Finding the chase and cutting to it

One of the things you hope for when ripping out your gas boiler and putting in a heat pump is things are not going to be worse for you.

Obviously, having our own solar generation capability means that unlike distilling our own natural gas, we can generate our own electricity. So, if it’s sunny and cold on a winter’s day, all should be good.

But, let’s be honest here, I live on a small island in the atlantic ocean, which is much closer to the arctic pole than the equator. During the winter, our shortest day is on the 21st or 22nd December and is 7 hours and 50 minutes. The sun is not necessarily going to be putting in an appearance, and is certainly not something you can bet on.

But in December 2024, I am looking out of my window and seeing a shining sun – more importantly, my solar cells are not only heating my house right this moment, but also charging my home battery.

This is kind of important because it means we can heat the house later today, after the sun sets which some stowed energy.

Which is hard to do with a gas boiler.

Interestingly, this year we still have all the figures for our gas heating. I know this because that’s all we were doing with the gas: heating the house and our water. Our heat pump provides similar figures in a handy app.

This very day in December 2023, we used 73kWh to heat the house and water. This year we’ve used 12.2kWh.

Now, it could be a much warmer day in our home town. So, last year the temperature varied between 4°C and 11°C. Not that dissimilar, our range today is 4 °C and 8°C (we’re a little colder today) . We haven’t changed our thermostats or settings, all we’ve done is switch the source of the heat… In fact, the past couple of days, we’ve turned down the thermostat in our bedroom because it was way too warm for us given how we had things setup.

Of course, that benefit could be happening right now!

Yawn, so?

Consider this, at the moment, right now, every 1kWh of electricity costs £0.24. Every stored unit we can make use of means we are not using electricity that has been generated by burning gas. You can see that in 10 minutes, we went from discharging the battery to feeding in excess today – the thermostats in the radiators and rooms turned off the draw from the heat pump, thus reducing our need for electricity and allowing us to charge the battery.

Now, because of the efficencies, an electric heat pump out performs a gas boiler, so environmentally it is a sounder choice. But we get the benefit of this right here right now, unlike our V2G. We’re hoping that during the summer, we can be completely off grid…

But haven’t you spent an awful lot of money to get to this point? The photovoltaics, heat pump, battery, smart thermostats…

Yes, we have invested to do this. Not all in one go, we did the solar cells in August 2014. The battery in November this year, and the heat pump was in July. The smart heating was over six months in 2021.

But this investment is giving us a big return thanks to high inflation. The solar cells paid for themselves in 5 years (and that was before electricity was £0.24 a unit).

In the next 20 years, we’ll both be retired, but it will cost a small fraction of our pensions to keep warm and have hot food during the winter. All thanks to having made the investment now.

Isn’t that what it’s all about? Saving the future…

I am from the UK. That means many things but ultimately, we’re a discrete people. Quiet, laid back, we don’t like fuss. We do like to talk and share, but, you know, through quiet means.

Eh, what, what’s going on?

‘Morning. Just about to talk about what’s happened since we had our gas meter removed in August.

Oh, it’s Saturday – I’m heading back to bed…

Mmm, least said about that, the better…

Where was I, oh yes… So, that apparently kicks off some “automated” processes in our energy supplier’s customer handling processes. Two weeks ago, while checking our daily usage, we found we were “moving to a new supplier”.

We were not. At least as far as we knew… A short call, and we were assured they would not be ceasing our electricity nor refunding our balance – due to V2G, we had quite a sum to see us through the winter…

The refund happened this week. We still have the banner on the customer portal telling us we’re leaving.

Now, our info to log-in to N3ergy no longer works.

Other things are a bit hit and miss. This diagram is only sometimes available when we ask for it:

Now, we’re assured that electricity is going to be delivered through the grid by our supplier, but it all seems a bit fussy, if you ask us!

Although our electricity direct debit is now only £162 a month…

Few people like surprises. Some say they do, but when you ask them, it’s about fun things not things like a spider dropping down on a thread before their eyes while they watch TV.

