What are you all up to
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Been fairly quiet the last few days just really cold 🥶 not even had any sunshine, but at least we've not had any snow.
Went to our storage site to check the caravan, all seemed okay, just cold.
Christmas tree bought today, will get it in and decorated during the week, currently making use if our half price electricity to cook a roast and a couple of cakes, washing all done too.
Loved the Christmas trees Ttda 🌲 we have visited Castleton a couple of times during December its always very festive, our local tree festival is next weekend.
Glad you have got your caravan back Francis all repaired and ready to go.
Speedy recovery to Mrs M hope its not too painful.
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Despite the middle and southern parts of the lakes full of snow there was hardly any in Keswick's Victorian fayre which was as usual fantastic. Although I'm not sure how this chap fits in?
I did say to him that you were the chosen one! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the Force, not leave it in darkness.
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Sorry to hear of Mrs M's mishap. It sounds painful. I do hope her recovery goes well. It sounds like you are going to be busy moulesy during the next few weeks.
Pleased to hear that you have your Christmas tree helen. I have put up a few advent lights and tree will hopefully go up at the end of the week.
I am still not feeling brilliant after the shingles. Apparently it takes a while. However we did meet up with 4 friends that we hadnt seen for a while for lunch today in a lovely village pub and had such a good time chatting and catching up with them. We have another lunch date with a couple of friends planned for Tuesday. We then go to see Father Christmas with our nearly 4 year old great grandson next Saturday.
Weather here has been bitterly cold of late. It took OH ages to defrost my car on Friday morning. It didn't thaw all day but was lovely and sunny. Saturday was just as cold but grey, misty and cloudy all day. We woke up to snow this morning but it turned to rain late morning. I wonder what tomorrow will bring?
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Good to hear that you have been out meeting up with friends, Miilie. Hope that you are soon fully recovered from the Shingles.
Pleased to read that you have got your caravan back from the dealers, Richard. Fingers crossed that all is fixed now.
Well, the snow finally stopped sometime in the night and we have had a bit of a thaw, but not enough to shifted much of it. It could well freeze over night and the untreated roads around by us will be more treacherous than ever. There are still cars stuck where they were abandoned yesterday. We may well postpone going away by a day to ensure that the roads are clear.
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Just reading how bad your area is Nellie, we still have some snow, but it’s freezing rain that isn’t helping here. Take care.
Glad you feeling a bit better Millie (and Mr Millie). We are both fighting off the start of a cold, a lost battle we know, but onwards and upwards. Hope others are ok,
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David K I remember my father getting the £10 Christmas bonus for pensioners for the first time and he was absolutely delighted. It was obviously worth a lot more then than it is now!
Did your boiler service man ever turn up WN?
I hope your colds don't turn out to be too bad TDA. I hate this time of year there are so many illnesses about.
Very wet here this morning with a lot of standing water about. At least I won't have to go out and defrost the bird's water bath.
I discovered that my car was running on empty when I was driving home late afternoon yesterday and I couldn't be bothered to stop at the fuel station in the wet and the dark so that is this morning's job.
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NO Millie they didn't. I did get a phone late in the afternoon which is more than I got on Friday. It's rescheduled for tomorrow afternoon. Fingers crossed.
Raining here, has been all day. Decided to get some shopping in for the freezer so we don't have to do so much over the Christmas period. Also called into GoOutdoors for a couple of items for replacing some items that have conveniently fallen apart in time for me to pronounce the replacements as presents. I hate having to find stuff for myself at the best of times and in years gone by have happily settled for annual memberships of various organisations.
Good timing for colds Ttda.
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Its been bitterly cold here for the last week, lowest we got to in our village was -7c. we've not had any snow just very heavy frosts that don't lift all day. Loving our new car that we got before going away in September. Its got heated seats and steering wheel, absolutely lovely in the weather we've had.
Had a couple of trips into town, one was to get our winter flu and Covid jabs and the other was to go to the bank and sort out a few things. Tend to do most things online these days but every now and again it pays to go into branch.
Managed to get a few jobs booked for the house, plumber lined up for changing our heated towel rail in the bathroom back to a radiator. Heated rail looks nice but doesn't heat the room, so not much use. Trying to get a plasterer in to redo the lounge ceiling, proving a bit more of an issue as he can plaster but doesn't put up plasterboard need a joiner for that, trying to tie in both of them at the same time isn't easy.
