On the face of it, our lives at the moment should resemble hell. We’re having building work done and have vacated our bedroom but thankfully our son is a grown up and living in Newcastle, so we can live in his old room. Despite the noise (we’re both still working from home), life is surprisingly comfortable.

Eh?

Our master bedroom is a little wow, about twice the size of a standard bed one and the ensuite is of the same proportion. We’re having that ensuite completely remodeled. It will take a while and we’re a week in. Thankfully, that’s the ripping out and because no nasty surprises were found, the rebuild is already underway.

Our son’s room is bed 2 and has it’s own bathroom too. So we’re not really slumming it. His bed is a little smaller and there’s less storage but we’ve moved a unit in from our room which makes it feel like home from home.

There are terrible things happening, as usual, across the world. These have caused gas and electricity prices to go up, however going through our budgets, things do not feel too scary. Yes, it will mean more money going on power but the steps we’ve taken to reduce our carbon footprint have all meant we’re spending less than the average house in terms of power anyway.

Our house has a carbon footprint of 3.99 tonnes per annum: we’ve knocked nearly 0.4 tonnes off our annual consumption. Our electricity bill is negative (i.e. we’re contributing more than we’re using) and goes a long way towards paying for our heating.

While we’re still using gas in the house, we use 19,176 kWh per annum over approx. 653m³. So that’s approx. or 29 kWh per m³ a day, which isn’t at all bad.. We’re never cold. Over the summer, excess electricity generation from our solar cells warms our hot water, reducing our footprint a little.

We’re not using a heat pump, but given the average house in the UK produces 6 tonnes of CO₂ a year, we’re using a lot less than the average.

Aren’t you goody two shoes?

For me, everything everyone does matters. The price of electricity and gas going up is awful. Simple things can help.

Using gas to keeping warm and using the same techniques to stay cool during summer

1. Fit blinds to your windows. Thermally insulated ones needn’t cost the earth but provide an extra layer of protection to an area where heat is lost.
2. Ensure your loft is insulated. There are many options, but fibreglass works really well and is relatively cheap but ensure condensation and roof leaks are sorted out. If fibreglass gets wet, it doesn’t work well. There are other alternatives as seen in https://www.insulation-info.co.uk/roof-insulation including Rock wool. If you’re relatively fit and healthy, it can be a DIY task, but both these options require the use of protective equipment to ensure skin and lung irritation is avoided.
3. Only heat what you need to: we’re talking thermostats here and timed ones are better than just setting a temperature as all people have different physiological needs during the day. The big beauty about controlling your heating by the thermostat is you can protect against frost, keeping rooms above 12°C means burst pipes are avoided and above 16° helps avoid condensation and therefore damp. For radiators, although this is not a cheap option, smart radiator valves can make a huge difference where you already have thermostatic valves on your radiators. At least one radiator needs to be open (we have that in the bathroom) to protect the boiler, but this can make a huge difference to heating bills and comfort.
4. During the winter, make use of thermal gain. Open curtains during the day and close them about 30 minutes before sunset. Teamed with room thermostats, this can make a big difference on a sunny day.
5. If you’re sitting at home cold and it’s possible, go outside. This sounds insane, but stepping outside for 15 minutes and getting your muscles working will make your house seem warmer when you go back inside. Remember to wrap up warm before you go 🙂
6. During the summer, close curtains and blinds to prevent solar gain. Open them up once the late afternoon arrives. The thermally insulating blinds we used over the winter can stop thermal gain too – don’t air condition, block the sun. For a modern look, a plain blind a similar colour to your wall can help tie in a look while a white one can help make the most of lighting schemes.
7. Keep air flowing – insulation is great but you and your home need to breathe. Trickle vents should be open during the winter when people are in the house and opening windows would lose too much heat.
8. Service your boiler at least once a year. This ensures it is working at its best efficiency and every 1 kWh of gas burnt is used to full benefit.
9. If you have a dual cavity oven and are only cooking a small thing, try using the small oven. Much like using the right sized hob ring, smaller spaces are cheaper to get to temperature.
10. Over the winter, we use a big (not thick) duvet. Going from a single to a double on a single bed can stop draughts by ensuring the duvet hangs over the edge of the bed. We use a super king on a king size. That allows us to have the room we sleep in down to 16°C without suffering at all. Over the summer, I swap the duvet for sheets under the much thinner and smaller duvet. When it’s really hot, the duvet can be stowed at the end of the bed and the sheet allows for a wicking effect to happen and at 3am or so, the duvet can be readded.
11. Do make the effort to close doors. Even if there is a draft under them, thermally, they make spaces smaller and easier to heat 🙂

