Category: House & domestic
CO2 equivalent
I’ve just changed my energy tariff. Octopus are now starting to offer one-year fixed price deals again, and for the sake of certainty I’ve gone with it. It’s £106 a month fixed, instead of the £110 a month I’m currently putting in against expenditure on a variable tariff, though unusually for Octopus there’s a charge if I leave early. As part of this, they sent me an up-to-date summary of my energy usage for the year – see pic. That prompted me to re-check my annual CO2 equivalent emissions, and led to this post on Facebook:
My CO2equivalent emissions will always be higher than I’d like – it comes of living on my own. But over the past three years I’ve pushed it down from 7.67 tonnes CO2e to 6.99 CO2e, which I’m rather pleased about: it’s just over a 10% reduction. That’s the full list, calculated by https://www.carbonindependent.org/ ,which includes a standard 1.1 tonnes allowance to cover the thing I incur as part of society – health, education, hospitals, armed forces etc.
It’s due to a whole host of small changes, mainly affecting domestic energy consumption. Things like using a multi-tier steamer for veg on an induction hob, instead of three separate saucepans. Slow-cooker not oven. Investing in a couple of smart switches, so it’s easy to turn all the hifi, TV, printer etc completely off instead of on standby. Every little helps!
aaargh! plumbing! aaargh!
Fibre-to-premises
The changeover was followed by a busy three hours of scrabbling round to tell all relevant devices about the new router – so far, I’ve found 14 of them! Laptop, phone, desktop, iPad, Ring doorbell, Ring chimes x2, smart sockets x2, Fire TV stick, laserjet printer, fall alarm wristband, deskjet printer/scanner, and wireless thermostat. There may be other devices I’ve forgotten … no doubt they’ll make themselves felt in due course.
And, for anyone I haven’t told, this means that I no longer have a landline.
indoor orchids
coffee table flowers
Vile day !
A miserable day here: grey and overcast with occasional drizzle, and a maximum temperature around 13/14C. I put up with it as long as I could, but taking a couple of slices of bread out of the freezer triggered a most unexpected and unseasonal attack of Raynaud’s, so (for the first time in six weeks) I put the heating on.
It took five hours, and a snooze under a warm blanket, for the Raynaud’s to wear off, and now I have the after-effects of pins and needles and hot flushes in my hands. Anyone would think it was December rather than July!
Aaargh !
My much-loved Moto One phone was dying – as I keep it in my rear jeans pocket, the back took up the shape of my posterior, while the front remained flat, leading to it peeling apart!
Having bought a replacement Moto G9 power) before going away, I have now wrestled with transferring everything. No doubt I’ll discover assorted things where passwords etc will need to be found / re-done, but the basics are now working.
yuccas
vile weather
It’s not cold – the central heating didn’t even come on this morning – but vilely damp everywhere. Not good for aches and pains, especially as I’ve stopped taking multiple painkillers I needed to get through Local Election day (tramadol, in particular, is rather addictive, so I limit myself to three days at a time).
So, if we’re going to have February-like weather, I’ll treat it like February! A small fire is lit, and there’s a covered bowl of crumpet batter beside it, waiting in the warm for the yeast to do its wonderful work. That will take an hour or so, and a little snooze will pass the time …
It turned out to be one of the most successful batches of crumpets I’ve ever made – nearly all of them came out with an appropriate number of holes. I’d forgotten that I usually halve the recipe, so having had two at teatime there will be six to go in the freezer for future rainy days … though I think we’ve had our ration of those recently!