We received our latest electricity bill today and it contained a nasty surprise.
We’ve managed to maintain our electricity consumption at the same level as last year (after cutting it for the two years before that), but despite that we’re now expected to pay £80 a month instead of £50.
I had budgeted for a 15% rise from 1 April (based on Scottish Hydro Electric’s announcement of a 13% rise from that date), but have now learned the effective rise is actually 60%.
And we’re not alone in finding that the real rise is much higher than the announced rise—two other people have told me today of effective rises in Scotland of 78% and 97%.
It has huge implications for us as our income has dropped in real terms this year—the Other Half was awarded a one per cent pay rise this year, while croft income is down and costs up—while the price of staple foods is rocketing along with the price of oil.
The effects are immediate. I was about to order two new pig arcs, we need one for our new boar and one for extra weaners, but I’ve cut this back to one to provide the cash to meet the added cost of the electricity bill for April, May and June.
The OH and I are now working out what else we can cut from our electricity consumption, which is not going to be easy as we’re a working croft with additional electricity needs, including electric fencing, incubators, heat lamps, pressure washer and the like.
We also make our own bread, do our own brewing, and preserve huge amounts of fruit and vegetables, all of which make demands on electricity. (We’re much more aware of the energy that goes into food production because of this.)
We’ve previously put Savaplugs on our refrigerator and freezer, put low energy bulbs in most light fittings (and left the remaining ones empty), leave lights off unless needed (I’m sitting in the dark now), retrict TV and computer use, turn everything off at the wall when not in use, wash laundry on either cld or 30C cycles depending on the level of grime, use mainly hand tools instead of power tools as much as possible, do not have a tumble dryer, do not use a dishwasher, and have very, very few gadgets.
We also cook one-pot meals as much as possible, turn the cooker off before food is cooked and allow residual heat to continue the cooking process, and use the bread machine instead of the oven (the latter uses more electricity to bake a loaf).
Now, we’re going to have to make much more uncomfortable cuts in our electricity use to get the bill down to something close to the £57.40 I’d budgeted.
Our preliminary plans are to limit television to one hour each for the boys and four for the OH and I, move to cold washes only for laundry, reduce baking in the oven to once a week from three times a week, to eat more cold meals, to see if we can afford a pressure cooker or slow cooker to reduce the cost of one-pot meals still further, to limit recharging the digital camera to once per fortnight and, the big one for readers of this blog, to cut computer use right back.
At the moment, I use the computer for about two hours a day, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less.
The peripherals are left off unless actually needed, the monitor has been downsized from a 17in to 15in, and everything gets turned off at the wall when not in use.
However, this is not going to be enough so I’m looking at cutting back to about four hours a week.
As this includes time allowed for banking, accounts, croft paperwork, orders and emails, it’s not going to leave much time for blogging.
Combine this with the restrictions on the use of the camera (and the outright ban on using the video camera) and I think the blog is going to have to cut back to one, perhaps two, posts a week.
If I can find a cheaper electricity tariff, I may have a little leeway but my preliminary investigations show that we’re already at the bottom end for cost per unit—some tariffs would be £500 a year higher!
But what’s even more concerning for us is that if things are going to be tight now, what are we going to cut when prices rise further?
Unlike the affluent suburbanites with a host of gadgets and appliances, we don’t have much left to cut while also not being able to afford a wind turbine or PV panels.
We can’t take the money from elsewhere in our energy budget as we’ve cut heating oil use to the bone (the solar hot water helps, and we turn the heating off from April to September so the house hovers around 14-15C), have replaced the second car with a bike, and the OH car shares in alternate weeks with the car anyway.
Challenging times with more to come—and I won’t even be able to say much about it any more! Oh well…
The OH just told me to put a button on the blog with a message reading “If you want to read more, pay for the electricity usage”! I told her the usual suspects would get a little hot under the collar about that…
I feel for you, but imagine that you have a lack of choice in suppliers for your area. I also suspect that changing suppliers tends to only provide temporary relief.
I have just had discussions with our energy supplier regarding their suggestion of a large rise in my monthly payments. After examining my bill I realised what they had done. Partly they chose to reduce my monthly payments in September last year, (stating a price reduction) the normal time when they reviewed my bill, I was dubious but they insisted it would be fine. However they had also decided to move the goalposts. My bill always broke even by September, meaning that any winter debit balance was sorted. However without telling anyone they have now decided that the bill should balance in May. Effectively they now not only want you to pay by direct debit rather than the old fashioned quarterly bill, but now expect you to pay for your winter electricity in advance! Their intention was that I should clear the outstanding balance in 3 months, plus pay the extra to put me in credit in September. I told them the mistake was theirs and they nad no right to expect such fast repayment. I still have to increase my payments but I am now repaying the outstanding balance over 12 months. Still doesn’t make the price good our bill will go up from £108 to £130 which is a lot of money.
On the other hand, there might be a few unusual suspects that would toss a copper or two in the kitty.
