A drought has been declared here in the UK. At least officially.

What does that mean, when do such declarations get made and is there an end in sight?

There is no definition of what a drought is. A sustained period of no rain, seems vague. Yes, we have had several ‘heat dome’ situations in the UK over the past 12 weeks. Yet ‘hose pipe bans’ only came in late June, early July. Why is it only a drought now?

Even if it wasn’t a drought, is there more I can do to control my costs? I’m one in one of the 60% of homes in England fitted with a water meter, so every drop counts.

Lovely winter.

It was wet and grey, an archetypal British winter, at least here in East Anglia. It meant that our reservoirs were pretty full, with both April and May having their usual amounts of rain. From the end of May through to August, it has been hot. But winter and spring meant the hot weather was buffered by stored water.

We don’t tend to water the garden from mains water. I feel that potable water is for people not for plants. Yet the grass was still green in early July. I remember driving to my parent’s place when I graduated in 1997 and the fields, verges, and gardens being brown in early June. Because of all the rain over early this year, the fields turning brown happened much later this time.

What can I do to help?

Here’s some of the things we’re doing:

Cooking.

Any wasted cooking or drinking water can be used for plants. Cool down water from boiling vegetables to room temp to water plant. Not only saving the waste water, the trace elements from the vegetables help give plants a bit of a boost.

If you have modern pipework, fill glasses and pots right from the start of letting the water flow. If not, catch that water for plants and cleaning.

Cleaning.

Washing up typically uses more water than a dishwasher, but there are things you can do. Washing knives, cooking utensils, and cutlery first in shallow water. The water will be very soapy, so rinse off into the bowl or sink. That provides more water for the bigger items. Save up to do a day’s washing up in one go, rather than many smaller washes during the day. Save a jug of cleanish dish water to wipe down the surfaces from cooking.

Fill up machines. Or use half loads. Keeping yourself clean, and deodorised, keeps your clothes clean.

Windows and cars just need to be useable not spotless and shiny.

I use a steam cleaner. One litre of water cleans four sinks, one bath, 2 windows, 5 floors, and one shower.

Gardening.

If a plant is already dead, water is not going to help. Do try to hang in there, what looks dead may just be asleep for the rest of the year. Plants have survival strategies like us.

Do not water grass, it is incredibly resilient, and is likely to pop up green with the next major shower. Be patient. Do not walk on it unless you weigh less than 10kg (22lbs – 1 stone 8lbs).

Hygiene.

Do not flush if you just urinate. When South Africa had a long drought a few years ago, they had a motto. ‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow, if it’s brown, flush it down’. It sounds gross, but we’ve been doing this for a while and it does make a difference to our water consumption.

Showers over baths, goes without saying. But turning off the water while you soap and shampoo can save just a little bit more. Waiting for the water to get hot is time I use to wash my feet.

Don’t shower or bath if you’re going to the gym later. If you think about it, you’re getting clean just to get dirty… Your skin will thank you too.

We’re not at the stage where you put a bucket in the shower to use to flush the toilet for when it’s brown… But ‘grey water’ from baths can also be used for this purpose. Before you empty the bath, collect a couple of buckets. Half a bucket covers the yellow flush, three quarters, a brown flush.

Hands do not need the tap running while you soap. Levered taps allow you to turn off the mixer or single taps to lather and rub for the recommended 20 seconds, before rinsing. Same for brushing teeth, though of course that’s two minutes!

NB: South Africa brought in many measures as the country survived a two and half year drought. When a drought starts, it becomes difficult to predict when it will end.

There has to be a better way?

Harvesting water yourself to be able to use at such times is not a new idea. Some take this to the final stage and purify the water for drinking, but toilets can use grey water with little processing required for rain water collection. I know one family who used the grey water for washing their clothes too. All you have is a storage tank, often underground, with your drainage going in to it from your roof, then a grey water circuit feeding the toilets and utility area. The owner was passionate about sustainable living, so sunk a water storage tank into the back garden.

If you really have the space, you can process your sewage too. Often seen in rural, off-grid, Grand Designs (Channel 4 in the UK) homes, they can filter it through SUDS (sustainable drainage systems), which then feeds reed beds to ‘polish’ the water to near potable standards. I saw a great example of this during the Carbon Charter Summer Event 2026, held at Pilgrims Barn, in Haughley, Suffolk.

But with a 6,000 litre tank, seems out of reach of many. Actually, such tanks are only 5.5m2 in area, and about 1.2m deep, often buried underground, this is an easy task for many new builds. What is difficult is their reed bed and swimming pond, which were bigger than our back garden and many of the plots previous houses have sat on!

But doing this for several houses in a new housing development would be achievable, much like ground source heat systems.

I love living in East Anglia, but we have very little rain in a good rainy year. We’re classed as semi-arid. Many more homes are being planned in the area, and without real thought about how that works in terms of SUDS and water reclamation, it is not going to be possible. Were you aware that water and sewage companies do not get involved in planning decisions until very late in the process, in England?

Apart from saving water waste, you haven’t talked about how you are doing?

