SteamyTea

I have a Bosch one now as I did a few years back, as does my Mother, all of them still working fine. Second choice, but the new ones have more controls and displays than NASA did 50 years ago. Certainly not as quick, or takes as large a load. But occasionally I have used the tumble on mine and after 2 hours things seem fine. Probably used it 10 times in 10 years and not used it in last 3 years I think. I can't comment on all the other posh ones, but my experience of Hoover and Hotpoint has not been good. One of them had a plastic drum, bearing went after about 14 months. After some argument about being out of warrantee and fit for purpose, I got my money back, plus 100 quid. Bought the Bosch. I think the trick is to not overload them and keep the speed speed down to 800 RPM. Soft water helps, though I never had to change an element when living in Aylesbury, and the water is actually solid there.

Welcome I am no expert as not borrowed money for a house in over 30 years now. But usually it seems that you arrange to borrow a fixed sum, but you get it in stages. The lender will not release more money until the agreed stage i.e. foundation, is actually in place and signed off. What they will not do is expose themselves to a greater financial risk. So by, in effect, owning your land, they know they can get something back at the start. So you hand over £100k of land, they lend you £35k to put a foundation in. This may increase the value to say £115k. They will then lean you another £35k to get walls and roofs fitted, increasing the value to £140K. Why I stopped borrowing money.

There was a documentary about Ronan Point a few years back. One of the workers was actually laughing about how they saved time, and therefore earned more, by skipping on the number of bolts that held the place together. Should be locked up if he is still alive.

They get tea in my house, they don't come back, not even the Jehovahs.

So he did, can see it clearly now I am back on the laptop, rather than the Kindle.

Just looked this up and it retails at £500. It has a power draw of 1450W. Let us say that it is on for 2 hours a day in total (a few heat and cool cycles rather than permanently on). So costs, before coffee and water, and assuming it will last 5 years (pure guess) That is about 50p a day in power, 30p a day for the machine. So 80p a day before the cost of coffee. Quick look at Tesco website and they have kilo of Lavazza beans for £13.75. Assuming 10g per drink, that is 14p per mug allowing for wastage. Now if I got machine at home, it would only be on for 20 minutes to make my one coffee a day, so that would be 7p for electric, 37p including the machine, 41p including the coffee. So I would save £2/day. And the 32 mile round trip at 45 MPG.

Since, and including the 7th July, until, and including yesterday (20/07/2019), I used 79.3 kWh, what is and average of 5.7 kWh/day. Isn't that 2.8 kWh/day

You kept those on while away, why?

I find the "coffee culture" a bit odd. I work with someone that says he refuses to have a coffee from a chain place. This seems to be based on one experience of ordering the wrong thing. He actually won't go to any chain place because he thinks that they have killed local traders, this suggests that he has already made up his mind about quality. A few years back I asked someone where was a good place to get a coffee in Penzance. Was told that the Cornish Hen was the best place to go because it was 'organic' (I think the coffee was Illy, which should be called Iffy). Was dreadful, truly dreadful. If they had put boiling water on a teaspoon of Happy Shopper instant it would have been better. And they charged me nearly 3 quid. The staff were standoffish. For an interesting take on food, listen to this. Was on last week. Highlights the snobbery of food. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p07gz0j1

Had anyone say down and worked out the price of buying and running a coffee machine. I go out for a coffee most days, cost me somewhere between £1.90 and £2.75 a day, usually about £2.40 (local Costa). Seems a lot, but is it really. They do the washing up for that and I get to read the newspapers, steal their internet, look at, and get annoyed with youngsters, occasionally have an interesting conversation...

Except you could store the PV energy as thermal energy, then just draw on it when needed. A lot of the time you would not be pulling the maximum 3kW. Remember that you only start importing energy once the load is greater than your PV is supplying. It is not 'either or '

The alternative is to have large investment into renewable generation, then, apart from commuter congestion, we can live just about were we like. There would be no environmental penalty for using energy (kind off, ish). I think that we will probably have a similar mix of housing that we have at the moment. One area that does need sorting, and sorting fast, is energy intensive industries i.e. concrete, steel, plastic, food manufacturing. We cannot just export this this and then claim virtue.

Almost a week later, but it is sunny and I want to go out. So after a week, my 7 sensor RPi has used 90.6 Wh, it has run for 165 hours, so that is 0.56W. With my E7 tariff that works out at about 0.3p/day. Or about £1/year.

If it is just housing, then large scale blocks of flats. They have small footprints, so leaves lots of land for other things, low energy usage, centralised management, good local infrastructure i.e. work, retail, leisure facilities, transport. Probably not the utopia future we imagined for our retirement.

Welcome First thing to do is to set a baseline for your energy usage. Then you can measure what any improvements are actually doing.

Can we play 'Spot the Safe'. For anyone under 40, that is what we did before the Lottery came along, though it was called 'Spot the Ball'

Bit of a worrying statement on their website. I thought it was 1.6180..... ♦ 1:1 Gold Ratio The unit and water tank are matched with a gold ratio to eliminate the phenomenon of disharmony, so that it is more energy-saving and professional.

"Police are hunting thieves who stole an entire cobbled street in Liverpool." Back in the 80's my Girlfriend's parents lived in Aintree. One Sunday afternoon they were sitting in the back garden and heard a noise in the house. Her Father went to investigate and there was some bloke carrying out their TV. When confronted with "What you doing", the thief said "taking your TV". The thief then walked out, put it in a van and drove off. Liverpool was great in the 80's. Now what happened to Derek Hatton.

I use all wired sensors on my collection of RPis. Have run some DHTs and DS18B20 at the end of 10m cables. The DHTs are not that great for reliability anyway, but not that many missed readings in the scheme of things. The 1-Wire stuff is very good, but as soon as you attach more than about 7 to the same cable, problems happen. I just reduced the Ohms of the resistor to up the cable voltage. That seemed to sort it. Have played with some ESP8266 as remote sensors. I really must have a play again. I got stuck on sending the data securely, but that was my lack of microPython skills rather than anything wrong with the ESP8266. After decades of only liking wired stuff (my mechanical engineering background), I like the idea of wireless more and more these days. My CurrentCost Optisense on my electric meter has been chugging along for about 7 years now, not changed the battery yet. Shame the CurrentCost are not about anymore. I am not worried about EMF, not enough energy in it to worry about.

Me too. If all energy was sold by the joule, it would be easy to compare. Even food has the kJ on it. But when I asked the local WeightWatchers woman what it meant, she had no idea.

All this talk of people being safe makes me sick. At least branch could have caught one of you in the nads, just as a social comment

I got a PDF for nothing. Bit of googling finds everything.

I have just read C P Snow's Science and Government lecture. Still valid even though it is almost 60 years since he delivered it. Last week was Club of Rome's Limits to Growth. Not valid and basic premise was wrong, and still is wrong. Now back to Rachel Carson's Silent Spring. If you want to learn a lesson about bad science and selective evidence, this is the book to read.

Yes, but a bath is my luxury, and it gets my body moving properly.

Get a copy of this book. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Energy-Beginners-Guide-Guides/dp/1786071339 It is pretty good and I got it electronically from my local library. Also there is the classic https://www.withouthotair.com/download.html free download Then the OU books that the renewable courses use. https://www.amazon.co.uk/Energy-Systems-Sustainability-Sustainable-Future/dp/0199593744 https://www.amazon.co.uk/RENEWABLE-ENERGY-SUSTAINABLE-GODFREY-PAPERBACK/dp/0199681279 I would say that the first two are compulsory reading and the second two are good for referencing.