General Chat

Bottled gas......argh!!! that was our only option in West Wales. It was an absolute novelty to have mains gas when we moved Eastwards as well as money saving.

Our house is over 100 years old with really thick exterior walls and we do have the sun full on the front of the house all day. In the Winter I turn the CH off after 20 minutes because I overheat lolol

Our meters are only read by a contracted human on behalf of the energy supplier once a year.

One house I would never considering owning again is electricity only with a solid fuel Rayburn. The village step down transformer blew on Xmas eve a few years ago, the kids went off to various friends for 4 days and took the turkey with them to be cooked by a friend's Mum. Hubby and I had soup and a sandwich in the dark on Xmas day. We also had to run off the hot water from the CH every few hours because the pump had no power and you could hear it boiling in the holding tank.

One Xmas I want to forget

:-(

We pay quarterly on a Scottish Power's dual fuel based on a real person's reading. Its been the same person for a number of years; we've almost become 'friends'!

Considering that mobile phone coverage is spotty around here, they may not think that smart meters are viable. Visitors can end up on the stairs waving their phones around trying to get a signal. Some phone providers are better than others. BT is ok - vodaphone is rubbish.

This is all very interesting - the shape of things to come?

We have bottled gas and I watch usage like a hawk because it is expensive.

Electricity meters are read by a proper person every quarter and estimated if I'm out. So far nobody has mentioned smart meters.

We don't need water meters in Scotland as the water supplies are not privatised. We pay a fixed amount along with the council tax.

IGP is 100% correct. He might also have added that Google and others are working hard on monetising energy usuage data obtained from smart meters.

re: mobile phones and poor indoor signal

I am glad that Supercrutch does not suffer from this problem which is extremely common both in offices and homes. Residential properties most affected tend to be flats and older pre 1900 properties built with a lot of stone. Cob cottages are fine.

One approach to a dire interior signall is a booster. Like many products these can be bought in the UK but not legally used (reason: they generally screw up the 3G network for everybody else).

Another approach is to use a fem2cell. These are expensive and so the ISPs are very resistant to providing them. I got mine originally from EE. Now I am with Virgin vut it still works 'cos Virgin is a "virtual"network carried by EE.

https://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18496595
https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/news/2011/12/virgin_media_4g_femtocell_devices_can_boost_mobile_broadband/

The smart meters we have tried to use were not compatible with the Fem2Cell.

As it happens Virgin plan to install public Fem2Cell boosters all over the place (well, busy urban areas) which is why they don't do 4G other than on biz contracts.

there you go, calm down and have a nice cup of tea

:-D :-D

The council had a water meter fitted here.
Then, the foreman realised my water & hot water tanks are fitted in the attic and upstairs at the front of the house, all water outlets are downstairs at the back of the house :-(

This means, when I want hot water, I have to run litres of water before the hot water appears - so no savings,but letters from the water company about my use!
When I can be bothered, I'll ask them if they'd like to move my tanks!

I considered a water meter some years ago but when I worked out our usage thought better of it PDQ.

Interesting, Rather like water meters. Fit one, save money - then we'll put the water rate up!! :-(
Water meters, another thing that 'everyone would have' are still, years later not in every home.
As for the in-home display showing my usage - my meter has that.
I mean, call me dense, but I'm well aware that filling the kettle to boil it will cost more than half filling it.

I also know tumble driers eat up electricity - hence I don't have one :-D
Amazingly, I don't even have to have a tumble drier on, and watch the 'ordinary' meter zooming round to know that!!
Is it more fun watching a smart meter clock up the £££'s?

If not, I won't bother :-D

Not compulsory to go 'Smart' but most consumers will get a smart meter installed in due course like it or not. The new meters also work in dumb mode.

There is still a lot of work to be done with the technology though, and as I said elsewhere, B Gas told me they can only provide a smart gas meter at the present time if they supply your leccy as well, but they are working on it so this is expected to change.

No need to change meters if you move suppliers either as all meters will connect via a central communications body, called the Data and Communications Company (DCC) so it will simply be a computer configuration change once the network is fully operational next year.

Should a consumer have a smart meter installed already and wish to switch to a supplier not yet supporting the technology, the new supplier is obligated to take on the customer, and the smart meter will revert to ‘dumb’ mode. But this is only temporary, until the DCC launches.

Also, if your meter does temporarily revert to its non-smart mode, you can still benefit from the in-home display, which will continue to show you your usage.

Well, Rollo, if you know so much about a fix, why don't you just do it, instead of rambling on about how everything/body in the world is wrong - apart from you?

