Preparedness for when

Frugalsod

fuddle wrote: »

Ergh. It all makes depressing reading. If there is no crash I guess we bumble along but that in itself worries me because bumbling along by means of buying into our economy means years and years of 'this mess' while never learning true consequences and, in my experience, without a bang there can never be progress from wrong doing.

Yip, ergh. I see no way out of this and almost wish for a bang to clear the air. Is that wrong and foolish?

Im many ways the bumbling along option is what we have been doing for the last eight years. It is probably the best we can hope for until debts are either written off or defaulted on.

The positive way to look at it has been to give those with some presence to prepare the chance to make changes. The crisis did catch me off guard but I have managed to make big changes even if I went haywire at the start. So it does not need to go bang for people to make the changes needed. I did not suffer any sudden drop in income but felt that things were not going well and had a good hard look at where I was going wrong. I had just taken out a huge loan at a high rate but worked out what I could do with my meagre disposable income. Now that loan has been paid off and I am now concentrating on clearing the credit card. So even with the additional costs of a house move in the next fortnight I have been able to pay for my move and expenses like a new fridge freezer without going overdrawn. I certainly could not have done that 8 years ago. Once my move has been completed I will have plenty to do without the need to spend money so that will keep my spending down to very little while I rebuild my finances again. It does not necessarily need a crisis to make the changes. In fact I suspect that many here are already aware of the potential for problems and so are trying to circumvent that possibility as best they can.

midnight_express

Re war bonds, my aunt had some and she got her money back in the 1970s.

armyknife

Eeek .......

jk0

I moved into this house in 2005, and there was a new central heating system installed in 2002. However, I found that no matter what time I set the heating to come on, I was always shivering for several hours. In view of this, I installed a number of 2nd hand storage heaters that I had surplus, and one I found at the side of the road.

Now, I still use the storage heaters for the bulk of the heating, and top up with the central heating in the evening. I have installed extra loft insulation, cavity wall insulation, and triple glazing, so I wondered last week if I would still shiver without the storage heaters.

I got my answer today. I woke up at 4am freezing, and found the storage heaters not working. I put the central heating on, and went back to bed. It's been on all day. However, even though it's at the same temperature as normal, I still feel chilly. Almost as though the storage heaters give a different kind of heat. They do tend to warm up the concrete walls they are bolted to.

Anyone else notice this, or is it just my odd house?

Nargleblast

Jko - a few things to think about, sorry if it sounds like I am telling you the bleeding obvious........is there air in the central heating system? Have you tried bleeding the radiators? Is there a loss of boiler pressure? Is there a leaky valve on one of the radiators? Is it the original boiler? At 14 years old your boiler could be due for replacement, and new boilers now are so much more efficient.

Storage heaters - had them in one house, never again, work of the devil!

NewShadow

Nargleblast wrote: »

Jko - a few things to think about, sorry if it sounds like I am telling you the bleeding obvious........is there air in the central heating system? Have you tried bleeding the radiators? Is there a loss of boiler pressure? Is there a leaky valve on one of the radiators? Is it the original boiler? At 14 years old your boiler could be due for replacement, and new boilers now are so much more efficient.

Storage heaters - had them in one house, never again, work of the devil!

The bricks from old storage heaters make great:

Baking stones (to cook on camp fires)
Mini anvils
Fire backs (to protect your wall or line a fire pit with)
Door stops

jk0

Thanks guys.

By the way, you might be interested to hear what was wrong with my storage heaters:

When I set them up, only one of them had an automatic charge control, so I connected this via 4 core cable to a contactor (relay) in the consumer unit. This has worked fine all these years, but of course means that if something goes wrong with the charge control, all the heaters go off.

Recently I have found the thermal fuse melting all the time, (and they are about £8 each), so in desperation I replaced it with a bit of wire.

This worked fine until yesterday. When I opened the storage heater, I found one terminal of the automatic charge control had melted through its case, and cut off the supply. I guess there must have been a bad contact which caused sparking, and heated up the terminal. My piece of wire remained connected to the detached terminal.

Fortunately, I had a spare charge control, so I fitted it today along with another thermal fuse. Fingers crossed it works now.

Frugalsod

nuatha wrote: »

While I agree that many people will express a negative opinion about politicians, it does seem that the same people will trust politicians to tell the truth and put the country's best interests first despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Having a system that prevents the voters from recalling or suspending those voted for seems incongruous. Having a system that prevents the majority opinion from being heard is just about ridiculous, but its the system we have. Expecting politicians to vote for and implement radical reforms that would require them to change their ways would be like expecting turkeys to vote for two Christmases per year.

Which is why I think that either they vote for changes or the public will vote them out, eventually. We have yet to see a populist party rise up so far but I suspect that is only a matter of time as the public start to suffer if there is another financial crisis.

That seems even closer if you see this

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-02-18/you-are-here

Frugalsod

Nargleblast wrote: »

Storage heaters - had them in one house, never again, work of the devil!

Ditto, but they are also best run at night when you are on economy 7 tariffs. If it is really cold you can effectively drain them of all the heat if you are not careful.

GreyQueen

Frugalsod wrote: »

Ditto, but they are also best run at night when you are on economy 7 tariffs. If it is really cold you can effectively drain them of all the heat if you are not careful.

That's not compatible with many people's lifestyle, for those who work outside the home, for example.

You end up with your home toasty first thing in the morning, you go to work and come home to a chilly home, shiver all evening, and then the heat comes on overnight, rinse and repeat.

Nan has storage heaters in her bungalow in a village with no mains gas. They work pretty well for someone like her who is housebound.

I have gas central heating running off a communal boiler house, for which I pay a fixed monthly service charge regardless of whether I am using it or not. At the moment, I have the heating on for an hour or so before work and then put it on again in the evening. Given the smallness of my home, which has double-glazing and cavity wall insulation, that's sufficient.

Even with no heating on, on the coldest of days, this place is still substantially warmer than some places I have lived were with their heating on, for which I give daily thanks.