Electricity use

1. Swap out halogen lights. While they are bright, they are as bad as incandescents in terms of power use (or may actually be worse). CFTs or LEDs are better alternatives and both are available in a range of fittings. Typically, lighting will make up 20% of your household consumption.
2. When looking at lights, check the rating of the lumens (may be given in lm) , this is the brightness, against the power, measured in watts. High lm value against a low W value is the ideal and can help you work out the best options for you.
3. Cooking options using electric rather than gas: cooking is typically 7-10% of a weekly “energy spend”. Microwave ovens are much more efficient and combination microwave and convention or grills can make cooking quicker while leaving a crispy finish. You’re not limited to just reheating either, microwaves can be used for many “from scratch” recipes including stocks, soups, poaching, and baking. I love them for vegetables and fish. If you don’t have one already, a basic one can be bought for very little, https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=microwave+oven against what it might save.
4. If you have solar cells, cook main meals at midday and have cold or quickly cook meals in the evening, making the most of your prepaid power.
5. You don’t need to replace your whole hob with an induction hob, a simple plug in one can allow you to access this cheaper form of hob cooking without a huge expense. I bought one for our barbequeing to reduce our carbon footprint and reduce fire risk but my lunch is often cooked on this. The only downside is needing a steel pan – I would recommend doing that as opposed to buying a big adapter plate for all your pans and that will reduce efficiency.
6. Of course, using the camping induction hob has let us know we really like this way of cooking, so that’s something we’re saving against.
7. Use a lid when heating on a hob. A bit like insulating your house, your cooking will heat at a lower temperature and boil quicker. I bought a Silicone Lid for Pots a while ago which not only provides that cover but stops the pan from over boiling.
8. We keep vegetables in the fridge to maximise shelf life. Taking them out 30-60 minutes before you’re going to use them makes use of ambient temperature rather than the oven or hob taking the strain. You can do the same with roast meats too.
9. Roast meats at a cooler temperature. Cooking for a little longer at 160°C for a small joint can make a big difference, especially if your using solar electricity to cook.
10. Use the timer on the oven to ensure the oven is switched off when cooking stops.
11. Heat pumps (air or ground) are not the only way to switch from gas central heating. Modern storage heaters are worth looking at, especially if you are out of the house all day and have solar cells. Originally, they were used to balance the grid and cheap electricity provided at night was used to provide heat during the day. Instead, the new ones make use of cheap, green electricity generated by the sun while you are at work and store heat in the radiator until it is needed when you get home. Storage heaters expect there to be a period in your day you don’t need to be using the heaters so they can get warm. If someone is in the house 16 hours or more a day, they may be less suitable.
12. “Effectively going off grid” and ensuring you are not going over your solar generated electricity can be done with some serious planning. High power kettles, running cookers on full power, washing machines on a boil wash and microwaves run on high can all hurt the cause if run willy nilly but staggering when things run can mean you make the most of what you generate. In the summer, the UK has between 5 and 8 hours of sun on average (over the last 10 years). which makes this an interesting option.
13. If you have solar, the other thing you can do is buy a Solar iBoost. Any unused solar power is used to turn on your hot water immersion heater without the need for complicated solar heaters. Over the summer, our gas consumption goes down to 400 kWh a month without modifying our behaviour (4 baths a week and a morning shower every day). It works during the winter too but is harder to see. When our boiler broke down one year, we just used immersion hot water and can really cut our CO₂ usage: so we’re thinking that might be the way we run things over the summer.
14. Again, if you have solar, charge batteries during midday rather than over night.

Of course, there are other options for cooking including using charcol, wood, or bottled gas. This is an interesting take on the cooking issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ueUXAzPltE, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kXWfmN1wMhs, and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szIRgcGyLdw if you have the patience to wait if there’s no direct sunlight. An interesting option for spending time in the garden though. GoSun are not the only manufacturers on market, as https://www.ecowatch.com/solar-oven-guide-2655204322.html demonstrates. If you have a suitable area, an option for weekend living and going zero CO₂?

I’m typing this in bed due to being infected by Covid-19 at some point over the last two weeks: I tested positive very late on the 16th February.

I feel reasonably lucky as the impact has been devasting on my insulin requirements, but I have food booked via my local supermarket, the internet at my fingertips and feel snug as Storm Franklin rages outside my window. I seem to have a coping mechanism working for the insulin requirements and am no longer swinging from high to low. And the power is still up, go PowerGen.

