Finding the chase and cutting to it

As the UK is coping with high humidity and high outside temperatures, it may seem an odd time to be thinking about insulating your pad. Summer is a perfect time to strip out older insulation and replace it with newer, “up to code”, materials and thicknesses. There are 21 million homes in the UK and […]

I wanted to follow up on Walking in the shadows, which looked at the using passive cooling methods for coping with the Heat Dome, which affected Africa and Europe in the last week of May 2026. After all, we hear the same advice every year, but life gets in the way. We get home from […]

Last week, we looked at the difference using our solar panels has made to our carbon footprint. Of course, that isn’t in isolation. At 27kWh, we have a large amount of battery capacity. But what got us here, why is that working so well for us? What is the easiest? Energy. I don’t use a […]

One of the big benefits of having a heat pump that doesn’t provide cool air in the house, is the ability to stand in front of the fans while it rips the heat out of the air to heat our hot water. Yes, dear readers, this is what I have been doing in sunny Ipswich […]

It’s hard to believe the UK has broken its solar generation record twice this April, after such a dull and grey winter. The day before that last record was broken, the UK achieved its lowest ever value for how much carbon dioxide was used to produce its electricity. These two things are connected! When you […]

Throughout time, humans have celebrated life’s big events. Sometimes lavishly, sometimes simply. Every year, we have a barbecue while a classic car run goes past our back garden. We are not the only ones, and on a sunny (or at least dry) day, the crowds lining the streets are almost as entertaining as the cars, […]

Before Covid 19 and lockdown, we spent an eye-watering amount on ready meals and eating out. It wasn’t just speed to table but energy levels. It was just easier – less washing up, less time to table, less effort. Like many, my home cooking repetoire was pretty limited. I don’t blame anyone for doing that. […]

Words to the wise: the majority of this paper is our usual exploration on how you can see the impact your efforts make in your home. I do include the actual mathematics at the bottom to explain where some of this has come from – you do not need to read this unless you want […]

When we got our solar cells, we were never looking to be off-grid. The move was to support us and our new electric car. I had an interest in heat pumps, especially ground source, but in 2014, we saw solar as helping us ease the load. Of course, the world has changed dramatically since then: […]

Was it all worth it? The hardest thing about a purchase like windows for your house is that feeling you don’t know if it was worth it. It feels intangilble. Even thermal imaging is a hard thing to assess because bricks have a high thermal mass, or in terms of house insulation efficiency a low […]