Our smart water meter was fitted in March, and we have used it to try and be careful with water. We clean ourselves, our house, our plates, and our food, cook with it, etc.
Two adults over July used 6,976 litres. That makes our usage per person 112.5 litres a day.

The average usage in the UK is 139 – 142 litres. To ensure we have enough water for everyone, the Environment Agency is aiming to get down to 110 litres per person per day. We’re approaching that target but still have a way to go. Our usage was 117 litres per person per day in May. It’s not as good as June, which was 85 litres per day but we did spend 6 days away from home on holiday.

What do you do to save water? Any tips or tricks that keep life comfortable while reducing your needs on the essential liquid for life?

Yesterday was the first day this July we were using electricity supplied from the national grid.

In fact, since the middle of May this year, we have, where humanly possible, run ‘off-grid’.

Where humanly possible?

Some things are scuppering this philosophy. This sounds so ungrateful, but our electricity supply company gives us free hours of electricity and I am sorry, but I am going to try and use that.

We’ve also had three days where we just haven’t had enough of a chance to harvest and store enough from our solar cells.

But in June, we only spent £3.81 on electricity consumption. Our electricity is £0.2375 per kWh (aka as a unit), plus VAT of 5%, so £0.249375. So we used 16.2kWh from the grid. We also pay a standing charge of £0.5138 +VAT (£0.53949) a day.

Surely you would be better off with a cheaper contract!

I love doing this analysis, because our £20.22 in June was mostly the standing charge. Full stop exclamation mark. We could go for a contract with a cheaper per unit price.

Every single one of those has a much higher standing charge. When we’re producing our own electricity, it makes no sense to do that.

In many ways, I am not against that. In the UK, our energy companies are privately owned, and they are trying to make money. We are not a cash cow for them, exactly the opposite. I also like the fact we have the grid to fall back on. It needs investment to keep it working and up to date.

So, I willing accept a charge of £0.249375 per unit, so that my monthly bill in the summer is as low as possible.

How low did you go?

Good question, and you know I love my figures. Let’s do a month by month walk through.

May 2006.

I realise that to reduce our bills, I need to ‘go off-grid’. This means the Tesla Gateway is operating in ‘island mode’, so it is not feeding power back into the grid or taking power from the grid.  

In fact, this seems by far the best way to ensure we do not use anything more from the grid than we have to.

I have set up various rules on the Tesla Gateway to fit in with our energy provider’s rules on the free electricity (zero rated), but the Powerwall logic is really basic. We are limited to 1 kWh for an hour, the Powerwall seeing it as a cheap way to charge the battery means we have to buy electricity.

Self-powered mode again doesn’t really help if it sees protecting the battery from running too low for an hour as not being worth the effort during our ‘peak time’.

Telling the battery to only charge off the solar also doesn’t work. Being in island mode does. And keeping an eye on it.  When the battery gets to 100%, the gateway stops consumption from the solar panels. It effectively turns them off, safety passive cooling which isn’t helpful. At those points, I need to reconnect to the grid.

As I said, we didn’t start doing the off-grid thing until late-May. Basically, in terms of our Tesla Powerwall’s analysis and our electricity bill, you can see the difference it made.

I learnt a great deal during this time on how the Tesla made decisions. None of them seemed geared towards us, and the fact we wanted to reduce our carbon footprint, and take advantage of cheap electricity albeit with some rules.

June 2026.

I’m still fairly nervous about all this: forget the business imperative, I use insulin. During a heat wave, the most valuable commodity I own is my fridge which protects my insulin and keeps it effective. Without insulin I die. I would die from starvation, but not as quickly or as painfully.

But this is the first month we pretty much manage it. We have not had a stellar month compared to last year. But generating 401.6 kWh absolutely covers everything we use, and some. 401.6 – 353.4 = 48.2 kWh. Although it doesn’t appear on this month’s bill, we even manage to donate some spare energy once I realise we have to manually do that. The SEG payment was £0.23.

July 2026.

I am happy enough that, while there is a week to go, we have enough evidence to say the case is proven. This has worked for us. Again, compared to last year, we are not generating as much electricity from our solar cells. Their performance is still high, at 12 years old, we still get days at 21 kWh, it is just that is dependent on the weather. We’re also not ideal for mid-summer, the equinoxes are our peak generation time. The summer highs are purely down to how long the sun is in the sky.

We generated 298.9 kWh as I write this article and we have consumed 263.3 kWh. To quote Mr Micawber: annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen pounds nineteen and six, result happiness. Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds naught and six, result misery. We are using less than we’re earning, so we are very happy bunnies.

I’m noticing July is more than June, and your usage is really high.

Yes, there is a whole extra day in July, and that makes a difference.

Yes, we power an electric car. This makes electricity much more valuable for us: every unit we use to drive the car means we’re not buying petrol or diesel. We haven’t had gas heating our rooms or water since 2024.

We cook, clean (washing machine, hot water, vacuum, dishwasher), have powered vehicles, have lighted rooms when it is night, work, and entertain ourselves from our electricity. Electricity is doing everything for us.