Really, do you have to?

Sorry <shame>.

One of the things we were not expecting with our Smart Meter when we got it in 2014, I wasn’t expecting it to just work off one “reader” in the house. Or how much energy said reader would consume – we soon plugged ours in having had it chew through batteries in short shrift…

But a pleasant surprise came with our new house battery, as it gives us that basic information, and more.

We can see how much of the energy we’re consuming is coming off our solar panels or our battery, and how much we’re having to pay for. That’s to our phones, so making real decisions at the point we want to make them is trivial.

If fact, I find I am not longer using the meter application attached to the solar cells. One stop at the battery app gives me all that.

Of course, there are other surprises that are not so great. It has been a cold and, more importantly, dark winter so far. But from the look of things, we should be able to go completely off grid in the summer for all our needs. Heating, hot water, cooking, cleaning, and travel with the car.

What’s not to love?

Going off grid for the summer?

Probably not. I have had “standing charge free” tariffs, which tend to be more expensive per unit but if you don’t use anything, you don’t owe anything.

Those tariffs are few and far between. Especially if you just need electricity.

Our contract is £0.24 per kWh used and £0.4842 per day for the standing charge. During the summer, if we really don’t consume anything from the grid, we’ll be paying £15.01 for the 31 day months, and £14.33 for the 30 day months.

This is important because it helps the UK pay for power generators, transmission lines, fixing issues when storm damage happens, like today when the tail end of Storm Darragh is blowing across the UK.

Obviously, to help more people make the move to solar panels and more, a cheap standing charge and expensive price per unit is the way to make it happen. But I think we’re a long way from that being the case.

How tempted were you to call this piece “shocking things”?

Very, but let’s not go there….

Black Friday is a relatively new thing in the UK because it has never been an opportunity for us to shop.

I work full time, in the UK. We do not have Thanksgiving day, there is no bank holiday in November and, because we don’t have that celebration, we did not have it fixed to the fourth Thursday of November by the American President F D Roosevelt in 1939. This strategy, a planned date for Thanksgiving bank holiday is that it fits in with two goals.

Goal 1: the American tax year runs January to December. Without this bank holiday where people traditionally shop (since 1939), shops find it difficult to keep going. Clearing stock for the tax year is very beneficial to the American business model and many retail organisations return their figures with the tax year dates.

Goal 2: It was done to boost Christmas shopping figures for shops. Like most other celebrations in our modern world, this was done for commercial reasons. The Christmas decorations are out in all towns and indeed Turkeys are the favourite fare on the American tables.

Globalisation has meant American companies have made the discounts globally available. But unless you have a computer, that’s pretty academic, until this year, and things were tagged up in UK shops.

Why? This is completely artificial for us in the UK. Our big shopping day, for similar reasons, is Boxing Day.

So I was not desparate to be parted with my cash yesterday.

I have had a pension with work since I was 18. First with the MoD, as a technician apprentice, and then with BT as a manager.

It makes sense to save for the future. But the opportunity cost of me saving £1 in 1991 as a technician apprentice was significantly more than it costs me to do the same now – partly from inflation but £1 was 22.5% of my monthly wage. It’s barely 0.01% now.

But that single £1 invested in 1991 is now worth £1,000. Which is significantly better return than inflation.

But, I’m very comfortable. I could afford to spare that money each month and lock it away for 50 odd years. What if you cannot do that?

Cash, cash ISA, baby! I cannot believe you made me say that!

Sorry 😀

A pension saves you money as you get income tax relief. But you pay management fees, transaction fees, holding fees. Not much to me, but if you’re earning minimum wage, you aren’t getting much back for your money.

Cash ISAs are great for three reasons.

