Preparing for Winter V

calicocat

Still awake........

Conservatory windows cleaned.......tick...:D...(cant hoover as will wake people up)
Old cat toilet cleaned ready to put in shed as spare....tick.
Spray paint some xmas Dec's to colour doing this year...tick.
Fireplace xmas Decks up...tick.
Rubbed some dried lavender into lounge rug to smell nice....tick.

I have a couple of jumpers of my dads after he died and have been meaning to wash them for ages......tick. Was going to make them into a cushion, but might just wear one of them....as have never got round to doing cushion....:o.


Fireplace polished....tick.


Boy can I tell i'm back to full time hours night shift.....:D

pollys

Spiky hedgehog, have you tried M&S, not cheap but I do find their sizes generous. They have fleecy onesies, which my 13 year old swore he'd never wear (but now loves it!) but not sure about pyjamas.

Polly

[Deleted User]

Winter seems to have arrived today so thank heavens for a warm and windproof coat, thermal scarves, hats and gloves and a decent pair of waterproof boots which made the necessary hound perambulation at lunchtime a thing of relative comfort and not an uncomfortable experience.

optimistic

calicocat wrote: »

Still awake........


I have a couple of jumpers of my dads after he died and have been meaning to wash them for ages......tick. Was going to make them into a cushion, but might just wear one of them....as have never got round to doing cushion....:o.

What a lovely idea, I so wish I had done this, my Dad had some really warm and woolly jumpers which would be cosy and comforting on soooo many levels.

SpikyHedgehog

pollys wrote: »

Spiky hedgehog, have you tried M&S, not cheap but I do find their sizes generous. They have fleecy onesies, which my 13 year old swore he'd never wear (but now loves it!) but not sure about pyjamas.

Polly

Thank you Polly!

I've had a look online, and they do a 'pure cotton fleece pj', as well as the fleece onesies. He has Asperger's Syndrome and tends to want exactly what he wants and finds onesies harder to manage when he needs the loo so I'd rather buy him pjs than a onesie - he does have a couple but doesn't wear them. I wasn't sure about M&S, as I know their baby clothes came up for tall thin babies when DS1 was a baby so they tend not to be my first choice for children's clothes (the idea that over 19 years and for different ages of children apparently not sinking into my brain :rotfl: ). At £16 for a pair of pjs, I think we'll go into the shop and have a look rather than my ordering online!

toozie_2

kittie wrote: »

mojo, I don`t know about cleaning a wood burning stove, someone else may know. Mine is a pellet stove 112 cm high and runs the ch and hot water. It has an integral tank and the heat to the tank goes through the wall around the burner. Tar or creosote come from burning the pellets and it condenses on the walls around the burner, it eventually forms quite a thick shiny layer which retards heat exchange to the water. I should think a wood burner without water would not need the cleaning that I have done. The tar build up that might happen in a wood burner would, I believe, come from running it at too cool a temperature. I gave the door surround a very thorough go too, I got a huge amount of tar off, wasn`t noticed as it was black anyway and was all around the inside around the glass

We never noticed tar build up when we had an anthracite burner in the long distant past but the pellet stove burns much cooler

I am very happy with the cleaning so far, although I was apprehensive. The stove has just fired up again and all seems good with not even a whiff of a creosote smell. Re smoke smells from stoves, I have been reading about that as we were getting a whiff now and then. The offending joint has been re-sealed and that seems to have stopped the problem. Downdraughts can also be a problem as can lack of ventilation and a cold flue, all leading to smoke smell. I dislike the smell as the smoke contains lots of micro pollutants, only removed by a carbon filter, which I have in an airvax as dh needs his lungs protecting as much as possible

Kittie-is your's the same as bio-mass burner?
A friend is getting one of these installed this week under The Nest scheme-help from Welsh Government for low income families with a low efficiency rating property.

She has been advised to order the wood pellets from The Plumb Center (£2 a bag), but I'm sure there must be somewhere cheaper-they would have to be delivered as she doesn't drive.

Do you buy yours locally-or on-line?

CathA

Should have gone to Specsavers!!

Nothing to do with preparing for winter, but I thought I'd put this comment on to give everyone a smile.

I never read the previous thread, 'Preparing for winter IV', as for some reason I thought it meant preparing for IVF in the winter!! I vaguely wondered why IVF would be different in the winter to the summer but never actually looked. I also wondered why it was in this section, rather than Marriage and Relationships but hey ho.

Oh and by the way, I did go to Specsavers last week, upgrade on my glasses on the way!!

Hope this makes you smile.

[Deleted User]

toozie wrote: »

Kittie-is your's the same as bio-mass burner?
A friend is getting one of these installed this week under The Nest scheme-help from Welsh Government for low income families with a low efficiency rating property.

She has been advised to order the wood pellets from The Plumb Center (£2 a bag), but I'm sure there must be somewhere cheaper-they would have to be delivered as she doesn't drive.

Do you buy yours locally-or on-line?

Gosh toozie, they cost £260 a tonne delivered or I have been lucky to find them by the bag locally at £2.99 a bag. She needs to be careful before she commits because they are very difficult to find per bag and delivered by the bag, they are extortionate. We have to fetch them by car as they are 10kg bags. The cheapest in plumb centre are £3.83 a bag. This form of heating will be massively expensive for her. She has been badly advised re biomass heating. We had a really hard time to find anywhere where you can get these pellets by the bag. If she has gas then gas is one heck of a lot cheaper. She must use enplus quality pellets in a biomass boiler and make sure not to get the ones for horse bedding

Most people use from 3 to 5 tonnes a year. We only use 1 tonne because we have an eco house. She needs to follow this up before they start.

bossymoo

catha wrote: »

should have gone to specsavers!!

nothing to do with preparing for winter, but i thought i'd put this comment on to give everyone a smile.

I never read the previous thread, 'preparing for winter iv', as for some reason i thought it meant preparing for ivf in the winter!! I vaguely wondered why ivf would be different in the winter to the summer but never actually looked. I also wondered why it was in this section, rather than marriage and relationships but hey ho.

Oh and by the way, i did go to specsavers last week, upgrade on my glasses on the way!!

Hope this makes you smile.

It did me!

twiglet98

I had to replace the tank for my heating oil a while ago and the new (second-hand) plastic one came with a wireless sensor that is supposed to show the oil level on an LCD plugged into an indoor socket. Mine has been reading half a tank, and I've been smug about how well I was conserving it - the heating hasn't been on yet and was only at 15C last winter,, DD1 and her fiance moved out just after I'd filled the tank, and I use a lot less hot water. Then yesterday evening there was no hot water, the boiler had shut down despite the oil level monitor reading 5 bars, so I dipped a (clean) garden cane into the tank only to find it's actually empty.

This tank doesn't have a sight gauge like the old steel one and anyone relying on a Watchm@n sensor might like to dip test too, mark the level on the cane with the number of bars on the display, and just check it once in a while to monitor how they compare! I wish I'd realised this before running out of oil with a chilly few days forecast and a load of wet washing hanging around.