It’s more than many people use, but it might explain the difference. When we’re asleep, our background usage is between 100 and 300 W an hour. Before we got the batteries, I worked out what was taking electricity, and if possible, changed the devices or our behaviour to bring our requirements as low as possible.

Before April, our base usage was 200 – 400W but we swapped out a router and its wifi extenders and that has made a huge difference.

The big question is, how long does your battery last?

We answered this question many times when we first had the EV!

During the summer, the 27kWh batteries provide two and half days guaranteed. Longer if we make an effort or are out of the house. I have connected to the grid for our free hours of electricity today.

Well, “Driving off the grid” is.

Excited to announce that our journey towards sustainability has been transformed into a Spotify podcast!

“Driving off the grid” explores the steps we took to decarbonise our lives and the insights we’ve gained along the way. You can listen to the podcast here: “Driving off the grid” on Spotify, or on Audible or Apple.

This podcast is built from the research material I compiled for my blog. I hope you find it interesting and gives you with valuable insights into how we took our home from EPC C to EPC B, and beyond.

Unusually, I got thermodynamics in physics. Heat is all about vibration of molecules rubbing together or hitting each other. Small amounts of friction taking and giving off energy.

Which brings me to today’s subject. It is inspired by a throw away comment my husband made this morning. Would the recent heat waves would change the priorities of home builders in the UK, i.e. build them to keep them cool as well as warm?

I live in a temperate country, we have seasons. The things that help us keep warm in the winter are terrible for keeping us cool in the summer. I’m talking of the principles of solar gain, trapping heat indoors, and heating via hot water,

Except one of those. Trapping heat is actually a preventative measure in keeping cool. Good insulation is terrible for losing heat, but if you maintain your thermal envelope, a room can keep up to 5°C cooler than outside. This is how many architectures work in deserts and the tropics. Long before chemical and mechanical heat exchangers were used.

If we look at how more traditional methods work, we see highly efficient and mechanically simple designs appearing all over the world. Carpets are not placed on floors in Middle Eastern countries but are used as a barrier to prevent the heat stowed in the wall material from heating the air in a home during the day. Exactly the same idea as cavity wall insulation in a modern UK home.

I’m not hanging carpets and rugs up on my wall this weekend!

I’m not suggesting you do. I am saying, appreciate that you may be lucky enough to have some help already built in to the fabric of your home.

What about solar gain? I have to say I’m closing my blinds and curtains but it’s not making much difference!

You have to combine it with other passive measures. If you have good insulation – once the heat is in there, it needs a channel to escape from.

Let’s look at our bedroom, it faces due south so bakes in the afternoon sun. At 20:00 last night it was 30.2°C.

I opened the windows at 20:25 (east facing and south facing) in the room and the temperature got down to 26.8°C by the time we got to bed at 22:30. Because we’ve been using this approach regularly, we are now comfortable sleeping that warm. We have a flat sheet between us and the world that helps our bodies wick sweat away. My skin temperature is maintaining its usual levels. According to Samsung Health, my sleep is off good quality.

We are not even using a fan at the moment, overnight. Our offices are the only places where we are using such devices: the office machinery driving up temperatures during the day.

But that still sleeping in a room whose air temp is 26°C!

That is 9°C warmer than the WHO recommends for most people. Actually, for older adults the recommendation is up to 25°C. We are heading to those warmer temperature needs.

But my husband’s comments are valid. Air to air heat pumps providing “heat and air” would give the UK inhabitants the freedom they need to respond to the weather.

Retro-fitting is non-trivial. To prevent heat channels (both losses and gains) and condensation paths, such measures need to be built in to the fabric of the structures. As they are in office blocks.

Not what you are doing today then?

Like many, we’re looking at fabric blinds to shield from the sun over the summer. Our triple glazing will give us insulation during the winter, But if you lack triple glazing, external, insulated shutters can boost your U-values for your windows and doors.

Our sail downstairs helps to protect the lounge from direct sun in the day time.

We then use passive cooling to remediate any gains made. All for significantly less than running air-con in terms of installation, running, and maintenance costs.

We have a rule in our house since 2020: if you buy another kitchen gadget, something has to be given to a charity shop or sold.

So much to unpack here, don’t you mean stakes in the ground?

No, I don’t, we’re talking about food. Let me continue.

OK, but wait, you have a ginormous kitchen. You don’t need to do that!

Maybe, but we’d soon run out of room. Plus, how many gadgets sit in cupboards unused about the world?

So what makes the cut for you?

After my years of cooking and living in a kitchen, these are the basics.

Food processor.

I started off with a food mixer, but actually, if space was short, I would have a smallish food processor. You can make pastry, meringue, stuffing, mayonnaise, salads, soups, even bread if you get one with a dough hook.

Combination microwave.

From roasting to soups, to flans, rice, puddings, proving dough, cooking fish, and eggs. I’ve had a microwave since I was 20, and am now on my third – they typically last 15 years. Sterilising baby’s bottles and warming the milk. Making toast. Warms up instantly and when I am on my own provides tasty meals in minutes. Cost effectively too.

Mine has a fan oven, so it doubles as our air fryer. The microwave function means they self-clean too.

Bread machine.