New lounge suite arrived and quite happy with it. I know we should get the ceiling done first but hey ho. Kitchen is next on the list of jobs to do but its not a big job just a repaint of what little walls that aren't covered by cupboards. Garden needs a fair bit of work but way to cold just now and everything is frozen solid, good excuse
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We have a slow but steady that today, with very light rain all day, but still lots of compacted snow about. We have postponed our trip to the C&CC's Windermere site until Friday and hopefully by then all the roads will be clear.
Tda, so far we have not had freezing rain, hope that the thaw soon gets to you too. I too am trying to fight off a cold, not something that I often get.
TG, thankfully we have not had temperatures as low as you have had. I did get a warning from Swift when it first got cold that there was water still in one of the van's tanks and advised to drain it down. It was the flush tank that still had fluid in it so I did as suggested.
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I know what you mean about the towel radiators TG!
Our daughter had them in her previous house, but it was a super insulated newbuild , now she has a 100 year old place, where the previous owners must have been very hardy, as 3 of the bathrooms only had small towel radiators.
3 are "en suite" and the 4th is a shower room by the front door that they do not use for showering. The 4th bedroom they use as a study, so if we stay over, we are on the sofas. They are only 4 miles from us, so staying over is infrequent.
Her en suite is quite large, so it did have a very puny radiator, and a small towel rail, so she now has a bigger double convector radiator plus a 6 foot tall towel radiator, which also has an electric element for summer use.
The 2 other en suites have new tall towel radiators, also with electric elements, but there was nowhere at present for ordinary radiators as well. They have only redone 2 bathrooms, so the 3rd one can maybe be reorganised to allow a decent radiator to be added, but that will be several years down the line.
Our bathrooms all have decent radiators, and originally small electric towel warmers, on timers. The 2 we have redone still have the radiators, and now taller, modern electric towel warmers, all on new timers.
After 30 odd years we reckoned it was time we went for electronic timers.
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We must be very hardy. Heaters in bathroom (only the one)? No!.
Heaters in bedrooms? No!
When we moved into this large farmhouse after my father-in-law died, we had it rewired. It such an endless job as the electrics hadn't been touched for years, and so disrupting that I couldn't face doing it all again in case we ever wanted central heating. So now, nearly 30 years later we're warm and cosy downstairs (two woodburners and a solid fuel Aga) and rather cooler upstairs. I do admit to having a couple of portable heaters for when it's really bad.
This is the estimate for the original electricity installation.
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Goldie
That would be about a £1000 in modern day money but I somehow imagine it would cost much more that that to have similar work done today? Its quite horrifying how inflation has impacted on the price of things even in my lifetime.
David
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You are indeed way hardier than us Goldie.
While we do not usually heat our bedrooms, although they do have CH radiators, we do like it cosy in the bathroom. As discussed, in the bathrooms we have both a radiator and a towel warmer/dryer, PLUS a 2kW electric wall mounted fan heater for summer use!
There were 5 of us living here originally, hence the multiple bathrooms, but now just the 2 of us, so mainly only our bathroom and the upstairs toilet that get used these days.
( We have an upside down house with our bedrooms downstairs and the kitchen and living rooms upstairs, plus MIL's "granny flat", to take advantage of the views as we are on quite a steep hill. )
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Our sniffles seem to have disappeared without turning into a full blown cold thankfully. Not something we get often either. I am finding it too warm at night as our CH is kicking in occasionally. Might be this that’s giving me the sniffles and bit of a thick head.
Present wrapping here. OH’s birthday this week.
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Happy Birthday to Mr TDA this week. I am pleased to hear your sniffles have gone. We have our heating set to around 14 overnight so it very rarely comes on. I hate a warm bedroom. We had a lovely lunch out with friends yesterday. The Bull Hotel in town has a special offer for Christmas of a 3 course lunch for £20. It was a very good meal with great service. It brought back some memories as that was where OH and I had our wedding reception! Bitterly cold here again this morning with a frost. I hope the nellies can get away on their planned trip soon.
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Happy Birthday this week TDA. I have had the sniffles for a few days too, feels a bit like a sort of weird hay fever allergy more than a cold but hoping it will go the same way as yours. I blamed it on a little Christmas tree sent by son and family for us to decorate as the sneezing started about the same time!
