Minus 6 here in semi rural Northants when I got up a few minutes before sunrise.
Now up to minus 3.6 but not forecast to get more than a degree above freezing all day.
That comes from our weather station sensor on the pergola at the end of the garden probably close enough to houses for them to leak a bit of heat. Will be interesting to see what the max/min in the caravan says. It's well out in the open and in what appears to be a frost pocket.
Got the heating on constant for the first time in years.
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Google etc says outside is -7 and has been since about 2am.
When I woke my bedroom was at 12 - no heating on overnight. It now says it's 15. (As measured by a reasonably reliable device)
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It's minus 4 outside at the moment.
Not the time to discover a burst water main up the road (which we have).
Walked past at 14:00 yesterday with no issues: returned 90 minutes later from the other direction to find water running fast down the road. It's not gushing, but it isn't a trickle - enough volume and speed to keep running in overnight temperatures below minus 6.
It's percolating through the pavement like a dispersed spring, and then heading to the road edge. Far enough up the road for me not to worry whether it's on my part of the pipe, rather than Severn Trent's, but the neighbour whose property it adjoins is a bit concerned (from appearance and his meter/stop tap location I don't think he should be).
Reported it just before 15:00 yesterday and got a "Crime Number" (job reference) which resolutely fails to track any info (though it should). It did appear on their incident map sometime around 19:00, though, with the target for repair being set at "by 20/1"! (The leak is not minor, and is enough to make us wonder about water pressure further up the road).
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Currently -2.9C at an elevation of 123m with an overnight low of -5.7C just after 8am. Will need to put another pensioner on the fire soon.
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7 degrees 'ere in Godforsaken Cornwall
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>> 7 degrees 'ere in Godforsaken Cornwall
+ 7, that's toasty.
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Toasty indoors - 20 degrees, too warm for me really but ASHP/programmer
Playing up.
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Currently 3% here on the south east coast.
Was -4 at night.
Tiler has popped around to tile the bathroom and says many people have fallen over roads are very icy still (at 9:30 ish).
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Was -5 here last night,-3 when I left, my screen was didn't cut it. Had to stop en route, and get stronger stuff.
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We had it as high as +4.8 an hour or so ago but it's dropping like a stone now.
I suspect the temperature sensor on the weather station's external sender is slightly prone to over reading when in sunlight.
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We've got the room temperature set to 16 overnight and when I got up for a P at 2am the Heat pump was running and the radiators were warm. Mind you, what wouldn't they give for that in LA?
Temperatures are forecast to rise over the next month.
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SWM said it was -6 when she came in an hour ago. She also said water was gushing from the outside tap onto the path down the side of the hovel. My heart sank. I keep all the kit I need for minor plumbing repair but it wasn't the right time to sort it. Better than 2am though !
First job was to urn off on the pavement. Bit difficult to get the lid off but it did come after clearing the ice away. We were graced with a nice cuddly new stopcock last year. It's only 6 inches down and just needs a quarter of a turn. It works.
I noticed that the water was pouring out vertically from the back of the tap so I assumed it was the compression joint and I was right. Armed with a Mole, adjustable wrench and a new 15mm olive, and a work chair I found the pipe had dropped a few mms in the joint, Nipped it back up, got SWM to put the water back on and all is ok. Heating back on @ 19 degs. Thank God it wasn't a full plumbing job !
Tues/Weds I haven't been able to open the RAV but it's opened since, with some difficulty. It heats uo quickly so sitting with it running for ten minutes cleared all the glass and I was able to use it.
Ted
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My CH pump started grumbling yesterday; sounds as though it's grinding up its innards.
Turned the speed down a bit and it seems OK. Engineer booked for Monday.
Pump was replaced relatively recently so a bit of a disappointment that it's gone 'zup.
If it'd failed completely I could probably manage to replace it. Various local Screwfix and similar have an identical one in stock.
Failing that it'd be over to get the caravan and live in that for a couple of days.
Interesting how much thermal gain there is in the house even from low winter sun. We don't heat the bedroom as we're warm enough with a duvet and residual heat from the rest of the house for 99% of the time. Kept the door shut this afternoon and it's toasty in there.
One thing we've learned living at home with just two of us is that the house has cool spots. What used to by Miss B's room is mega chilly. A bigger rad, or dual panel one, might solve that. Working out which room doors to open and which to close at different times of day has been interesting.
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As part of my recent kitchen refurb we replaced a 900mm rad with a much larger type 22 rad (2 panels, 2 sets of fins) in the very cold kitchen extension. It still never gets proper warm there ( - it never will, with largely uninsulated flat roof and walls) but it's now nowhere near as bad as it was. It wouldn't have been helped by an underfloor leak in the pipe work to the old rad which my man said could have been there for years. The new one has been done with all new pipe runs. And I've just icked up a larger rad for the hall from Screwfix today.
We've just had a nice sunny late morn/afternoon and so I set off the new dishwasher on its 65 degree 1h cycle, and SWMBO put a load of washing in - hopefully that won't have cost us much as the solar panels were churning it out pretty well most of the time. Makes up a bit for yesterday, which from 0800 to 2000 was all in the 70 to 85p pkWh range except 16:30 to 19:30 which hit the cap of 99.9p per kWh. We went out for most of the day so my whole day only averaged 47p a kWh so not so bad (only a bit over 7 kWh used).