This is my luxury tool but mine gives me so much. Fresh small loaves that last a week and are done while I sleep. I do pizza doughs, baguettes, and rolls, which I finish off in another oven, and tea cakes.

Mine is ancient, but is still going strong. I have a fund to replace it when the time comes, if it can’t be repaired.

Hand blender.

So, if you have a food mixer, the question I have is do you really need a hand blender? Probably not. But a very basic unit with a metal blade allows you to make soups in your microwave with so little washing up.

Of course, many have attachments, so if you are not sure you want a dough hook on your big food processor, forget the big food processor and get a grater and slicer attachment for your hand blender. Most of it goes straight in the dishwasher too.

When my son buys his own place, I am getting this as a house warming present. For those on a budget, a fully kitted out Braun Multiquick 9 can be bought in 2026 for £130, e.g. Curry’s offer.

You can even get a potato ricer in this kit!

Food mixer or no food mixer?

So, I don’t have a dedicated food processor because I got a food mixer (Kenwood Chef) when my grandma down-sized. There’s an argument I don’t need the Bread Maker, because I have my food mixer.

What being given this did for me was allow me to add attachments over the years.

1. Mixer – the basic function, but you can buy different tools and bowls to give you more options. I have the whisk, dough hook, k-beater, and creamer. I don’t have the folding tool yet.
2. Pasta roller – to make spaghetti and lasagna.
3. Blender – to make soups and shakes and mayonnaise.
4. Mincer – I make my own mince. For burgers and meatballs or sausages! And gives the name of this article, a grounding in what you need as I make steak mince into delicious custom burgers.
5. Pasta shaper – for linguini, macaroni, and orecchiette, and fusilli.
6. Food processor – which changed my life. All of it goes in the dishwasher. Dicer, graters, “mixer blade”, and adjustable blade. It’s a great tool as you can make pastry with from the freezer butter!
7. Continuous Slicer Grater Attachment – which allows you to do the slicing and grating option of a food processing but without limitation – I got this before the food processor. Technically, I may not need this any more…
8. Fruit Press Attachment – juice seeded fruit to get something without the seeds. Not an essential.
9. Blend Xtract Sport Attachment – love this, I use it for milkshakes. Everything goes in the dishwasher!
10. A coffee grinder.
11. A smaller grinder for bread crumbs. I use this where a pestle and mortar is required.

It is a very capable tool and I have used everything. Over the summer, I use the sport attachment a great deal with produce from the garden.

I make my own pasta. Fresh pasta is amazing and the Kenwood kneads the pasta dough, then allows me to roll out the shapes I need. Priceless. Homemade lasagna is something I do twice a year (if you read the recipe, you see why, not the effort, it’s the calories), and it is amazing.

The continuous slicer told me a food processor would be worthwhile, and I use the food processor four or five times a week, though the grater and “mixing blade” more than anything else.

It helped me work out what I needed and if someone offers you one, get it if you can squeeze it into you kitchen. But if space is an issue, a hand blender will give you 80% of the functionality.

Toaster.

If you have a grill, you can make toast. Our combination microwave gives us this capability, so maybe.

Kettle and coffee maker.

I am going to be controversial and say, maybe. The modern kettles are incredible, 95% efficient. The same could be said for the modern coffee maker. Both take room on your counter.

Induction hob.

This is a fourth place item – teamed with a combination microwave, this gives you the ability to cook multiple things at once in a variety of ways. As efficient and with timers and programmes can be a real aid. If you have a hob, this is the one to go for.

I have cooked on old element electric hobs, gas, induction and halogen. For quick food, and real controllability, induction wins hands down. Halogens I think do some things better. Gas is versatile, but nowhere near as efficient. If you miss the “flame” cooking, a hand held cooking blow torch does the job.

If you had to have four things?

Food processor (with all the attachments), stick blender for soups, induction hob, combination microwave. I could live with these. The others give me flexibility but these are my essentials.

As I’ve said, my bread maker is my luxury item. I could live with the four above, but the bread maker brings a smile to my face.

I’ve had my own website since 2008 (long story, not relevant here). It was compromised in 2009. I was away from home, and while I had backups, there was no way I could get to them. It taught me a few things though: the compromise was completely my fault, so my website had to survive the human element.

In some ways, it led to my career in cybersecurity. It taught me to listen to what was going on in the world in this regard, and to be professional and intentional in my actions if it was for personal use. It’s also allowed me to recover from three attacks against my personal web site.

I’m sharing with you what I now do, and how I got there. But to summarise, my defence in depth is:

1. Firewall zoning: only letting legitimate traffic through.
2. FireHOL level1: blocks entire known-bad netblocks at firewalld, never reaches the webservers – I have seven, don’t ask, some proxying others.
   Also protects the other end points: secure shell, VNC.
3. Web application firewall: CrowdSec community + third-party blocklists, pre-emptive IP bans from collective intelligence
   • samj/ban-browserless — catches browserless scrapers on first hit
   • samj/path-throttle — catches aggressive crawlers even with a UA
   • CrowdSec built-in scenarios — SSH brute force, CVE probing, bad user agents etc.
4. My webserver’s security modules.
5. Backups. Always take backups. We’re talking about “business continuity” here, so things can happen and you need a safe place to get back to.

