here in MK. Interesting that yesterday we got our first "winter" energy bill for November. It seems that we used 8% less electricity than the same period last year but paid 56% more for what we did use. Gas we used 28% less than last year but paid 88% more. A sign of things to come
David
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Thanks Nellie yes I saw it, the BBC history sections etc often have interesting bits!
Cold and frosty here too but lovely sunshine just the smell of slurry taking the edge off things, 20 acres thrice covered! Tractor working in the dark last night to complete.
OH still on tiling mission in a cold house. Told him to wear his hat! Woodburner man due there as daughter's stove needs replacing daughter's partner has managed to keep it burning but it never was an efficient stove. They do have central heating but like many are loathe to turn it on.
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Despite us using less electric our provider sent us an email yesterday saying they want to double our monthly payment, we will have to look into that.
It all reminds me of being young when we had ice on the inside of the bathroom window, a wash before school was quick cos it was so cold. No central heating and only one fire so we huddled. Bundled up indoors in lots of clothes. Sadly now more modern houses, including ours, have no way of even having a real fire place. Yesterday I pulled out some old jumpers and am now bundled up in them, hope any visitors let us know they are coming so I can change first! I reminded myself of my dear Mum all bundled up in clothes at home in winter.
Fortunately, (despite being on the lower, retired before 2016 lower rate of pension, how unfair is that!) we can afford to pay these bills, I just hate giving money to these big companies and their shareholders, and that includes water bills. I feel very sad for the people that can’t. I read yesterday about people saying they could not afford school dinners for their kids. Mum could never afford us school dinners, not that I wanted the fatty lamb and over cooked cabbage that was dished up. Mum worked but used to leave us a flask of hot soup and we came home for lunch, with sandwiches eaten at school in the summer. We did get a hot meal at night though, which sadly some of today’s kids might not get either.
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We are on a fixed contract till next July, however we're with Bristish Gas and they're changing their systems (far worse than CAMC, everything has gone kaput...
) They have cancelled our DD, we've made no payments for Nov and haven't seen our gov.uk £66 for that month either. So now haven't got a clue what is happening...big bill coming up soon that's for sure. 0 -
Glad I didn’t get a smart meter installed. I found out that over half a million smart meter owners had their tariffs raised to a higher rate without being informed. We’ve been very frugal with gas and electric, the log burner is a blessing
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It’s like being in a time warp indeed. I can see people dying these next few months, so unfair, and so sad. Hard to equate just what a mess this country is in at the moment sadly.
The necklace find is fabulous, a real glimpse into the past, and interesting that the coins and central clasp are thought to have been reused.
Cold frosty day here as well. My gardeners arrived this morning, left them to things while I am up at Mum’s, so will be a nice surprise tomorrow morning. Gives me a chance to do the kind of tidying I enjoy, rather than the heavy work. Still got some roses out, but this frost will probably sort them. A lovely Clematis Freckles in full bloom as well, with some hardy Fuschia’s clinging on.
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Same here Oneputt. Installing a smart meter in our house was complicated, so we never followed it up. We have lots of logs and smokeless fuel in now, so that’s really helping us.
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+1 here too, I was on them early-many years ago before they could mess with your details. It proved annoying. It put me off Smart meters for life. I changed from BG to an independent, I got mail from BG, ‘you’ve left us so now your smart meter is a dumb meter’🤷🏻♂️. Followed by horror stories from others. Trying to pin companies down with a complaint is so hard, It’s a case of being ignored for months as we go thru their complaints procedure😤😤. Now there’s no EU standards/regs to follow they are all but feral in their attitude to customers.
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We’ve got a smart meter, which I like as I keep an eye on everything as it goes on and off, although it can get a bit obsessive. The supposedly cheap to run electric clothes airer (not) has been banished to the garage.
Brue we are also with British Gas, they stopped our direct debit, no idea why, OH reinstated it at a later date and, fingers crossed, seems ok now.
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A 20 min wait on BG live chat resulted in zilch so I've re-read all the web site details and it looks as though BG will re-install the DD soon, I live in hope, all the accounts look very wonky at present! Yet another meter reading sent in just in case.....
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We got smart meters just under a month back. Electricity one works fine and we can now see exactly how much of the production from our panels we are actually exporting, rather than the 50% "deemed export".
This will be useful in helping us to decide whether to invest in a system that diverts unused electricity from the roof to heat our HW tank. The amount we get paid for exporting to the grid is very low in comparison to what we pay for using power, and significantly less that the kWh gas price.
