Home and heating

We currently use electricity for general lighting, cooking and heating three upstairs bedrooms and two bathrooms with far infrared ceiling panels. Downstairs radiators and water heating are through an oil fired boiler. We plan to stay in the house for at least ten more years and would be really interested in replacing the oil fired system with a completely electric system (even if we don’t get all our money back) using cheap off peak power and batteries. If we got rid of the oil tank, we have a large concrete base that could house these. We’d need a water heating system and six new electric radiators. Can current batteries large enough to last the whole day, especially in winter, be charged up from off peak power? We live in an old Grade II listed building and do not want to use solar panels. Is this is a feasible option?

RCD tripped overnight, only resets with kitchen sockets trip off, any help please

Updated on 03/10/24 by Abby_OVO So you are with an amazing energy supplier but still want to save money on your heating bill? Look no further! Although OVO offers an incredible deal with Tado, there are alternatives. I am not saying the product I have implemented into my home is better than Tado but I will go over why I chose Hive over Tado further on. Let’s talk about the advantages before we get to the disadvantages. So the advantages with replacing your current thermostats with a smart one? Well, let’s rewind this back in December when I got the thermostats installed into my home as this is when people tend to use their heating right? So rewind to December 2017. British Gas man arrives at my house to install thermostat in the hallway and upstairs, offer the man a cup of tea and he refuses, so far not a good start turning down a cup of tea. The whole installation process took 45 minutes due to the way my house does it’s heating. I have a separate thermostats to control down stairs and a separate one for upstairs heating. Ok, getting off topic here. Like I said, installation took 45 minutes so the next part was to connect my thermostats to the hive hub or the receiver I believe some people call it. This just simply allows hive products to connect to my router. A simple process like many other hive products in my house (lights & plugs) you just open the app on the phone, turn the products on and link it to the hub. All done great! So now what? Not like I can tweak it to cook me dinner so what is so fancy about smart thermostats? What is the advantage owning one? Well for one, I can now control the heating with either my phone or at the time use IFTTT (if this then that) to use my google home to control the heating. But now google home has updated to be compatible with Hive products. Secondly, I can control the heating while I’m at work and make sure my partner isn’t cranking it up to 30c! So a big bonus there! The hive thermostats have a pipe freeze protection so when the house reaches a certain temperature. For mine it’s 8c, the heating will kick in to stop pipes from freezing. There is not much I have used the thermostats for because they just work, I have the thermostats set so when my phone GPS is a certain range to my house the heating turns on. And when I leave the heating turns off. Other than this, I still have loads of features to try. I would highly recommend you look into purchasing Tado or hive. The only disadvantage so far with hive is the app for iOS still does not support iPhone X display. This doesn’t stop the functionality of the app but would be nice to use the app with a big screen. Like I said I only went with the hive thermostats because I already have lights and plugs in my home so it only made sense to keep it all standardised. Sorry for blabbing on as usual! But hopefully you enjoyed it Any questions, drop them down below and I am happy to answer as efficient as possible. Keen to learn more about how you can control your heating with a Smart thermostat? Check out this great guide. OVO offers an exclusive deal on a tadoº Smart thermostat, or check out what one of our members had to say about using a Hive in their blog below.

I've recently moved to a house where the central heating system is run via a 14 year old Alph gas boiler. My meter readings seem high. Is this down to the age of the boiler? It has been regularly maintained. I'm wondering whether to replace it or not.

I had a Powerwall 11 installed on 21st May with back up Gateway. My specification was to be able to have a self-powered home. I.e. I didn’t want to buy any grid electricity at all, or at least reduce my dependency on Grid supplied energy. My solar array is some 6 years old and performs very well but the inverter is grid connected such that if there is a grid power failure/outage I have no power in the home – so not even the gas boiler will work! The Tesla back up gate way keeps the house energised even if the grid is down. Solar power continues and or the Powerwall depending on the time of day. The installation was straight forward and was completed in 2 days. Things to look out for if considering a Tesla installation. Get at least three quotes and make sure any installer is Tesla accredited – Tesla won’t allow non accredited installers near their kit. The gateway needs to be connected to the internet - ideally three different ways. It comes with a SIM for remote monitoring by Tesla support but they require it also to be connected by a direct ether net connection and WI-FI. The concern is that if your router is changed and the connection is not hard wired then you will not be able to use the APP to control the system. The Tesla APP allows you to monitor in real time how much energy is being produced and where it is being used or exported – very simple and straight forward – ok for smart phones as well as android tablets. The result is that from 21st May 2020, I have only spent £0.02 per day on grid electricity plus of course the all-important daily standing charge. BUT – on a poor day with low light the one Powerwall installation can become almost exhausted. I have set the back-up limit at 5% (in case of a grid outage) after which the gateway will allow grid energy through to power the home. Now for the complicate bit – do I stay on my one tariff rate day and night – or switch to say economy 7? Staying as I am, will mean paying more for charging the battery off peak, assuming that on most days I will have sufficient power in the battery to power the house during the day and evening? BUT switching to economy 7 and being caught out on occasions of poor light in the day may result in having to use grid power at an expensive time. Experience to date suggests that our present profile of power usage allows the solar/battery combination to get us through the most trying days until late evening and as there has been so much sunlight through until charging can take place from the solar array. I want to stick with OVO – been with them for 6 or so years and I have never experienced a more cooperative and supportive utility provider in 60 years of desperate struggles – so my instinct at this time is I will switch to economy 7 at the end of my current contract and tweak our usage through the winter such as to only use off peak power from the grid. Hope all this helps someone and if anyone needs further info please let me know.

Hi Now, I know for a like for like type of light bulb the title will be the case - e.g. 3w LED bulb will be cheaper to run than a 7w LED light bulb and a 5w energy saving bulb will be cheaper than a 10w energy saving bulb and so forth. But what if I am comparing different types of bulb? So is it still the case that a 5w energy saving bulb will be cheaper than a 7w LED bulb? All the advice I've read seems to say that LED is pretty much always cheaper 'in the long run' but that also takes into account the purchase cost of the bulb in the first place. I am only interested in the running costs and disregarding the purchase costs. Then what if I have a combination of bulbs? Would I just add up the total wattage? So in this example, will an uplighter using a 5w energy saving bulb be cheaper than a ceiling light using two 3w LED bulbs? Many thanks in advance

HI guys I am having batteries installed on the 19th Jan and my question is, is it worth going to eco7 to charge them overnight in the winter so I get next day at cheap rate until proper time of use tariffs become available?

we are having a new kitchen fitted with lots of high tec appliances.I have been told by my electrician that because the new hob draws power of 48 amps we need to have our service head upgraded and the tails also need upgrading.He told me to contact my energy supplier to arrange this but I’m having trouble getting through.Who do I contact to sort this service head out for me if I can't speak to OVo? Appreciate any adviceLori

Hi ,I've had a liberty 110 smart meter installed and I'm thinking of replacing old storage heaters with dimplex quantum The meter has a 5th terminal for storage heaters ,but is this a 24/7 power supply running alongside economy 7 ? Any help would be appreciated