Keeping your home warm / heating / energy crisis / insulation etc

There's always a risk, is all I am saying. It's worth careful consideration. :)

A friend of mine got a spurious CCJ, which meant he couldn't get a credit card, which in turn meant he could continue his balance transfer juggling act, and had to borrow £10k from a mate (not me - before I end up in Golf Club again).

I would hazard a guess that they are slightly less thermally efficient

gas prices have hit a 12 month low in the last few weeks, panic over peeps
lower bills on their way

turn the heating up and get those shorts back on round the house

No chance, they are quick to put it up but slower than a week in the jail to put it down.

There are a whole host of reasons, both regulatory and commercial, for why prices will be slow to fall. The two big ones are hedging (this hampering energy suppliers ability to drop prices), and the OFGEM market stabilisation charge (MSC) which aims to ease out sudden movements in price.

Any good supplier will hedge energy costs, you’ve seen the impact on those that don’t do this well in 2022. It does mean prices are slow to fall but it also allows supplier to offer competitive tariffs when the market isn’t as rosy.

The second (MSC) is a direct result of the first where a number of suppliers who hadn’t hedged well went under and OFGEM stepped in with regulation to make it less attractive to be risky.

Is there a forum-approved, energy-efficient, plug-in heater for keeping one room toasty for a couple of hours without turning the central heating on?!

I looked at this recently. Basically all electric heaters are as efficient as each other (electricity in equals heat out) so I just got the cheapest one from Argos. Costs about 70p an hour to get the room up to temperature and then about 10-15p pet hour to maintain it for me.

Ditto Aggi above. Got a cheap 1.8kWh from Argos (challenge?), small and discrete when not needed, hot enough when it is. Bit noisy, but about 1p/min to run. Keep my home office (1m cube) warm enough if needed to top up during the day.

I’ve found it’s very much an instant heat, but it doesn’t linger in the same way as turning on central heating so good for a top up, not great for constant use.

Parents have an electric oil filled radiator which is much better at the longer term warmth, but a fair bit bigger!

yeh I use an oil filled, takes longer to get warm but them retains the heat longer once off, fan heaters are great if you have a well insulated space and just need to get it up to temp quickly

Does everyone else's oil rad make a lot of lound banging noises now and again?

I got one for the kids room to keep it warm in the night and when it turns on and off it clicks loud. Then it seems to bang several times at occasions I guess due to heating or cooling.

Mine just makes creaking/clicking noises on warm up really

Yeah, it clicks audibly when turning on/off and then bangs a bit warming or cooling. It's quite loud though.
As it turns on and off during the night to warm and cool it makes noises.

Yeh thermostat clicks on and off and some pops and crackles as it warms but nothing that loud

Lol.

Bulb are being a shower of cunts with regard to dealing with this; after emailing photographic evidence of historic meter readings, as per their request, they're now saying this cannot be dealt with via email, and to call "quoting this reference number".

When calling, every agent I speak to claims to have no record of the reference number, or any previous emails, then hangs up.

What the fuck do I do now?

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Go to the Press

They don't get to tell you that it can't be dealt with over email.

Document, write a complaint, dispute the amount, then escalate to the Energy Ombudsman if they do nothing in 8 weeks, or it is deadlocked.

Interesting article on electric wallpaper:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-64402524

@ectoplasmosis we are stuck in this bullshit back and forth with Bulb with incorrect or estimated readings even though we have a smart meter.

Every month we get an estimated bill and we then waste an hour of ours lives trying to get them to accept an actual reading. Then they send back a different fucking estimated bill!

It’s not on the scale of yours in terms of £££ but it’s very frustrating.

When do Octopus actually take over Bulb proper?

After raising a complaint (which was hilariously deemed ‘resolved’ before I’d even had a chance to respond to the irrelevant copypasta sent by an agent with a thirst pic selfie attached to her email) and threatening with ombudsman and press, Bulb finally ‘readjusted’ my bills, silently, with no acknowledgement or apology.

I’m however now left with no way to adjust my direct debit amount to anything lower than £780/month lol

I’m however now left with no way to adjust my direct debit amount to anything lower than £780/month lol

Your bank may be able to help. I had a problem years ago with a registered DD taking more than they should and my bank (Barclays) was able to put a limit on the amount they could take with the DD.

the hidden wallpaper, usually installed in the ceiling

I noticed on my last Bulb bill they said it was based on estimated readings and then reading on saw it was actuals. Not quite sure why.

On some companies I’ve got around that by cancelling the direct debit and it’ll let you choose a new amount when you set it up again.

We did a spreadsheet exercise on gas and electricity usage over the last few years, because we had largely been on estimated usage due to a broken gas meter.

Looking at the data and charts are interesting because you can see the usage impact of Covid, maternity leave, working from home, holidays, particularly cold/hot spells, building an extension. You can map life events with a couple of colourful lines.

Thats just using monthly KWH figures, the amount of data and analysis you could do (and probably is being done) on Tesco clubcard points and supermarket shopping data is insane.

Yeah we have a similar problem with Octopus, we've just moved house and despite us having a smart meter, they're charging our DD based on estimates. Estimates which are obviously based on historical data for the property which before us was lived in by a family of 4, its just 2 of us living here now both working full time so we are being massively overcharged on the estimates.

They told me that the estimates are only readjusted once a year, so basically we'll have a year of massive overcharging I assume.