Actually, Franklin may be why I’m typing this – the noise is horrendous and while I am definitely achy, coughy and headachy, I’m not actually ill enough to be out for the count while my subconcious is going “threat”. Why is it prioritising the wind outside to me getting better? Doesn’t my subconcious trust that I wouldn’t subject any part of me to unnecessary risk.

Oh, that’s right, I am in this position as I managed to pick up Covid from somewhere: point taken.

Location is so important in where you live, we have a show in the UK called Location, Location, Location.

We ended up moving for that very reason 8 years ago but after the initial shock of the cost of moving, one thing we noticed moving from a village to the main town was how cheap everything got.

Our council tax is lower despite moving up a band. Local services are much better.

Heating is lower as the air temperature is a good 1°C warmer, often two.

The roads are gritted automatically, so journeys in the snow and ice are easier, even on foot, and there’s so much competition, many private services are cheaper too.

The main library is a mile away and we can get evening classes easily. We can often walk for most things and it’s only 2 miles to several big supermarkets and an actual market and green grocers are much closer than that.

I fill up the car once every 6-9 months or so because of Covid and lockdowns, but before that, once every 3-4 months. I can walk to the train station though often I used a fold-up bike as I then had transport both ends. No searching for a space to park the car or waiting for a taxi. Thanks to the house being well insulated, we’ve reduced out carbon footprint considerably.

Because I am no longer travelling an hour or worse a day, I am not so knackered at the end of the week either. I may even be fitter, though lying down in bed with Covid-19 is not making me feel particularly perky.

Did I mention the gyms? I miss the department stores that have closed over the past few months but the town has many stores offering different merchandise and there are stores in other towns and London available by rail.

Then there are deliveries. Everything now delivers to us, including take-outs. Not necessarily cheap, but when isolating, it means there are options. Many, many options.

Many things are happening tomorrow, the result of which is I’ve just spent the best part of 6 hours designing and making a pump case so I have the luxury of being where I was this morning at 6am with a new insulin pump.

Let me explain.

My first ever pump came with three cases when it turned up: a clip case, a “sleep” case and a neoprene one.

Every case was exactly what it needed to be.  The clip allowed it to be attached to the edge of clothing and yet rotate so it was easy to read the pump at any one time.

Perfection.

The neoprene one allowed the pump to be protected while rough and tumbling or performing some sporting activities.  I have dropped the pump with these cases on and had absolutely no damage to the pump.  Not quite indestructible but with it being waterproof as well takes the stress out of swimming and sailing too.

The sleep case was always my go to case.  I wear it long, across my body with any kind of PJs or night dresses or indeed when in leggings lounging round the house on a cold winter’s day.  The real benefit is while sleeping – as an occasional sleep walker when hypo, having the pump firmly attached is a game and face saver.

So may I ask why only a couple of pump manufacturers or indeed other “case” suppliers do not include such items in their ranges, please?

I bought material, formed a design that would protect the pump, allow easy reuse of the older cases I no longer need and then made the cases.  My husband feels I should be very proud of my efforts but it’s just annoying.

I am not a seamstress or tailor; people with these skills would have knocked up the one measly case I have produced at this time in minutes rather than hours and in better material than I have been able to source – I ended up using a plain soft cotton as you would use for a child’s romper suit rather than the slick Alcantara my pump manufacturer sourced and worked out all the design issues.

At £15 it was a bargin in terms of price too – most cases last 20 years, I know, I have ones that old.

When a pump retails at £2,500, the assurance of having that device protected even over night is gratefully received much more than the colour of the pump.

As you’re aware, in my spare time, I’m an insulin kineticist. That means I study the impact of artifically given insulin on the human body.

The title is putting it mildly. Timing matters, it’s not necessarily what you do but when you do it.

Take today. After a very lazy Christmas, I’m starting to exercise again and that means my flat blood glucose levels are taking a hammering. I walked back from my retinal screening (with very dark glasses on as it’s a lovely sunny winter’s morning) with flat levels all the way home and poured myself a glass of orange juice and sat down.

Now, resting after exercise is the wrong thing to do if you’re looking to maintain blood glucose levels as it can start muscle filling. That’s the process of taking glucose from the blood stream and stowing it in the muscle reserves. While you’re exercising the opposite process happens which can lead to high blood glucose readings albeit temporarily.

