There are no grants for home owners anymore.

You can’t have more than a 7kW charger unless you have 3 phase electricity.

They can split the cables coming out of the electricity meter and avoid changing your existing consumer unit entirely so if the electric meter is in a more accessible position that would be the way to go.

A Wemos D1 mini if you don’t need too many GPIOs. Can be had for less than £2 a pop if you buy a couple from AliExpress.

You should do the calculations for an EV tariff like Octopus Go. Depending on your home electricity usage and how much you are willing to move things like washing machines and dishwasher usage to the overnight cheap period it can take only a single full charge of an EV per month on the off-peak to makeup for the increased peak costs.

We have a heatsava in the kitchen. It does help with condensation. We have single glazed windows and no other extractor.

It can’t add warmth to your room though, just reduce the heat loss of the alternative extraction methods (extractor fan, open window).

The unit was a bit annoying in October as the weather was so wet and inside temperatures were equal to outside. The unit would sense the high relative humidity and ramp up but pulling in air at the same temperature but higher humidity from outside doesn’t help, the internal RH didn’t drop so the fan speed remained at an elevated level.

7.18kWh today in Derbyshire. 3.85kWp system facing SSE at about 40 degrees. Almost cloudless day but the low angle means one of my panels is in partial shade all day.

they could just measure the local grid and offer a cheapepr price at the low use time.

Houses would need a meter that records the time they use the energy so that they can be billed for the amount they used during that low use/cheap time…. Oh wait. That’s a smart meter!

I should have said the regulatory process was slightly easier. As the article says, suppliers aren’t supposed to change you to prepay without your knowledge. Hopefully ofgem will step in and fine ones that are going rogue, I won’t hold my breath though.

There is an industry wide project to migrate the SMETS1 meters to the same system that SMETS2 use which should make them interoperable between suppliers. It was supposed to be completed in September but as with everything it’s dragging on.

Smart meters are great. Our electricity bill this month is £45. We’re on Octopus Go as we have an EV and home battery. Without a smart meter we’d be stuck on the flat rate tariff. Which at the current 34p/kWh would mean a bill of £200 this month.

Yes smart meters cost more upfront than an dumb meter and maybe the operational cost isn’t cheaper than sending people to read meters. However smart meters allow for better demand shifting; curtailing wind farms costs money, obtaining additional capacity during large peaks costs a lot of money. Without a smart meter there is no way to incentivise/reward home owners for shifting their usage (big business/industry have had half hourly metering for years).

The law (as it stands currently) doesn’t allow your supplier to switch you off on a whim. You’re no more at risk of being disconnected. A court order is still required. It is slightly easier for them to swap you to a prepay setup though.

On mine the 240v thermostat contacts on the boiler is bridged with a small wire, the boiler is set to OpenTherm mode and the low voltage wires connected. The WiserHub needs powering from 240V, which you can take from the boiler or from elsewhere.

You can move to Octopus right now. You just need to call them up. The regulations don’t allow for suppliers to refuse new customers but they don’t have to make it easy for you to join.

All the media outlets do say 2900kWh, even ofgems website talks about 2900kWh, however ofgem have 3 values for electricity usage

1800kWh – low
2900kWh – medium
4200kWh – high

If you look at the official docs for the cap they clearly state it is for 3100kWh “benchmark”

The price cap is given as 2 numbers per region.

1 – the “nil” consumption cap. This is the maximum amount a supplier can charge for a year as standing charge
2 – the average consumption cap. This is the maximum amount a supplier can charge for a year of average consumption (3100kWh for electricity, 12000kWh for gas), this amount includes the standing charge

To work out the max for the standing charge you divide the nil consumption cap by 365.
To work out the max for the unit rate you subtract the nill consumption charge from the average consumption cap and then divide by the average consumption.

e.g For the October cap (before it was just superseded today). In the North West region, the cap for electricity (flat rate metering), when paid by direct debit is:

nil consumption: £150.38
average consumption: £1665.67

So the max standing charge in that region is 150.38/365 = 0.412
And the max unit rate is (1665.67 – 150.38)/3100 = 0.4888032258

and then you need to add VAT.

Bulb hasn’t offered fixed tariffs so there was none to continue.

The thinking behind Bulbs special administration was that it was the less expensive option. Letting Bulb go through the supplier of last resort process would have meant the new supplier requesting a lot of money from the “slush” fund in order to cover the cost of the unhedged energy needed to support the new customers. This amount was calculated to be worse for everyone than special administration.

Have you checked to see if the hinges have any adjustment?

If you haven’t already I would recommend watching Stumpy Nub’s table saw safety videos on YouTube.

