blonde poker forum
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
March 28, 2024, 04:09:28 PM

Login with username, password and session length
Search:     Advanced search
2272476 Posts in 66752 Topics by 16945 Members
Latest Member: Zula
* Home Help Arcade Search Calendar Guidelines Login Register
+  blonde poker forum
|-+  Community Forums
| |-+  The Lounge
| | |-+  As the saying go’s....
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic. « previous next »
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 Go Down Print
Author Topic: As the saying go’s....  (Read 6187 times)
Longines
Gamesmaster
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 3798


View Profile
« Reply #15 on: October 18, 2019, 02:49:21 PM »

I'm pretty much pescatarian now, can't remember the last time I ate red meat. At home it's either fish or vegan meatballs, mince etc. or veg chillis, curries etc.

I'm the nut worst for forgetting to take a bag to the supermarket, was pleased to see Morrisons now only have paper bags to buy.

Meat substitutes suck. If they ever find something decent I'd happily switch.

https://www.waitrose.com/ecom/products/vivera-veggie-shawarma-kebab/472425-629172-629173

Our eldest son is vegan and makes doner kebabs with this stuff, tastes awesome imo.
Logged
EvilPie
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 14253



View Profile
« Reply #16 on: October 18, 2019, 04:09:40 PM »

I went as green as I could when doing a recent house refurb. Solar panels, loads of insulation, LEDs everywhere, air source heat pump.

Also got a battery to store the excess solar produced during the day but they aren't really eco.

The house doesn't have gas at all and my net usage is about 2000kWh for a year. It was 20000kWh at my old house when you added gas and electric and that was an EPC 'C' so not exactly terrible.

I'll be getting an electric car in April. I was probably getting one anyway but the changes to BIK taking them down to 0% makes it an absolute no brainer in my circumstances.

I try to do as much as I can but I'm under no illusions that I'm in any way 'eco'. I could live in a house a quarter of the size and plan on buying a Renault Zoe instead of a Tesla but I don't because I like nice things. I just try to do my best whilst maintaining the standard of living I like to enjoy.

My land fill wheelie bin gets put out about once every two months. I generate one small bag of waste per week and the rest gets recycled. The recycling bin only goes out every 6 weeks or so as well.

I avoid single use plastic wherever I can but it's so difficult.

Work gets through an obscene amount of unnecessary plastic mainly from suppliers. The amount of items that are individually packaged in plastic bags is disgusting. Some of them are changing to use cardboard instead. It doesn't seem that much better to me but these days it's all about single use plastic so we're switching to cardboard where possible.


Logged

Motivational speeches at their best:

"Because thats what living is, the 6 inches in front of your face......" - Patrick Leonard - 10th May 2015
Karabiner
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 22737


James Webb Telescope


View Profile
« Reply #17 on: October 18, 2019, 07:59:21 PM »

I'm thinking of giving up apostrophes.

Was almost red meat free during the summer months when local fresh veggies were abundant but falling off that wagon now.

I find stews irresistable during the winter.
Logged

"Golf is deceptively simple and endlessly complicated. It satisfies the soul and frustrates the intellect. It is at the same time maddening and rewarding and it is without a doubt the greatest game that mankind has ever invented." - Arnold Palmer aka The King.
4KSuited
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 1147



View Profile
« Reply #18 on: October 18, 2019, 09:25:28 PM »

The most significant change I’ve made recently is carrying my own coffee cup to work. A rough calculation is that I use 400 fewer disposable cups and save £200 a year from the reduced cost.

Oh, and the coffee tastes so much better.
Logged
vegaslover
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 4618


View Profile
« Reply #19 on: October 18, 2019, 10:12:15 PM »

I went as green as I could when doing a recent house refurb. Solar panels, loads of insulation, LEDs everywhere, air source heat pump.

Also got a battery to store the excess solar produced during the day but they aren't really eco.

The house doesn't have gas at all and my net usage is about 2000kWh for a year. It was 20000kWh at my old house when you added gas and electric and that was an EPC 'C' so not exactly terrible.