Each of these has a dedicated purpose. Each is simple to set up initially, the tuning can be finicky. Claude and Gemini can be your friends here, as can the community sites.

Let’s look at what each one does and some tools that can help you. My server is a linux one (what are clouds made of? Linux servers mostly!). Windows and Mac often have ports of these tools.

Firewall zoning.

This looks like gobbledygook when you first see it, and in some ways it is. There’s a lot of jargon for some simple ideas that are really powerful when used well.

My server has a “software firewall” running on it. If you use PCs, this is what Windows Defender is. In linux, there are two common ones in use: ufw and firewall-cmd.

Each of these allow you to specify rules. The rules I have on mine allow services in and out depending on the zone (or area) the traffic is coming from or going to.

I run various tools: webservers, webservices (subtly different), remote access, etc.

But I also want to allow my machines to receive mail messages, chats, and web traffic in general. So, the firewall not only allows information to be requested and sent, but make requests and receive traffic. We call this one way traffic (in or out) or bidirectional (both in and out).

Every server is unique and you should sit down and think about what you need or are trying to achieve. What are you sharing and what are you protecting? What is shared with the world or with your family and friends or with no-one?

FireHOL level1.

The next part of this software firewall is white listing and black listing. Believe it or not, there are “black lists” available out there which hold the IP addresses of the bad actors.

That’s a big statement, let’s break it down. An IP address is the location of a machine on the internet. Every machine has a unique address, and there are families of addresses, called subnets. A “bad actor” is a person or programme that is trying to perform a cyber attack. We don’t tend to use the term hacker in the community because we all creatively find solutions – some are for good purposes, some for bad. “Bad actor” says what the aim of that individual is.

This was one of the first things I ever did for my server. I formed a “black list” from the people who were trying to break into my machine. Now-a-days, I download a published list from https://iplists.firehol.org/files/firehol_level1.netset, hence the name of this section!

This forms a “drop list”, when a machine (it could be a person or a programme) talks to my server, if their IP address is in the drop list, their connection is dropped. They can’t do anything more than ask “can I connect” and be told “no”.

I automate the application of updates to this list.

Web application firewall aka WAF.

OK, there are a few ways to do this, and many people choose tools like https://dash.cloudflare.com/ to protect their websites – these often do more besides, and as a beginner, I would recommend them.

I choose not to do that, using https://app.crowdsec.net/ running on my machine.

Either option gives you protection over what anyone, anywhere, is allowed to do on your website and what they can’t do.

This is limited to website traffic. Very powerful tools, very complicated, but can protect your site from being downloaded on to someone else’s machine and used for their purposes.

WAF form their own “drop lists”, so if an IP address has been compromised and an automated programme (a “bot”) is trying to cause mischief, the WAF will block them.

The webserver’s security modules.

Webservers often have security modules and “hardening techniques”. Hardening techniques are setting things up in the most secure but accessible way possible.

In my case, I only let some functions of my wiki and this blog be available to registered users who have logged in.

If you are trying to do something you are not allowed to:

But a user who has logged in can.

Backups.

Active defence is ideal, but do not rely on it. A power cut could render the disks on your server unusable: I had this happen to me today, which prompted this blog.

Thanks to my backup I was able to recover the site in less than 20 minutes. I have some offline and some online, the offline ones protect against a ransomware attack.

Or if the powercut rendered all the disks in my server unusable, the offline backup means I can quickly launch a new server with most of the work retained.

There are two approaches to backups:

• Total: application, its configuration, and its data.
• Data and configuration only.

Data and configuration can mean a new install of an application or service takes 10 minutes, but you have a full service available.

A total can be as little as 2 minutes – depending on how big it is – once you have a working machine.

If you do nothing else, do backups! Test them regularly – are they doing what you need them to and allowing you to recover your service as quickly as possible?

A closing note

There’s so much here I haven’t spoken about. Operating system, application, and service hardening, virus checkers, security policies, user management, zero trust…

But this is a good starting point to, hopefully, whet your appetite for exploring those subjects.

Wait a sec, you spoke about three attacks on your home web site? What happened?

First one in 2009, I left open a priviledged ssh access with a weak password. Someone got in and deleted all the files making up my website. They couldn’t do anything else because I have always performed zero trust policies on my server, something you get for free in linux. Backups allowed me to restore everything, but first I removed the account, ensured people needed a certificate to get into any account, and put in a zoned firewall with intelligent blocking. If you kept trying to get into my machine with ssh and kept failing, your ip address was blocked. I still get 6,000 odd tries a day, but without a key against an accessible user, you are not getting in. The router firewall also protects by shielding probes against all the machines in our network.

Second attack was on the 16th March, a distributed denial of service one: multiple bots were trying to access my site at once. I tightened up my web server’s security module definitions. Service was resumed.

Third one was the 13th May, another denial of service attack with more than a 1,000 hits per second. This is when I brought in the WAF. I am still being hit that hard, but the WAF means it doesn’t hurt my server.

The subjects we’ve explored in this post are all the things I have had to do to secure my site. I hope they help you secure yours.

Surely, you are taking stock…

No, absolutely not. I am taking the carcass from our roast chicken and making a pint of stock. All in 28 minutes. Got to love microwaves.

In fact, from an eco point of view, it’s not been a bad few days. After four brilliant solar generation days, we have had some cloud the past couple, and we still have some power in our battery. All thanks to the power house of a cooker in the corner of our kitchen.

The heat pump is doing its part and keeping the water warm: our room thermostats and insulation mean that the radiators do not come on again until the rooms cool down considerably. Our water is a barmy 57°C, all thanks to the heat exchanger in the heat pump. So far today we have spent (including VAT), 5p on heating our hot water, only we haven’t because we have been using the battery and our solar generated energy to do that for us.

Which is the thing at the moment. We’re not the only ones benefiting from the investment made in renewable energy sources. A south facing system 4.5kW in the UK generally saves you £575 per annum in 2026. Such a system, including fitting, typically costs around £8,000: which gives you a pay back of 13 years. Probably less, as energy prices are likely to rise in reaction to the cost of petrol.

We were asked by our neighbour if our battery was worthwhile. My husband said no over the winter, largely because we have made the decision to keep a tariff with a lower standing charge. That makes sense to us because we get a number of days where we are powered without drawing from the grid for much of May, June, July, and August. It’s silly for us to be on a tariff that gives us cheap electricity per unit but charges us more standing charge. The average standing charge is £0.5721 a day, we pay £0.53949 or £197 a year. Many battery or heat pump focused tariffs, the standing charge is over £0.65 a day or £237 a year.

We get around 123 days where we don’t us much from the grid at all, so having a cheap rate for what we do use makes little sense to us if it drives up our non-using day charges.

It makes perfect sense if we didn’t have the solar panels and the batteries. Which is why it really pays to understand what your core needs are and where investing in panels or batteries or both makes sense.

Of course, our solar system has now “come of age” or at least would be celebrating its bar mitzvah were it a person. Because of FIT, it paid for itself relatively quickly and we are considering getting a second system to give us to wider generation options. During the winter we get around 7 hours of generation time on a good day, in the summer that goes up to 12 hours, but putting panels facing east and west could extend that to nearly 16 hours. It would improve how much we could generate in the winter too, from reflected photons.

As global warming is here, other considerations need to be made. Summers in the UK are likely to be hotter and drier, and the winters wetter and cloudier with biting cold snaps. We are considering passive cooling systems, especially window shutters.

Making stock, then?

Making stock. Reducing the food we waste and turning our generated and stored power into something we can eat. A soup during the week, may be a chicken pie or a chicken risotto too.

Simple, really.

I hate networking, small talk, trying…

No, I am not talking about that.

I am talking about one of the wonders of modern life, the LAN (local area network) in your house.

For some, this is synonymous with Wifi, of course, coming from a telecoms work life, we have an odd assortment of different devices and connection methodologies which we really do need to rationalise at some point…

Which was all fine until the Tesla stopped talking to our old network router completely about three weeks ago. On its own, we could have lasted quite a long time without the ability to go off-grid at a moments notice, but an annoying consequence of this was the component nearest to house was in the habit of beeping every five minutes.

Having some friends who are much more informed and experienced in these things, we bought a new router and you should be experiencing the joys of this equipment.

We certainly are! Faster wifi, consistently running in every room for a fraction of the power outlay. For a start, instead of needing three satellite pods to reach every part of our long house, we have one.

Wifi 7 seems to just work and at 46 Gbps (46,000,000,000 bits per second) is a bit nippier than wifi 6’s 9.6 Gbps. Of course, this is a little meaningless as our internet is limited to 915 Mbps download and 953 Mbps upload – internally we’re quick but it doesn’t make a great deal of difference when speaking to the outside world. Of course, Wifi 7 gives us more than a speed boost: this standard has far more resilience and increased bandwidth: which basically means we can support far more devices, if we need to, without issues!

We have a few legacy devices round the house which have their own dedicated area networks, allowing them to function and keep safe. Such networks are not as secure, so they cannot reach any of the computers et al that need such protection in terms of encryption and secure passwords.

This ability to create such segregated networks should allow our home control to provide great service for many years to come. The router itself will allow us to make that move at our leisure when we’re ready.

This is all about your automated home!

Not just that. Yes, much of our great energy performance is thanks to controllable devices, but on top of that is the services we provide for work and leisure. Being able to cast our phones to all our TVs, watching Apple TV et al.

Even our scales talk to our network, so we can monitor our weight, helping us make conscious decisions about what we’re eating and cooking. We should not forget the faithful 2016 internet tablet that lets us see the recipes I have published to help us reduce our cholesterol and increase our fibre in-take.

That’s without talking about our working. My husband enjoys working from home a few days a week and my new business is based here: even though much of it is run in the cloud, enjoying working from home is saving me money on office space.

But the combination of new and old is a battle many of us now face. Thankfully, I have never used WEP, but this has been unanimously dropped from all newly updated routers.

Having these separate subnets in our LAN means we can securely manage this, while retaining the services.