For the cut where you took off the tongue. I would have run the wood the opposite way around, with the tongue away from the fence. My reasoning (I’m also self “trained” by watching YouTube) is:

1) the tongue is the scrap bit. Running the bit you care about against the fence should yield a more accurate result on it.
2) You were pushing the workpiece past the blade and also would have been pushing it towards the blade too (in order to provide friction to push it forwards), as the piece isn’t supported by the fence it could flex slightly and you might end up with a wonky cut.
3) The lateral force applied could also cause the piece to bind on the back of the blade (as you have no riving knife) and cause a kickback which will ruin your workpiece, your face and likely your hand.

The tablesaw terrifies me every time I use it. I think that’s a good thing. So many YouTubers are terrible when it comes to using their saws safely.

Bulb won’t provide you with a new IHD as they didn’t install your smart meter and it’s expensive.

Try this app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=uk.co.hildebrand.brightionic if your smets1 meter is the compatible type then it offers you most the benefits of an IHD for free and more as it gives you better historical data. Its limited to half hourly resolution though, you need to buy their IHD/CAD for instantaneous and 1min resolution as the smart meter doesn’t report those back to the DCC. They only get reported to the IHD, which in brights case send them via the internet back to their servers so they appear in the app.

@deadlydarcy the latest word was Apple car play is due Spring 2022.. so anytime now. There will be some very annoyed people if it’s another year. I’ve no need for it so haven’t missed it, I think quite a few have actually decided they don’t miss it that much. The Bluetooth integration does most things and the native android stuff is good. The Google maps integration is continually getting better; it tells you your battery % on arrival with pretty good accuracy and says how much you’ll have if you do a return trip. It finds you chargers (not all of them though) and tells you their availability and can filter on charger speed and payment options and conditions the battery for arrival when navigating to one.

Since November. I have the dual motor version.

The app is terrible.
The “phone as a key” system seemed so unreliable I haven’t bothered to set it up as I don’t want to use it and it fail.
The Android Automotive system is a bit void of apps this far.
The reversing light might as well not exist, it illuminates nothing.
The reversing camera is crap at night.
The 360 camera view is a bit blurry and warped (much more so than other cars).
The automatic braking in reverse is sometimes scared of its own shadow. When it activates it’s a bit alarming!
The customer service is pretty woeful.
It’s not a particularly efficient EV. Around 35kWh/100miles over winter. I did get a 29.8kWh/100mile trip (about 60 miles in length) the other week when it warmed up.
Not as fast to charge as the Ionic5/EV6.

Overall though I really like it, driving it makes up for the above.

@deadlydarcy Yep, I have Polestar 2

Working in the industry I don’t think it’s malice. It’s more likely the result of archaic and inefficient processes. The yearly consumption estimate processes is an industry wide thing. Your supply submits your readings and then eventually gets back an annual usage estimate. It wouldn’t surprise me if Octopus hadn’t yet got estimates for your meterpoint from the industry since you moved to them in October.

Annual estimates are also woefully slow to change. It’s taken nearly 2 years of living in our house for our gas annual estimate to get anywhere near close to the previous owners (we’re at about 1/3rd what they were). That’s with a smart meter giving regular readings.

I know that the communications we sent out about the price changes included a break down of the costs; the standing charge + the annual usage x unit rate. And included a note to indicate if the industry defaults for annual usage had been used rather than actual estimates for your meterpoint. I’m not sure if that was a regulatory requirement though.

The first task should always be to gather data. Otherwise you’re stabbing in the dark a lot.

Smart meters and heating controls can allow you to build a really good picture about how your behaviour and your house affects your consumption and potentially make significant savings with very little capital investment.

Thermal imaging cameras are relatively cheap these days and are vital for checking if your insulation is actually doing its job (builders are notoriously bad at installing it) and finding cold spots.

I managed to halve our gas consumption from ~34,000kWh/year when we moved in to. ~17,500kWh now. That was through a forced boiler replacement (old one died after a few months) and a proper heating control system (not just the timer and boiler stay).

We managed to reduce our electricity bills (£ not the amount of kWh used) by switching to an EV tariff (a few months before getting an EV) and shifting some load (dishwasher, washing machine) to the night time. That requires no investment really. I was confident it would save us money as I had the granular data from my smart meter so I could model it myself in a spreadsheet.

Next up is a solar PV + battery system. Our roof is less than ideal in size and orientation, meaning the payback period is a bit long but I got a bonus this year so I’m not worried about that.

We’re also looking at a comprehensive retrofit of the house (c1890s solid wall, conservation area) with internal wall insulation, window upgrades and draught proofing.

250W minimum with no heating load is a lot.

Our house idles at 96W (120W when the fridge kicks in periodically).

The constant loads are:

4 node mesh WiFi
Router
Modem
2xRaspberry Pi’s
A bunch of ESP8266 temperature and humidity sensors and some power monitoring smart plugs.
TV on standby

You could do it with a Broadlink RM4 Pro. It’s an RF/IR transmitter that is controllable via an app. You won’t however know for sure that it has actually worked. If the TV was switched off at the wall for example, you wouldn’t know.