Anyway, while I love the taste orange juice, it is a terrible hypo treatment. It is slow to absorb and heavy in sugar when it does hit the system, which can lead to rebound highs. You basically have to sit out being hypo, waiting for the levels to rise. Not great! Compared to my favourite treatment, coca-cola, orange juice takes twice as long.

Plus, the orange juice may overshoot. At 25g of CHO, it is a big hit – in my case raising my blood glucose levels by 6.25mmol/l. Think about that, if I’m a little low say 3.8mmol/l, that’s going to make me 10.05mmol/l which is technically speaking hyper.

Of course, if I have the orange juice 15 minutes before I stop walking, the levels are all seemlessly perfect. The low never happens, the bump of the high is avoided too.

Timing is everything.

I love Christmas.  I love the fact that in Europe, the rising Christian monarchs pragmatically looked at the climate, the food stocks and the people and took on the pagan celebrations as Christ’s birthday and in most countries said that should be a bank/public holiday.

Ours is a little beyond the shortest day in the year in the UK, but it means for many, while the nights are colder, we get to stay indoors and enjoy our labours from the last year.

We do presents, I know some people are moving away from that tradition.  In a time of massive consumption, maybe that would be better.  I love the beautifully wrapped thoughts nestling under our tree.

It’s really the tree I’d like to discuss today, in fact all the decorations.  Over twenty-three years of owning my own place, I have built up some baubles, tinsel, star and lights that deck our tree.  We have reusable lights and wreaths that bedeck our home outside, and this was how I got into home automation.

My newest bit of tinsel is 10 years old, the oldest is 23 years old, bought for my first tree.  That first tree is safely stowed for next year – we have a real tree every other year.  The real tree holder is 13 years old this year.

It’s all about building up and making the most of what you have.  I saw a set of 12 baubles I loved and bought early in that game.  The rest were as I saw something I liked.  One thing a year until the stowed tree was dripping.

The tree goes up around the 15^th December and always comes down on or before the 6^th January (twelfth night).  I am very traditional, not because I have the glitter, tinsel and baubles, but because it should be special and different.  Something to look forward to each and every year.

I’m planning on taking it all down tomorrow as I have my eye screening on Wednesday and I’m working on Thursday.  Each bauble will be placed in its holder and the hanger stowed in the corner of the bauble box.  The decoration my son made in primary school takes up two spaces and that is done early.  The felt stocking I made in primary school will be placed in that box on top before the lid is closed.

Every piece of tinsel will be folded up and lain in the tinsel box and the star laid on top.  The lights will be packed away and placed in the corner of that box before it is closed.  Then they all get placed in their corner of the attic ready for next year.

The cards are packed away, ready to be recycled as decorations or just as reminders of family and friends.

This year, as we’ve had a real tree, it is taken outside and will dry for a month in the shed.  Then we’ll cut it down and dry it out over two years.  The fronds make wonderful tinder if properly dried, but the resin means it is not a quick process.  By contrast the branches are normally ready after 12 months or so: we chop them up quite small.  The ashes are used to fertilise the garden flower beds.

Lastly, the outside decorations are all removed, packed away for next year.  They go up on the first weekend of December and the timers set to come on at sunset for a few hours to give joy to those travelling to and from work on most days.

Over the December and January months we don’t produce much rubbish at all as a result.  Hope you’ve had a sustainable and merry yule tide.

Like many, this year has involved some changes health-wise (4 vaccinations, 3 for Covid-19 and one for influenza) and some sole searching following COP26.

COP?  Police?

No, the climate crisess :D.  For me, this has to be a personal thing.  While governments and business can do their bit to ensure we can’t screw up, there are every day choices we need to be making every day.

One of the ones we made during October was the decision to change our themorstatic radiators values with “smart” ones from tado.

Is that complicated?

In many ways this is a much easier job than swapping a room thermostat and doesn’t require messing about with the boiler or power as thermostatic radiator valves are purely mechanical.  You don’t even need to turn the radiators off, though we did, as it was October – just to make sure no-one got burnt!

The steps are then reasonably straight forward to follow.  The receiver plugs into a power socket and using the phone app, we

 

plugged it into our hub router, automatically connecting it to tado’s servers to you can then drive everything from the tado app or web interface.

Then unscrew the existing valve in question (having let the radiator cool down), and after activating the battery, screw on the new thermostat.

In reality, the valve is untouched, what you’re swapping is just the thermostatic part.  That means you don’t need any tools or plumbing knowledge – it also means you don’t need to pay “for installation services” unless you have no strength in your arms or difficulty sitting on the floor to reach the valves.