1. You can access you money if you need it. Any spare money you have can be added at any time. You cannot do that with your pension.
2. Multiplier effect. You may not be able to use your £20,000 ISA limit each year, but each ISA can be added to new ones. This means if I manage to save £300 in my first year, the next year, I can add this £300 to the next ISA I start and still have my complete allowence and the interest I have earnt… which means it is all growing!
3. You and your spouse can make use of both allowences. So say one is a higher rate earner the other is on minimum wage, you have £40,000 to invest each year with no tax on your interest.
4. The other things is the £1 you save on the first day is worth the most. As a low paid earner, especially if you can start saving from the age of 16, the better off you will be in your life-time.

The £40,000 for a couple is really useful.

Given an interest rate of 4.3% per annum, it takes a single person 24 years to get enough ISAs to give an annual interest amount of £20,000.

Two people together can achieve the same thing in 12 years. Add on the full state pension, £11,502.40, and that would be an income of £31,502.40 with very little risk and no fees anywhere. It’s not a fortune, but it’s only a few thousand shy of the average wage of
£35,830 in the UK.

Plus you have £465,116.28 in savings.

In the UK, there are around 5,000 ISA millionaires. Most of them started with cash ISAs then converted them to Share ISAs. I’m no-where near there, and as my father used to say (he was a stock broker for 40 years), it’s not worth investing in shares unless you have £20,000 and ideally, you have the space to allow those assets to depreciate without it hurting.

Of course, if you have rent/mortgage to pay each month, that’s a huge ask. But it’s why those who concentrate on settling the mortgage, get such an advantage – £31,500 per annum when you are not paying any rent or mortgage is really good money – £2,625 a month.

But of course, I didn’t do that. I got the benefit of my work pension where my employer is doubling what I contribute. That’s the time when it makes the most sense to contribute to the work scheme!

When we got our last EPC done in April 2022, we were a little disappointed that there were no recommendations of what to do to reduce our carbon footprint.

Which was the reason behind getting the assessment redone.

As it is, we’ve made some positive steps, hopefully, in the right direction. The lattest one was achieved this week, with the installation of a battery.

What, on top of the V2G?

Absolutely. Don’t get me wrong, the V2G has worked out very well for us, but there’s a couple of things it is lacking.

The first being, we don’t get to say where or when it charges or discharges.

The second being that we want a battery back up for the house. Getting our energy use down means we can, for some of the year, live off the energy we produce from our roof. In summer we often generate more than 15kWh a day and use less than 13kWh. Having access to that power would be really useful.

It’s a little different over the winter as we’re also using electricity to heat our house and water. Being in the UK, we just don’t generate enough power during December and January to be “off grid”.

The idea for our home battery as opposed to using the car battery, is that we can go on “island mode” and disconnect from the grid when we can to or need to, say during a power cut.

There’s other things our system does too. It monitors the power from our solar cells, the power going out to the grid, and the power coming in. During the summer, it can be programme to donate to the grid or our home when prices are highest or when there is a glut of power, store energy for later.

During the summer, we should be able to go off grid for much of the time, effectively. We generate, at most, 3kWh. Our base load, (what the house uses when the heating isn’t running, or lights are on, etc), we use between 0.4 and 0.6kWh – so that excess can go straight into our battery.

Cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and heating are the big consummers in the house. Doing these functions at mid-day can make a huge difference to your electricity bill – even during the winter. Batch cooking can make use of this excess power, so the evening meal needs to be a snack or reheated in the energy efficient microwave.

That takes a great deal of planning and effort. There’s energy consummed by the fridge for keeping things cool, and again that is not a zero cost.

I have mixed feelings about batch cooking for that reason – the more you cook, the more energy you need. Then you waste that energy in cooling it down… There are other options, though again that is more effort.

I’m beginning to think you could go crazy thinking about this!

Five years ago, I cycled 100 miles across London, into Surrey and back again.

Having independently cycled to the station in Ipswich this morning, caught a train to London and worked a day then returned home, that seems a very long time ago.

Which is a bit of a shame, because five years ago, I promised myself I’d never let myself get that unfit again.

Of course, it’s easy to blame Covid, but to be fair, the first 6 months I kept my weight down and kept up my exercise.  It was after that I let it all slip away.