So how did it go?

Got the new one up and running in less than 10 minutes, and got 90% of the devices working without faff. A few things were picky and needed a special subnet, properly secured. We’re very happy with the new setup. And enjoying the benefits of good networking.

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 only 7 million meet the insulation standards set after 1976. Only 1.6 million meet the newest set of standards, set in 2003.

Given that the average home uses 12 MWh of gas for heating, insulating to today’s standards would lower that bill to 9 MWh, saving approx. £172.20 at £0.0574 per kWh of gas. When prices go up to £0.0733, that is worth £219.90, per annum.

Spread that over 13.9 million homes, and that reduces the UK’s gas usage by 41.7 TWh, a cost of about £2.4 billion if the gas price is £0.0574p per kWh. Prices are about to go up to £0.0733 in the UK on the 1^st July 2026, making that total worth £3.1 bn.

Let’s look at what you can do to “get your house up to code” and make these savings. This is going to be one of three in a series looking at insulation for your house. Starting with the roof, the walls, and, finally, the ceilings and the floors. In this entry, we’re talking about your roof, or your house’s hat.

Reaching, very reaching…

I try. In the UK, all new houses were fitted with roof insulation since 1973 in response to the burgeoning energy crisis.

I’ve a strong sense of deja vu

Indeed, much like the global economic situation we find ourselves in now. Back in 1973, that insulation was typically mineral wool (often fibre glass). Before then, mineral wool laid to 28mm in depth, and was seen in some homes from as early as 1965. 1973 saw that rise to 60-70mm… Actually, let’s see that in a table and a graph.

Year	Minimum requirement (mm)	Estimated U-value (W/m2K)
1960	0	2.5
1973	60	0.6
1976	70	0.5
1985	100	0.35
1990	150	0.25
1995	200	0.2
2002	250	0.18
2003	270	0.16

Here is a quick reminder on what the u-value is (aka the thermal transmittance). The u-value measures the rate of heat transfer through a material, divided by the difference in temperature across that material. A lower numbered u-value is better, the limit being 0W/m²K – or zero difference in the heat being lost. The graph above let’s us see that we can dramatically reduce the amount of heat lost by increasing the thickness of the roof insulation, if the insulation material is mineral wool.

Some things not obvious from the results.

A couple of things to realise here.

1. The thickness of the insulation is achieved by layering different pieces of rock wool together. Though these days it can be bought in 50mm thick slabs too, in which case you would buy six layers to achieve 270mm.
2. When climbing about your loft, ensure your feet touch only the beams and girders. Your plasterboard ceiling will not appreciate any weight on it!
3. While it can be done as a DIY job, protective equipment is essential. Rock wool/mineral wool/fibre glass insulation is made from small particles that can be absorbed through the nose and lungs, skin, and eyes. Therefore, the following is required:
   • Breathing equipment and respiratory filters up to standard FFP2 or P3, disposable ones are best.
   • Wearing tightly fitting safety googles, fitted over glasses. This is to protect against air born fibre fragments.
   • Good boots are essential. Leather or thick soled and padded working boots.
   • Long sleeved and trousered, loose fitting clothing. This means any material that brushes against you is caught by the clothing and not absorbed through the skin. A type 5 (dust tight) coverall is ideal.
   • Heavy duty gloves with a good layer of protection.
   • Ideally a hard hat and protection for the head, ear, and neck against brushing against the material.

Young children and pets should be kept away from the area. Dust sheets sealing the loft hatches can help keep exposure contained, otherwise any fibres need to be vacuumed using a HEPA filter, or use a damp cloth which can be binned, and wear gloves while you wipe up the residual dust.

Sounds scary.

Sorry, but I needed to ensure anyone inspired to renew or install from scratch their loft insulation knew that safety equipment wasn’t optional. Of course, you can pay specialists who have this equipment to do the work for you.

Newer versions of stone or fibre glass mineral wool come with layer of reflective material for better infrared insulation.

Of course, you can also use sheep’s wool, with products often called thermafleece, that are produced from that renewable of sources, the common or garden sheep. That doesn’t need as much safety equipment to install.

Having installed it, mineral wool is good for 30-50 years where it is not compressed, it is protected from the elements, and rodent or pest ingestion or habitation. Ensure there are no heavy boxes stopping your base layers from being compressed. A u-value of 0.16 W/m²K is an amazing level to sit at. Of course, the UK building standards mean that this is baked into new builds, and any renovations being performed.

Where the loft insulation material is damaged, or thermal bridging occurs, it is worth refreshing the loft.

So, install it once, and we’re sorted?

A couple of things to appreciate, if you are doing it yourself.

• Any gaps provide a thermal bridge. If you are using a roll, make sure your layers overlap.
• Any compression reduce the performance. If you are thinking of boarding out the loft, ensure the posts you are using will allow that 270mm to sit without being squeezed.
• Ensure the rock wool sits against the ceiling boards and over the girders and beams.
• Venting – ironically, you don’t want any thermal bridging but it is essential to ensure the roof itself, above the thermal insulation, can breathe to prevent damp.

These are things the professionals build into their designs which you must consider when doing the job on your home.

