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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • This is why I end up doing so much DIY.

    A job that takes a professional half a day could take me a whole weekend.
    But having to play “how likely are they to fuck it up, and how much of a pain will it be to fix” drives me up the wall so much, I often just buy the tool and do it myself.

    My time to do it: 15 hours, plus £200 in materials.
    Cheap tradesman: 8 hours, £450 total, non-zero chance I’ll have to rip it out and re-do it myself anyway.
    Specialist tradesman : 5 hours, £900-1200 total.

    So it either ends up being lots of work, a gamble, or lots of money. Quick, good, cheap, pick two!




  • This is roughly what we have in the UK.

    For electricity, the standing charge is 61.6p/day, then 23.3p/kWh.
    And gas is 29.6p/day, then 6.1p/kWh. (The numbers vary, and you can choose to lock rates for the duration of a contract).

    There has been some discussion of it in recent years (after it doubled, thanks Putin).
    Whether it is fair for people using less energy…But in reality, everyone has similar 100 or 60A connections to the grid.
    There are tarrifs for very low users, where the standing charge is combined with the first kWh.

    Once I’m off the gas boiler, and on a heat pump, I may get my gas disconnected to save the standing charge.

    On a tangent, as you may be interested, we now have the option of flexible electricity pricing that tracks the wholesale rates for the day. Usually, it’s cheaper, sometimes even negative. Link.
    However, this week there has been a lot of expensive energy, so it’s been butting up against the £1/kWh limit!