Simple living in the country - back to basics

SuperSecretSquirrel

I nearly commented yesterday on how good your lpg deal is Cheery... If google is right about 1 litre containing 7.08kwh of energy, since you got 1620 litres delivered for £850 then you're paying 7.4p per kwh. The current average price cap level for mains gas is 10.3p per kwh, plus 28.5p per day standing charge on top.

I wish we could get lpg as cheaply as you do, we pay £1 per litre, or 14.1p per kwh. That premium over mains gas is actually lower than I had expected. Your discount against mains gas prices is amazing!

We'd be in trouble if we had your consumption figures though... We used a total of 1660 litres a year when we last had a tiny baby in the house (so the house was kept warm and cosy 24x7). Since then we've fitted a modern efficient boiler, improved insulation, reduced boiler flow temperature, and tweaked thermostat and trv settings, etc. I'd be disappointed if we used over 1100 litres this year. I'm hoping for closer to 900. Time will tell. Anyway, all houses are different and we all use what we need to use, and you are without a doubt on a really great deal 😎

I hope Mr Cheery's dad isn't too sore after his fall.

Cheery_Daff

Thanks SSS 😊

That's interesting - I'd not worked out price per kwh before.  Your LPG is super expensive at £1 a litre! 😱 We managed to fix at 50p a litre (plus vat) last summer,  plus the tank fee, which is billed separately at about £65 a year I think.  We were paying 39p a litre before that (and 29p when we first moved here 5 years ago!) so it seemed like quite a jump, but everything seemed to be going up. And it seemed like a reasonable price compared to what others on the LPG board were being offered.

Also it was a 2 years fixed price, whereas its far more common to have a 2 year contract with the price only fixed for the first year - that's what we had before (and a max rise of 6p a litre in year 2, which of course they used all of). I'm not convinced they won't try to weasel out of the fixed price at some point but,  touch wood, they haven't so far!

Are you using small bottles, rather than a large tank, for it to be so expensive? Or are you limited to set suppliers? We've only got a choice of 2, as the other won't guarantee to send a small tanker, and they can't get a large one down our drive, so I wasn't convinced we'd always get deliveries! We started with calor, who supplied the previous people,  then switched to Avanti - then didn't have a choice last summer a Calor weren't taking new customers for a while. 

Interesting about your consumption - yes,  we do seem to use far more than you! 😱 Our house most certainly is NOT toasty 😱😂 but we're working on it.  It's a bit of a draughty old farmhouse - as I said yesterday,  exposed on all sides,  not massive but quite sprawling - it's had 3 extensions,  all single storey, so the upstairs only has 2 rooms whereas the downstairs has quite a few more,  so I don't think that helps either.  Plumber recently described the boiler as ancient,  but our old boiler in our old house was over 30 i think, and this one is only about 15 so what does he know?? 😂😂 certainly not the most modern or efficient anyway.

But we are making improvements.  It's all double glazed now which it wasn't when we moved in. We had no ceiling between the kitchen and upstairs for a year or so,  and no insulation in that ceiling for another year,  so that didn't help! Heating doesn't go above 16, and is only in when we're in and up.

Consumption has unsurprisingly gone down since we first moved in (although it's hard to work out without a proper meter) but will,  I hope,  get even better as we do further work on the house (very slowly). Your consumption is very impressive!! As you say,  every house is different and is certainly lean towards something smaller and with better insulation next time...

I'll stop waffling now but should say it's entirely possibly I've calculated wrong - not had an actual bill yet,  just the delivery note left under a stone in the garden 😂

SuperSecretSquirrel

Yes we use the bottles not a tank, so that does push the price per litre up quite a lot (no standing charge, but that doesn't really amount to much). I think there are four suppliers covering the area, so I should probably try shopping around for better prices. The fact that we pay less per litre delivered to our door than local petrol stations charge for lpg suggests that we won't get it much cheaper though. We now pay the same price, give or take a few pence, for one bottle as we did six years ago for two. Probably worth making a few phone calls, but I expect them all to be charging very similar prices.

We're all very comfortable at 16c too, but we certainly don't live in a sprawling farmhouse 😁 Those efficiency improvements should make a big difference, double glazing, insulation, well worth it. We only replaced our boiler because the old one was kaput. It is certainly more efficient than the old one, but it would take quite some time to pay for itself if the old one hadn't been beyond repair.

If we had paid for a big lpg tank when we moved in, the cheaper cost per litre would have paid for itself a few times over by now. I think solar panels would probably be a similar story. Since we were never sure how long we were going to stay here we've avoided any big long term investments like that, a mistake in hindsight!

Cheery_Daff

Lots of things are mistakes in hindsight! 😂 And upfront costs aren't always available at the time. We're all just making the best decisions we can with the info we have at the time 😊

Speaking of best decisions... today's was not to go home from work 😂 The drive in was a bit tricky - snow up to the main road, then slush, and a few stuck lorries in stupid places 🙄 as ever I was grateful for the all weather tyres on my little Yaris 😂 Although I wasn't going fast enough for some people 🙄 

Still, I got here in one piece, but as I was getting in the car to go home, I checked the weather and it's due to snow again tonight. I need to be in work tomorrow, and didn't fancy such a hairy drive again... so I made a few phone calls and have ended up in a lovely friend's spare room after an evening of tea and cake 😁 A very satisfactory solution! 

