Suzuki V-Strom (VStrom) Owners Club DL250, DL650, DL1000 & DL1050
Other Stuff => The Blue Oyster bar => Topic started by: Brockett on October 22, 2022, 17:03:03
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1. When making a cup of tea or coffee there is always some hot water left in the kettle. Pour this excess into a vacuum flask and keep it next to the kettle. Next time you want to boil water / make a drink, pour it back in the kettle. You can also put a little cold water in the newly emptied kettle to capture the residual heat and after a minute or so pour that into the flask.
2. if you have an unused room you can turn the radiator off to conserve energy. However when the room cools down it can become a trap for air carried water vapour and spread black mold. Instead of turning off the radiator use double sided tape to fix bubble wrap to the window and then draw the curtains.
What do others plan to do this winter?
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In February I shall stay warmer by fecking off to the Canaries for a week.
Warmer clothing in the house, lights off when she leaves them on, emptying 75 percent of the water she's just put in the kettle, no doors/windows open for too long. Boring stuff, really.
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I've just bought a litre of Whyte and Mackay and when that's gone I'm going to buy another. Makes you all warm inside.
Glad I could help.
Upt'North.
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Eat a vindaloo.
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If you think you can benefit from cheaper night time eleccy get a smart meter fitted if you don't already have one.
My other top tip to save money is proably courtesy of Viz. Take your daily dump while at work to save on the cost of loo roll.
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We tried a recent trick to fill the slow cooker with potatoes wrapping in foil, on low for 8 hours. (No water)
Jacket potatoes and the house has been kept mildly warm all day.
The down side is that it's jacket potaoes for every meal to do the same thing every day.
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I've got a big, compressor type, dehumidifier. I've also got electric heating.
The dehumidifier blows out warm exhaust air when it runs (if you leave the tube indoors, it dehumidifies, if you put the tube outside, it's air conditioning), and cold air out the front.
So, kill two birds with one stone, heat my flat and dehumidify it at the same time... only problem is, is that it's a bit noisy!
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Even before all the issues we were frugal with our home energy.
All our bulbs are LED , we heat our water 1 hour a day and in the height of winter we heat just one room sparingly.
Even our meals are chosen by how quick and efficiently we can cook them.
Shit times we're living in right now .. :groan:
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Likewise as I'm a cheap skate trying to earn Yorkshire citizenship.
LEDs everywhere, 1 cup water boiler and heating never goes above 14 via a smart stat that turns everything off when I leave the house.
This latest crisis has finally made the case for going big though, solar panels and battery storage going in later this week and I will then use a smart diverter to heat the water cylinder via immersion when generating excess.
Long payback for me but I'm a nerd so looking forward to the experiment.
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We haven't put the central heating on yet, the house is still tolerable at 16°C, we have economy 7 so the immersion is on for a couple of hours on cheap rate which gives enough hot water to last during the day.
Bought a Breville hot cup kettle a few years ago, just fill the tank up and it boils one cup of water at a time in about 30 seconds.
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The heating has been on three times up to now this 'winter' and that's because the grandkids have been here, or the Mother in law.
Good thermal loft insulation, wall insulation & new double glazing all done a few years back have kept the house to a decent temperature. Mostly I've still had shorts & T shirt on, (that might change in a few weeks :)) but I hate being too hot, preferring it a little cooler.
Deb, however, is now considering her 'old lady' blanket when sitting watching the tele in the evening......despite having her fleece on :roll:
We have used a slow cooker for a number of years and considering an air fryer but not researched them enough yet.
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https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-63317138
Beeb did a good dig in to air fryers last month. I'll definitely be getting a Combi air fryer, slow cooker once the solar is in.
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Some good tips folks, obviously fit LED lights where you can, drop the thermostat down as much as possible and try to wear an extra layer around the house. Microwaves use a lot of energy when operating but operate for very short periods of time and can be very cost effective, depending on what you are cooking.
I am all electric and have an air source heat pump which to operate efficiently needs to run 24/7 which means big bills in the winter. But, as I have a huge PV system (14.9kW through 12kW of inverters) & battery storage (2x Tesla Powerwalls @ 27kWh) I only pay for electricity for 6 months of the year. It's a bit 'swings and roundabouts' but I am heading into the expensive period now sadly...
So far this year I have generated 11.22MWh from the PV, stored & used 3.28MWh from the battery & imported 3.77MWh from the grid. The house (including 2x EV's charging) has used 14.43MWh so far this year. The mathematicians amongst you will notice that the numbers do not quite add up, this is because at peak generation times when the Tesla batteries are full I export to the grid. If I had another Powerwall this could be just about reduced to zero but at over £10,000 installed I'll make do with 2 for now... And yes, I do mean mega watt hours not kilo watt hours!
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Forgot to mention above, that back in August last year I signed up to a three year fixed price contract with my provider, Shell, although it cost a few pounds more than other contracts on offer back then I thought it was a decent deal, now I'm thinking it was an excellent deal. :lala:
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I don't get how anyone can survive having 16C in the room. It is like a freezer.. In our house we don't put the heating on yet but my room is in comfortable 23C thanks to my PC (powerful water-cooled rig) :)
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Sounds obvious but try and understand what things actually cost to use so as to be able to make informed decisions :shrug:
I'll be generous and believe it was unintentional disinformation but recently there was a presenter on daytime telly saying that it would cost about a pound to boil the kettle because it's rated at 3KW and a KWH of electricity costs over 30p :dl_smiley_banghead:
BBC news had sombody last week as I remember explaining how an average house had a 26KW boiler and [a KWH of gas costing just over 10p] therefore gas central heating costs most people £2.70 an hour to have on.
