The inevitable change as each season passes, is firmly on the way.
From the (for once) hot summer August, we move to September, the air is changing, the wind is changing, light decreasing, plants change, people change and on it goes.
It matters not that it may be a little later or earlier each year, but change will come. As sure as time.
For a breed that dislikes change, sometimes this can be difficult to adjust to.
In work, home life or both, there’s no escaping it.
We changed the front room today, nothing major, just moved one of the settees to give the appearance of a right angled, corner unit settee that the better half has been looking at.
It makes a difference. I think we should have a small or major change around every few months, makes the place look different and in some aspects, less stale.
All the talk is of the “energy crisis” online, whereby we are told energy bills have rocketed to [insert random figure here]
Some things people would do well to remember;
- What is being quoted is a quote!
It’s a Direct Debit estimate, it’s not outstanding and it’s not your debt. It’s an estimate of the possible cost of your monthly direct debit payment to your energy company - You can use less energy and lower this cost!
There are lots of ways to use less energy, but the mainstay is, turn things off!
The sheer number of things left on standby or on all night is scary. It’s no wonder many are using so much energy. - Use alternatives.
Instead of washing half a load, wash a full load.
Dishwasher or a bowl full of hot water?
Dry clothes on your washing line instead of in the dryer.
Dry clothes on a clothes horse (are they still called this?) we have two in the back bedroom, usually for difficult to dry items, but put the clothes on there, takes a couple of minutes, then collect them the next day, dry. Cost = zero.
Do you drink cups of tea/coffee in your house? Rinse the pots out in cold water. By the time the water has warmed up (via your so called energy efficient boiler) you could have rinsed the cups off without it firing up or running at all.
How many brews do you have a day? 5? More?
At 5 brews a day for the household, that’s 4 rinses per day, that equals 120 rinses per month (30 days), which equals 1460 rinses per year. That’s 1460 times you’ve fired up your boiler and waited for the warm water to come through, using gas and electricity! - Have a small garden? Get a compost heap.
Example: Three buddleia bushes/trees. Cut all stems down, strip into compost heap, cut all main branches into smaller parts and bag up. Compost has green leaves and seeds to rot (for next year) and the branches are now drying to use as kindling for the winter fires on the log burner, with the wood ash also going on to the heap.
Cut the main trunks of the bushes down, bang them in the log sack to dry out ready for winter fire.
No waste, free logs (granted not many), free wood ash for compost (brown) and free kindling. Waste = zero.
Most non cooked foodstuffs can go on there (eggshells and old mushrooms even) and with the huge rise in prices for compost coming down the line, it’s another small saving. - Little victories – if it takes a little bit of time and effort, then not only will you feel better about it, but small savings make a big difference (I sound like one of those crap adverts on websites now).
Remember: Convenience costs! - I don’t understand why people trust energy companies (or any other monopoly business) with access to their bank account? They are out to make money, that’s what they do.
We refuse to go on direct debit, have done for over 32 years now. OK we pay a small premium extra over DD customers, but if we haven’t the money, it stays off and we make do with alternatives, such as a log burner for heating, we can also put pans on it and in emergencies we could cook on it.
If the credit has run out, then just standing charge per day is due when it gets put back on.
To close, a short tale of how energy saving measures are much ado about nothing…
When building the extention, we put in a log burner and were advised to take out the back boiler tank and replace with a condenser boiler. It’ll save you money they said.
It didn’t.
Each year our bills remained the same for gas, how could this be?
Well the estimated savings they bragged about (over £300 a year) turned out to be around £85 per year. This would have been like for like I suppose, but not only did the experts vastly over-estimate savings (backed up by official figures), they also missed two crucial factors.
1. Old back boilers, while central heating was turned on, also heated up the water tank upstairs in the old airing cupboard without using anymore gas. This tank could easily fill two baths and remained scolding hot for days. So when the hot water tap was turned on, the gas wasn’t used, it ran from the hot water tank.
2. With hundreds of thousands of households now ripping out their back boilers, replacing them with combi or condensing boilers, in the belief they would be saving energy by using less, what do you think the energy companies did to maintain their profits?
That’s right, they put their prices up to compensate for the supposed losses.
Now we were using similar amounts of gas, but the companies put the prices up, so the public were not much better off at all.
Factor in that the prices of boilers and fitting shot up, new combi boiler averaged around £800 when the scheme was launched, within a few months the price had shot up to £1500 and upwards.
Over the life of the boiler, along with the service costs/insurance, and an average shelf life of 12 years, the new boiler didn’t even cover the costs of buying it, before it was recommended that it be changed for a new boiler!
The energy companies made up some cock & bull stories in reports/studies that because people were much warmer in their homes, less savings than expected were made, due to people wearing less clothes, ie. wearing t-shirts around their homes, in the middle of winter!
The prices of insulation shot up, as well as fitting, double glazing prices shot up, you get the picture.
We installed new boiler, double glazing throughout, cavity wall insulation, loft insulation (they even put loft insulation on top of existing loft insulation, claiming it had to be a new minimum thickness to work!) and yet all our gas bills and usage remained the same.
When I put this to the energy saving team at our gas company a year later (when expecting a dramatic falling of usage and bill) there only answer was, “Well think of how much your gas bill would have been if you hadn’t fitted all the energy saving measures that you did!”
I would expect 6 months of the year without using the gas central heating at all, would have some effect on reducing the usage?
Not one jot.
So remember gang, the proposed bills are based upon direct debit estimates, they do not take into account any payments made via government, both now and in the future.
Try not to panic.