I'll be getting an electric car in April. I was probably getting one anyway but the changes to BIK taking them down to 0% makes it an absolute no brainer in my circumstances.

I try to do as much as I can but I'm under no illusions that I'm in any way 'eco'. I could live in a house a quarter of the size and plan on buying a Renault Zoe instead of a Tesla but I don't because I like nice things. I just try to do my best whilst maintaining the standard of living I like to enjoy.

My land fill wheelie bin gets put out about once every two months. I generate one small bag of waste per week and the rest gets recycled. The recycling bin only goes out every 6 weeks or so as well.

I avoid single use plastic wherever I can but it's so difficult.

Work gets through an obscene amount of unnecessary plastic mainly from suppliers. The amount of items that are individually packaged in plastic bags is disgusting. Some of them are changing to use cardboard instead. It doesn't seem that much better to me but these days it's all about single use plastic so we're switching to cardboard where possible.




How long do you think it will be before viable battery storage options are available for the home Matt?
Last time I dropped into the college near me, one of the level 4 guys was also there and said he though it was at least 3 or 4 years away before we start to see them. Obviously the energy companies don't want to see people making and storing their own electricity.
Logged
RED-DOG
International Lover World Wide Playboy
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46911



View Profile WWW
« Reply #20 on: October 18, 2019, 10:33:07 PM »



I wonder when they will make a battery that doesn't degrade?

The phone companies would sulfate themselves.
Logged

The older I get, the better I was.
bobAlike
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 5922


View Profile
« Reply #21 on: October 19, 2019, 05:14:18 PM »



I wonder when they will make a battery that doesn't degrade?

The phone companies would sulfate themselves.

Sulfate?
Logged

Ah! The element of surprise
RED-DOG
International Lover World Wide Playboy
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46911



View Profile WWW
« Reply #22 on: October 19, 2019, 06:01:07 PM »



I wonder when they will make a battery that doesn't degrade?

The phone companies would sulfate themselves.

Sulfate?

It's a technical term we battery geeks use.
Logged

The older I get, the better I was.
EvilPie
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 14253



View Profile
« Reply #23 on: October 19, 2019, 07:53:31 PM »

I’m glad something had come up like this.

Now and then I do online shopping (when a promo), but I am appalled by supermarkets on how they pack their groceries. Ocado recently sent me my order with 7 bags, but yet it would fit in three. They told me it’s how products are packed. This is similar across all supermarkets. I literally get a multi-pack guna & bog roll in one bag. In that bag they could have included much more.

It’s worrying when this is happening across all supermarkets. How much plastic is this wasting?

A lot of supermarkets now do bagless home deliveries.

Tesco only do bagless deliveries for home deliveries now (they stopped offering the bagged service a few months ago).

This is a great example of where someone like Aaron could make a genuine difference.

Simply shop at Tesco instead of Ocado but also let Ocado know the reason you're boycotting them. If they change their ways you'll go back, if not then you'll never shop there again.
Logged

Motivational speeches at their best:

"Because thats what living is, the 6 inches in front of your face......" - Patrick Leonard - 10th May 2015
EvilPie
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 14253



View Profile
« Reply #24 on: October 19, 2019, 08:37:25 PM »

I went as green as I could when doing a recent house refurb. Solar panels, loads of insulation, LEDs everywhere, air source heat pump.

Also got a battery to store the excess solar produced during the day but they aren't really eco.

The house doesn't have gas at all and my net usage is about 2000kWh for a year. It was 20000kWh at my old house when you added gas and electric and that was an EPC 'C' so not exactly terrible.

I'll be getting an electric car in April. I was probably getting one anyway but the changes to BIK taking them down to 0% makes it an absolute no brainer in my circumstances.

I try to do as much as I can but I'm under no illusions that I'm in any way 'eco'. I could live in a house a quarter of the size and plan on buying a Renault Zoe instead of a Tesla but I don't because I like nice things. I just try to do my best whilst maintaining the standard of living I like to enjoy.

My land fill wheelie bin gets put out about once every two months. I generate one small bag of waste per week and the rest gets recycled. The recycling bin only goes out every 6 weeks or so as well.

