What's the expected rate increase?  I must have missed it so far.

I've worked out the last few months electric as being £90-95 each.  Currently paying £120 direct debit.  On a normal year that excess would probably have covered the winter but I doubt it this year!

Saw the figures on another forum, will copy and paste them on here. 

"My advice, for what it is worth is to make yourself a cuppa (or save that electric on boiling the kettle and pour yourself a G&T instead) and sit down for 20mins to work out your own situation when it comes to Gas & Electric.

It is not particularly exciting and so we can often put off jobs like this, but the price rises are coming in October (and again in Jan), so try not to bury your head in the sand, but take control instead and work out what is going to happen.

The latest estimates are that the prices will be as follows:

October cap:
Gas
Daily standing charge: 27p
Unit charge per kwh: 14p

Electric
Daily standing charge: 40p
Unit charge per kwh: 44p

The above prices are not exact, since things vary across the country but it gives you a solid idea of how much you are likely to have to pay.

Dig out your bills and work out your typical annual usage (ideally based on meter readings and not estimates) and then work out how much it is going to cost you per year.

As a head start the yearly standing charges from Oct on the capped rates will be:
Gas: £98.55
Elec: £146

Once you have an idea of your yearly cost, take off the £400 government grant and divide what is left by 12, then you have your monthly cost. It is likely to be scary, but at least you know it.

We also have a couple of months before Oct, so if you can start to put some extra cash aside now, go for it. And if you can start reducing energy usage now to get in the habit before the rises come then great.

In terms of reducing usage, if you need to set your hot water on a timer, reduce it by 5 mins every day until you get the point that you don't have enough and stop. That way you can work out exactly how long to have the hot water on each day and you don't waste any money heating water unnecessarily."

don't take the rates as set in stone rates. Just what I heard somewhere else but pro ably about right. 

Its all rather scary for myself and my partner. Our house is looking to be ready in the next few weeks (first time buyers currently living with my parents). We have no clue how much gas and electricity we will be using, so we cannot really work anything out. Hopefully with the £400 grant being started from October, we will be able to get that to help.

4 minutes ago, Matthew McGuinness said:

Its all rather scary for myself and my partner. Our house is looking to be ready in the next few weeks (first time buyers currently living with my parents). We have no clue how much gas and electricity we will be using, so we cannot really work anything out. Hopefully with the £400 grant being started from October, we will be able to get that to help.

If your house is a new build then it has to be very well insulted and have an efficient boiler so you should ne ok compared to others in older houses.

47 minutes ago, Tizer said:

If your house is a new build then it has to be very well insulted and have an efficient boiler so you should ne ok compared to others in older houses.

That's certainly true, but houses being built now will still need retro-fitting: CIBSE Journal. I wonder how many have heat pumps?

14 minutes ago, Marlburian said:

That's certainly true, but houses being built now will still need retro-fitting: CIBSE Journal. I wonder how many have heat pumps?

I thought the heat pumps saga was a no no in this country ? 

Another half baked scheme conjured up by the Womble and his cronies.

1 hour ago, Marlburian said:

That's certainly true, but houses being built now will still need retro-fitting: CIBSE Journal. I wonder how many have heat pumps?

I can't see anyone being made to retrofit heat pumps, and I doubt that many new builds have heat pumps except for the odd very expensive one in the middle of nowhere.

Air Source Heat Pumps are a waste of time. I saw my first domestic sized one working in 1985, I remember the date because it was in the SECC which had just opened. The exhibiter said It had been running inside the SECC for two days and was heating water in a small domestic sized cylinder. The water was lukewarm, not hot enough for a bath, a complete waste of time.

I have seen a few new builds since with Ground Source Heat Pumps  and Underfloor Heating. They were all purpose designed massive houses and gardens where money was no object and they all had one thing in common, they needed some real heating/hot water heating to supplement the inadequate Heat Pump system.

The only saving grace is that Housebuilders give massive amounts of money to political parties so have a lot of influence and it is likely that things will get watered down.  

@Tizer I think things have moved on a bit since 1985! 😃

Our new build, which was built about 7 years ago, had underfloor heating and hot water supplied by airsource. Hot water was hot enough to be too hot to hold your hand under and the heating was more than adequate for a well insulated new build. 