Maybe a ‘pay per view’ arrangement where we get an invoice based on page views per IP address
We reviewed our electricity usage (suburban Australia, so it’s not really apples with apples) with a kill-a-watt type device and found our computer running cost was only a couple of cents per day. Biggest users were hot water, air-conditioning, refrigeration and clothes dryer (limited, but it does happen).
Regards, Gary
Restrict length of comments so less reading time.
Slow cooker is brilliant. How would I find out the most energy efficient slow cooker? I love mine, but I’m not convinced it’s the most efficient.
I would be happy to contribute if you had a donations page. I read a few online comics regularly, and from time to time make donations to them. They, like you, are providing entertainment/information, so why shouldnt they have a link for donations. (same for you)
As for the naysayers, who really cares? Surely its not too hard to ignore and/or block them? If a few people want to help you out, why make yourself suffer for the benefit of the people who would probably be happier to see you fail?
We’ve changed suppliers three times in five years. We were with a “green” energy supplier first but their customer service was abysmal and their tariff was almost double that of the cheapest supplier. Then we moved to another “green” supplier who pledged to match the best local rate (but not for long) and then to Scottish Hydro (peculiarly, long-established hydroelectric is not counted as “green” energy).
As far as use is concerned, refrigeration does draw a lot of electricity but by adding Savaplugs to our refrigerator and freezer we’ve made them as efficient as A+ appliances. Our hot water is heated by solar and oil, we have no air-con and no clothes dryer.
Electric cookers use quite a lot of electricity, and electric ovens even more so limiting their use will help. At present, we have oatmeal porridge five days a week, so if we move to muesli or similar that’s 50 minutes cooker use cut out per week. (Unfortunately, previous owners ripped out the solid fuel Rayburn that was here and replaced it with an oil boiler and electric oven/hob.)
Yes, computers draw relatively little compared to those but all those little things do add up as we know from our own energy assessments. A little for the computer, a little for the camera batteries, a little for the mobile, a little for the electric fencing, a little for the borehole pump (we have a private water supply), a little for the lights, a little for the incubators, and before you know it, you have a lot of electricity consumption.
We could move to solar/wind powered electric fencing, but we have a long run of fencing to energise and would need several 12v energisers to cover the distance. The mains-powered one handles our run of fencing with ease and has a relatively small energy draw.
So it makes sense to cut back in little ways in lots of areas instead of looking for one big thing to cut—not least because the only remaining big things are the freezer (full of pork, lamb and vegetables) and refrigerator.
Oh, and one more thing. We inherited a lot of the electrical technology when we bought the house and while, in an ideal world with pots of money, you’d replace that technology with renewable equivalents, it’s often not possible in the short to medium term (and sometimes even longer term).
The house had a solid fuel Rayburn for cooking, hot water and heating—it was replaced by an oil-fired boiler, an electric oven and an electric hob.
The house had a hand-pumped well—it was filled in and replaced by a borehole with a mains electric pump. (A solar powered 12v pump or a mechanical wind pump would be much better.)
The house had a grey water system—it was ripped out and replaced with pipes that feed directly into the septic tank.
Single light fittings were replaced with striplights containing four to six halogen 50w spots. (We have replaced most of these.)
And the list goes on.
The problem with the naysayers, critics, ratbags and screamers is that it’s a pain in the proverbial to have to scan through a dozen rabid comments to get to the entertaining/useful/informative/genuinely challenging ones. I also don’t feel the need to come and sit at the computer just so I can feel grumpy about all the ****s out there. I do that quite well already!!
It’s one thing to write a challenging or controversial response in the knowledge that some respondents are going to get hot under the collar, it’s another thing to deal with torrents of abuse over things that seem innocuous, trivial or non-threatening.
I should think that your electric fence draws a lot of power, but it a necessary and can’t be switched off.
With all these prices rises across the board the credit crunch is going to hit even harder
If you put on a voluntary pay-pal button, I’d contribute to your blog now and then. Your blog provides me with knowledge and I enjoy reading it.
I pay for the books I download, buy in shops or take out of the library, why not donate to a weblog? After all you donate the time to share your experiences with us.
If people want to read the blog without paying that’s fine, but if they would like to contribute, then a pay-pal button would give them the chance to do so. Then you’ll find out if that’s enough to cover the electricity bill of you blogging time and charging the camera (we like your pics too :-).
And who knows… perhaps the number of donations will make you smile despite the ‘rabid comments’ you’ll have to plough through at first.
Regards, Jandra
I love reading your blog. It gives me a reality attack on what life would really be like if I bought that smallholding/plot of land big enough for a pig or two.
I’d put a copper or two in the pot, every now and again.
These rises are happening across the board and the world. Electricity isn’t rising very fast here at the moment as there is a lot of nuclear but the astronomical rise in the cost of oil is effecting everything else- and people still won’t accept a peak oil scenario.
