Energy bills

[Yambo]

I've just had my leccy bill for Nov/Dec . . . 452 TL.

That's about average but I was using the sander and bandsaw quite a bit in November. Today's exchange rate is 23 TL/1£ but if I use 21 Tl/1£ (it was hovering around 21 TL for a couple of months) then my bill for Nov/Dec is around £21.50.

My gas bottle for cooking will run out soon I think, I started using it on 5 March and I get about 10 or 11 months use out of one. I have a spare which is not completely full but I'll get the empty one replaced at a cost of around 400 TL, around 20 quid.

My state pension (£600 every 4 weeks|) which is paid into my Turkish bank got me 14,000 TL a few days ago as I get the rate of exchange on the day. That will comfortably pay all my regular bills, electricity, water, telephone/internet. health insurance and groceries. I have a pile of wood for the wood burner some of which I bought in 2020 and haven't got through it all and I have a fair bit of pine tree trunk in the garden and a Fiskars splitting axe.

I'm good for the 2 - 3 months (Jan, Feb Mar) when it might get a bit chilly. I'll be swimming in the sea this afternoon.

[Pirahna]

I'm cutting things very fine with electricity production, the batteries haven't been above 60% for a couple of weeks. It's been constantly cloudy which messes things up. I'll add some solar panels for next year.

I've unplugged the electric water heater and installed a gas one, so hot showers on demand. I'll put the electric one on when solar production picks up, probably Feb or March.

I've been looking at generators. My inverter says it wants a nice sine wave, so an inverter generator needed. I did borrow a couple of normal ones but they won't work. Everywhere is sold out so maybe a normal one and an extent lead to run the washing machine.

[Slenver]

£40/day? I can imagine it's not too difficult in a cold period. Big house, all rooms heated to 21° (+) constantly inc. overnight, heat the home office in the garden the same, run the tumble dryer every day etc etc. Swimming pool? Aga?

We're on over £50/day currently, and we don't have any rooms anywhere near 21º! Half the house is unheated (so about 12 degrees, tops), 3 are heated and get to about 17/18, one relies on wood burner (another £6/day). Our main living room has underfloor heating so we just shut that entire room off over winter.

It's really not hard to spank through that much if you have an old house with no meaningful insulation, old single-glazed windows etc. Big rooms, high ceilings etc also a plus!

[Mr. Dazzle]

Ours is set to 18.5, selectively timed to only come on when we need it (WFH shoots quite a big hole in savings though ). It's dual zone too, so we only heat upstairs in the day 'cause that's where we're working.

Insulation FTW. What can I say? S'obvious really. New double glazing, triple layered loft insulation, nice thick cavity walls full of that polystyrene bead stuff....

[MrLongbeard]

(WFH shoots quite a big hole in savings though )

Thermals, slippers and a hoody solves that

[Count Steer]

£40/day? I can imagine it's not too difficult in a cold period. Big house, all rooms heated to 21° (+) constantly inc. overnight, heat the home office in the garden the same, run the tumble dryer every day etc etc. Swimming pool? Aga?

We're on over £50/day currently, and we don't have any rooms anywhere near 21º! Half the house is unheated (so about 12 degrees, tops), 3 are heated and get to about 17/18, one relies on wood burner (another £6/day). Our main living room has underfloor heating so we just shut that entire room off over winter.

It's really not hard to spank through that much if you have an old house with no meaningful insulation, old single-glazed windows etc. Big rooms, high ceilings etc also a plus!

The joys of characterful homes.

Have you considered building winter quarters on the land? A large, well insulated and fully equipped Portakin should do the trick...or move into the stables*.

*It's a bit chilly, better add another horse.

[Mr. Dazzle]

(WFH shoots quite a big hole in savings though )

Thermals, slippers and a hoody solves that

Already done that.

We had it down to 16°C at one point, but it has distinct health disadvantages for the asthmatic Mrs. D. Hence why we've settled on 18.5°C.

[Slenver]

The joys of characterful homes.

Have you considered building winter quarters on the land? A large, well insulated and fully equipped Portakin should do the trick...or move into the stables*.

*It's a bit chilly, better add another horse.

TBH, one of those garden offices would probably pay for itself in a few years for two of us to WFH in. I wouldn't fancy trudging around outside to get to it every day though, at least my freezing study is indoors The answer is generally clothes layering and hot water bottles..

On a related note, a mate of mine has just installed a self-contained insulated box inside a storage unit that he uses as an office. The plan was to just use it on occasion (he works occasionally), but he's realised that it costs pennies to heat 24 hours/day, plus he's still on some old-skool commercial rate at 12p/kWh. If it wasn't for his missus, I think he'd just stay there all winter.

[MrLongbeard]

(WFH shoots quite a big hole in savings though )

Thermals, slippers and a hoody solves that

Already done that.

We had it down to 16°C at one point, but it has distinct health disadvantages for the asthmatic Mrs. D. Hence why we've settled on 18.5°C.

It's 16 degrees in my study now, it was 15 but the sun is coming around and heating the window up.
I get the asthma thing, I've been a wheezy knacker since before it was trendy to say peoples homes are too clean, oddly I'm the other way and get on better with cold air than I do warm.

[ZRX61]

In related news...

https://climatechangedispatch.com/risin ... ncObfZPC40

Oh wait, that's not a credible source, try this one instead...

https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/supp ... 6-12-2022/

[DefTrap]

As long as you're out of the wind and rain, I don't mind the cold so much, you can always put another sweater on. I certainly don't need it on in every room, and certainly not where I'm sleeping, not when I'm paying for it anyway.

[Hoonercat]

My CH only comes on for an hour each morning, that's long enough to get the house warm by the time I climb out of my pit. Rad in the living room is permanently off* because I don't use it during the day plus it seems to have its very own eco-system. This morning the living room was the coldest I've seen it this winter, 16.8, so it dropped by 3.2 degrees in 8.5 hours (temp was 20 degrees when I went to bed last night) while the outside temp was -3 degrees with a thick ground frost. An hour later the temp is just below 18 degrees in the living room thanks to the sun Having walls that are 18 inches thick probably helps (28 inches for the wall that adjoins the conservatory).

*I heat it at night with a woodburner that's in the adjoining room/conservatory but close the rooms off when I go to bed.

[Asian Boss]

I haven't seen any bills for my new place yet but I'm not looking forward to them. It has huge rooms with high ceilings and drafty sash windows. I went in the loft and in some places there's no insulation at all, just rubble and builders waste. It's listed too so can't be changed much.

My brother in law lives nearby. He's a tooleygoon. I've told him to sort it or I'll have him thrown out of his cottage.

[Kneerly Down]

Well, my kitchen has warmed up to a balmy 14C when I go down to make the morning cuppas now.
It was at 10C during the recent cold snap so 14 feels alright.

It should be pretty warm in there as we have the oil-fired Esse, but the supply pipe got damaged around this time last year.
All our family are used to c.18C in the living room and 14 or so in bedrooms/kitchen during the winter (and not much different in summer! )
If they want to be in a warm room the dining room has a woodburner in it that's normally lit or they can start a fire in the woodburner in the dog room.

We have lots of family and friends staying over Christmas though so I think I might need to fix and fire up the Esse before Xmas day* and will probably burn through a huge amount of oil heating their rooms. Even pondered turning off the power to the shower pumps and going back to the 80s style trickle showers.

At 40ppl heating oil and 10ppkWh elec we were getting through £4,000 and £2,500 respectively when we first moved in, but hoping to have got this down to similar amounts (well, prob £3-3.5k elec) even with the greatly increased prices.
I've got 8kW of solar PV now but haven't had it over a summer to see how much impact that'll have.
I never thought that heating and powering a big 18thC listed house on the coast in NW Scotland would ever be cheap though.

* might have to be SWMBOs Xmas present if I don't get something sorted.

[Screwdriver]

What a surprise...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... m-us-to-uk

What did I tell you?

I mean that the USA without an actual president is being run by a ragbag of corporate interest groups, manipulating/using/lobbying nominally elected politician to further their economic agendas. I appreciate that yes, this is exactly how "democracy" works but without the appropriate checks/balances and firm leadership, it has become amplified to these extremes.

I might be wrong but I see no benefit whatsoever in Putin destroying (or crippling) the only lifeline that may save his failed agenda. My understanding is that certain EU countries were more than happy to circumvent sanctions and accept Russian gas. Well, that's the end of that idea.

And, don't worry, good ole' USA will step in and help by incorporating you funny little Europeans into our own energy agenda.

Thus was the Empire forged. Same game different day. The stakes may be bigger as the world gets smaller but that is the nature of a zero sum game.

Do I still have to sit here with my tinfoil hat on?

[demographic]

Doesnt the UK currently have the highest lecky prices in Europe? Sure that was mentioned on the radio this week.
Twice as high as in France?

[ZRX61]

German Govt are now blaming the consumers for a possible shortage of NG instead of the sanctions they enacted...

[Screwdriver]

This is what corporate governance looks like.

The West (i.e. America) has decided that we'd be better off with a Ukrainian oligarchy controlled by western (American corporate) interest, rather than a Russian oligarchy controlled by Putin.

Things are much better now though right? I mean that's what our mainstream media keep telling us, also owned by the same global corporate elitists...

[Ant]

Don't worry, we'll just wave our blue and yellow flags around and everything will be ok.

[Hoonercat]

What a surprise...

https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... m-us-to-uk

What did I tell you?

I mean that the USA without an actual president is being run by a ragbag of corporate interest groups, manipulating/using/lobbying nominally elected politician to further their economic agendas. I appreciate that yes, this is exactly how "democracy" works but without the appropriate checks/balances and firm leadership, it has become amplified to these extremes.

I might be wrong but I see no benefit whatsoever in Putin destroying (or crippling) the only lifeline that may save his failed agenda. My understanding is that certain EU countries were more than happy to circumvent sanctions and accept Russian gas. Well, that's the end of that idea.

And, don't worry, good ole' USA will step in and help by incorporating you funny little Europeans into our own energy agenda.

Thus was the Empire forged. Same game different day. The stakes may be bigger as the world gets smaller but that is the nature of a zero sum game.

Do I still have to sit here with my tinfoil hat on?

From the article:

Under the deal, the US aims to more than double the amount of liquefied natural gas (LNG) exported to the UK over the coming year, compared with 2021.

The government said that, as part of the gas deal, the US will “strive” to export at least 9-10bn cubic metres (bcm) of LNG over the next year via UK terminals.

Over the 12 months to October 2022, the UK imported 9.7bcm of American LNG, 42% of total imports.

Cut out all the waffle and it's something of a non-story.