There are many studies out there into the CO2 that goes into making an EV and well-to-tank CO2 for petrol and electricity.

I used some to do some calculations recently and taking an existing petrol car that gets 45mpg it takes:

(10,000 miles/year) ~5 years to “break even” on the CO2 from building the new EV (+average grid CO2 form the electricity used in driving). Every year you delay going EV takes just over an extra year to get you level (compared to switching today)

(5,000 miles/year) ~11 years

The Remarkable Hare in Matlock does a good one.

Was there earlier this week. Bit wet but trails are fine, all the rock keeps them running well in wet weather.

Tried my hand at making some picture frames.

A floating frame made from some reclaimed pine boards and a gallery frame (needs glass) from some reclaimed oak.

The UK Gov apparently provides subsidies to fossil fuel companies to the amount of ~£12.5B/yr. That would do a good job at plugging some of the gap.

Very similar, Writing = LH, Snooker/Pool = LH, everything else is RH. For fine hand work task that aren’t directly related to writing (e.g soldering, woodworking) I switch to whichever hand is in a better position.

Given how little writing I do these days it seems a bit odd to class myself as left handed.

@redmex No issues sitting on it at the weekend, we broke the edges slightly so nothing too sharp.

As for the lateral movement, so far so good, some play might develop over time we shall see. It’s not like my design is a novel one though.

That ones already in progress!

Outdoor furniture. Couldn’t find anything for sale we liked the look of, in stock and at a reasonable price. Going to make a 2nd bench, came up a bit short on wood though.

Please excuse the weeds and the gate, they are on the list.

Knocked up a quick 2nd desk for my home office from so left over OSB from the garage fit out. My primary desk was getting overrun with hobby projects and never got tidied again before work.

I’m sure when I was in yr9 it was “mandatory” to do at least one language at GCSE. I didn’t, I think our school lacked sufficient teachers to actually teach everyone or something so I wrangled my way out of it.

It hasn’t disadvantaged me whatsoever, went on to get an MEng in Electronic and Electrical Engineering and the University of Sheffield.

I graduated in 2009 so not particularly recent.

Made a tray/coffee table add-on for our footstool.

White oak finished with osmo raw (took me two attempts to get the finish looking good).

(Please excuse the bare walls)

I have a Wiser setup.

Wiser doesn’t do geofencing natively, you’d have to do it through IFTTT. I’ve only had mine since November and we’ve barely left the house so not an issue for us.

IMO Wiser has the nicest looking TRVs by far. The system can also be used with Home Assistant (you can even communicate with the TRVs directly via Zigbee if you wanted) so no worries if Drayton go bust/stop supporting it.

Things that annoy me:

1) Algorithms seem a bit over damped, they can sometimes take a few hours past the set point time to reach the set point temperature. Office rooms on monday morning for example are set to be at temp for 9am but it can be 11am before they actually get their. It reduces the boiler demand (via OpenTherm, another reason I bought Wiser) proportionally to the temperature difference. I feel like it could get there a little bit faster but I guess they don’t want to overshoot.

2) Eco mode is pants:

“This mode learns about your home’s thermal properties and how long it takes to react to temperature changes, and turn the boiler off sooner to save energy. By adding smart TRVs to gain room-by-room heating control, the effect of this is magnified to achieve even greater savings.”

This isn’t very good when you want to heat the office till 1800 then have it turn down to say 10 degrees (or off entirely) as it gets to some point in the afternoon and it thinks “oh I’ve got loads of time to drop down from 20 to 10 degrees, i’ll stop maintaining temperature” and then it gets cold!. It makes it hard to set schedules on rooms correctly so I’ve turned it off.

Don’t try and switch until you’ve been properly adopted by EDF or you’ll end up in a big mess as the switch process wont work properly now that Green Energy Network aren’t operating.

EDF have taken you over as a Supplier Of Last Resort. You should be able to find details of the process on the ofgem site.

I think you’re credit will be transferred over, I’ve only just started working in this industry though so no 100%

Can you expand the DHCP pool and subnet mask of your router to cover that range? E.g

192.168.0.1-192.168.255.255
255.255.0.0

Got a table saw so as a practice project I made a little desk tidy for my other half’s desk. Used the left over oak from the clothes ladder.

The base didn’t turn out wonderfully, kind of winged it as didn’t have a good idea what to do for a base.

My 2015 MBP battery 100% needs replacing:

Model Information:
Manufacturer: SMP
Device Name: bq20z451
Pack Lot Code: 0
PCB Lot Code: 0
Firmware Version: 702
Hardware Revision: 1
Cell Revision: 3244
Charge Information:
Charge Remaining (mAh): 3522
Fully Charged: No
Charging: No
Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 5675
Health Information:
Cycle Count: 1157
Condition: Service Recommended
Battery Installed: Yes
Amperage (mA): -1626
Voltage (mV): 11156

It often turns off at anything up to 90% if you ask it to do anything taxing on battery power.