SteamyTea

Yes, but I am the exception. Kernow is basically an island in the Atlantic, so is surrounded by warm seas, why I started to incorporate sea surface temperature, that, and I can tell the cold water swimming bores that it is not as cold as they claim. My weather rose shows that my house is pretty stable, regardless of weather, the overriding influence is OAT. Just get it done, being able to quickly check, and do indepth analysis is so helpful. I have made it a hobby, and learnt quite a bit along the way. I can now do basic Python programming, very advance statistics (though I did learn a lot at University an have a natural aptitude for it), how to make an energy monitor And best of all, can be smug about it.

I semi-retired over 23 years ago, though I did have an interest in energy before then. When I was working, I drove about 50k miles a year, one year, it was 70k. And I had larger petrol cars and the truck. One thing about reducing my working hours, and changing to evening working, is that my house is empty when most people have heating, lighting and entertainment on. Coming home to a chilly house is soon sorted with a shower and bed. Having said that, when I had a lodger, and once I had trained her up, we (it was a team effort) got usage down to between 4.5 and 5 MWh/year. So long haired girls can reduce usage as well. I am still not sure if my target of 3 MWh/year is good or bad. I think, for a small, single person, household, it is reasonable, especially if I look at the ToU against CO2 emissions.

Yes, I hope this year is a bit more settled. As my Mother is still about, even though she broke her leg again, last year really was a bonus year, for me, though I know not for others. This year has started well, it is not raining yet, so time to go out and play. Play is important.

When it became obvious, 15 months ago, that we were all in for a significant hike in energy prices, I decided to set a target of using less energy. I generally used about 4 MWh/year. This is down from 11 MWh/year when I first moved into the house over 17 years ago. The initial target was 3.5 MWh/year for this year. Putin invading Ukraine caused a lot of uncertainty, and much bigger price hikes, at one stage EDF were sending out silly 'estimates', but they have since stabilised, and in my case, actually reduced from last quarters peak. So I set myself a new target back in May of 3 MWh/year. So how did I get on. I missed the new target, but was under the old one. This was mainly down to the cold weather that started in the third week of November and carried though to the third week of December, it was at least 5° below average, and sometimes 10°C lower. The weather is never very cold here, just feels it goes below 9°C. Daily mean of 9°C is around the temperature I turn my heating on. So this last year, I have used a total of 3237 kWh, with 474 kWh during the day and 2765 kWh during the night. That was as read by my old CurrentCost Opti-Envi meter. The actual meter showed that I had used a total of 3224 kWh, with 503 kWh during the day and 2721 kWh at night. Pretty good agreement considering that the EDF window initially had an odd hour between 23:00 and 00:00 hours and then 01:00 to 07:00 sometimes, and then 00:00 to 00:800 at other times, which I cannot be bothered to adjust for. I made three changes to the house this year. First change, I fixed the leaky back door. I was expecting to have to buy a new one, but found that the warping was being caused by a dislodged threshold. Took 2 minutes with a screwdriver to put it right. Lesson here is to investigate rather than assume. I still fancy a new door, a barn type would be nice, but just cannot justify the price, so may try and make one. Second change, at the end of May, was putting a timer of the top immersion heater on the E7 cylinder and pulling the fuse on the bottom element. This saved around 1 kWh/day, (can see the step change in the chart). It has made the quantity of DHW marginal, and I have been caught out a couple of times, but I can live with that, though others may not. 15 minutes of override sorts the problem for a shower, so not exactly dreadful. I intend to play about with the timings, maybe 1 day of lower heating element and then two days of higher heating element to reduce the chance of running out of DHW, but it will be a marginal saving for little benefit. Timer was under £20. My water usage has stayed about the same at 140 lt/day, though I really need to lower this, but I like a bath and dislike a shower. Third change was to make some secondary glazing for all but 1 window (should really be 2 windows, but decided to live dangerously). I did this with cheap planed timber, very cheap polystyrene sheet (cast acrylic would be better, but I like to experiment first) and some W profile draught excluding foam tape. Cosy about a tenner a window. So about £120 for that This has made a difference to both the U-Value and the draughtiness. Though not the prettiest of retrofits, but as I expect the polystyrene sheet to start to 'frost', I can make it much better next time. As a side benefit, the house is a lot quieter as well. In all, I have probably spend £200 on 'energy saving improvements' and have saved approximately 0.8 MWh/year, with my profile of 85% at the cheaper 15p, that is £100 saving (and the savings only started from end of May), so come next May, I should be quids in. The house seems warmer as well, but that maybe because the back door is not leaking, and I sit at my desk opposite that door. Mean house temperature has been 20.6° with a mean temperature difference of 8.8°C. As some of you know, I am keen to reduce parasitic loads, and have very few. Fridge (kind of essential, but still think 0.3 kWh/day is excessive), laptop (that is now mains only), 3 RPiZeroWs (could get away with 1), a cheap Weather Station (that I hardly look at as the outside sensor has stopped working) and a tiny 'pocket' router (which I can get rid of as it is only the energy monitor on it) and the CC energy monitor (could get rid of that as I made a similar one, but I like the display). I have, this last week, made a secure TOR webserver (one of the RPIZeros) that at the moment is just logging and publishing outside temperature. If I get bored, and trust the reliability, I shall shift all the data logging to this and just let it 'do its thing' but giving me remote data viewing. On the downside of my energy usage, I have driven an extra 27,000 miles this year, on top of my usual 22,000 miles/year, but even there I have modified my driving style for economy and increased them MPG by 20% (other benefits are the car is still going at 220k miles, driving is generally less stressful, had a £270 speeding fine once and got banned many years ago, but only a £30 fine that time, now I stop everyone speeding), but it has cost an extra £4000 in fuel, and used an 2,300 litres, so about 23 MWh of energy. Now the important chart.