In our current house we have air-to-air heating in 4 areas which is very efficient to heat up. We installed it a couple of years ago to supplement/replace the oil boiler heated radiators in every room. However with the price of electricity now we'll maybe not use it much this year! 😲

Our monthly leccy standing order is £302! 

Mrs Turvey has just ordered 500 litres of oil, which only heats hot water now, at 97p a litre! 

 

Gonna be a cruel winter for a lot of folk this year! 

World news has now become so bleak, it's no longer appropriate to joke about it...  

Mock the Week: BBC Two's comedy panel show to end after 17 years - BBC News

Sat outside in the nice sun , peace and quiet having a cuppa tea listening to the birds. No, flight path of every airplane seems to be overhead this morning, then a hot air balloon firing up burners, then another hot air balloon,  then a motorised paraglider. What a right noise that was. 

Feel I need to make noise too now. I already mowed the dust bowl yesterday. 

Next door coughing there guts up now. Might as well go back inside. 

59 minutes ago, iantt said:

Next door coughing there guts up now. Might as well go back inside. 

Fed up of listening to this myself.  People must get a massive reward out of puffing on those death sticks to put up with all the coughing.  

8 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Fed up of listening to this myself.  People must get a massive reward out of puffing on those death sticks to put up with all the coughing.  

Another ciggy soon stops the coughing 😁

On 8/2/2022 at 5:54 PM, Turvey said:

Our new build, which was built about 7 years ago, had underfloor heating and hot water supplied by airsource. Hot water was hot enough to be too hot to hold your hand under and the heating was more than adequate for a well insulated new build. 

The real problems with heat pumps is they do almost nothing to help the environment, and are very expensive to run & own. They use loads of expensive and environmentally unfriendly electricity, and how all this extra electric power for cars & heat pumps is going to be generated and distributed to everyone seems to have been totally ignored.

A far better answer is to continue doubling and re-doubling offshore wind power, use the periodic excess to make Hydrogen, then simply pump the hydrogen into the existing gas mains. There it can easily be stored, months worth of energy stored that way very cheaply and efficiently. As opposed to stupidly expensive, inefficient, short lived and environmentally disastrous Lithium batteries, that will only ever give a few hours worth of storage (at grid scale) at best.

In the graphs here, the orange line is natural gas (fossil fuel), by far the biggest and most important contribution as it fills in all the gaps. Green is Wind, Yellow is solar (pretty useless overall). Blue is nuclear, just chugging along regardless, though it has dropped quite a lot in recent years as our old nuclear plants have more or longer shutdowns. Purple is biomass, mostly Drax, which is a base load system like nuclear, and only just about carbon neutral. The rest are trivial, though red is Coal, and they are still having to use that just to keep the system going at times. There is little real spare capacity.

Data from: https://grid.iamkate.com/

As the hydrogen content in gas increases, adjustments will be needed for domestic boilers and burners, but this was done before, I well remember the change from town to natural gas in the 60s to 70s.

48 minutes ago, Tdci-Peter said:

The real problems with heat pumps is they do almost nothing to help the environment, and are very expensive to run & own. They use loads of expensive and environmentally unfriendly electricity, and how all this extra electric power for cars & heat pumps is going to be generated and distributed to everyone seems to have been totally ignored.

A far better answer is to continue doubling and re-doubling offshore wind power, use the periodic excess to make Hydrogen, then simply pump the hydrogen into the existing gas mains. There it can easily be stored, months worth of energy stored that way very cheaply and efficiently. As opposed to stupidly expensive, inefficient, short lived and environmentally disastrous Lithium batteries, that will only ever give a few hours worth of storage (at grid scale) at best.

In the graphs here, the orange line is natural gas (fossil fuel), by far the biggest and most important contribution as it fills in all the gaps. Green is Wind, Yellow is solar (pretty useless overall). Blue is nuclear, just chugging along regardless, though it has dropped quite a lot in recent years as our old nuclear plants have more or longer shutdowns. Purple is biomass, mostly Drax, which is a base load system like nuclear, and only just about carbon neutral. The rest are trivial, though red is Coal, and they are still having to use that just to keep the system going at times. There is little real spare capacity.

