Cheery's country living adventure

themadvix

Ouch ouch ouch to the LPG bill! (note to self, don't buy a house with LPG!)

Enjoy your time in the garden

PurpleFairy26

Definitely ouch to the LPG! Hate it when things are a racket like that. Same with r0yal mail (although not the same cost level) you have to pay upfront and just hope they get it there the next day for first class. If it doesn’t you don’t have any recompense. 

greenbee

How old is your boiler @Cheery_Daff? And is there anything in the new 'green deal' or whatever it is that would make it worth your while moving to something like air source heat with solar PV/thermal? I know when my boiler needs replacing I'll be moving from oil to air source heat as that's really the only viable option here. Of course, as you have the space, you could investigate ground source. 

Cheery_Daff

Interesting point greenbee, thank you! I'll investigate. Boiler's not dead old, probably 10 years or so. Longer term we were potentially thinking of moving away from LPG but that was years away, when we'd grown enough trees to heat with wood 😂😂 will check out the options...

Cheery_Daff

Hmm... the LPG plot thickens... 

Just logged into our online account (we're supposedly paperless, aside from today's letter, obviously). I can see invoices from the last 3 delivery dates (since December), but payments only for May, June and July... Jan-April payments aren't there - and theoretically they should be if they're listing payments and invoices in chronological order rather than randomly  

I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if they hadn't gone out of the bank given I do tot up YNAB etc pretty regularly, so I'm wondering if they've just not been applied to the account... 

Hope so - we currently pay £151 a month (which is bad enough), so 4 months would be over £600, which would make a rather large dent in that supposed £700+ balance...

Have emailed to suggest they check the account (and also asked when the contract is up, as I can't see that anywhere at all in the online account, which is pretty poor). 

Yawn.

rtandon27

Oh goodness Cheery - what a faff with the billing - hope it sorts out and that 700 falls down to 100ish!

Karmacat

My word, that plot *has* thickened.  The LPG people sound really complacent - they don't know mse people, obviously!

Cheery_Daff

No word from LPG people yet... I did hear from the tank delivery people though - the said 'I did pass the message on to Transport but clearly they didn't do anything about it', a brief apology, and a promise to 'work with them so it doesn't happen again'. Blah blah. They only sell giant water tanks and I'm not likely to need another one of those any time soon - especially as the darn thing is so big I can't collect water from the greenhouse roof into the top of it unless I dig it a couple of inches into the ground - and then I can't get the watering can under it I *think* I've got a solution for that one, but it'll require a bit of work...  

Next time need to measure giant things like that before ordering - never occurred to me it'd be higher than the greenhouse guttering Shame really as it's raining today and it could have started filling up! Hey ho - I've got next week off so I can start digging... 

Lots of parcels today (none of them a tape measure...) A medal from an exercise challenge I've been doing, some wool from a friend's sheep (I'm knitting a pair of socks and I'd only bought one ball so am going to run out after one sock!), an extra hanging drinker for the chickens (we've got one, but with the new chickens needed two separate drinking stations - been using a bowl but they just kick their bedding and muck into it after about 20 minutes). 

And, most excitingly, two hay rakes!! Last year we just used a normal garden grass rake, but in the process we snapped the handle in half... These are handmade wooden hay rakes, really wide with big long teeth, like you see in the old photos
Quite excited about hay making this year. Last year I was mostly just scared... We cut less than a sixth of the field in the end, and only made 7 small bales (although we've only got down to the last one now so clearly didn't need any more). 

This year I'm going to start next week, and cut a bit at a time rather than trying to do it all in the space of a week or so.

Anyway, this isn't exactly a money-saving post is it... technically I didn't *need* any of those things... 

themadvix

I think you definitely needed the hay rakes - they sound lovely (and very practical!) and hay is expensive, so they'll pay for themselves eventually. Days when lots of parcels arrive are fun!

PurpleFairy26

When I read your post I could just picture the sheep walking to the post office to post the parcel to you.... then realised it was their wool. **must read slower** 

hay rake a necessity I would have thought and who doesn’t love a bit of running bling!