I guess you will have done it but have you checked your usage figures. I found (back in the UK), that the electricity company were very sneaky; come my review, along with the accompanying price rise announcement, they almost doubled my monthly payments. When I used the last year’s consumption plus a bit and calculated the cost of the electricity over the next year and compared it with my payments over the year I found it would leave me over £300 in credit with them! Multiply that over a few thousand customers and they have a hefty sum gaining interest for them.
As for the rabid comments, isn’t is sad that some people have so little else to do in their life, and as for reduced postings, that will just make them more special
Regarding breakfast, any commercial type of breakfast cereal or even homemade muesli, is quite expensive compared to porridge. I wonder how you would do the sums on that one.
I’m fed up with people trying to make money from blogs. It’s completely missing the point. Blogs are about reciprocity and freedom of knowledge. Knowledge and information want to be free and should be free. Forcing people to pay or using copyright to deny access to knowledge is wrong. You read other people’s blogs and pay nothing, so why should I pay for yours? Especially when there are so many other blogs out there. If you start asking for money or putting up ads, then I - and many others - will go elsewhere. Then what will you do?
Download local cooling & install on your pc, it makes it run a lot more efficiantly.
Rather than a slow cooker, consider making yourself a hay basket or hay box for crock pot type cooking ( http://www.cookinginabasket.blogspot.com/ ) loads of us use them up here & they work fantastically.
Farrowing shed… There are heat lamps out there with far lower power usage than the traditional infra red etc.
Use LED lightbulbs in the house where possible, far cheaper than even the most efficiant green based lightbulb.
Rather than boil the kettle over & over during the day, fill a large thermos flask & refill as required.
Fencing energizing units (12v) can power up to 2k of fencing wire each, using a low voltage battery charger makes them even more energy efficient.
Winter… Wool is 8 times warmer than acrylic & cotton & prefers to be washed in cool water. Live with the sock monster, use odd socks to stuff door logs to keep out drafts.
Batch bake, if your filling the oven with bread its far more cheaper than using a bread machine, bake on a sunday, freeze & use throughout the week, dont turn the oven on unless you can fill it.
If you like bread with soup or meals, consider baking bannocks instead, cooking uses far less power & they taste just as good, if not better.
Do you have a microwave? It is a quick and cheap way to make porridge I am told. although I believe it is also possible to make porridge overnight in the slow cooker. I have a combination microwave with a built in convection oven, I believe it is more economical to use than a standard electric oven, but of course would cost over £100 compared to a basic microwave at say £30.
I think this is a great site and wish you well with your economising. You might also enjoy this:
http://caughtinthemiddleman.wordpress.com/2008/05/29/i-cant-afford-it/
A smile costs nothing!
Do you use freecycle? It’s more computer time to check the lists, but you might be able to get a pressure cooker from someone for free. It’s the sort of thing people have but don’t use.
I thought exactly the same thing as your OH, I have to admit and would be happy to pay a small amount occasionally as the amount I’ve learned (and maybe one day will have a chance to put into practice) from your blog is enormous. Not to mention the fun I have reading it.
You could carry on cooking porridge overnight in a haybox.
I’d gladly contribute - I enjoy reading what you’re doing and getting lots of tips on how to do things. Those that don’t want to could go elsewhere but there’d be many who’d stick with you.
[...] This site is a member of Smallholding/Small Farming and Self Sufficiency - UK based WebRing. To browse visit Here. Balancing the fuel usage May 29, 2008, 12:41 pm Filed under: Crofting, Island Life, Self Sufficiency Stoney [...]
Have to agree with the OH here stoney she is right put a paypal button back on the blog and sod the rabid comments and moaners (just use the delete button on them). I would be more than happy to donate a few quid now and again to keep reading this blog.
This is the one site I try to check at least once a day for updates of you and your family around the holding.
I like others have learnt a lot from reading this site and hope one day to put the information gained and stored in the grey matter to good use.
LISTEN TO THE OH STONEY AND PUT THE BUTTON UP
[...] are having the same problem as Stoney, in that we no longer have many things we can cut back on having already given up the idea of TV [...]
Out of all the comments here, there is only one nay-sayer for the donations bit. You aren’t charging for the read, you are giving folk the opportunity to donate. That is a world of difference. If someone wants to donate, they can. If they don’t, they can still read.
FreeCycle is a wonderful resource, and you should put up an ask for either a pressure cooker or a slow cooker (or both!). Someone will have one somewhere in their cupboards gathering dust. I actually have a pressure cooker myself, but I’m scared to use it because I don’t know if it is safe, or I would offer it to you. I use the thing for jam (unsuccessfully, I might add). If you want to risk it, you are more than welcome to it. Just drop me an email.
Incidentally, when you get your oil bill, you are going to drop down dead. We are considering putting in a wood burning stove and one of those switch things so I can heat the house and the water with either the oil or the stove, because my oil bills are astronomical, and are becoming, quite frankly, scary.
I have a Paypal “Donate” button on my blog. It doesn’t generate much income, but it has earned a little—and your blog is clearly much more widely read than mine, so I would think you would be able to earn at least enough to pay for the electricity to keep blogging.
It’s worth a try! I know I would miss reading your site if you stopped writing so often.
I think you could put a ‘donate’ button on the blog without incurring the wrath of too many idiots - you’re not making it obligatory to pay and plenty of people won’t want too, but I’m sure a few of us will because we value the time and thought you put into your posts and the real benefit that we get from them: recipes, know-how, a good giggle… the list goes on…
If you’re really not keen on that idea, I’m sure I read somewhere of a guy who connected up his computer to some nifty electricity-generating-bicycle-scenario; so you (or preferably an energetic child) can pedal away whilst you tap out your blog post!
I have a suggestion for you - and I never thought that would happen!
For best results with a slow cooker you should brown the meat and vegetables, and bring the cooking liquid up to boiling point first. Why not do that but transfer an ordinary cooking pot to a haybox made to fit it exactly? No appliance to buy and no running costs. I am sure that you could do oatmeal porridge in there overnight too. We used to use a haybox at Guide camp, so I know that they work, although I still find it hard to understand quite how they do so well.
Where to start? And how to keep it short?
First, JC isn’t alone in his thoughts/beliefs. It’s just that he was the only one of the anti-brigade who managed to refrain from swearing with every second word. (And as regulars know, apart from the occasional bloody, damn or asterisks, swearing results in “comment deleted”.)
There are some useful suggestions in there that we’ll look at, and a lot of much appreciated messages of support.
However, some of the suggestions are not immediately viable. We’ve been looking for a low-cost, second-hand solid fuel cooker for some time but with no luck to date (missing out by minutes in a couple of cases).
Yes, three or four 12v energisers with solar/wind charging could replace the mains energiser but with the cheapest energiser that I’ve seen costing £69.95, a solar panel costing £74.99 and a Rutland 504 Windcharger costing £285 the cost is beyond us at the moment. (We’re actually accumulating free bits and pieces from all around the place to put a 12v charging and lighting system together, but haven’t enough bits yet.)
Cost and the installed technology here means the most immediate solutions have to be low-cost, negligible cost or no cost.
Auldwife, we do put our mind to it and we are open to suggestions—if we weren’t, would we be doing this? There are a couple of posts on this blog about our previous experiences with electricity bills.
We cut consumption one quarter by 12.4% but that only equalled a 0.18% cut in cost. Even worse, in another quarter we cut consumption by 7.32% but our bill actually rose by 12.29%. I suspect the only way to actually cut electricity costs in any meaningful sense is to cut the power lines—and I’m suspect I’d get charged for that too!!
As for Freecycle, I’m not very keen on it any more. When I first joined, almost everyone was giving, people took part in the spirit of it, and most of the handful of Wanteds were people in genuine need.
Now, the local Freecycle is almost entirely Wanteds and when I try to give stuff away myself people fail to show, declare things not new enough or fashionable enough, or pop it on ebay. Freecycle was supposed to be about stopping things to landfill or incinerators, not about accumulating free stuff.
I prefer to make my own contacts and swap/barter with them—so we swapped eggs and vegetables for a couple of wardrobes and a chest of drawers. Much friendlier.
And TonyD, I misread your last line as “Listen to the OH and shut the button up”. Which is equally true!
JC (and the less polite contributors who have been deleted),
I don’t speak often but I occasionally feel compelled.
YOU do not HAVE to pay for it. Writing this blog is something ‘Stonehead’ enjoys doing both for himself and for readers who benefit in the many ways they do. It is not a necessity for us that he does it whereas it is a necessity that the pigs & chickens are well cared for and the veg’ are grown. It is also a necessity that I go out to work and our children are fed and clothed.
‘Stonehead’s’ blogging costs us in terms of time and money. Recent financial constraints have meant that we are looking for ways to reduce our out goings. Since a reduction in blogging can reduce our electricity consumption and therefore our out goings, and incidentally increase the time ‘Stonehead’ has for ‘chores’ and his family, we don’t really have a choice.
Many people have asked if they can, and how they can contribute and I don’t see anything wrong in giving people the opportunity to do that because it takes a bit of pressure off “Stonehead’ and blogging is something that he really enjoys and would miss. He is bombarded by extremely vitriolic, malevolent comments which he can’t be indifferent to or ignore because they come right into his study, so he is naturally reluctant. I had to employ some extremely persuasive tactics to get him to put on a button so people could help after the bike accident. (for which we were extremely grateful :))
I suggest that you JC (and co) have missed the point, ‘Stonehead’ is not responsible for upholding some odd blog etiquette and reading other people’s blogs isn’t going to pay the electricity bill. I’m sure that if he sent our electricity provider a few blog addresses as payment they wouldn’t be too impressed, excellent though they may be.
It looks like we may not be seeing you again JC (could you take your more foul mouthed compatriots with you?). I wish you all the best, surfing through the pure, true, rule-abiding blogs. You ask what will we do. Carry on as usual, worse things have happened.
OH
P.S. To everyone else, thank you for your kind, thoughtful and supportive comments.
I wanted to Thank you for writing such an interesting blog. You offer a wonderfully worded insite into your daily life. I for one would be willing to make a donation. Those who have to swear to get their point accross usually don’t have much to say.
Here in the states we are seeing our electric/ oil/ food prices doubling. On our little farm we have cut back about as far as we can. I wish I had a stream so I could install a water wheel.
If there were a donate button, I might occasionally pop something in. Certainly not offensive.
And good luck with the electricity. Our energy supplier also suggested we increase payment from £20 gas, £20 electricity to £25 for both, even though we are in the black after winter - when I said nothankyouverymuch, there was no argument. I suspect they rely on most people not reading the letter and just allowing it to happen.
I’ll miss you, if you go to a couple of posts a week, but I’ll still read and enjoy.
Earth Hour was a couple of months ago.
It seems to me that you have chosen to live a lifestyle beyond your current income. The facts are that you practice a form of self-supporting that is heavily dependent on external suppliers of energy and animal feed, in a location where the local markets are unsympathetic to the produce you offer. Your lifestyle costs you more than it earns, and therefore you cannot expect it to break even. So in fact it isn’t self-supporting at all.
You could spend the next year or so being stubborn about it and complaining as energy and feed costs continue to rise until finally your situation is desperate, or you can choose to take a cold hard look at your situation and focus your talents into a resolution. Sitting in the dark whilst collecting a few quid from blog readers will not achieve this. None of us reading your blog can say what is right for you, but we can add up and the figures do not look good right now.
No amount of empathy from me will pay your electricity bills or keep you in your croft in five years time, and therefore I do not offer it. I take no pleasure in reading about your difficulties, through I look forward with interest in reading how you overcome them. I know what I would do - the question is, what will you do?
All the best,
alf
Hmm, but isn’t the bulk of the British population—and indeed much of the western world—dependent on external supplies of energy and food? And therefore living beyond its means?
We’ve actually lived within our means for some considerable time and, by adjusting things again, will probably continue to do so. The crofting side has broken even until very recently, while the mortgage and household costs were manageable, again until very recently.
We’re revising our budget at the moment and will take the necessary measures to make things balance again, even though our income is down in real terms while external costs are rising.
We don’t have mounds of debt, unlike most people it seems, but as we don’t use debt to mask our financial situation we notice immediately when costs rise. We don’t increase debt to meet the extra costs, we tighten our belt further.
Yes, I could be earning a wage by writing professionally again but I’ve chosen to write this blog for nothing more than the pleasure of it and the communication. I also choose to see most of my labour benefit my family directly, whereas when I was writing for a living most of my labour benefited shareholders and directors (most of them in the US as most of the media is now US-owned).
Oh, and when I last had a waged job, once I deducted the costs of getting to work, paying for childcare, and the like, I was coming out £10 a month ahead. So, should I spend 55 hours a week commuting and working to make £10? And how much food, housing, clothing etc would that £10 a month buy? And should I use a credit card/loan to make up the difference?
Or should I forgo the £10 and spend 55 hours a week rearing pigs and poultry, growing vegetables, providing food directly, and seeing the Other Half and the boys much more?
Simple choice for me, but I know from experience that most people don’t want to face realistic numbers like that. Yes, going to work can cost more than you earn.
But I suspect that’s not what you want to hear, either. We live within our means, we do get jolted by external costs, and we adjust but can be hard. I’m not whinging about it, simply describing what we do and how externalities affect us.
We’ve done a huge amount to reduce the effect of externalities, particularly energy, but how many other people can say the same?
We put in solar hot water, turned the heating thermostats down to 16C and turn the heating off from April to September. The effect was to cut oil consumption from the 6,000 litres of year of the previous owners to 1,400 litres last year.
We’ve cut our refrigeration costs by 20%, we’ve more than halved our road fuel use, we’re planting trees to provide solid fuel in six to eight years, we use hand tools in preference to power tools, we’ve changed to low-energy lighting and only use lights when we really need to, we don’t use a tumble dryer or dish washer, and we minimise our use of gadgets, TV, etc.
The irony is that the more we reduce energy use, the more we’re hit by spikes in price as we don’t have as much left to cut as the vast number of profligate users. And of course, the more we offer ourselves up for criticism to the effect that what we’re doing isn’t really possible and we should go back to doing what everyone else does.
And finally, if reading about this is not a pleasure, why are you here?
Oh, and I never suggested asking anyone to help pay the costs of this blog or the electricity bill. The Other Half made a sarcastic quip to me as I finished the original post, related to her belief that as other people benefit from my writing then it’s appropriate to ask for contributions, and I related that quip in a comment. Her view, not mine.
I’m now getting tired of dealing with ill-natured comments, so I’d better leave it at that before I get tetchy.
Sorry to hear about your problems, but you are not the only person affected. Alas we are all subject to similar tariff increases. However, knowing you I’m confident that you’ll come up with some imaginative solution.
From childhood reading I seem to recall that the Swiss chalet design meant that the animals were kept on the lower floors with people above . The people above benefited from the rising heat produced by the animals. Not that I’m suggesting you do this, but????
Have you had your meter checked.? You seem to be very organised so I’m surprised that changes in tariff have caught you out so badly especially as unlike me you seem to take regular readings.
Good luck because I really enjoy your blog
John
The mistake I made was in believing the letter when it said there would be a 13.1% rise in electricity prices from 1 April. It turns out that was an average rise.
There’s not a problem with meter and our electricity consumption has not risen. The rise in the bill is entirely due to the rising tariff.
We used the same amount of electricity in the three months to 23 May as in the same quarter last year (and that was a cut on the previous year, which in turn was a cut on the year before that).
As I keep saying, the problem is that energy prices are rising too steeply for our economies to keep us ahead. But, the bright side is that we’d be in a far worse position if we’d maintained consumption at the same level as five years ago (about 30% higher then than now).
And yes, I am well are that we are not alone in being affected like this. Early in my post I referred to people known to me who’ve had even steeper rises and there’s also this article in the Guardian about a revival of peat cutting in the Outer Hebrides.
And that really is it. I’ve removed moderation from comments for people with prior approved posts, but any newcomers will have to wait until I next log in.
I’ve had a Paypal button up for a year and gotten exactly three donations, so don’t get your hopes up. But then, you’re nicer than I am. At least, more polite. Put the button up and you’ll have ten Canadian loonies from me, and I’m not referring to my friends and neighbors.
Sixty percent is outrageous. I know I looked into a wind power system, but the initial costs for the batteries were too expensive; it would have been about $1700 to take my little apartment “off the grid” entirely. But if you don’t buy the big prefab turbines you might be able to save some money; have you thought about connecting with a scrap dealer? In Canada at least, they get a lot of windmills from farms. Forgive me if you’re miles ahead and I just don’t realize.
My ex-roomie found a very slick, CHEAP system for wind power on YouTube, which of course I cannot find because YouTUbe is down. But it was made up of many, many handmade fans about six inches in diameter, strung on wires. The array generated an impressive amount of power, actually, and was visible enough that birds avoided it. I’ll try and find it again later.
Oh, and I talked to a poet from El Salvador and he said that the Mexican rebels in Chiapas hook bicycles up to their computers and one soldier will peddle while the other surfs the net. God knows, if you could hook up a system like that for one person on a stationary bike you could sell it to fat people (like myself) on eBay by the thousands and solve ALL your money problems.
Hi Stonehead. Just to say I read your blog every day with my breakfast brew and I’ve learnt a darn site more about economising than any of the fancy websites out there on the web. We are on a low income as DH hasn’t worked for 12 yrs due to illness. I could’t “go out ” to work due to the nature of his illness so I used my Craft skills to start a micro business . It doesn’t bring mega bucks in but it keeps the much needed car on the road. Please keep blogging i want to learn more . Ursula x
It appears Stoney some think you are stupid, greedy and a money grabber whilst living the high life on your ill gotten gains……………….I could in jest say they know you well, but they would probably believe that too!
Stoney appears to be very poor (and he is not well off or ‘comfortable’) but he does not supplement the OH income with a credit card. They live entirely off the OH’s salary which to some would probably be a very good income. But those who think that are ones who supplement their income with the credit card. That means any rise on their budget is hard hit and hard felt.
Stoney and OH go with out a lot in order that the boys are well feed and looked after. Stoney particularly goes with out and I have seen some of his clothing is thread bare, particularly shirts. They go with out so that the quality of food they produced, and buy in, is top quality so their boys grow up with out being bombard with chemicals etc
Tonight I am roasting one of his pork joints I bought from him a few months ago. If Stoney didn’t produce it I could not afford to eat good quality meat. And the price I paid, he probably made no profit or very little, or even a small loss. Now the doubters will say he should charge more. But he doesn’t for a few reason. People here won’t pay more and he would far rather sell the pork at cost to people like me who appreciate it as as he gets back what it cost him, hopefully, and those like me who have very little money can eat good meat.
Not quite accurate, but pretty close. We don’t live entirely on the OH’s salary as a teacher—what we do is use her salary to pay the mortgage, the car costs, clothing, and household bills. We then use the croft “income” (whether produce, cash or barter) to feed us, pay non-domestic bills, and provide us with furniture, tools, etc. In the long term, we will also have the wood from the trees for fuel and lumber.
And what’s wrong with my shirts? They’re very comfortable!
Stoney, sorry to hear of this. It’s so galling when you clearly do what you can to reduce your energy use, only to be ’stung’ by the rises in tariffs. I really enjoy your blog, and totally understand the need to cut back. Good luck to you and the family.
AHA! I found it:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=4Y5ADeTlIUo
My comment went to spam because it contained a link to the YouTube of those turbines. Plz fish it out, thanks.