Once in situ, following the instructions help to pair the thermostat with the receiver.  This is the time consuming bit and pretty much out of your control, you’re just waiting for connections and pairings.

What you end up with is a set of named thermostats, and a dashboard as below.

The menu boxes allow a comprehensive programming capability for each and every radiator – which is amazing where you have a single radiator in a room, a little harder to pair if you have more than one!

Savings?  What’s the outcome?

There are a couple of things to note.  One, to make the most of this, you need to pay a subscription annually.  Two, it makes no sense to do that unless you have a smart phone that can tell the tado servers where you are.

The promises are high and we’re probably not making the best of the radiator thermostats as we don’t have the tado zone thermostat – it didn’t seem worthwhile to ditch our existing one as it’s still working and doesn’t require a battery.

We’re not achieving that, on average we’re saving 19% on our bills according to the phone app (18.3% in October, 9.3% in November), probably as you can see, I’m working from home which means we’re not out of the house much and needing to heat upstairs.  It will detect open windows though and turn off a room while it deems a window to be open which is impressive.

But we’re getting quite a bit of extra information via the “air quality” menu.

This is interesting, not least as responsibility northern Europeans, we follow WHO guidelines and typically run our bedrooms between 15.6°C and 19.4°C, especially when sleeping.  Tado quotes these values and ignores them, preferring rooms to be set at 20°C as an absolute minimum.  Our rooms are typically called cold.

We also live in a humid climate in the winter – today, in my home town, the forecast states that humidity is 97%.  My office, shown above, is running at 57%.  At 60%, it would be deemed, humid, so 17.6°C and 57% is cold and getting humid, so it advises turning on the heating.

For guidence on what an ideal temperature for rooms in the UK, please check out this post: Viessmann – a boiler and radiator manufacturer.

If we turned on the heating to the settings they advise to be “pleasant” instead of cold, we’d be spending more than we did with the old thermostats!

You wouldn’t recommend it then?

If you ignore the whinges about temp and humidity, it is magic.  Separately controlling the zone thermostat to the individual rooms, allows us to fine tune out climate indoors without crippling the wider environment.  When rooms get to the right temperature but the zone thermostat is still on, the bathrooms are allowed to completely dry and stay toastie but not uncomfortable thanks to the zone thermostat.

To be honest, that is probably the best thing about the system.  Complete tunability run to your spec, no waste.

It’s not cheap and it’s not an instant setup, it probably took a week to get it tuned to us with temperatures and times.

But when it’s done, it is amazing the difference it has made to our comfort without burning any more gas than we need to as an absolute maximum.

Merry Christmas.

It’s November, news flash, it’s winter!

Very few days have peaked at 10°C, so it’s still autumn…

Anyway, the heating is definitely on. Which is a great time to get a new EPC (Energy Performance Certificate) done.

There’s no reason it cannot be done in the summer, any measurements are done in reverse, rather than heat getting out, you measure the heat getting in. In the UK, that doesn’t make much sense as we tend to protect against heat loss rather than heat gain.

Yawn, so you’re putting the house on the market?

No, definitely not, we’re in this for the long haul as it’s a goodish house (after all, you never figure out what’s wrong with a property until you are living in it) and we like the area. It gives us everything we need and there’s still enough to do to keep things interesting. We’ve got the rest of the hedge to do and…

Back to the point, please?

OK, sorry. EPC. Ours ran out , as per find energy certificate a while ago and there was some really useful information in it. We’ve done almost all it suggested (on the advice of Greenscape Ltd, we’re getting our water heated by solar PVs rather than a solar collector) and have indeed got our energy usage down considerably.

But it’s really a guess whether or not we’ve met the criteria for the next band.

Measuring will help us decide on our next steps.

Why not put it on the market to get a free EPC done for you?

I want a real one done not a sales one. £72 for the south of England is a decent price for someone to come out and assess rather than look at the figures. We’re lucky in having 251m² but we’re no longer a simple property. The solar cells are very standard but the vehicle to grid is exotic and skews the numbers. Looking at last month, it looks as if we’re burning 300.2kWh more in terms of electricity use but in reality that’s balancing the grid to the tune of 243.4kWh – 56.8kWh is what we’re really spending driving around (about £9 a month or if that electricity were generated by gas, 13kg of CO₂ per month).

What do you care, you’re paying for this and getting paid well for the feed in, so what?

I care a great deal about this, not least because the actions each and everyone of us takes, matters.

While COP26 has had the world leaders making promises, I feel it’s people who take the actions that impact the world. I feel I should be doing everything I can. Not because someone is telling me to but because I have a choice to be a positive or a negative impact on my world and the rest of the world.