Then all done?

This is an amazing start. But there are things done on newer builds that are worth considering.

1. Celotex between roof rafters, sitting the house side of the roof underlay. These sit on laths, allowing 50mm gap between the membrane and the Celotex to allow everything to breathe. This technique allows you to butt right up against the rafters and even cover them with a thin strip of Celotex to prevent a thermal bridge.
2. Dormer windows are really difficult to insulate well. Consider a plan to allow a box of insulation to be created but allow that air gap.
3. Steel girders, even powder coated ones, need special attention. They are often boxed in Celotex. This is to stop the steel beams and columns getting cold and allowing water to condense on them. This is not a DIY task, because if it get it wrong, you risk dramatically shortening the life of these critical building elements.

Good luck with your roof’s insulation project, I hope I’ve provided food for thought.

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 work, exhausted, and think, “I’m buying a fan or air-con unit,” as we find ourselves stuck in the fiery furnace of our own living rooms. Indeed, that was the very advice I was giving this time last week.

I thought I would share exactly what we did, and when we did it, and whether it actually worked. So, here is a measured look at our strategy, tracked through the detailed data provided by our Tado smart radiator and room thermostats.

The strategy.

As I mentioned in the blog, we set up to test the thermal resilience of our building and window infrastructure by following the advice of keeping windows shut and curtains closed. We were not alone in this, talking our usual evening postprandial, many of our neighbours were doing the same thing, many south, east, and west facing windows were shuttered against the sun.

But did it work?

Basically, yes, but we did manage it.

First post on this subject was the 22^nd May, today is the 30^th May. Let’s track our bedroom over that period (why this room? Well I don’t know about you, but when hot weather happens, you need a place you can be cool where you sleep).

So, not looking too bad. The curtains are blocking the heat. You can see on the 23^rd, we cooled the room by opening our windows after sunset. Having had French windows fitted, we opened them and the en-suite velux window wide open, which created a through draft. I shut the door to the landing and left the room to it. You can see when we went closed them too, at 10pm ish.

You can see this impact on Sunday, that sharp drop, again just post sunset.

The Monday, with people back on the road, our weather forecast may have said 29°C, but the thermometer for the Viessman reported 31°C! Same pattern and by the time we went to bed, the room was a comfortable 22°C.

Now, we have not used a fan to help.

Tuesday 26^th May, and the first outside forecast of over 30°C.

You can see I was late in opening the windows, but if anything that helped as the air was cooler.

We forgot and opened the draws on the 27^th May, so despite a cooler forecast, we were in a similar position until the magic time when the windows were flung open and the cool air can come in.

Again on the 28^th.

Only this time, I didn’t open the windows like I did on Friday.

The pattern was repeated in all our south facing rooms. Many have not required windows being opened and if they have, we were reasonably disciplined about ensuring it was post sun-down.

Isn’t it easier just to plug in a fan and forget about it? Or buy air-con?

The short answer is yes. But shall we examine those options.

If you buy a fan, and plug it in, moving hot air around with a motor, which is generating heat, is not going to work long term. You need to ventilate. Should we have used a fan at the same time? Interesting question, but actually, we didn’t need to and our “summer fan” is still in the loft.

Air-con is really efficient, but again needs to be vented and maintained. When I ask people about when they last changed their filters and topped up the fluid, I generally get met by a blank stare.

I have to say, if we’d had “heat and air” in the house for our air pump, so we could get it to cool during hot weather…

But we don’t.

Actually, talking of the heat pump…

I did completely switch off the heating circuit, and the heat exchanger has pretty much coped without needs to run the fan at all. Our hot water has used:

Day	Electricity (kWh)	Heat generated (kWh)
23/05/2026	1.25	6.51
24/05/2026	1.55	7.05
25/05/2026	2.44	11.9
26/05/2026	1.25	6.58
27/05/2026	1.4	5.93
28/05/2026	2.3	11.6
29/05/2026	1.54	6.63
30/05/2026	1.85	9.85
Total	13.58	66.05

Which gives us a SPF of 66.05 / 13.58 = 4.89. Which is not as good as we get for doing the heating circuit, in the spring, when we need to heat, the SPF is typically above 6!

Still, it is better than we get for the solar diverter.

What about the days when it was above 1.6 kWh? These are days when we’ve done many loads of washing or had a bath and the water went from its usual 58°C to 33°C. It is allowed to use a bit more in those circumstances. I also did a hygiene programme on Thursday.

Solar generation-wise, we have done really well since the 23rd. We have had a day where we have been up over 99% self-powered. Even charging the car by 60%. Because we used passive cooling, our power consumption a day was typically 10kWh for a house that is 244m², that’s 4.1kWh per 100m² which is passive house territory.

Global warming not an issue for you then?

This is not good for the UK and our flora and fauna. Being human, we can use tools to adapt, but this is not yet past the point where people can’t make a real difference.

This is happening everywhere, to people who don’t have the luxury of well insulated houses and free electricity to power fans and air-con. Even if we had heat and air, it’s a shock to walk out of rooms chilled to 18°C when it’s 35°C outside. Who wants that?