So, tonight my long muscles are a bit sore and my clothes are gently steaming as my sweat evaporates off them.

I do know I will get fit again.  I do know it will get easier.  But right now, all I want to do is wrap myself in my duvet and fall asleep.  Bon nuit, mes amis.

The intersection of my worlds (diabetes. cyber security, developing interesting tools, cyclist, motorcyclist, skier, driver, keen walker, sustainable living, and cooking) leads to some observations. Not least when it comes to this term: lived experience. When medical studies are conducted and are published to the masses, this is the caveat emptor, your experience may vary.

I was reminded of it while sitting in my endo’s office, waiting for my 11:10 appointment. One of the slides auto-playing in kiosk mode said about when you travel to hot and cold climes and the impact on your insulin requirements.

Now the nights are drawing in, we’re getting questions about how comfortable we are – now these are from friends but I suspect the inquiry is less to do with our general wellbeing and more to do with the heat pump replacing our gas heating system.

To be honest, it’s lovely. It took a couple of days to tune the radiators and the heat distribution system, but we are warm when we need to be and cooler when want to be doing things.

We do have an emergency heat source with our newly cleaned (and CO monitored) log burner in the lounge, which we tend to use when staying at home during the weekend and the place is below 10°C – mostly because the room is unbearably hot otherwise – over the space of two hours the room temperature rises above 12°C, even with only burning a log or two an hour.

Now, it our aim was to reduce our carbon footprint – use fewer kWh of energy to keep warm and clean (hot water). Which is a good job, because electricity prices have risen in the UK.

Oh, well worth the effort then!

Like I said, the proof will be if our total energy usage this winter is less than last year. I say winter, as we started using the heat pump in mid July and the boiler broke end of March, which was freezing this year.

And so far, it looks good. Our SPF (seasonal performance factor) is currently 4.7 – so for each 1kWh of electricity we buy, we get 4.7kWh out or 470% efficiency. This is compared to a great gas boiler giving out 0.8kWh for every 1kWh of gas burnt.

The colder it has got, the better it has been. Also great for us. More importantly, it is outperforming the combined totals most days:

Comaprison of this month with this month last year in terms of combined energy consumption.

A few of the colder days we didn’t do so well, but so far this month, the heat pump is heating our water and house for less than the boiler did – of course, what we are not seeing in the graph above is the fact the car took more energy charging than it did the other days!

Oh, so it is worth the effort then?

Well, it looks good so far. Of particular note is Tuesday 15th October – the temperature in Ipswich was 9-14°C. We were both at home and both were comfortable, lit, bathed, and cooked for, all for 25.95kWh electricity compared to a combined score of 74.75kWh in 2023 when the temperature was very similar 13-14°C.

Of course, we cannot make our own natural gas. We do have solar cells making some of our electricity though 😉

Studies on the impact of ultra processed foods has been doing the news circuits for a while now, but while it seems obvious that highly smoked, reformated foods (e.g. corn syrup is often cited here), and packaged foods (pringles anyone?), we should perhaps cast the net a little wider.

I love pesto: but it is not something I “cook with”. What do I mean? Well, olive oil is a processed food and a component of pesto. If I take some pastry, smear it with pesto and then bake it, the resulting pesto pastry is, by definition, ultra processed.

Cooking breaks down nutrients in food, it’s actually why we cook in the first place as it makes it easier to absorb those nutrients. But cooking more than once breaks the food down further. Should we consider such foods ultra processed too?

Breads are not all equal. A french dough doesn’t need sugar to help the yeast rise yet we class this food in the same class of processed food as a quick cooked “american styled loaf”.

Smoked foods such as sausages are commonly placed in the ultra processed list. But there is a big difference between an English style, unsmoked sausage and a 6 month smoked Falukorv. The English sausages are often sneered at in terms of taste (typically derived from herbs rather than processing) but the minced, otherwise uncooked meat is processed but not ultra processed…

Of course, our bacon was traditionally the way we preserved pork. Smoked and tasty but probably not the way we need to do things these days with fridges in every store and home.