My car is making a small impact as an 8 year old vehicle. But my house and how I choose to live in it has an impact every second of every day.

Why wouldn’t I want that to be as good as it can be?

(NB: I’m still largely working from home, so the 160kg of CO₂ for our car use is a little low. Obviously, like many, we’ve not been using our ICEs very much at all.).

COP26 is on in the UK and we are all looking at these leaders for what we need to do.

Living in the UK, the average person has a carbon footprint of 13 tonnes a year. Given a population of 67 million, that’s a huge national footprint.

So, where do you fit on that scale? Are you above the 13 tonnes?

Moving house in 2013, getting an electric car in January 2014 and finally making the move to solar panels in August 2014, we have a reasonable idea of what the house is doing. Even more so as we’ve taken the plunge with our vehicle to grid donations.

Since the 1st January, we’ve used a wapping 5.8mWh! But we’ve donated 1.7mWh leaving a consumption of 4.1mWh.

We’re using spare solar energy to save gas usage (on any sunny day), which has increased our electricity usage but our house usage is 4.1 tonnes instead of 4.9 tonnes thanks to these simple measures (excluding our donated electricity from the car). As we’re oscillating between 2 and 4 people in the house, we’ll keep it simple and say we’re two people – that’s 2.1 tonnes each as a max.

I don’t drink milk at all, though I do eat cheese and yoghurt. I have 6 meals a week (max) with meat in them. At least one is purely vegetarian though sometimes we do have more meat free food than that: I make my own soup which is often veggie – I don’t count these meals if they have cheese or cream in them. Most of the food we have is made fresh in the house. I buy tins where possible and unpackaged fruit and veg where possible.

My big thing is baths. My showers are frugal, barely 4 minutes of running water and I keep my water on the cool side, but I do have a 2 hour soaks in the bath. Where possible I try to do this when the solar power can heat the water afterwards, but it’s still my big luxury.

I don’t use bathroom cleaner

Yuk!

No, I use steam. It saves 10 or more plastic bottles a year, no to mention the chemicals. I fizz my own water, which saves many, many plastic water bottles. Where possible, water bottles are reduced.

I still wear a pair of dungerees I bought when I was 14. On average I spend £200 on clothing a year. Shoes typically last 5 years, outdoor coats 5-15 years. I buy classic styles so things don’t go out of fashion.

Yawn, so what?

Well, my carbon footprint is approximately 3.2 tonnes per annum. There’s more I could do. But it’s a start. Especially given the average footprint in the UK is 13 tonnes!

What’s your’s?

As you’re aware, we’ve swapped our old manual thermostatic radiator values with Tado’s “smart” ones.

Once the first one was done – even though we’d read the instructions and watched the video, this was still a 15 minute task for the first one.  We felt like fools but having sussed out the procedure, it took only a couple of minutes longer to do the next 6 as it took to do that very first one.

They’ve been in place for a week it seems to have been worth the effort not least as we have precise control over each and every room.

Don’t see why you think this would be of interest to anyone…

OK, but one of the interesting things the smart thermostatic controls do is measure air quality in the rooms.

Eh?

Well, they record various bits of information, one of which being the room’s humidity.

Now living in a damp country (today’s weather forecast says air humidity is 90%), there’s only so much you can easily do in our accommodation, but ideally, your living spaces should be between 50 and 60%.

Helpfully, given the outside conditions, Tado suggests opening a window to reduce our room’s humidity.  Which would be a really quick way to solve the issue if it wasn’t for the fact outside is wetter than within.

Still, in for a penny… and opening a couple of windows in the dampest room does allow us to bring the humidity down 5%.  Pretty impressive.  But nothing seems to lose that last couple of percentage points and as it’s actively raining outside, I close up the windows.

I’ve ensured all the vents are open on all the windows and doors are closed but short of getting the dehumidifier out, I think we might just be stuck until there’s a really dry day later in the year.

It does suggest keeping rooms warm enough to prevent mold, which can be harmful to life but again that tips away from having a window open all the time to combat the damp as during the winter, that’s a sure fire way to cool a room down.  Indeed, that radiator thermostats can automatically shut themselves down when they “sense” an open window to help preserve energy efficiency.

Of course, if it gets a bit cool…

Which may mean there’s no way to win this easily, other than keep an eye on it and adjust as required.  Keep the vents open on the windows and take the opportunity to air the rooms when we can.

It’s the UK, we do have a summer.  However brief…