The gas meter however is still refusing to communicate with our IHD, so I have downloaded the BRIGHT app, which accesses the data the meter is sending to the central data base, so now we can watch that bill mounting too!
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I keep a spreadsheet with all our meter readings, though we have missed sending in a couple due to being on holiday, so it is not 100% accurate for every month.
For electricity October25th-November 25th we used 379 kWh this year (£143.70) compared to 759 (£130.61) last year, it must have been sunnier this year, plus we have turned off our drinks fridge.
For gas in the same period, this year 3102 kWh (£205.15), last year 3120 kWh (£84.52) . New boiler, but colder weather up here this year. We will need to cut down on that! Still experimenting with new boiler settings.
Temperature here was down to -4 overnight.
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We've been looking into battery storage from our SPs, not sure yet if its going to be cost effective, as it will be a retrofit, we may have to have a new inverter as well.
We've had them 11 years now so its done us well, my sister had to have her inverter replaced 3 years ago as it just stopped working, hers were installed a couple of months after ours.
Our Fits payments are almost double what we pay per Kwh but our standing charge is one of the highest in the uk.
I couldn't say what our costs are for this time of year or last as we were away abroad, so will wait until January to do a comparison.
Given what Ive heard and read it would appear that for the first time since we moved in to this house our LPG gas is working out cheaper than natural gas.
We have discovered our bathroom underfloor heating uses 4 Kwh over night.
Cold day here but no snow.
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Very cold here today, but quite bright out. At least it's not raining!
First day without a concert or practice for a little while. Took the caravan in today for them to deal with a small window leak... hopefully all sorted now.
Two performances tomorrow... Singing at a Christmas meal during the day and the a little concert at Acton Trussell Church (near Stafford) tomorrow night. Definitely going to sit down and do absolutely nothing tonight..... but I do have my eye on a bottle of wine, which could do with opening.... 🤣🤣
Keep warm and well, everyone
David
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Of course it is!
I'll blame it on predictive text and not fully reading what I have written. Hope to go there in Saturday when it is open.1 -
Beautiful sunny day after frost through the night. Managed to get the big wash done and all dry, or nearly so, outside on clothes airer. This meant we were late going out so just walked from the site before and after lunch in the van. Full moon and a clear sky tonight so we will have a deep frost by the morning.
We have had a cut in our DD for our fuel bill, and at the moment with the Government's fuel payout are over £300 in credit.
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Love it Nellie. Live in your van, choose your average pitch price wisely, and you can enjoy a bonus👏👏
If you get a wet day, but fancy a great drive out, Coverdale is quite spectacular, starting in Middleham, up onto the Coverdale Gallops, and then wind your way scenically up, down and around until you end up in Kettlewell, with some good pubs👍 Some good picnic spots as well. Best in snow, but a bit hairy down into Kettlewell🫣
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We will certainly go up on the gallops but OH would have something to say if I suggested a "hairy" drive in the snow!!😀 Might be worth it on a bright sunny day though.
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We have also looked at battery storage, but the cost of batteries is very high, so we have discounted that. We are probably on the same FIT as you as our panels are also 11 years old. Now over 60p per kWh generated. We have topped £1800 this year, which used to be more than our bills.
If you have a HW cylinder, it could be worth looking at a system to use excess generation to heat that. Our daughter has a work colleague who has recently invested in panels and this system, and he did not use any gas all summer to heat HW. I can send you a link to what he has if you like.
We have not had any problems with the panels, other than pigeons moving in, they are still producing very well, but we did get a 20 year warranty on our inverter, which was good, and the panels should be good for at least 25 years, which at my age should "see us out" !! Our son did say.....is this a sensible investment at your age.......but we have proved him wrong!
No snow here, but grass everywhere was very white all day, really cold.
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Our forecast is for some snow late afternoon tomorrow, so we might go for a short drive out, off the main roads. Beautiful clear skies tonight.
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Beautiful frosty morning here but very cold, could feel it through my coat when taking the dog for a walk, more layers needed!
We were in the Middleham area a year ago Nellie, didn't get time to visit the castle so hope you see more than we did, really liked the countryside round there, same as TDA.
KJ our friends on Orkney used solar to heat their water, they're in a different house now but I expect they're updating things. Orkney has some advanced energy policies. I think solar is good, wish it was standard on all new buildings instead of covering green fields.
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