What Preps are you doing this week? Part 12

[Yorkshire Andy]

Thanks Y A
Learned a lot tonight about what hapoens if gas goes out
The house to house individually sounds so bad what a job it's going to be ...as Peter said this is someone chopping through a mains and taking out thousands of properties by accident. ..
Can you imagine a deliberate act and how the public would respond .

It's cause chaos and thats a semi rural area imagine a big industrial area

[GillyBee]

Time to buy shares in a hot water bottle company and in a camp cooker supplier?
I hate to think how our locality would cope if the gas went out. Londoners are so unused to outages that they go into shock at even a tiny problem. (With the notable exception of commuter trains which everyone expects to give trouble.)

[Yorkshire Andy]

Time to buy shares in a hot water bottle company and in a camp cooker supplier?
I hate to think how our locality would cope if the gas went out. Londoners are so unused to outages that they go into shock at even a tiny problem. (With the notable exception of commuter trains which everyone expects to give trouble.)

Got one each for the kids chucked ours out last week ment to pick a new one up today but forgot... boyes it is tomorrow

Boyes is a original department store think B&m but mainly branded stuff not cheap China tat similar to Wilkinsons but most have a proper haberdashery decent tool / car section / clothing / kitchen stuff / fireplace parts

https://www.boyes.co.uk/storelocator

[Frnc]

Got the monitor plug for my electric rad. Got it set up and seems to work ok. Tells me how many kWh it's used each hour, day, and currently. First hour this morning it used 0.23 kWh, exactly what I had predicted actually. Obviously energy use will reduce as the room warms up. Central heating isn't really coming on yet, most of the time. It might come on in a bit, but I was up early so it's not time yet. Another advantage to the electric radiator.

The radiator itself is a million times better than my old fan heater, so a great investment. Doesn't use much electricity, gets the room to the temp I want, and keeps it there. I do turn it off for a bit when the room's warm enough. Convection makes the whole room the same temperature. It's a 700w Dimplex. Quite compact, only about a foot long.

[Peter]

We have a dimplex, at half power for a couple of hours gets a large room warm for the whole evening.

[diamond lil]

I think the basic old-style preps really need to be held onto like grim death. Hot water bottles, old style tin openers, and basic common sense. My daughter's friend went into meltdown when her electric kettle died and she couldn't get a new one for 3 days. She didn't have the sense to use an ordinary cooking pot to heat the water!!!

[Frnc]

Dimplex used 2.08 kWh yesterday. Central heating never came on. I was up about 19 hours, so I think that's pretty good. Obviously it's not very cold yet. I open my window for a bit most days to bring drier air into the house.

Ordered a new extension lead. I wanted one with individual switches. ChatGPT reckons it's safe to use the timer on the energy monitor plug, so the Dimplex gets shut down by it before I go to sleep. I wanted the swithes so the power is off when I plug and unplug things. Ordered Masterpug one, as they are a good brand.

Also ordered a separate switched Masterplug extension to use for my hair dryer in a spare socket. This avoids having to keep unplugging the radiator.

The energy monitor plug sticks out at the 'top' (side where there is one prong), so you need an extension that has room for that. Some Masterplug ones look like it wouldn't work with them.

[GillyBee]

I think the basic old-style preps really need to be held onto like grim death. Hot water bottles, old style tin openers, and basic common sense. My daughter's friend went into meltdown when her electric kettle died and she couldn't get a new one for 3 days. She didn't have the sense to use an ordinary cooking pot to heat the water!!!

Hear! Hear! If things really go south it is those very basic preps that will hold on the longest.

[Frnc]

Ordered 30 packets of Koka noodles. Installed my two new extension leads. Have the Tapo energy monitor plug for the electric radiator on schedule to turn off at 21.30 every night. In the morning I just press the side button on the Tapo to turn it back on. It was intended for occasional monitoring, but I think I'll be leaving it on all winter to get an accurate measure of energy use.

Ordered samples for a living room blind. I already have a Roman blind, but it's either up, down, or up a bit. Leaving it down if I go away, or out for any length of time, is not ideal, but burglars can see in if it's up. The samples are for a Venetian blind that will stick to the glass, covering just the bottom half of the window, up to just above eye level. So I can leave the Roman up, and the Venetian down, but semi open. I think the combo should look ok and be practical. I have a Venetian and curtains in my room, and the combo looks good and is very functional.

I'm trying to train myself not to wake up ridiculously early, so I'm getting some sunlight as soon as it rises. Then I'll block it out, so it doesn't blind me or make it hard to see my tv/monitor. In the meantime I've put a bright natural light reading lamp on, but not 'til about 06.30.

[Yorkshire Andy]

Got the wife's winter tyres put on the car today before the cold weather arrives