What are you all up to
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Day started off well. Door bell rang just before 9 am and a neighbour handed OH her winnings from a raffle that was made for people donating to a cancer charity. A nice CK travel bag and 6 free days at a Gym/Spa. She handed the free passes back asking for the participants who were the ones being sponsored for the charity event to be given them. They're younger and fitter than us so they'll get more use and deserve them.
We then visited our local Range and OH found one of those plastic storage box with 5 drawers in that she's being trying to find. Had to be a certain size and this one had 1" to spare.
So one happy bunny.🐰😃
Did I receive anything. Yep, a bowel screening kit and results from my consultant that I've waiting for. No happy bunny on this side of the bed.
Wish the "free" bus pass was UK wide and not just restricted to one country.
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TG
Appreciate that you were quoting the source you mentioned. Like Kj I was a bit surprised at how high the costs were. I can only say what we pay for the gas we use aided by my Hive and Octopus Energy apps. Having read what Ideal Home said I thought I would check. Yesterday (as an example) outside temperature was around 6 degrees during the day, so not freezing. Our boiler (fairly new and no idea what Kw it is, perhaps I should check!) The boiler was running for just over 5 hours in that 24 hour period. I can work out that it was costing me about 69p and hour plus of course the daily standing charge of 26p. I might depend on what temperature the system is running at and what temperature the heating stat is set at. To my logic if you run at a higher temperature the boiler would just be running for more hours rather than using more gas per hour. I could have that totally wrong of course! Does Kj know?
David
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Something strange happened on here last night as two of the posts that I replied to do not show my responses although there are others I submitted are there. Hey ho, yet another glitch in the system!!
Happy birthday to your OH, tda, and pleased to read that you are recovering from your colds. I am suffering myself but it is taking a while to shift.
Congratulations to your OH, WN, on her winnings and finding just the right size of storage box.
We have had two sunny days and the snow has just about gone, although it did freeze overnight, so some surfaces were rather slippery first thing, and we have had a very chilly wind for most of the day.
I hope the nellies can get away on their planned trip soon.
Millie, yesterday we postponed going on our trip until Friday, thinking that the roads would be clear by then, as we were going to the C&CC's Windermere site, However early this morning we got a phone call from their HO to inform us that they have had to cancel the booking completely because of the amount of snow on the site and it was not opening until 15th. So we won't be heading off until next Monday to the second of our booked sites.
on here
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Nellie
I sometimes post and what I have posted does not appear. Sometimes a refresh works but I sometimes have to check my profile and look at my latest posts there. No idea what causes it but as we all know this software is well past its sell by date!
David
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I get travel sick on buses. Always have, right from being a child. We’d rather go out in our warm, comfy, all comforts MH than queue for a bus, dragging the dog along, have to use horrible public conveniences, find somewhere that sells decent vegetarian food, carry our purchases around all day, have someone hacking and coughing all over us. I love trains, but not buses.
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TG
Appreciate that you were quoting the source you mentioned. Like Kj I was a bit surprised at how high the costs were.
As was I, which is why I posted it. As we don't have mains gas I can only go on what was reported by Ideal Home. It would appear from what Kj posted his usage is pretty similar to ours and the cost is comparable.
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DK, just worked it out they are quoting 6.89p per KwH for gas on a 24kw boiler. So 6.89 x by 24 = 1.65 they are quoting for the boiler to be running for the full hour. I'm pretty sure our boiler a (28kw) one doesn't run for an hour solid even from start up. 🙂
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Just shows how pretty useless these statistics are! Bit like this price cap business when they quote the cost for an average family and house......is there such a thing as an average family and house?
At least now the media are also saying that it does depend also on how much you actually use.
With heating there really are far too many variables for an average cost to mean anything. And as David said, how many people know the kW rating of their boiler?
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Our boiler will run for an hour or more at start up in the morning, but once the rooms are up to the set temperature it can go off and on. However modern boilers modulate......they burn less gas and reduce their output to match the heat demand, I think ours can go as low as 6kW, so although it is running, it is not burning that much gas.
The figures you found are quite likely to scare some people into not turning on their heating, which is rather irresponsible of Ideal Home IMO.