The situation is bad enough without uninformed over simplification scaring some people even more.
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I insist on living with no cold blooded creatures...Also in a month I'm leaving my 1894 End Terrace home for a more efficient 1990's one..
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This post is Extreme Victim Blaming .... by the Victims !!
The heads of the power companies, paid hundreds of thousands of pounds per year ..plus dividends and mad pension contributions are supposed to be providing energy at affordable prices and without blackouts .... Why are we being charged world market prices for gas that comes from our own wells in the north sea ... and is landed in our own country ...
Windfall tax the lot of them .... obscene profits while we discuss how to keep warm ... it’s like turkeys voting in favour of the Christmass ....
:icon_exclaim:
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There is quite a bit of scaremongering going on at the moment in the media. Yes, it will be a difficult winter for a lot of people and some folks are going to have to make very difficult decisions. I had to chuckle when they asked the CEO of N Power if they would disconnect anyone for non-payment this winter. He simply replied that customers would not be cut off but would be transferred to a pre-payment meter (key meter) instead. It's the same as being cut off because if you can't afford to put money on the key you are effectively cut off, but N Power won't physically disconnect you. A clever use of words which won't actually help anyone...
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Hope they've got enough key meters to cover all those that can't afford their bills ...
I'm willing to bet they haven't...
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StromGeeza
Similar to your last tip, a bloke I worked with many moons ago used to disappear into the toilets on the way to clock out at the end of his shift.
He was never in there long enough to do owt, when we quizzed him about it he told us he'd been doing that every day since he started work at 16. He went in with his empty sandwich bag and came out with a new toilet roll in it after the bogs had been replenished for the next shift.
He reckoned he'd been instructed to do so by his old man who had been doing it at his work for years. Must have saved them loads of money, thieving gits.
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Hope they've got enough key meters to cover all those that can't afford their bills ...
I was talking to one of the Directors of SSE on Wednesday at Solar & Storage live at the NEC. He has heard that there are over 2,000,000 Siemens key meters available in the UK to various meter operators... It might not cover everyone, but it'll be close.
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I found the best tip to keep your electricity bill low is have your mate from Western Power connect you straight in to the mains... not meter, no problem :thumb:
If you don't have a friendly Western Power (now National Grid) employee in your back pocket you could always ask the local weed grower to bypas the meter for you.
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It's a good job I'm (mostly) honest because as a qualified sparky it wouldn't take me long to bypass the meter.
I put "mostly" in brackets due to a psychometric test I did years ago where it classed me as "cynical and willing to bend the rules" :)
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I did a course years ago at Northern Electric (now Powergrid) on how to fiddle meters so you could spot them a mile away.
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I worked at a mill once, putting a machine in. I walked into the plumber's workshop and saw a gas meter sitting on a bench, connected to the airline, happily running backwards.
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Thérèse Coffey announced she favoured reusing cups to help the environment......... :shrug:
(BBC breakfast tv this morning)
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lol
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Well it may not save money any time soon but it'll trickle charge the bike nicely over winter.
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Keep your head and feet warm. Sitting here now with room at 15.5 degrees with my EDZ mohair socks and a wool hat. Feeling toasty. Having a shower earlier was a tad chilly but that is temporary. Weirdly, I am looking forward to seeing what temp I can no longer tolerate and succumb to firing up the heating. I try to think back to when I would go night fishing as a youth when snow was on the ground. Now that WAS cold!
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Nice tidy install there Rix' :thumb: Is it an East - West set up ? Mines that orientation (with a tiny bit of South) and works really well. Sadly, we're heading into the not so good period for solar but wait until April/May next year and you'll see a huge difference. Get used to 6 months free leccy every year :lala:
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It's 55 degrees front, 235 degrees rear so slightly afternoon biased which I think is preferable. Battery pending which will obviously make all the difference.
My annual consumption is only 1800kWh so I'm hoping more like 9 months for me. Solar diverter going in next to run the immersion heater on any excess. Not sure that will pay for itself given the current disparity in prices but it's more sustainable and isolates me from future prices which is the main aim.
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Nice one :thumb: I had a Solis solar diverter to start with (which is basic but perfectly functional & reliable) but now have a Eddi (by MyEnergi) which is very good. Anything is better than nothing and heating water is a fantastic use of 'surplus' solar. There are so many batteries on the market at the moment but a good place to browse is Naked Solar (https://nakedsolar.co.uk/storage/) with some indicative prices too.
Pics of my East & West array's (GSE inset mounting system with LG 300w all black monocrystalline panels)
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Mine's an Enphase micro inverter system with 400W panels, battery booked in, should be an alpha B3+. Only 5kWh but should be more than enough for my usage. Eddi is the plan here as well, seems to work well with battery storage, you're on Zappi chargers as well then I guess.
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Yes, Zappi charger & Harvi data management module. We have a 2.2kW EV charger in the garage for slow overnight charging.
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Interesting I have been thinking if we should look in to getting solar panels but have to say know nothing about it lol
I see you both have been talking about East - West I believe we have a East - West Gable end I will Add a couple of pics
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You'll be able to squeeze some solar on there :thumb: