Excellent service

I left £80 in a bank machine last week.  I felt extremely stoopid.  But I was so impressed by the level of service I got from the bank where i drew out the money (Barclays) where I don’t even have an account.  I went into the bank as soon as I realised it had happened and the lady in the branch said she would look into it personally for me when they opened the cash machine the next morning and would phone me as soon as she knew.  She phoned the next day to say that she had found the money and would credit it to me via my bank.  She even apologised for the fact that it might take up to a week to reach my bank account.  I’ve now got the money back and my bank has also written to me apologising for my mistake.

The biggest car in the world

Just had to buy a new car because our old one couldn’t fit 3 children across the back and we are expecting our third in January.  So we’ve ended up with a lovely purple tank – Citroen Picasso Grande.  Its so completely not very green – although its fuel consumption is not too bad (compared to other big tanks).  If we could have bought something greener that would have transported our entire family plus luggage I would have done.  But I haven’t been able to see a way round it.

Wormery update

Checked on my worms yesterday and what a difference.  No fruit flies at all.  I do know that the cooling weather probably helped with this but still I think adding a little soil helped a lot too.  I don’t know if its my imagination but the last lot of stuff that I put in seems to have composted so much quicker too.  Worms are all over the place – more than I’ve ever seen.  I am so proud.

Anyone any advice as to whether I should cover them when we start to get hard frosts.  Presumably they should be quite warm as there is plenty of compost in there now.  What should I cover them with?  I think I have some bubble wrap somewhere.

Using my CurrentCost from e.on

Got my CurrentCost energy monitor last week.   This was a freebie when I changed to e.on’s energy saver package.  I think a lot of energy companies are offering similar deals.  And I think its mainly the CurrentCost that they are offering, just with a quick rebrand.

So, it arrived.  It was installed easily and working in no time.  The most interesting thing is obviously the current electricity use.  This seems to be incredibly accurate.  For instance, we worked out that our fridge had a 20W light bulb because when you open the fridge the electricity consumption goes up by 20W.  It shows up some scary things – like underfloor heating, ouch! and our oven is pretty bad too.  We had a new kitchen installed last year with halogen spotlights and this is about 800W when they’re all on.  It definitely makes us turn off the lights when we leave the room!

So surprising things are the amount of energy lights use, even the normal ones.  Also surprising is the energy used by electrical gadgets such as computers and TVs.  This is actually pretty low.  And I’ve always been told that leaving chargers switched on for mobile phones and lap-tops when not in use used electricity and it DOESN’T.  It seems to show that the advice you get for how to save electricity by getting obsessive about things on standby etc won’t really save much energy at all.  My top advice for using as little energy as possible – eat cold food by the light of the telly!

Finally, I am also interested in how to use the CurrentCost with the tryingtobegreen.com energy tracking website.  It would be of great advantage as it would stop you having to keep looking at your electricity meter (normally in such an unaccessible spot like under the stairs or in a cupboard outside).  At first glance I couldn’t find much that corresponded to anything we could use and the CurrentCost is generally about reporting usage right now rather than cumulatively.  However, it does tell you your total use over the last week and month and I think this could be used within tryingtobegreen.com.   I wonder whether other energy monitors have a similar feature.