Last edited by: smokie on Sat 11 Jan 25 at 16:14
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A bit warmer today. Above freezing before sunrise and the cars have thawed.
Ground still frozen in places. One side of the cul de sac gets no sun at all at this time of the year so I guess that'll take a few hours of the 3+ we're forecast for the middle of the day.
No more air frost on the outlook for the next week but cold enough for frost pockets to be dodgy when driving.
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Have been doing a lot of short trips over the past few days and cold weather really hits the range especially as I like to prewarm car. In effect though it just means I just charge the car more often. Getting in a warm car free of ice is really a luxury after decades of spraying de-icer and scraping.
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Intense cold for the last few nights, prior to that is was -4c most nights for about 2 weeks and still around zero through the day.
Today, the car was frosty but car cleared by 8.30 - car said outside temp was 3C when I was out - could be 4/5C today.
Tomorrow forecast is 10 to 12 C - almost tropical!
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>> Have been doing a lot of short trips over the past few days and cold
>> weather really hits the range especially as I like to prewarm car.
I prewarm the Skoda with it still plugged in, so it doesn’t affect the range. Does yours not work that way?
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My brother has his EV on timer to charge at cheapest rates through the night so he tells me if pre heating in the morning, it takes from the battery as it isn’t charging at that point.
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“I prewarm the Skoda with it still plugged in, so it doesn't affect the range. Does yours not work that way?”
I use OVO Charge Anytime which selects when it will charge based on my selected target time. Cost is 7p per KwH. I could override that when prewarming but that would mean paying 28p per KwH which doesn’t make economic sense.
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>> I use OVO Charge Anytime which selects when it will charge based on my selected
>> target time. Cost is 7p per KwH. I could override that when prewarming but that
>> would mean paying 28p per KwH which doesn’t make economic sense.
Ah, thanks. I was trying to see if other cars don’t have the ability to do what I do now, as I’m on the cusp of changing - though can’t find anything to change to - or whether it was a choice you’d made.
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>> A bit warmer today. Above freezing before sunrise and the cars have thawed.
-4 in Essex at 09:00 this morning.
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Only 1 degree here at the moment but a thick blanket of snow.
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Air temperature above freezing now but cars are frozen.
Forecast to be warmer from today on but still at/close to freezing at night.
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Complete change since yesterday 8.30
Yesterday Today
zero 10
Bright, no wind Murky, windy and raining
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How cold am I - freezing and the central heating is controlled by a remote controlled box the size of a pack of 20 ciggies and I can't find it anywhere!
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Spent the last couple of days in Devon where it was a bit warmer, 8.C this morning. It was well below zero in Tring on Saturday morning, and the heat pump has kept the house warm despite spending a good proportion of its time unfreezing itself. At some cost. It's been eating up to 50kWh a day.
I'm not too concerned about that. Sub zero weather is a triple whammy, the heat pump is less efficient, you need extra heat, and it needs still more power for de-icing. Over the year it chews through about 4500kWh.
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So that's something around a £12 a day on a regular tariff isn't it? Presume that's your hot water too? How much does it use on a more normal winter day?
It's not really comparable with my bills not least because your house is permanently warm whereas mine cools down when the heating goes off. But I'm OK with that, we manage...
And while I like the idea of doing my bit for the planet - not if it's too costly!! LOL
Last edited by: smokie on Mon 13 Jan 25 at 16:14
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Altnaharra in the Highlands was -18.9 on Saturday and + 11 this afternoon.
A swing of 30 degrees in less than 3 days!
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>> So that's something around a £12 a day on a regular tariff isn't it? Presume
>> that's your hot water too? How much does it use on a more normal winter
>> day?
>>
Yes that's right. In 13 days of January our total use has been 600kWh/£160 so over £100 on heating. The whole of December was 1036 kWh/£280.
The output is just too low at 11kW for 2300 sq ft to allow the house to go cold if we are out for the day, and with UFH the latency is just too high for it to warm up quickly anyway.
Really we need some solar,
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Seems expensive. Though I suppose if you no longer need a gas supply you save somewhere around 60p a day standing charge (£300ish a year before you start using it!!).
Solar isn't so helpful at this time of year, my modest array has only generated 44kWh this month (and only 34 for the whole of Dec!!) - it's been about the worst winter for solar since I had it put in in 2012.
People on another forum I frequent have batteries and manipulate them along with the ASHP to benefit from cheaper tariffs. They often seem to be a bit coy about saying just how much they're spending but I'm sure I read of average costs being around 18p a unit. Mind you that's after a fairly significant investment in the batteries!
I suppose once we reach those times when no heating is required you have a water only mode, or do you use an immersion?
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The ASHP does the water in summer. I actually turned the heating off in 2023 forJune July and August. Didn't bother last year but the result was the same, it uses about 2-3 units per day, total electricity use about 380-400 kWh per month in that period.
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How Cold Where You Are? - smokie
