[WizzyWigg]

@meldrewreborn And if you compare the app explanation to what's online on the website they're different. No true explanations.

[meldrewreborn]

Good news, my Electricity EAC has been revised down to 1661.9kWh per annum (i put in manual readings to get a bill). thats the lowest its been since my dramatic cut in consumption in October 2022. So the hike after the fitting of smart metering was thankfully temporary, nevertheless the EAC is still a bit too high (3.6%) compared to my consumption over the past 27 months. So while its fair to say the EAC does adjust to changes in usage if regular readings are submitted, It doesn't do so fully, and it doesn't do it quickly. Rest assured I'll continue to monitor the situation.

I have to say that the GAs EAC didn't suffer the same problem as did the electricity. My gas usage can easily vary 20% from year to year depending on the severity of the winter, but perhaps the way the gas industry computes the figures is better than the electricity industry.

Just the change of the cable splitting/termination fitting under the stairs to go now which requires my driveway to be dug up. 2 week to go on that one!

[meldrewreborn]

Well, my electricity cable splitting device has been replaced this morning which hopefully ends the work stemming from my decision to have smart meters installed.


I was awoken at 07:50 by an insistent door bell, to be confronted by 4 chaps in hi Viz , 2 to dig up my driveway and 2 to do the internals. The digging up of the drive was a “just in case” as in the end it wasn’t necessary to cut the cable outside. This was precautionary “in case” the breaking of the cast iron internal splitting device didn’t go smoothly – as it was it did go smoothly, and the changes were made on the supply whilst live. And a good job too as it turns out my electricity cable resides inside a cast iron pipe which would have required additional cutting gear, or another hole on the footpath to get at the cable before it entered the pipe. An hour and 15 minutes later all was complete, and reinstated. My IHD survived the "power cut" so I've no further light to shed on that issue.


So now I have a fully compliant supply and metering setup which should outlast me – given that the original was up to 92 years old (that was when the house was built) - but not every new house in those days had mains electricity as standard. And if you think electricity is expensive now, in the 1930’s it was horrendously expensive and adverts for new homes for sale made claims of installed electric lighting – there wasn’t any demand for sockets to power washing machines dishwasher, vacuum cleaners, fridges, freezers and anything else we consider standard today. When my parents were bombed out in 1945 their extensive war damage claim listed not one electrical item, so progress wasn’t that quick either.

Currently I’m re-reading the book “This Boy” by Alan Johnson. Alan grew up in Notting Hill in the 1950’s along with his elder sister, minus a largely absent father but with a very hard working and put upon mother. His descriptions of their living conditions will be familiar to many, in rooms in houses shared with other families, no bathroom and only one outside WC, places already condemned in the 1930’s. Although he became a union leader and later a Labour MP and Minister, the book isn’t really political but more a tribute to the two formidable women who shaped his life. Many of the things he describes ring true to me although I lived in East London and he was in West London. Reminding ourselves of these common living condition of the 1950’s shows us how far we’ve come in the intervening years, something we should be immensely proud of, even though things today are far from perfect for many. But anybody who yearns for the good old days of yesteryear must have been incredibly rich, because for the vast majority life was quite grim.