Inspector Green - there will be no expectation for everyone to have a smart meter in the near future - as has been shown, they sometimes don't work, and we have a choice of suppliers, if we don't want dual fuel, why should we have it?
I'm afraid it is just an urban rumour.
Will suppliers be happy to change your smart meter every time you want to change suppliers? Will they be able to keep up with it? Of course not.
Strikes me, it' a way to stop constant changing of suppliers.

It's a personal choice. I personally like blinds at my windows, but wouldn't tell someone with curtains that they were 'wrong'. ;-)

Of course I use my mobile to make and receive calls, why else do I have paid for minutes on my plan?

To be quite honest I couldn't give a damn about using a booster for my 3G signal because it's absolutely fine.

I also grew up with black phones with curly cables and being able to tap in phone numbers in the red phone boxes, not pressing button A and saving 4d every time :-D

I am not talking about data I am talking about talking about voice.
Maybe you are one of the many who never use yr mobile phone as a phone and even if you talk on it it is via some app or the other.
I grew up with real phones connected with curly wires to the wall and still prefer classic talkie.

On UK mobile phones this is delivered through 2G a subset of 3G. Even if you have a 4G phone it still uses 3G for voice calls. These are calls using yr mobile phone number which is supposed to connect to a local phone mast.

Except that often it doesn't especially in buildings with sold walls made out of stone, brick and concrete or with a lot of metal. The phone signal is one bar at most and the only way to connect is to go outside.

There is a fix for this on some networks called a Fem2Cell. The device plugs into yr router. It then sends/recieves classic 3G signals to/from yr mobile which are then routed to the mobile ISP over internet (tcp/ip). The ISP then repeats the trick at the other end of the call.
Mobile phone ISPs are very resistant to handing out this technology which is not well known.

Simples.

If my mobile phone can't locate the signal for data it just uses my Wifi ... 'simples' as a certain Meercat is fond of saying

Do any taxi/uber drivers speak the Queens English ?!!! There's variations of it....

Rollo, Rollo, Rollo, you sound as sick as a parrot. :-D

Go out and do something silly to cheer yourself up. It's the weekend after all. :-D

There is a measure requring Uber drivers to speak English properly and they are up in arms about it. This mighjt be because most of them cannot speak English "properly" let alone at a level better than that needed to be granted British citizenship.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-37103979

"Smart Meters in the UK are not linked to the internet. "

exactly they use the mobile phone system if I understand you correctly. However our mobile phone signal is rats.

Now if yr signal is rats and you create holy hell with the ISP they can proivde a small gadget called a Fem2Cell which plugs into the wifi router. It connects to the mobile ISP somewhere or other. All the 3G phone signal within around 20m of the box then gets routed via it and the wifi router with the result that the phone signal jumps from 0 to 4 bars :-) If you are lucky you can get one free the SP is £ 200. You can always tell where the 3G signal is v poor 'cos people come outside to talk on their mobiles.

for whatever reason the smart meters could not avail themselves of this but the phones are happy .

LOL now we can even blame Brexit for the perceived lose of future Uber drivers.....so all UK Uber drivers are not UK citizens ??!!

I have rung them up several times.

They demand we have the meter read by a human being at a time am/pm and day of their choosing which so far has proved impossible. I would like to have the meter outside in a cupboard but the planners won't agree with that, not even if the meter was hidden in some kind of steam punk box matching the locality. They are happy with all the serried waste bins though.

They also say that we are not really in surplus at all but our usage is actually in accordance with the billing based on expected usage for our floor area. I have sent them photos of the meters but that is not good enough.

I used to pay for resident's parking but stopped 'cos it does not guaretee a spot and they oversell the spaces just like plane tickets. This can cause serious confrontations around 7pm.

Well now there is a cunning camera which will issue a fine if you dare use the parking for a sliver of time ... so it is cheaper to buy the non existent space anyway but now I am at the back of the queue. If brexit goes through there will be nobody to drive for Uber (my pay grade does not stretch to black cabs) and we'll have to walk and risk being mugged for the wallets we haven;t got any more.

what was it? ah yes being born an Englishman is to win a ticket from the best lottery in life (or something like that).
Yeah , sure
my dad was born in Lahore. Should have stayed there.


smart meters, parking, rapacious plumbers, mobile phone companies, Melanie Philuips, smart meters ( we are watching you ), government spying (get a DD-WRT router now while you can), brexit, low pay, bad cooking, freezing cold coast, late crowded expensive trains, wildlife massacres, criminalisation of poverty, I can never myself understand why Bill Bryson's island is such a draw. To be fair T May is doing all she can to correct this perception.

Smart Meters in the UK are not linked to the internet.