What are you all up to

Yes ours will run for awhile but then goes into maintenance mode. I would think our house heats up a lot quicker than yours given the size difference. I agree the figures are enough to stop you putting the heating on. They even said it was worth putting the heating on for just 1 hour a day to warm through the house.  I think the whole report was full of misleading information.

However they very kindly cut us off at 4am, 

They did the same to us just before we went away, we asked for it to be cut off on the 13th as we knew that was the day we were leaving but they cut it off 24hrs early  We know don't have a landline or broadband. The phone signal in our village isn't great  but we are using Voip to make any calls and we have erected an omnidirectional antenna for wifi which is working fine, even allowing us to stream TV. We have a TP-Link modem, the sim card is with RWG who work off EE, which is the best signal here. So far so good, at least we are now paying for 1 system and its portable so we can take it away with us. No more paying 6 mths of the year for something we are not using.

Not so cold today as its raining, very dark outside and in, have to have the lights on all day its that dark, no solar power today 

Went for breast screening this morning, the wagon was at the other Tesco (Edinburgh road) store not the one we usually use. Wasn't impressed by the store not as good as the one we use (Crieff road) Did however manage to get quite a few good bargains with my Tesco card so quite pleased about that. Tuesday morning I called into Iceland and topped up the freezer, once again got quite a few bargains 3 for 2 deals and then got another 10% off as it was pensioners day.

Spent a fortune on bird food this morning but it should see us into the new year and I don't begrudge it, its nice to see the birdlife in the garden. Still no sign of the hedgehog house being used. its been cleaned out and new bedding put in ready for it but nothing yet.

Thinking of going and doing another hat on the knitting machine but its really dark even with the light on and I need good light to see the needle beds, might have to use the angle poised lamp. 

Not put it to the test but I think our system is principally controlled by the freestanding Hive thermostat which communicates wirelessly to the boiler. It can also be controlled via the app on my phone which does rely on 4G or the house WiFi. So if internet was down I don't think it would prevent the heating coming on? I would agree that changing internet suppliers can be a pain in the neck so best avoided if possible!!!

David

A lot of firing going off at local military camp today and some very big bangs that moved a few pictures on the wall and probably frightened a few birds and local animals even the horses in the field next to us ran to the other end of their field.

A frost first thing then it was dry for most of the day but now light rain very odd weather for December and some areas are flooded like some areas of the UK.

OH had a tidying session in his shed this morning after moving radiator and changing the controls for the heating system as all electric here (you can tell he is ex electronics engineer ha ha).

Off to friends tomorrow evening for a meal and catch up as all folks better now after coughs and colds and we have not seen them for 3 months what with holidays etc so a lot to talk about  but will keep our distance.

Unfortunately necessary when they will not offer a decent price!   Plus, the speeds on Plusnet were just not up to what they promised, so we decided to move.

Landlines as we know them will cease in 2025 it seems, and Plusnet said they will not be offering an equivalent, so we decided we might as well jump now.

I have no idea which heating control systems work in which way, they all seem to be a bit different!   You only find out when something goes wrong.

Do you know exactly how your thermostat communicate wirelessly with your boiler?  If you turn off your internet, does it still work?

As far as I know, if our internet goes down, if the heating is on it stays on, and if it is off it stays off.     Changing settings on it is via app, but if the system is not connected/on internet,  it cannot receive instructions?

Our daughter also has Hive, I will need to ask her how hers works.  It is all a bit of a mystery to me!

Anyway.......we have 2 boilers here, main house and granny flat, so we have decided to get a tado system for the new boiler in the granny flat too.

Will be interesting to see if that works, we have been told by tado that it should.  Have ordered it from Screwfix, so have 30 days to return if it does not.

Biblical quantities of the wet stuff today. Hope those travelling arrived safely at their destinations. and others have avoided any flooding.

Did our normal Thursday shop for the weekend, this including MiLs as she had conveniently made a hair appointment instead. I also understand she has arranged to see a friend next Thursday for coffee and mice pies. I smell a trend! I decided to do a click and collect for all of the heavy non essential foodstuff next week as shops becoming a tad crowded.

