Moan of the day

[mags]

It is not very often I go into town and these days I rarely buy a cross stitch/stitchy magazine. In W H Smith those magazines are on the back shelf of the bottom rack so if you wanted to have a look just to see which magazines they had you would have to get down on your hands and knees and peer upwards!!!! I have mentioned this to an assistant before but nothing has been done. Needless to say I didn't get to see what they had so no magazine for me today.

[rcperryls]

Its a catch22 isn't it. Those magazines are where they are because they don't sell well and they don't sell well because of where they are.

Carole

[mags]

Yes you are so right.

[Steam.Jo]

I note that the 'porn' type ones were always stocked at eye line

I have a moan for today: I have a solar array on my roof. It cost me £14K over 10 years ago but I get a nice not so little return ( about £2.5K a year) from the power they generate. However the government has deemed that our panels will not be generating as much power this year so all of the readings have to be manually verified before they will be paid. They accept a photograph of your meter but because of the volume being hit with this Government error it takes 4 extra weeks to do the verification and then it will be a further 28 days for them to pay me my money

And this is on the day we have been told that here in the UK our electricity charge will increase again by a huge amount not only in October but also in January when we all have our heating on I doubt my electricity supplier would be happy if I told them they had to wait an extra 56 days to get their quarterly money.

Jo

[mags]

Oh no - I can't understand why they would do that.
We were thinking about solar panels but the return rate is not very good now so probably won' bother.

[Steam.Jo]

Even with zero FIT (Feed in Tariff) I think Solar panels are worth having for the free electrical power they provide:

During daylight hours in the spring/summer/autumn my electricity usage is less than my 4KW array generates. The excess generation is "dumped" into my hot water tank using a special electronic gadget, The result is I get free hot water from March through to November .

I have no gas to the house so all of my heating has to be done either using my log burner or through electrical heating. Before the vast increases in prices my electricity started at £38 a month, currently on £60 and I am anticipating it going up to £120 next January. My (semi-detached) neighbour started at £185 a month now at £350 so I am claiming that my panels are contributing to much of this difference.

Jo

(P.S. I looked into installing a ground source heat pump and it was too expensive to run)

[richardandtracy]

Fuel prices are horrendous, and could well get much worse this winter. It's hard to guess how bad it'll get.

I think for us the most cost effective thing to do is to insulate the areas with least insulation (particularly the bathroom ceiling where rodents have moved the loose fill insulation). Our Victorian house has some 9" thick brick walls that are still uninsulated, so that needs doing, we have many bits done so far, just need to finish the last bits.

Then solar hot water using tubes to heat a feeder tank. In summer I think that would do our total hot water needs, and in winter it'd help the boiler.

Speaking of the boiler.. it's gas, and at least 30 years old. No condenser, but.. it's working, and replacing it is not yet viable - Tracy has broken one thermostat turning it down so often and our bills are usually half that of my least profligate colleague. In 10 years time we'll have to get rid of a fossil fuel burner, so it seems hard to justify replacing it now. And new boilers are so unreliable they're unlikely to last 10 years.

At the moment a ground source heat pump is too expensive (and the house isn't really suitable, not having under floor heating) and an air source one gets less effective in air temps where you need it most.

It's a conundrum to know what to do for the best.

Regards,

Richard.