I avoid single use plastic wherever I can but it's so difficult.

Work gets through an obscene amount of unnecessary plastic mainly from suppliers. The amount of items that are individually packaged in plastic bags is disgusting. Some of them are changing to use cardboard instead. It doesn't seem that much better to me but these days it's all about single use plastic so we're switching to cardboard where possible.




How long do you think it will be before viable battery storage options are available for the home Matt?
Last time I dropped into the college near me, one of the level 4 guys was also there and said he though it was at least 3 or 4 years away before we start to see them. Obviously the energy companies don't want to see people making and storing their own electricity.

Incoming essay........

3 or 4 years seems reasonable but in my opinion it's not because of battery prices but more the energy companies getting on board that they'll become feasible.

Even if the price of the actual batteries comes down you have other associated costs that won't change. Tesla are quick to point out that a battery 'only' costs £5000. Once you add an inverter, controller and a bloke to fit the thing you're at £7200 which adds significantly to the payback period. So if the battery prices halve in the next 5 years which I guess they will you're still looking at just shy of £5k for a battery once fitted which makes them a luxury item for geeks rather than an essential item for the financially savvy.

The savings that I make don't mainly come from the solar panels charging up the battery although that obviously helps. During winter I can charge the battery on my economy 7 electric and then use that during the day to power my heat pump through the evening. Over the last 12 months I've purchased about 500kWh of peak electric and 3200 of off-peak. It means my total bill including heating is about £360 per year.

This works well for me because my usage of electric is high due to the air source heat pump providing my heating. If I was on gas then I'd never save enough on my electric bill to make either the battery or solar viable.

What's starting to happen now though is a few energy companies will let you charge your battery during cheap hours and then discharge it back to the grid during expensive hours. Thanks to 'smart' tech it can all be done automatically and any person with a compatible battery can become their own mini supplier. You may be able to buy 10kWh off the energy company at low demand time for 50p and then sell it back during peak demand for £1.50.

It doesn't seem a lot but when you're talking double figure year pay back times then every pound counts.

I need to write a separate post here. This is a TL;DR already

Logged

Motivational speeches at their best:

"Because thats what living is, the 6 inches in front of your face......" - Patrick Leonard - 10th May 2015
EvilPie
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 14253



View Profile
« Reply #25 on: October 19, 2019, 09:14:05 PM »

Incoming geek post:

Going back to a previous point here's some food for thought about the financial viability of solar and batteries:

I spend £360 per year on my electric bill and zero on gas because I don't have it.

Let's say most people spend £1200 per year on their bills then I'm £840 better off which seems nice.

The battery and solar package together cost about £13000. However the saving I make wouldn't be realised if I hadn't also spent £7000 on a air source heat pump. This means I'm in for £20k to achieve a saving of £840 over what I would've paid had I just gone gas/electric. Let's say a gas boiler would've cost £2000 anyway so it's actually cost £18k on day one

You don't need a calculator to see that the payback period is one hell of a long time if we just leave it at that.

Now let's bring in our friendly Government and their various eco incentives. I get £282 per quarter for 7 years on the heat pump which is about £7900. Heat pumps are incredibly efficient so you get an incentive due to the reduced carbon emissions they produce. For every kWh of energy that goes in to a heat pump you get about 3kWh of heat out meaning they're 300% efficient compared to the best gas boilers at about 85 to 90% efficient. You can also power a heat pump using renewable energy which then makes them 100% carbon free. How nice is that Smiley 

I also get £240 per year for 20 years on the solar panels

So now the saving over the first 7 years is £7900 + (240 x 7) + (840 x 7) = ££15460

So we're nearly there right..... Still saving £840 per year and getting £240 for the panels so let's call it 9 years to break even woohoo!!

But now I'm going to throw a huge spanner in the works.... My house is ridiculously efficient. This means that my bills wouldn't be anywhere near average if I was on standard gas/electric. They'd actually be closer to £800 per year. My saving is now down to £440 from the previous £840

So the new saving over the first 7 years is £7900 + (240 x 7) + (440 x 7) = £12660

The savings in year 8 through to 20 is £680 so to get to our magic break even figure of £18k you've got another 8 years making a total of 15 years.