Very cold and frosty this morning but sunny and dry so I’m hoping we can get out for a while before it starts the dull and rainy stuff again. We also desperately need to tidy the garden. The indoor jobs can wait for tomorrow’s forecast wet day.
Glad to hear you are getting out and about again Millie and that you are feeling better.
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We seem affected by CH, I suppose it dries the air out to much for us, even though we always have a window cracked for fresh air. I hate a warm bedroom, feel stifled, but OH feels the cold a lot more now. (He’s got less padding than me🤣) On the plus side, my little experiment with putting a curtain across our winter room/ kitchen area, the one with the stove, is working a treat. Our CH isn’t coming on at all now in evening until 9pm, unless it drops below 16c. We are really cosy with just stove. I simple open the curtain, stove heat flows through house, topped up in bedrooms in use by CL until it goes back down to 16c overnight. High glee watching our Smart meter, we average 2p per hour for gas until 9-10.30pm. Hound has a bed at side of stove, then another under a radiator, so he is happy.
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Cold night again last night - 5c, still - 2c when we got up but the frost on the cars has gone now.
The back garden which is north facing, is still covered in frost. Went out and cleared the frozen water from the birds bath. No sooner got back in the house and the black birds were in there having a splash around.
Need to get more bird food I think I'm the only one feeding them. The garden this morning was full of birds, black birds, blue tits, chaffinch, sparrows and of course a Robin. 🙂
I make no apologies for heating my house, I hate being cold and refuse to wrap up like a snowman to sit indoors. The heating comes on at 08.00 and goes off at 21.30 during the colder months, it's set at 19c during the day and 21c in the evenings. The bedroom is 18c but no heating overnight anywhere in the house. We are cavity wall insulated, loft insulated and floored. The inner walls are all solid brick and the floors are concrete, so not warm on the feet. The house holds its heat quite well overnight.
I read a report this morning that gas heating costs around £1.65 per hour and electric £2.78 which surprised me. We are on LPG, we pay 57p a litre we get through roughly 1% of our tank a day (in this weather) that's roughly 13ltrs of LPG over 13.5 hrs £7.41 +11p a day standing charge. I always thought that LPG was much more expensive than natural gas. Yet given the figures quoted in the report it would seem not, it would cost £22.27 if we were on natural gas 😲
OH out taking BIL to the hospital for his oncology appointment, he usually takes himself but not this time. The sepsis has really taken a toll on his health, far more than the cancer has. He can only manage to walk around the house using a stick. There is no way he could get from the car park to the hospital, OH is taking him and has arranged a wheelchair to get him about, it's a big hospital.
Off to knit some more hats while I've got peace and quiet. Have a good day all.
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Happy birthday to TDA's OH, and good wishes for a speedy recovery to those with colds and sniffles... hope you are rid of it in time for Christmas.
For us is Christmas tree day... it usually goes up on 6th December... St Nicholas Day... Just about to start!!! 😀
David
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It should have been a milestone birthday, but no, the “interesting” bit of the milestone reached isn’t available for another year. I’m not sure access to a bus pass has the same interest, but I will check out rail passes. Given the last few years, and the health scares he’s endured, it’s good enough to hit a certain age in one piece. 🥳
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I had my uncles's house rewired when I inherited it in 2014. It has 2 rooms downstairs, plus kitchen, 2 bedrooms and a large bathroom and I seem to remember that it was around 2,500 and they charged around 150 extra to fit a shower over the bath! I think that I made the mistake of getting a number of quotes, instead of going for just the one.
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How can they decide that gas heating costs £1.65 per hour? Surely must depend on how powerful your boiler is, how big your house is, how cold it is outside, and how hot you keep it inside.
With our new boiler and the tado control system, we are keeping the living room, kitchen, upstairs toilet, landing and downstairs hall heated to 19-22 degrees, from 08.00-22.30, unless the TRVs turn things off. Plus our bathroom morning and evening for a few hours to 21-23 degrees, and the rest of the rooms to a minimum of 15 degrees.
Yesterday we were home all day and it was very cold, we used 96 kWh of gas, which cost about £7 at the current prices.
Something wrong with their arithmetic!
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Having a bus pass is the only advantage of getting old. We only tend to use ours when we are away in the caravan. Last weekend we stayed on the CCC Braithwaite site a few miles outside Keswick. It was great to leave the car on site and jump on the bus only 50m from the entrance. A few minutes and you are in the middle of Keswick.
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