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Best laid plans and all that... we’ve had a full weekend planned for a while at our caravan, meeting up with friends, table booked for a meal out with cousin, meeting up with Son and family, visiting the Christmas market. Then it rained and rained! We have been watching the river level closely, shall we shan’t we. Then OH got a stomach upset yesterday when we should have left, decided, with the river high and rising to cancel. Glad that we did, message from the Site this morning asking that people don’t travel there as the Site may have to close due to flooding. And it’s not as though we can just pop back home. We will have to go at some point to just finish the last of the winter pack up. Not too bothered if it floods when we aren’t there, we have floats fitted, but not much fun if we are there. A friend who lives in Stratford town just messaged that they had just received a flood alert from the Met Office, so we really did make the right decision. Ah well off to Tesco now, every cloud.
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Talking about heating........ours did not start up this morning at the set time, so it is a bit chilly here. Nothing wrong with the boiler, just the internet.
We were due to switch broadband provider today, we are now on 3 Home Broadband, we already had it all set up but were still using Plusnet . However they very kindly cut us off at 4am, as shown by the lack of heating temperature records, so our tado system had no internet to use to turn on the boiler.
Should have thought about that, but had not expected them to cut us off till later in the day. Strangely, our phone line still seems to be connected meantime.
We were late home yesterday as we were looking after the 2 little ones while both parents were at SIL's drama club annual show. DD is needed to operate the sound system and lights, and she was not home till well after 9pm. She also had to be at her office in town yesterday, had to take the train, and walk the mile to the station, so she was pretty worn out when she got home.
We are also on duty today, but only for the afternoon, so have time to sort out internet related stuff. 2 of my Alexas are refusing to co-operate, but the heating is now fine.
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Yes ours will run for awhile but then goes into maintenance mode. I would think our house heats up a lot quicker than yours given the size difference. I agree the figures are enough to stop you putting the heating on. They even said it was worth putting the heating on for just 1 hour a day to warm through the house. I think the whole report was full of misleading information.
However they very kindly cut us off at 4am,
They did the same to us just before we went away, we asked for it to be cut off on the 13th as we knew that was the day we were leaving but they cut it off 24hrs early
We know don't have a landline or broadband. The phone signal in our village isn't great but we are using Voip to make any calls and we have erected an omnidirectional antenna for wifi which is working fine, even allowing us to stream TV. We have a TP-Link modem, the sim card is with RWG who work off EE, which is the best signal here. So far so good, at least we are now paying for 1 system and its portable so we can take it away with us. No more paying 6 mths of the year for something we are not using.Not so cold today as its raining, very dark outside and in, have to have the lights on all day its that dark, no solar power today
Went for breast screening this morning, the wagon was at the other Tesco (Edinburgh road) store not the one we usually use. Wasn't impressed by the store not as good as the one we use (Crieff road) Did however manage to get quite a few good bargains with my Tesco card so quite pleased about that. Tuesday morning I called into Iceland and topped up the freezer, once again got quite a few bargains 3 for 2 deals and then got another 10% off as it was pensioners day.
Spent a fortune on bird food this morning but it should see us into the new year and I don't begrudge it, its nice to see the birdlife in the garden. Still no sign of the hedgehog house being used. its been cleaned out and new bedding put in ready for it but nothing yet.
Thinking of going and doing another hat on the knitting machine but its really dark even with the light on and I need good light to see the needle beds, might have to use the angle poised lamp.
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Not put it to the test but I think our system is principally controlled by the freestanding Hive thermostat which communicates wirelessly to the boiler. It can also be controlled via the app on my phone which does rely on 4G or the house WiFi. So if internet was down I don't think it would prevent the heating coming on? I would agree that changing internet suppliers can be a pain in the neck so best avoided if possible!!!
David
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A lot of firing going off at local military camp today and some very big bangs that moved a few pictures on the wall and probably frightened a few birds and local animals even the horses in the field next to us ran to the other end of their field.
A frost first thing then it was dry for most of the day but now light rain very odd weather for December and some areas are flooded like some areas of the UK.
OH had a tidying session in his shed this morning after moving radiator and changing the controls for the heating system as all electric here (you can tell he is ex electronics engineer ha ha).
Off to friends tomorrow evening for a meal and catch up as all folks better now after coughs and colds and we have not seen them for 3 months what with holidays etc so a lot to talk about but will keep our distance.