There is also this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zm8yRIWonJI
Which they say was built of 35 poundsworth of PVC. But as we all know, the big cost is in batteries. If you’re pouring the output straight into electric fences, you don’t need the cost.
And pigs can’t tell when the power is shut off anyway. As long as it’s on when they’re being trained and sometimes otherwise, they’ll stay away from the fence. Cows and horses aren’t that smart.
Hi Stoney & OH
Sorry to hear about the exorbitant fuel price rise. as you say, when you have already pared costs right down, it is hard to find further savings.
I swear by my slow cooker, though my particular type (Morphey Richards) has now gone out of production. (I have used it for about 15 years)….. It is a metal pan with a teflon lining (now a bit hit & miss due to age). This means i can use the pan on my gas hob for just a couple of minutes to sear meat and colour onions, then I put the pan onto the tiny warming pad that uses the same amount of electricity as a 40w light bulb.
Not only is it very energy efficient, but can be good to return home to the smell of a lovely meal when you have both been out all day grafting…. and amazingly it also helps to heat the room if you’ve left the door closed!
I look forward to your continued blogging, even if at a reduced rate…. I really missed you when you went away on an earlier occasion
Its the ever rising oil price thats the big problem up in the remote shetlands, heating oil has doubled in price in 2yrsm car fuels have gone up 30p per ltr, red diesel 20p per ltr, and the knock on effect on everything is getting pretty frightening. Bought in some sow nuts yesterday, £9.15 per 25kg bag ! Thats the dearest they’ve ever been, sugar beat pellets are now £7.95 per 20kg bag.
We’re now seriously thinking about moving to a croft thats vacant on the isle which has more land (three times as much as we have here) which would allow us to do more with the cows & pigs & sheep & grow enough crops to keep up with it, but it has a smaller house. Both of us will be working on the isle full time from august on, so we’ll be closing as a B&B and in 2 yrs loose 2 kids to the big wide world, so we’ll be sitting in a huge house with 4 unused rooms, the house at the other croft has only 4 bedrooms, its a heck of a lot more sheltered in winter, has plenty sheds/byres & a butt n ben that would make the perfect studio for me. Cheaper to heat, easier to run & doesnt require 15k spent on it to get enough shed space & animal housing.
Im just crossing my fingers animal feed costs start to get a bit more realistic soon, I can see us culling out 60 chickens rather than taking the entire lot through the winter on a very expensive feeding bill.
Raincoaster, thanks as always. Unfortunately, pigs are rather too smart and do know when the fence is off. Some carefully nose up to it, some listen for the clicks/pulses, and the really smart ones deliberately bury the wire.
Our Tamworths were the most adept at checking out the fence, but Berkshires and Gloucesters are also fairly adept at knowing when it’s off. Our dozy Saddlebacks couldn’t have cared less so long as they had plenty of food and water.
Lesley, I’ll still be around, just much less often—unless something gets me going! As with today’s dentistry post.
Our pigs are the same, we change the batteries for freshly charged ones every 2 weeks cos the beggars know dern fine when its not running to full kick & will take advantage of the chance to head off to new diggins.
Stoney, I suggest that ring your energy supplier on their (hopefully freephone) number and ask them to send you copy bills dating back the last 16 years, for audit purposes. When they arrive, turn them into fuel bricketts and use these to cook by. You could also burn your horrid threadbare shirts too, as it’s summer now, so you won’t need clothing for the next 5 months anyway surely. In honesty, your situation is too awful and real for me to make any kind of helpful comment that could possibly be of any help, so I thought I’d leave you a daft one instead. hugs xxxx
I have lurked at your blog for a while now, and find it informative and inspirational. I also appreciate the frequent blogging and would miss you if you went down to only a few a week, therefore I would definately donate given the chance. How about giving paypal details to those who ask for them via email?
All the best
ginge
[...] To wait a bit and make sure we have everything we need first before we make the move. Thanks to Stonehead (who is a huge inspiration to us). I am a bit sad about it, but I’ll get over it. Everything [...]
Well, I would totally donate to the electrical cause. I was just thinking of how much I wish I was able to have a job where I did physical labor all day. I like what I do, but it’s not as satisfying as days spent digging and hauling, and collapsing into bed exhausted each night for a deep sleep.
Humans were not meant to sit on their butts and compute for a living.
So I’ll happily contribute to your nonbuttsittingness.
Well, you know what I mean
(I also totally understand about the way people online can wreck your day with their comments–it’s amazing to me what people will do and say online. If only there was a way to electronically slap them upside the head….)
An article in the Sydney Morning Herald reports that a Sony PlayStation 3 costs five times as much to run as an average-sized refrigerator, whille a computer left on standby costs three times as much to run as the refrigerator. Add all the other energy gobbling gadgets and you quickly realise why energy consumption is rocketing (and why we’re glad we don’t have many gadgets).
