Caz counts it down

cazmanian_minx

cazmanian_minx wrote: »

and a bit of work for Mr RPC who may well send more through this evening.

Just finished three hours straight of typing reports for him, that'll be a nice chunk on the invoice

cazmanian_minx

A conversation with my mother-in-law over lunch made me wonder about the effect the new windows were having on the electricity bills - I knew they'd put us £287 into credit at the end of the summer as opposed to our usual £90-ish, so I thought I'd go and have a look at the meter and see if I could work out whether we were ahead or behind.

Last winter we used 5,210 kWh at the heating rate and 3,223 kWh at the normal rate. This winter, with six weeks until the meter reader comes round, we've used 3,993 kWh at the heating rate and 2,318 kWh at the normal rate, so unless we get nothing but snow and ice until the end of March, I think Scottish Hydro are going to owe us some money As far as I can reckon, we owe them around £868 for everything we've used since the last bill and the account is already £1,034 in credit.

mfmaybe

Interesting comparison. We do have double glazing but it's wrecked. We've been putting off replacing them but I think we need to move it up the list. It might even make our home feel a bit warmer

cazmanian_minx

mfmaybe wrote: »

Interesting comparison. We do have double glazing but it's wrecked. We've been putting off replacing them but I think we need to move it up the list. It might even make our home feel a bit warmer

Well, based on a sample of one, I'd recommend it! We supposedly had double glazing as well, but there was condensation between the two layers on most windows, so it was leaking somewhere.

Just finished my proofreading shift and am knackered, but dropping in quickly to say that we test drove both Land Rovers and ended up buying neither of them. The newer one of the two was so high off the ground that I practically needed a mounting block to get into it and you had to stomp nearly all the way down on the brakes before you got a response. The older one I actually found much, much easier to drive, but it wouldn't have worked as an everyday vehicle for me - the clutch was very, very heavy, the windows didn't quite wind up all the way (so the first heavy rain we had it would start growing mould - we don't have a sheltered area to put it in) and in winter I'd have needed about sixteen layers of clothing to be able to sit in it for longer than five minutes, as the heater didn't work and there was a gap around the doorframes that the wind whistled through.

So back to the drawing board on a towing vehicle and my very lovely neighbour up the road has agreed to take me and our trailer to get my next load of hay this week, so that takes the pressure off for the immediate future.

AlexLK

Stop being such a girl, cazmanian, my 70-odd year old mother drives a Defender everyday.

Seriously, within a couple of weeks you'd be used to the heavy clutch or if you preferred the other one you can get all kinds of steps. The nicest ones are the original County spec items. Rubbish heaters and door tops that don't fit properly are all part of the experience.

cazmanian_minx

To be fair, if it had been £1500 for the older one, we'd have bought it and just kept my Toyota. As it was rather more than that, we thanked them for their time and left it! (And the Landy-loving friend we took with us had reservations about it as well).

AlexLK

You won't find even the most rotten 200TDI Defender for £1,500, they tend to hold their value very nicely. Unfortunately, there are lots of nasty Defenders due to the problems I listed in the other post.

If you want something much more civilised but still just about as capable, have a look for a 300TDI Discovery.

cazmanian_minx

Don't fancy the road tax on a Disco! My neighbours had one for a bit and sold it in under a year because it was something like £465 to tax and filling the tank at north coast fuel prices was nearly £200. I shall continue my search for a Daihatsu Fourtrak, but they're few and far between these days.

mfmaybe

Yes agree Defenders for some reason are mega expensive. And rather agricultural, but of course that's the point.

I have a V reg Disco 2. 2.5L TDI. Great, great car, and the road tax is not £465. (no, for that honour I have my much more efficient non-4*4 car to thank :cool:). I think my Disco is about £260/year. - iirc the very expensive road tax is for a 2000 (W) plate or newer. I paid about £1500 for it last year. They tow 3.5 tons (as do Land Cruisers, but not much else) and they drive quite car-like. It tows fantastically as well. I do love it. It even has central locking :rotfl:

cazmanian_minx

Part of the reason Defenders have got even more pricey than ever is because they've been discontinued - they've redesigned it (I've actually proofread some of the focus groups where people have seen some of the prototypes for the new one!), but there'll be a gap of a couple of years, I think, where you just can't buy a new one and apparently the new version is going to be closer to a Disco. Neighbour's Disco was brand new, hence the astronomical tax

I'm up late helping Mr RPC finish his reports - just waiting for him to upload the next section for me. It's not been a bad day, I posted out 40 orders, did some admin for Mr RPC and produced a flyer for him (he said on his first bit of dictation this evening that he wished I wasn't 500 miles away so he could offer me a full-time job!), finally got round to taking the bead shop's own website offline and putting up a page that redirects people to the eBay shop and blitzed the bathroom as my mother in law is coming out on Wednesday afternoon. Can't believe I threw away an entire binliner of stuff, it's a pretty small bathroom!!!

Mr RPC has pinged me on Skype to say go to bed and he'll send more in the morning, so I shall head upstairs and try to finish the second Game of Thrones novel before I have to give it back to the library van tomorrow.