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Unfortunately necessary when they will not offer a decent price! Plus, the speeds on Plusnet were just not up to what they promised, so we decided to move.
Landlines as we know them will cease in 2025 it seems, and Plusnet said they will not be offering an equivalent, so we decided we might as well jump now.
I have no idea which heating control systems work in which way, they all seem to be a bit different! You only find out when something goes wrong.
Do you know exactly how your thermostat communicate wirelessly with your boiler? If you turn off your internet, does it still work?
As far as I know, if our internet goes down, if the heating is on it stays on, and if it is off it stays off. Changing settings on it is via app, but if the system is not connected/on internet, it cannot receive instructions?
Our daughter also has Hive, I will need to ask her how hers works. It is all a bit of a mystery to me!
Anyway.......we have 2 boilers here, main house and granny flat, so we have decided to get a tado system for the new boiler in the granny flat too.
Will be interesting to see if that works, we have been told by tado that it should. Have ordered it from Screwfix, so have 30 days to return if it does not.
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Biblical quantities of the wet stuff today. Hope those travelling arrived safely at their destinations. and others have avoided any flooding.
Did our normal Thursday shop for the weekend, this including MiLs as she had conveniently made a hair appointment instead. I also understand she has arranged to see a friend next Thursday for coffee and mice pies. I smell a trend! I decided to do a click and collect for all of the heavy non essential foodstuff next week as shops becoming a tad crowded.
Gas man turned up yesterday as planned. All sorted. Funnily enough I've not received a "How did we do" email yet. Maybe something to do with the other 2 missed appointments.
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Glad to hear that your gas man finally arrived WN, and all's sorted now, fingers crossed.
You obviously made the correct decision, Debs, hope that you OH recovers and you are soon able to get back up to Stratford and finalise the year's close down.
We too have had heavy rain for much of the day and it was dark enough by 2:30 for us to need our lighting on. I think that the closure of the Windermere site has done us a favour as we would have been setting off and setting up in heavy rain and the forecast for the weekend is not much better. Roll on Monday when hopefully it will be somewhat drier and we will get away without getting wet.
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Kj
Apparently it works on something called Zigbee, there is an explanation here. It seems to be a low powered wireless transmission between the thermostat and the controller on the boiler. I wonder if the control via the Hive Hub goes via the boiler controller to the thermostat rather than the other way round? So I am thinking that if we had a break in the house WiFi the boiler and thermostat would still communicate. The only issue if the WiFi was down for some time is that it is a pain to use the thermostat to change setting which are much easier done on the App!
What speeds did you get with Plusnet? We are on FTTC and get about 34 Mbps download and about 8 up which is more than enough for what we use the internet for. For about 18 months I also had a City Fibre connection which was 100 mbps down and about the same up. We know that Openreach are about to install more fibre in MK and as BT and Plusnet are the same company I imagine they will be offering the same service. We had a couple of guys looking at the ground cabinets in front of our house and they seemed to be suggesting they were checking pipe ways were clear for pulling through fibre. No official news yet!
David
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We have had Openreach in the street for several days this week, no idea what they were doing.
Plusnet speed was supposed to be 50-65 download and 15-17 upload, but more often than not we did not get that, and sometimes it went into soup, or dropped out completely for a while. On 3 we now have 50 odds download and 32 upload, on 4g, with no problems so far. We can see the 3 mast from here, it is only a few hundred metres away.
£20 per month, first 3 months free, but of course no landline. Both our mobiles are on 3, mine is direct with 3, soon up for renewal so I may change so we are not 100% relying on 3, and OH is with Smarty, also owned by 3, on a monthly contract with 50Gb data. I will soon be looking for something similar.
Yes BT and Plusnet are the same company, but apparently Plusnet will not be offering whatever will replace landlines, they told us that we would have to go to BT for that.
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"Yes BT and Plusnet are the same company, but apparently Plusnet will not be offering whatever will replace landlines, they told us that we would have to go to BT for that."
