OMG I have just had a fright

Long story short. We've moved house, into rented, loads of things different, will tell you more in later posts. Just inputting the meter readings into readyourmeter and shock HORROR our gas readings are over 300 times larger than the house we moved out of!!! PANIC !!! check and double check readings ..

Was the gas measured in cubic feet before? find bill, yes
Is the gas really measured in cubic meters now? check meter, YES.
Have we really used 232m3 in one month? YESSSSSS
Is the data input correctly into readyourmeter? YESSSSSS!!!!!
Is it really showing as 300 times more gas used? YES! ARGGGHHHH
Is the heating on now? YES
Is the heating on now? NO!!.
Dare I tell Mr Transition House? ...


...


gonna have to ....

We panic together and Mr Transition House quickly works out how much it will cost.

SHIT

I double check Mr TH's calculation, only to find he didn't convert cubic feet into kilowatt hours correctly, (he'd forgotten about calorific value and correction factors).

[I can't really type what I thought]

Then Mr Transition House notices the "Gas used (100s cubic feet)" on the bill from the last house. Thank goodness. I'd input all of the data for the previous house at 100th of the actual gas used.

Phew. We are now only using 3 times as much gas as we did in the first transition house!

Brilliant! (but not of course, 3 times as much, that's really quite bad - I'll write about why and what we do about it in later posts).

The heating is still off. We have put on a few more layers of clothes and think ourselves lucky.

The new graph showing (correct) old house and new house meter readings is below (and to the right).

I'll show you mine if you show me yours ...

electricity and gas meter readings that is ;)

Many thanks to the readyourmeter guys for adding the embed graph functionality to their site. I hadn't ever thought that a few graphs could be sooo much fun.

You can really see where we whacked up the heat during that snowy spell over Christmas - look at that gas use spike! And I was wearing lots of jumpers!! