Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

starnac

I'm sorry cheery but :rotfl: at parking disputes and not-very-cheery OH's! After the day you'd had I'm not surprised nerves were frazzled!

How are things today?

Cheery_Daff

Well I spent all day at a non-worky conferencey thing (which wasn't very warm actually!) and got a text at 3pm to say the heating was back on :j :j :j :j

I'm home now and Mr Cheery is out, and only had a very brief chat with him, but it seems lovely proper old fashioned plumber has fiddled about with the boiler and fixed it :j and the cooker is fine - but we're not to use the grill (the other plumbers never even looked at the grill so goodness knows what happened there)

So I have no idea what went on, but will find out later and will inform you, but the good news is it's WARM again! :j :j

And I have plugged 'Pippit' (the smart meter :rotfl: ) back in and I can tell you we were using 4p an hour of electricity until I switched the washing machine on, and now it's - oooh, it's back down to 5p, it was at 35p a minute ago! Does that mean the washing machine uses different amounts of electric at different points in the cycle? How very interesting! :rotfl:

Gas use higher of course - heating is on and we're currently at 35p an hour to heat the house - this jumped to 40p when I put one ring on on the cooker. Better than the 68p an hour it was costing us just to heat the kitchen with electric heater yesterday!

Interestingly, I went up and turned the hot water lever off and it's only made 1p an hour of difference! I thought it would make more difference than that?? Will keep an eye on it, and at some point I'll try just the hot water and not the heating, and see what difference that makes.

Fascinating subject

Sorry the novelty will wear off in a day or two and I'll shut up about it! :rotfl:

Not spent anything today and had all food provided at conference so quite excited about that :j Must ring mother, tis her birthday today! :j

starnac

Ooh would be interesting to know about the washing machine.....

Glad it's warm for you x

Cheery_Daff

Also be interesting to know why the heating is apparently now costing 50p an hour when it was only 34p before :rotfl: Suspect there may be some glitching going on

fannyadams

WOOO HOO to old fashioned boilermen/plumbers who keep us in heating and hot water when all modern plumbers want to sell us an upgrade to nasty combination boilers with acid for blood (we have one at ours, he's keeping our 'old' (15 years old) boiler going.

The washing machine does indeed use different amounts of electricity at different points in the cycle.
the water heating element (my machine is a cold fill, not sure if yours is hot and cold fill or just cold) will use lots as it's like a kettle. then the motor that swooshes the drum round will need to use some (but less than the kettle element thingy thatheast the water).
heating using extra energy might be the pump moving the heating water around the system, or using gas to heat the watery stuff that makes the radiators warm and heats the water up in the tank/cylinder).

Cheery_Daff

Morning chums :hello:

Tis toasty here :j :j

Got the story from Mr Cheery - nowt wrong with the boiler (of COURSE) - we had a new part fitted recently and they sometimes take a few resets at first if the entire gas supply gets turned off. Neither the meter bloke nor the annoying plumber did this, so a tiny bit of gas was escaping. Cheery plumber reset it and no problem at all.

As for it having been like that for years - he said the house would stink of gas if it had been doing that for half an hour, let alone years!

Thank goodness for plumbers who are willing to actually LOOK at stuff and repair it rather than just rip it out and replace. Tis an attitude I admire!

The cooker, however, *is* on its last legs :rotfl: Can't use the grill at all as there's a crack in the pipe, and while he's left the supply on and told us it won't kill us, he's given us a warning notice and told us to get a new one...

I shall miss the cheery old cooker! Mr Cheery had it second hand from a friend of his mother when he moved in here 25 years ago, so it's likely older than me :eek: It's a Flavel 'Fiona' :rotfl: Much cheerier than the current spate of 'logic 5836268kx' and 'power 27261895hgt' models you can buy at the minute :rotfl:

Banks done, and I'm REALLY enjoying having everything in one place. Finally sussed out how to reconcile YNAB with the bank account and I'm doing that every day so I can track what's gone out and what's still left to go out - but they're right, if you rely on what the BUDGET says you have (not what the bank account says) then everything will be fine.

Off to a christmas fair at the museum today so might pick up one or two little presents for folk :j But other than that no spending (I don't think!)

Cheery_Daff

Morning fannyadams, you snuck in there while I was rabbiting on

Ours is cold fill, so you must be right! It was using more at the start, when heating the water up presumably. Never thought about that before!

Cheery_Daff

Evening all,

Bit of a blimbling kind of a day here. Festive musical things at the museum this morning, and idle pottering this afternoon. LOVELY to do not-very-much for pretty much the first time in weeks.

Took the treats budget to the local farm and spent £9.90 on 4 cups of tea, 2 sausage butties and a bit of Christmas flapjack :j Not a bad bargain! :money:

Also bought Christmas and birthday pressies for my dad, so that's another couple of bits ticked off the list

And added £3.62 to the VSP :j :j

Lazy evening coming up

Karmacat

Cheery, that sounds wonderful! Knowledgeable, kind plumber, sausage butties, intense gas and elec analysis , YNAB works the way you want it to work, whats not to love :rotfl: Sorry about the old cooker, but take lots of piccies :j

Cheery_Daff

I shall indeed KC :rotfl:

Nice cheery day yesterday at another Christmas fair :j I'd intended to buy a couple of presents but couldn't find a single thing on my list so didn't buy anything other than a cup of tea and slice of stollen (budgeted for, and we were there for nearly 4 hours!), and a loaf of bread.

Just checked banks and done a bit of sweeping - another £4.24 over to the VSP which now has £29.92 in :j :j I tend to raid that for tea and cake money when we go on holiday - makes it feel like someone else is treating us :rotfl: :rotfl:

Working at home today and friends came for tea last night and left us some home made mince pies Also have leftover custard (I made FAR too much) and a load of veggie stuff that'll do for dinner so all set :j

Going to try and pop over to visit office pal who just had a baby later today too Not finished making present yet, mind you

First though, best do some work. Feeling rather rotten with cold still making its presence felt but not QUITE here yet, and a nasty girly stomach ache. But the sun's shining and I have a hot water bottle and a nice cup of tea (and a mince pie waiting for later) so I shall buttle on and get as much work done as quickly as I can then have a nap