There's myriad assumptions in here of course so the true figure would be probably be different although your guess is as good as mine if it would be better or worse.

What the above quick calc illustrates I think is that you can't look at any one item in isolation. Each eco thing you do has an effect on the payback time of the others. For me the starting point was solar on it's own. Adding a battery increased the payback time. Adding the heat pump reduced the payback time. Making the house more efficient which we obviously all should (must) do increases the payback time.

House insulation is one of the most counter intuitive things when it comes to calculations. You have to have a well insulated house for a heat pump to be effective. If you have a well insulated house your bills without a heat pump would be reduced anyway so your payback on buying solar/battery/heat pump gets much longer. So what do you do?

Lot's of people will tell you that they save this on their panels and that on their batteries but they're in cloud cuckoo land. They live in a dream world and haven't actually calculated out the true cost taking in to account the opportunity cost of everything they've done. One thing they never take in to account is what the £18k up front would've made over the 15 year payback if they invested it at 5% ROI. That makes quite a difference doesn't it. I could've just insulated my house to the same standard, stuck £18k in an investment of some kind and paid my £800 per year bills using the returns.

I think I best stop. I'm a complete geek with all this, I did all the above calculations prior to buying anything 'eco' but still went ahead happy in the knowledge that it wasn't that great a financial move. You can't really put a price on the 'feel good' factor and that's what it came down to for me.

Cliffs: I'm a geek.

Logged

Motivational speeches at their best:

"Because thats what living is, the 6 inches in front of your face......" - Patrick Leonard - 10th May 2015
booder
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 12769


Lazy , Hazy days


View Profile WWW
« Reply #26 on: October 19, 2019, 09:41:31 PM »

Post more.
Logged

Quote from: action man
im not speculating, either, but id have been pretty peeved if i missed the thread and i ended up getting clipped, kindly accepting a lift home.

In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.
Martin Luther King Jr
RED-DOG
International Lover World Wide Playboy
Global Moderator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 46911



View Profile WWW
« Reply #27 on: October 19, 2019, 10:02:45 PM »

Great stuff Matt. I love Geeky.

I feel better about my phone post now.
Logged

The older I get, the better I was.
tikay
Administrator
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: I am a geek!!



View Profile
« Reply #28 on: October 19, 2019, 10:18:52 PM »


Matt.

Extraordinary stuff.

Solid reasoning, carefully considered, intelligent, efficient, and - take this as a compliment - a dyed in the wool financial life nit.

And yet when you play poker...
Logged

All details of the 2016 Vegas Staking Adventure can be found via this link - http://bit.ly/1pdQZDY (copyright Anthony James Kendall, 2016).
DropTheHammer
Hero Member
*****
Offline Offline

Posts: 1057



View Profile
« Reply #29 on: October 19, 2019, 10:39:28 PM »

EvilPie that is really interesting I may have to PM you as I am going to be building a house soon and have decided to go down the air source heat pump/underfloor heating route and not have gas. Did you get triple glazed windows? We are keen on installing rainwater caputure so we can flush our toilets and wash our clothes with rain water. Don't see the point in using treated water for that type of thing! The tank will sit underground in the garden and can also be used to water the plants. If all new-builds had these tanks then it would somewhat counter-balance the risk of flooding from having paved over a load of farmland/fields.

We'll be using bamboo flooring inside, which is over twice as hard as oak and more sustainable because of how quick it grows.


I have cut down on meat massively and am keenly trying out all the meat alternatives out there. I've been pleasantly surprised at how nice they are. Particular favourites are Linda McCartney sausage rolls and Quorn scotch eggs, both of which are delicious and taste identical to what they're mimicking. Moving towards a plant-based diet really does seem to be beneficial for the body, environment, animals.
Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4 Go Up Print 
« previous next »
Jump to:  

Powered by MySQL Powered by PHP Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines Valid XHTML 1.0! Valid CSS!
Page created in 0.214 seconds with 20 queries.