Gas man turned up yesterday as planned. All sorted. Funnily enough I've not received a "How did we do" email yet. Maybe something to do with the other 2 missed appointments.

Glad to hear that your gas man finally arrived WN, and all's sorted now, fingers crossed. 

You obviously made the correct decision, Debs, hope that you OH recovers and you are soon able to get back up to Stratford and finalise the year's close down.

We too have had heavy rain for much of the day and it was dark enough by 2:30 for us to need our lighting on. I think that the closure of the Windermere site has done us a favour as we would have been setting off and setting up in heavy rain and the forecast for the weekend is not much better. Roll on Monday when hopefully it will be somewhat drier and we will get away without getting wet.

Kj

Apparently it works on something called Zigbee, there is an explanation here. It seems to be a low powered wireless transmission between the thermostat and the controller on the boiler. I wonder if the control via the Hive Hub goes via the boiler controller to the thermostat rather than the other way round? So I am thinking that if we had a break in the house WiFi the boiler and thermostat would still communicate. The only issue if the WiFi was down for some time is that it is a pain to use the thermostat to change setting which are much easier done on the App!

What speeds did you get with Plusnet? We are on FTTC and get about 34 Mbps download and about 8 up which is more than enough for what we use the internet for. For about 18 months I also had a City Fibre connection which was 100 mbps down and about the same up. We know that Openreach are about to install more fibre in MK and as BT and Plusnet are the same company I imagine they will be offering the same service. We had a couple of guys looking at the ground cabinets in front of our house and they seemed to be suggesting they were checking pipe ways were clear for pulling through fibre. No official news yet!

David

We have had Openreach  in the street for several days this week, no idea  what they were doing.

Plusnet speed was supposed to be 50-65 download and 15-17 upload, but more often than not we did not get that, and sometimes it went into soup, or dropped out completely for a while.  On 3 we now have 50 odds download and 32 upload, on 4g, with no problems so far.  We can see the 3 mast from here, it is only a few hundred metres away.

£20 per month, first 3 months free, but  of course no landline. Both our mobiles are on 3, mine is direct with 3, soon up for renewal so I may change so we are not 100% relying on 3, and OH  is with Smarty, also owned by 3, on a monthly contract with 50Gb data.   I will soon be looking for something similar.

Yes BT and Plusnet are the same company, but apparently Plusnet will not be offering whatever will replace landlines, they told us that we would have to go to BT for that.  

"Yes BT and Plusnet are the same company, but apparently Plusnet will not be offering whatever will replace landlines, they told us that we would have to go to BT for that."

That's strange KJ.  We're with EE - for everything - mobiles, landline, internet, mifi - and have been for a lot of years. I was chatting with one of their customer service advisors - last year, I think - when I was doing my usual haggle over prices and she told me that EE and BT were going through a re-structuring and the intention was that, in the future, all domestic services would be handled by the EE side of the company whilst BT would take care of infrastructure and commercial customers. I have to say, though, that I've not seen any evidence of that, but it does sound like a logical move. Don't know what impact it would have on Plusnet.

The speed you can get on FTTC is limited to a top speed of about 80 Mbps but the further away from the cabinet the lower the speed. We are about 1 kilometre from the cabinet which dictates our speed. I have to say its been pretty reliable, that may have been because people where we live migrated to the higher speeds offered by City Fibre so there is less demand on the Plusnet/BT system? I won't do anything until either Plusnet or BT contact me. The reorganisation mentioned by Richard might also impact on Plusnet and perhaps they will disappear eventually? It would be a shame as I have always found their customer service pretty good and UK based. I hope they don't start messing around with email addresses as I have had my btinternet.com email address for over 20 years. We are also keen to keep our landline number which consists of three lots of double digits so easy to remember. Not sure I would be keen to rely of a mobile signal where we live as signal wise its OK but not brilliant.

David