That's strange KJ. We're with EE - for everything - mobiles, landline, internet, mifi - and have been for a lot of years. I was chatting with one of their customer service advisors - last year, I think - when I was doing my usual haggle over prices and she told me that EE and BT were going through a re-structuring and the intention was that, in the future, all domestic services would be handled by the EE side of the company whilst BT would take care of infrastructure and commercial customers. I have to say, though, that I've not seen any evidence of that, but it does sound like a logical move. Don't know what impact it would have on Plusnet.
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The speed you can get on FTTC is limited to a top speed of about 80 Mbps but the further away from the cabinet the lower the speed. We are about 1 kilometre from the cabinet which dictates our speed. I have to say its been pretty reliable, that may have been because people where we live migrated to the higher speeds offered by City Fibre so there is less demand on the Plusnet/BT system? I won't do anything until either Plusnet or BT contact me. The reorganisation mentioned by Richard might also impact on Plusnet and perhaps they will disappear eventually? It would be a shame as I have always found their customer service pretty good and UK based. I hope they don't start messing around with email addresses as I have had my btinternet.com email address for over 20 years. We are also keen to keep our landline number which consists of three lots of double digits so easy to remember. Not sure I would be keen to rely of a mobile signal where we live as signal wise its OK but not brilliant.
David
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Can only go on what we were told by Plusnet customer service when we were haggling on price. If we have to go elsewhere for a landline service in a couple of years that would just be more hassle.
We never used the landline as the calls were far too expensive, all it was used for was for scammers to call us! Will be glad to escape that.
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We did away with BT broadband, Sky and a landline completely about two years ago. Now only have a mi-fi mobile router with unlimited data which runs all our laptops, iPads and TV at home. Never had problems and the hub fits in Mrssf’s handbag when we go out for the day or away in the van. We are saving a small fortune and have no issues with speed or buffering at all, it serves all our needs.
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Anything to do with a reliable mobile signal would be our issue with changing as well David. Our service is not very good to poor! We received a letter a while ago about BT changing to that sort of service in future, I don’t know all the in and outs but OH might. Anyway, we laughed at that as we said we hardly have a mobile signal - on any provider. Also OH is hard of hearing so he will only use the landline as he can’t hear clearly on a mobile phone.
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and she told me that EE and BT were going through a re-structuring and the intention was that, in the future, all domestic services would be handled by the EE side of the company whilst BT would take care of infrastructure
That sounds about right, I recently upgraded the broadband hub with BT and it is badged with an EE logo and has an EE designation. The landline also had to be changed to digital if I wanted to keep it at a cost of £2 a month. Although we don’t use it for calls, some folk still ring us on it, so I thought I would keep it for the moment. It still uses the old phone, they give you a three pin plug with a phone socket on it, you simply plug into a convenient socket and it links by WiFi to your router. The option of the phone rejecting anything not in its directory and sending them to answerphone still works and the call quality is excellent. Of course it doesn’t work in a power cut unless you buy a very expensive power pack. Therefore unlike before, if the cell tower also goes down you are unable to make an emergency call. The price of progress I guess.🤷🏻♀️
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Like Kj we were also told by Plusnet that they will not be going down the voip route and we would have to move to BT if we wanted that.
My friend was with EE up to last year when they got moved over to BT and the new system of no land line, just a broadband connection. Because BT totally messed them about when setting it all up they gave them free of charge 2 phones that work off the broadband and a discount for the first year.
We have ditched broadband and the land-line altogether.
We now have a omnidirectional antenna and a TP-Link router which works off an EE sim through RWG.
We can take it away with us we did this on our last trip to Spain, Portugal and France.
We each have a mobile with data just a small amount as that's all we need.
The signal in our village isn't great but we can stream TV OK.
We are saving a fortune as we are no longer paying for land-line and broadband which was only used 6 mths of the year. The router goes with us when away so we also saving there as before we had to pay for that as well but only use it 6 mths.
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I'd love to get rid of our landline but MiL doesn't do mobiles so we're stuck with it for the moment. Like Steve we recently upgraded the hub and the new one was EE marked.
Had a lovely morning despite the atrocious weather. We met the Ttdas' at a local coffee shop/cafe as they were heading to North Wales and had a good blather for a couple of hours before they proceeded on their way. Lovely to see them again. Hope they have a good break in spite of the forecast.
Trying to organise workman is akin to herding cats. I'd be happy if we could corral just the one of them (workmen not cats).
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