Pleased with myself for this morning - I am NOT one for driving in snow, and usually avoid at all costs. But I managed fine, albeit quite cautiously once I got onto the more hilly bits, or the bits that would have landed me off the road if I'd swerved 🙄 

Anyway, work was VERY tiresome today- at one point during a ridiculous meeting I just felt a giant wave of absolute disillusionment wash over me 😱😂 I mean, I regularly roll my eyes at the shenanigans, but this was a proper moment of 'oh good grief, this is complete and utter pointless b*ll***' 😱

I'm sure I'll feel better after a good kip (although teaching starts tomorrow so perhaps not!) 😂

beckstar1975

I was at a workshop at a conference for our student data system (niche I know) and there was a brilliant talk by the most excellent Paul Redmond who was explaining how different our Gen Z students are to us (majority Gen X ers). He said that us Gen Xers are likely to be passed over for roles as we're sceptical and we roll our eyes saying things will never chanage, we've seen it all before (as we have) whereas millennials haven't and thus act interested and take the bait.

I am paraphrasing him v badly but we all laughed and laughed as it is exactly true - and his description of Gen Z fitted my teens to a T.

b*

PS - good call for staying over, we're near London and although no snow have treacherous ice so can imagine it's so much worse up there

Cheery_Daff

I imagine that's always been the same with different generations beckstar! Hard not to get disillusioned when you've seen the same things come round and round again, and hard to be cynical when you haven't!

Glad I stayed over, as there was more snow yesterday morning and I probably would have made it to work, but actually I had a nice relaxed breakfast with my pal instead of a slightly hair-raising drive  

Cancelled visiting family today though as we had another ice warning overnight last night, and my route takes me over some of the highest routes where a few cars have come off the road in the last few days. In reality it probably would have been fine, but it's icy at the other end of the journey as well so we decided to be better safe than sorry. 

So an unexpected free day today! And the sun is shining We had breakfast in the cafe using our vouchers, and are now home having a nice cup of tea and some lunch. I am sat at the dining table in the streaming sunshine with a candle lit, looking at the garden, and enjoying myself very much

I've got no specific plans for this weekend, which feels nice - work has been quite stressful this week for various reasons, so I'm glad not to have to be doing anything specific. There are a few things I would like to get done over the weekend though (although inevitably they won't all get done!)

DIY
* put the rest of the blinds up (the most awkward one in the kitchen over the sink, and the two in the bedroom)
* get the bed set up properly in the bedroom (the mattress is on the floor at the minute, and the frame needs rebuilding)
* change the bedding

HOME
* do some washing and get it dried
* bit of batch cooking - I want to get at least 5 meals in the freezer (doesn't matter if they're all the same!)
* clean the pantry shelves
* clean the bathroom and take the clothes all back upstairs - ridiculous how they migrate
* wash the latest round of chicken dishes before they build up to a teetering pile

CHICKENS
* clean out the chicken houses
* possibly try a bit of supervised pre-bedtime mingling of the old and new chickens... 
* grab Daisy Chicken and snip some of the mucky feathers off her backside. She came to us like that, no sign of anything in particular being wrong, but I don't want it to build up any more. 

ONLINE & ADMIN
* banking
* Premium bonds dosh has arrived and I was going to transfer it to the building society savings account, but the online password hasn't arrived yet, so I can't log in to check my test amount arrived properly
* check dates for the covid study and get the next tests in the post
* set Mr Cheery up with some premium bonds of his own

OTHER THINGS
* go for a nice walk in the sunshine!
* yoga
* read book for new online book club I'm trying next week - annoyingly I've had to buy a digital version as it's quite new and none of the libraries had it yet!
* do a bit of plotting and scheming of plans for the garden
* find and list seeds I already have - I'm not intending to buy any this year, but there's a local seed swap event coming up so I might be able to fill some gaps there, and get rid of some stuff that hasn't done well here
* get out my DIY lists and figure out the next set of tasks to focus on
* rearrange a dinner that got cancelled before Christmas
* reply to a text and a couple of emails that I've been putting off
* upload photos and write a blog post

Er, that's turning into quite a long, ambitious list for someone who's just spend the best part of the last four hours sitting around drinking tea

KajiKita

take the clothes all back upstairs - ridiculous how they migrate

Yup - here too!   

KK

Cheery_Daff

Just had some post, including the garage bill, which was £972  

This is a 15 year old Yaris, I took it in for a service, and they rang me to say it needed new brake pads and disks. I asked for an estimate of cost, they said £4-500, so I said to go ahead. I was expecting the service to be a max of £150 on top of that. 

But no, £972

I never would have agreed to paying that much. We only paid £1500 for the car!

Can't imagine there's anything to be done about it at this stage, but I'll be sending a strongly worded email, and never using them again (annoying really as they're quite close to home and it's very convenient! And the people in the workshop have always been very lovely). 

Hey ho. But it's not exactly helping my mood! 

SuperSecretSquirrel

At £300-£400 above what was quoted I'd be asking them to double check that no mistake had been made. I'd also want an itemised breakdown of costs.

Cheery_Daff

SuperSecretSquirrel said:

At £300-£400 above what was quoted I'd be asking them to double check that no mistake had been made. I'd also want an itemised breakdown of costs.

Thanks, yes, that's what I'll be doing. They've sent a breakdown of costs, but the stuff for the service is mixed in with everything else, and all the labour costs are in together so I can't see what's what. I'm sure they'll say 'well £162 is VAT' but I don't expect a quote to be without that unless I'm told - it's still part of the cost!

Anyway, trying not to spend the entire day dwelling on it 🙄 it's expensive, but if we had eg a vets bill for £3-400 we'd just pay it and move on. I will definitely be emailing them, but tomorrow.

In the meantime, we've moved the bed frame into the bedroom - only taken us a year 🙄😂 Mr Cheery is currently trying to decide whether to saw a few inches off the legs 🙄