Small things matter

[Bugtownboy]

Sod it - I saw this advertisement and thought ‘that’s the way to go to get the fire started’

Works every time. Can recommend

[Joeboy]

Ripley Rocks!

We watched 1 thru 7 in Crete, was brilliant.

Summer is defo over up here. A wee nip in the air mornings. Off down to Tyndrum for gold panning next couple a days. Hoping weather will be kind.

It's strange but kinda cool how after 5 months solid solar it's defo waning and the woodstove is now ascendant. Not needed am yet but won't be long....

[Mr Gus]

I don't waste anything that should & could go on the fire, so sweepings & a few crumpled pages of the local paper for that initial "oomph" chimney warming & spread of flame to the chunkier blocks of hardwood.

But yeah, the billhook (straight edge as per picture) is my go to & the splinters it produces are gratifying to see for the fire to take before it builds up to hit up the larger, thicker low lying stuff.

Get your head in the zone, instruct the wife that the rule is NO Interruptions, NO exceptions, ..you want your fingers as is.

My billhooks are as sharp as hell. (3 on rotation) I just do not trust the weight of a hatchet they are too iffy.

[Bugtownboy]

Still in shorts and not much else down here

House still at 22-23 with no thought of heating - still amazes me how only a few hundred miles has such a difference. I know there’s an elevation/E-W/attitude/humidity thing, but it really demonstrates the variability in heating requirements and their effects on energy usage.

Appreciate it also has an impact on PV generation - good to see your figures, Joe. Very impressive.

[nowty]

Will just about finish off August without any meaningful import (7kWh leccy and 30kWh for gas in Aug) but its been hard for the last 3 days. Quite cool and very thick cloud, solar PV down to under 20kwh per day, starting to get dark earlier too.

Having to run the heatpump early morning to keep house toasty and hot water full, EV is 75% and house battery at 50 %. Cooked roast chicken this evening so residual heat from electric oven keeping house warm.

We usually go to Oct without any import but the EV, the heatpump and leaving the gas combi off are making it difficult with these continuous cloudy conditions.

PS - Watched Aliens - Covenant only a few nights ago, I thought I had not seen it before, but eventually realised I had, my memory definitely on the decline.

[Joeboy]

Still in shorts and not much else down here

House still at 22-23 with no thought of heating - still amazes me how only a few hundred miles has such a difference. I know there’s an elevation/E-W/attitude/humidity thing, but it really demonstrates the variability in heating requirements and their effects on energy usage.

Appreciate it also has an impact on PV generation - good to see your figures, Joe. Very impressive.

A wee anecdote, I worked on and off in Norway for decades. Thought I was used to the differences the incremental moves North make. Imagine my surprise when we'd sailed North from Stavanger in May, up the coast, well into the circle. Did a month offshore, we then made land in Tromso beginning of June and there was a foot of snow just fallen the night before. Absolutely jaw dropping.

Hoping Sept makes a comeback, wouldn't mind a wee Scottish Indian Summer. Might even see that fabled 22-23 outdoors.

I know where you are coming from Nowty, we had 42% soc at sunset. Ran the evening ok and then dumped the remaining lot into the EV.

[Joeboy]

Penny dropped yesterday as I was scratch cooking an Arabiata sauce on the woodstove. The penny was the email I received on Friday from Octopus on the cap of 30p kWh E & 6p kWh G on tracker. Like most of you guys I'm in this to be more green based. A different reality leaks in though at these prices and I am very happy with where we are on self sufficient (mostly) for power.

This reality massively changes the payback on the systems we own and make them even better value for money.

Plus, there's the excellent over 50's workout that is supplying your own log store! We use it all, bark, chips, logs. Just make sure it's dry dry before our final use.
PV was cranking out 5.1kWh earlier for a while, fallen back to 4kWh now, i'll happily take that, thank you!

[Stinsy]

This “self sufficiency” thing struck home at the beginning of the pandemic. We didn’t know how bad things were going to get. It seemed possible that a significant proportion of people employed to deliver grid power could have been sick or even dead. Multi-day outages could have been commonplace. Even my modest solar/battery setup provides all the power I can use on the sunniest days and could keep the essentials running on even overcast days.

Obviously things didn’t go in that direction but society remains perilously balanced, it is nice to be prepared!

[Joeboy]

SWMBO & I spoke about just that yesterday. It was off the back of a gold rush episode we watched. A line in it was how important seasoned firewood is in Haines Alaska after a horrendous natural disaster. A strip of hill was liquidied by heavy rains and slid off the hill taking two houses and two lives with it straight into the fjord. Straight out they said, it's critical, heating, hot water and cooking. Exactly how we try to do it.

Back onto PV though, it becomes a whole other thing quickly when prices are rocketing and as you say 'how well staffed are the plants'. I think i'll get a UPS for our network hub.

Did I see something the other day saying that Tesla is going to be power trading? I immediately flashed to Enron. Aye, there's something to be said about generating and storing your own!

I'm not crying doom but the mind makes these connections on its own!

[Stinsy]

I've got one of these:

https://www.ebuyer.com/704438-apc-back- ... s-bx1400ui

It is connected to the wifi router and the PoE switch that powers the CCTV cameras. Runs for about 2.5 hrs in the event of an outage. It has 2x 7Ah Lead-acid batteries arranged in a 24V array that are "non-replacable" but one failed after 3 years so I swapped both for (identical) generic ones from Amazon. Some people swap the batteries for LiFePO4 batteries sold in the same form factor, other people externally mount large (eg 110Ah) batteries for extended runtime.