Data from: https://grid.iamkate.com/

As the hydrogen content in gas increases, adjustments will be needed for domestic boilers and burners, but this was done before, I well remember the change from town to natural gas in the 60s to 70s.

A bigger hole will be needed for all those end of life wind turbines.Apparently most of the materials used isn’t recyclable at the moment.However everything that is made on this planet  eventually returns to the soil with very few exceptions.

1 hour ago, williamweb said:

A bigger hole will be needed for all those end of life wind turbines.

That won't be a problem. Politicians are used to digging big holes 🤣

1 hour ago, williamweb said:

A bigger hole will be needed for all those end of life wind turbines.Apparently most of the materials used isn’t recyclable at the moment.However everything that is made on this planet  eventually returns to the soil with very few exceptions.

As I posted elsewhere, they've supposedly cracked it now, but we shall see!

"Another major issue is that the recycling of life-expired fibreglass/composite blades has been problematic (I've seen an estimate that over 40 million tons of the things will need recycling by 2050) though I believe an efficient and cost effective methodology has now been developed."

 

I don't like getting a blue screen and sudden shutdown on the laptop twice in two days...  

Thought it was a virus due to the unprofessional-looking sad face : ( but I think it's genuine Microsoft after Googling.

I'm wondering if it simply overheated.  (It has been 32c in here at lunchtime both today and yesterday...I'm overheating myself! 🥵 ).  But it starts up again fine straight away which makes it seem less like an overheating issue. 🤔

Any suggestions?

Wasn't impressed with the lack of notice given this morning for me to deliver a lengthy verbal explanation as to why the process in the warehouse isnt working as it should be and what to do to correct it in front of 9 senior gen ops and the head regional honcho.

3 hours ago, Wino said:

Wasn't impressed with the lack of notice given this morning

I sympathise, David. One of my bosses had a habit of dropping you in things at short notice e.g.

Him: "Can you give a talk to "x" Chamber of Commerce?"

Me: " Sure, no problem. What's the date? "

Him: " Er, 6 o'clock tonight"😀

5 hours ago, TomsFocus said:

I don't like getting a blue screen and sudden shutdown on the laptop twice in two days...  

Thought it was a virus due to the unprofessional-looking sad face : ( but I think it's genuine Microsoft after Googling.

I'm wondering if it simply overheated.  (It has been 32c in here at lunchtime both today and yesterday...I'm overheating myself! 🥵 ).  But it starts up again fine straight away which makes it seem less like an overheating issue. 🤔

Any suggestions?

Hoover the air vents 😉

Don't balance the laptop on your lap..... I know 😃 put it on a hard surface.

4 hours ago, Wino said:

Wasn't impressed with the lack of notice given this morning for me to deliver a lengthy verbal explanation as to why the process in the warehouse isnt working as it should be and what to do to correct it in front of 9 senior gen ops and the head regional honcho.

Easy! It's Dave in aisle 3 that's the problem! Get him moved or fired and that'll sort it 😉

36 minutes ago, Turvey said:

Hoover the air vents 😉

Don't balance the laptop on your lap..... I know 😃 put it on a hard surface.

Might try hoovering the vents tomorrow.  Haven't got anywhere other than my lap to put it unfortunately.  Just seems odd that it started again straight away if it was overheating. 

31 minutes ago, TomsFocus said:

Might try hoovering the vents tomorrow.  Haven't got anywhere other than my lap to put it unfortunately.  Just seems odd that it started again straight away if it was overheating. 

Big book, tray, offcut of wood etc anything to keep the vents on the bottom clear.

1 hour ago, TomsFocus said:

Might try hoovering the vents tomorrow.  Haven't got anywhere other than my lap to put it unfortunately.  Just seems odd that it started again straight away if it was overheating. 

The last time I had my HP apart I removed a lot of fluff from the intake to the internal fan and now the fan does not go into overdrive as often when I'm doing something intensive. Mine never did cut out but the fan did go fast sometimes.

You can buy a Laptop Lap Pad with Beads on the underside so that it can sit on your Lap, that's what I use.