Was that the RES farce that was on telly a few years back?

Many years ago, @Ed Davies and myself, looked into predicting light levels. After looking at thousands of data points, we came to the conclusion that it was not very accurate. The best correlation was wind direction. I did think at the time that cloud base temperature, or lack of cloud base temperature, may be a good indictor, but never followed it up. This came about as I was trying to find the algorithm that my cheap weather station uses and is spookily accurate. Bought an IR temperature sensor for my RPi, think it is still in a packet somewhere. Maybe this year I shall get around to doing it.

@Marvin I think you need a new fridge. I noticed my old one had gone faulty because it was using about 3 kWh/day. A very cheap energy upgrade.

No, not a prep school. It was worse, it was in Kent.

Humour is the best medicine.

Still very high. Mine uses about a tenth of what yours does. @Radian's new fridge uses even less.

Seems high.

Sand blasting attachment for a pressure washer maybe. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/314246418092

@pocster has a few stories about his exploits with KY and Superglue.

Easiest way to find out is to ask a Structural Engineer, what they do.

You went to Prep School as well then. I have an irrational phobia with flannels. Actually, not that irrational. Having had to look, and smell, a line of damp, discoloured flannels, that were used every day, by teenage boys, to remove genitalia crud and discharge, I cannot have one in the house. Matron never gave any of us bed baths either. They never mentioned any of this in Tom Brown's School Days, or the Harry Potter books do they. I blame the parents.

I agree, would also be good if all energy was generated on site. I think the main problem is that homes just don't have enough area. And many sit on the wrong sort of land. Probably why building on flood plains seems like a good idea.

Is that because we are not doing it at scale and not measuring the benefits correctly. The rainwater that falls onto my roof and parking area runs directly into the main sewage system, along with the kitchen sink, washing machine, bath, shower and toilet waste. It then flows under the street, collecting all the neighbours waste, into a larger pipe, then gets pumped inland for 6 miles to the treatment plant. Now get this, it then gets pumped 6 miles again, to the sea. I assume that a lot of the road surface water is also being mixed in with the domestic waste water, and probably business waste as well (there is a large laundry company not too far away). Now if I was to collect say 30% of the rain run off from my property and use, directly, 50% of that, that would take fair bit of load of the local sewage system, and would be less pumping. The other 15% (50% of the collected 30%) could be slowly released into the general sewage system, rather than flooded in during high rainfall. This would reduce costs as less pumping and large scale holding would be needed, and hopefully reduce the number of major spillages (we have a lot, Portreath does not smell of seaweed, it is not mud washed into the sea at St. Agnes, and I have stopped telling people in Penzance harbour that it is full of shit, but that is because they park badly and are boring twats, cold water swimmers are the new vegans). So without measuring, and putting a price on those small advantages, it is hard to say if there is genuine saving and any environmental benefits, but one thing is sure, if we carry on developing towns (the preferred option of brown field development) while relying on the same design and management of waste water systems, we are not going to get any advantages at all, just the same 'working on the edge' systems that are known to fail on a regular basis. SUDS was a start, it just needs to be built on and expanded. Southwest Water charge Water £1.9336/m3 Foul, Surface and Highway £3.2938/m3 Fixed charge £54.60/year Thames Water charge Water 149.62p/m3 Foul, Surface and Highway 90.51p/m3 Fixed charge (I can't find this, is there one?) And we all know that Thames Water has a problem with supplying water. Problem my arse, try the South West, we are paying 3.5 times to get rid of the waste and 30% for potable water.

If I leave the bath full of water to cool, I get a damp house, unless I keep the extractor on, which defeats the object. Having MVHR would help. A cubic metre of water costs me about £8. Cost about £6.50 to heat up at night. Short, cold showers are really the answer, not the hot soak in the bath I prefer. I get all the health and wellbeing advantages of cold water swimming from a hot bath.

They are offering you a size they have in stock, not a deal. Payback on a RWH system is really dependant in how much you pay for your water and waste, I pay the most for it the country, and it is a poor service. Had more water disconnections than electricity ones. Anyway, no one looks at payback on kitchens or bathrooms. RWH should be thought of as 'doing the right thing' rather than a monetary gain. £4k in a £400k house is 1% of the value, so keep the price in perspective.

I did need a wee. Oddly, I did not need to go for about an hour after the event, and no poo came out.

I had a lodger who had aa very bad stroke when she was young, had medical problems every since. One was epilepsy. Now with an epileptic in the house, doors are never locked, never, not even the bathroom. Simple rule, close the door if you are in there, leave it open when you are not in there. So returning home after a long journey, I need a wee, quiet house so rush upstairs and the bathroom door is ajar, rush in, then see the body of my lodger laying in a still bath of water. "Oh Becky" I sighed in a very mournful way. Then the (expletive deleted)ing bitch came alive and sat up. Neither of us froze, we both shriek with fright, then hysterical laughter. Still, I go to see my lodger, who was 21 years younger than me, naked.

First Google hit https://www.palextrusions.co.uk/products/glazing-products/

Can you still put those important 'Welcome to Rhyl' fridge magnets on the door?