Don’t get me started on “triple cooked” fries. Lets boil the goodness in potatoes away to just leave the simplest form of carbohydrate. Bring back the English chip, please.

When my husband was made redundant in 2008, my wage was less than a third of what it is now and we had a mortgage. We had no gym membership, we had a relatively expensive house to run compared to our wages. But we adjusted and 9 weeks later, he had a job offer with the company he has just been made redundant from.

When it looked like we may be in the same position a year later, I had to ask for a fair wage – for every pound my male colleagues made (many with less experience than I had) I got 80p! A five minute phone call fixed that. I had a 2nd promotion in six months later. Which, career-wise, got me to this point.

It’s a different game this time round. We have no mortgage, we have spent money over the past 10 years paying off the mortgage and getting the house to be cheap to run. It meant we didn’t do too much on the holidays but on my wage, we can keep everything comfortably running along and have a holiday a year.

The house is cleaned by my man over the week, so we have had fun this weekend.

Of course, he’s too young to retire, 16 months off being able to draw his old work pension. So he is looking hard for a new role. But if he doesn’t, maybe it doesn’t matter. There’s enough to do in the house to keep him out of trouble. Gym membership means he can keep healthy.

Life is so different once you’re kids have left home and the mortgage is done. We’ve owned our cars since new and the motorbikes, so they have been maintained. No loans, no rentals that need to be maintained.

A chance conversation

changed everything for me. A colleague who’d joined the company the same month I had, had waited two years before buying his house for cash. Now, I’d already worked out how much in interest my house was going to cost – a mortgage for £55,000 paid for 25 years at £325 was going to be £97,500.

I looked into the details and when we combined our earnings and got a new mortgage, I was focused on paying off (after establishing some savings – 3 months of your living wages is an absolute minimum) what-ever was left at the end of the month.

Our last mortgage was for £250,000 and we paid it off in 10 years. We upgraded our heating system in three stages: thermostats, radiator valve controls, heat pump. We got a smart home. We upgraded the cooker and hob,

Sounds idyllic, but you’re not exactly an average wage earner…

No, having had the redundancy in 2008, I focused my career on an independantly comfortable life.

It doesn’t mean we’ve kept everything the same. Every decision is conscious. I haven’t changed my suppliers, but we are making smarter choices. Cooking from scratch instead of buying ready meals saves around £20 a shop! Vegetarian two meals a week saves around £20 and is better for our hearts and waist-lines.

We were paying £90 a month for Sky TV – that’s £1,080 a year! That’s not including the power for the set top boxes. Switching to Now TV saves £70 a month or £20 a week. We’re in the same position, able to watch the shows we’re interested in for much less. Do not pay for the sports channels – find a local pub that has the shows you care about on their screens. A drink an evening is way cheaper than the best part of £70 quid a month, after all.

Aye, but we haven’t mentioned the elephant in the room, have we? The heat pump…

An interest free credit card allowed us to buy the heat pump in July. Since then, not only have we cut our carbon footprint to 0.3 tonnes per annum, but we’ve saved about 200kWh a month on average and that’s not compared to the gas we’re not using. Our heating and water with gas cost 13,375kWh a year. We should come in under 4,000kWh – but of course we’re not going to see that for a year.

Unlike gas, much of our water heating won’t cost us anything as we have solar panels. Any further panels we add, will help recoup those costs much more quickly. A big enough, insulated water tank means plenty of hot water on tap for all our needs. Because our dish-washer heats its own water, we might be one of the few places where hand-washing costs in!

So long as I keep my job, we should be more than OK. Our house, living as we do today costs less to run than my pension will be. My husband’s pension is as much. It feels like we’re going to be OK.

We’re not drinkers or smokers, we’re not extravagant in our tastes or habits. I still regularly wear clothing I bought when I was 16. My car is 14 years old in December.

What more do I need, please? I am going to have good food, cheap heat, and able to save at the end of the month. I have a good partner who loves me.