On a more personal level, a work colleague of the Other Half recently bought a new mobile phone and was horrified to discover it has to remain plugged in to the mains for more than twice as long as her old one. It’s all those extra “features” that consume more energy.
I also have to ask just how mobile a mobile phone is when it has to spend vast amounts of time connected to an electrical socket!
I’m a huge fan of this site and I have a tentative suggestion (I know how irksome unsolicited advice can be). What about putting all your useful how-to stuff (unblocking drains, digging veg garden, fixing fences and much much more) on a nice cd with a good index and selling it for a tenner with a five pound voucher off the first £50 purchase of Stonehead pork products. Dunno if it’d make any dent in your leccy bill but I’d be in for that!
Best Regards
On mobile phones: I have the same experience. As soon as I discovered how quickly the batteries go flat when having bluetooth etc. switched on I did some studying of the manual to find out how to disable all those nifty features. I do use the camera a lot, though. Great for making pics for my blog whenever I feel like it.
After looking at our electricity supply options, we’ve decided to switch to Eon’s Energy Saver v2 as this caps our tariff until 1 October 2009. We’ll also save £20 a year compared with our present Scottish Hydro tariff and based on our present consumption. (As we’re already making further cuts to our consumption, we should be able to reduce this even further).
Our other option was to switch to the British Gas Click Energy 5 tariff. This would have cut our projected yearly bill by £179 (almost 20%) but it would have left us exposed to further energy price rises. I did quite a lot of research into the energy market and my analysis is that there will be at least one further price rise this year, plus another early next year. (As oil jumped to $139 a barrel on Friday and is now expected to hit $150 a barrel, I think this may be an optimistic prediction!)
Anyway, as we’ve already redone our budget to cover the higher Scottish Hydro tariff and are taking measures to cut consumption even further, we think the best option is to go for a capped tarriff that’s just below the variable Scottish Hydro tariff we were on. It will give us 14 months of predictable electricity bills, given that we won’t actually go on to the Eon tarriff until late July/early August.
The final step was to find the most cost effective way of doing the switch. There are quite a few business that get commission for passing your business to the energy companies, and they then pass some of that back to consumers. Some offer wine, some offer loyalty card points and some offer cash, so we went with the latter. Energy Helpline offers £15 cash back so we took that and will put the money towards the Scottish Hydro bill when the switch goes through.
Oh, and we get a free energy monitor from Eon for switching as well (it’s one of those monitors that clips on your mains cable and tells you how much energy you’re consoming and at what cost every six seconds).
A final thought for people who think we’re profligate with electricity and like to tell us how much better they are: our household uses 2,900-3,200kWh a year. In 2005, average UK household consumption was 4,478kWh a year.
Our individual consumption is 725-800kWh a year, compared with 1,930kWh for the average person in the UK.
As we’re a working croft in cool northern Scotland with electric fencing, incubators, heat lamps, and the like, I think we’re doing reasonably well to come in that far below average consumption.
“Green” electricity was out of the question due to cost. We had been using Scottish Hydro as it generates electricity using existing hydro-electric schemes, and had the cheapest tariff using renewables. “Green” electricity from other companies would have meant our bill rising by 25-37% above the new Scottish Hydro tariff, which was already 60% above our previous tariff.
Stoney,
I’ve been thinking a lot about this since I read it yesterday. In business when things are looking grim you should focus your attention on INCOME, not expenditure. It’s clear that you are keeping a careful eye on expenditure - that’s good - but if you are to really lift yourself out you need to apply the same level of analysis to how to maximise your income as you have to dissecting your electricity consumption to the nth. What opportunities do you have for getting more money in? You need to exploit them. (Are you maximising your income from the state? Family credit and the like? Go see CAB and ask for a benefits check. Are you VAT registered? Go see an accountant). Hope this helps and apologies if any of it misses the mark.
Simon
We do examine income as well—and in as much detail. However, the OH’s salary has gone down in real terms (a lower than inflation “rise”), while “consumers” of our produce and livestock want to pay the same as last year or less, even as the the input costs rise. Every time we raise prices, we lose customers. The OH is doing extra tuition, while I’m constantly looking for new areas to sell what we have to offer (but only if they will generate more income than they cost). The battery is now failing on the laptop so more later!
These folk are in a similar line to yourselves now idea how they are doing but it might be worth a lookie to see if you can combine forces
http://www.ruthslittlefarm.co.uk/
Now here is this weeks dumbo idea.
People want to be more intouch with their food and where it comes from. Due to this many folk are now wanting to raise there own pork and poultry. Now many can’t do this due to lack of time and space.
Your skill are raising animals and writing. Now why don’t you combine those two things. You expand this blog to be slightly more animal centric and then sell off the fruits of your products to those that want to be more intouch with their food. Something similar to sponsor a dolphin/gorilla ideas just instead of getting a letter every three months about how they are doing you get a letter how they are doing every month and a big pack of juicy pork at the end of it.
[...] when Scottish Hydro’s tariff rose to the extent that we’d go from paying £50 a month to £80—despite using the same amount [...]