The Prepping Thread - A Newer Beginning ;)

daz378

Things are so uncertain  at the moment, extra food  tins etc   can almost count as savings, especially  if inflation takes a hold...be it demand pull   or wage push....covid could evolve to avoid vaccines....even if  we are slowly coming out of it....but then there are bigger   waves     Brexit, climate change transition....bright side we are still a major economy...so hopefully muddle through

Serendipitious

Shropshirelass said:

I cook pasta, also rice this way. I have hesitated to recommend this method, as I suspect purists would be shocked. Also, frozen veg e.g. peas and sweet corn, frozen fruit, need only minimal simmering, then put lid on for a while. Can't quote timings, it's an art not a science, you need to taste for yourself.

When I had an electric cooker with solid plates I often used to switch them off once the veg had reached the boil, the residual heat which remained during cool-down would then cook them fully.

In fact in a client's home with a similar cooker, after cooking their meal, I would even put a pan of cold water to sit on the cooling plate, this was to speed up the cool-down so the client would not be left with the hazard of a warm hotplate after I had left. It was amazing how much heat was in there - enough to heat a panful and then a second panful, and I used to use that hot water to do their washing up.

Nargleblast

Just heard my energy supplier, Goto Energy, has joined the bust gang. Prepping-wise I have just taken photos of both meters and the front page of my energy account, showing my healthy credit balance, previous readings and amount of last bill. Now to wait to hear who my new supplier will be. Hopefully it won't be my previous supplier, a big player whose energy cost an arm and a leg, hence my swap to Goto. 

Karmacat

Dig for Victory, Shropshire Lass, Serendipitous - thank you!  Brilliant posts - I've just been analysing how much I spend each day on fuel, and even though I've had the heating on for a total this October of about 4 hours, I'm spending £2.25 a day on average.  And I use my hob twice a day, so using less water and switching off is great.  I've usually boiled water in the kettle and poured it over the pasta and whatever frozen veg I've got in the same pan ... I wonder if that would still work?  Or is heating up from cold on the hob best?  Very interesting.

Baileys_Babe

Karmacat said:

 I've usually boiled water in the kettle and poured it over the pasta and whatever frozen veg I've got in the same pan ... I wonder if that would still work?  Or is heating up from cold on the hob best?  Very interesting.

My thinking on this is, if you warm the water up in the pan on the hob you are also heating the pan. If you do your method some of the waters heat will be transferred to the pan. I have no idea which is more efficient or if or makes any difference to the amount of fuel used or the texture of the food.

pollyanna_26

daz378 said:

Things are so uncertain  at the moment, extra food  tins etc   can almost count as savings, especially  if inflation takes a hold...be it demand pull   or wage push....covid could evolve to avoid vaccines....even if  we are slowly coming out of it....but then there are bigger   waves     Brexit, climate change transition....bright side we are still a major economy...so hopefully muddle through

I've been trying to concentrate on the positves daz. By the end of last year I was an angry, frustrated ball of fury at the hopeless management of all situations. That wasn't helping me in any way so time for positives. I've always prepped since the Lights OUt in the 70s. I was lucky to already have a coalman and with a newborn and a toddler did big shops rather than small ones.

Through our lives we pick up various bits of knowledge we're barely aware of but since early last year I've remembered them. We can't deal with the things beyond our control but concentrating on those we can is good for both physica and mental health and puts us in a stronger position to hopefully get through.

Take care

pollyx

Si_Clist

Woo hoo!  Doris is going to give us £5000 towards a heat pump so we can save the planet.

I do hope he's going to tell me where the other £10000's coming from, where we're going to put the big outside unit, and the inside one, and how it's going to heat our tap water in winter.

No doubt him being such a wonderful chap he'll also tell us exactly how we're going to insulate these solid stone walls that have no damp course.  And where the money comes from for that.

And for the 7 new windows we'll also be needing ...

greenbee

Lots of people round here have heat pumps, as the alternatives are oil or electric radiators. If your oil boiler and tank both need replacing at the same time it makes a lot of sense, and avoids ripping out all the plumbing to replace with electric rads. While not everyone is going to find it easy to identify a location for the unit, most of them are smaller than the boilers they’ve replaced on the inside, and take up very little space outside. They’re also a lot more cost effective even with the higher initial cost - and even before this grant people have benefited from other subsidies. They don’t have any issues with getting water or heating hot enough in winter.

Like everything, they may not suit everyone, and while there’s still gas available and you can keep your gas boiler going officially there is no real sense I changing. If you do need to upgrade, then it makes sense to look at more efficient technology - and as with solar, hopefully the subsidy will bring the cost down.

Part of prepping should surely be thinking about the long term future, and future generations. Not just selfishly thinking about ourselves, now. Kids growing up now have a pretty scary future ahead as the wildfires, floods and pandemic have already illustrated. 

-taff

I went to see a heating expert about new fanlged tech because we will be extending and rejigging next year [ finally!] . We have a 1950's built 1930 designed semi. I told him all our plans about solar, heat pumps or MHVR, batteries for the solar array...

When I explained our circumstances, he just said, get a system boiler, a bit of wet underfloor heating and an unvented tank. The boilers now will run on hydrogen, solar batteries are too expensive for what they are currently, retrofitting mechanical ventialtion ductwork is too much of a pain because of the type of ducting you need. He did say, get an electric charging point built in for a car in the future.

So all my green plans went down the figurative toilet.

Jellytotts

We replaced the 1960s back boiler here when we moved in 2 years ago and had a combi boiler installed in the garage instead, we don't need to think about replacing anything for a while but will move over to a heat exchange when this boiler dies.  Our boiler installer at the time said that within a few years combi boiler parts would stop being made to try and force people to start switching.  

We had solar panels at our previous property on a lease scheme and they'd have cost us £16k at installation otherwise.  10 years later we had them installed here, smaller panels and less of them but able to generate the same amount of power and they cost just over £3k.  The price of the new heat exchanges will come down as the installers are trained and the units are made in larger quantities.

We did view a property with heat exchanger and solar panels and the utility bills were amazingly low.  They won't be right for every property but they are finding solutions for the type of houses they're building now and going forwards.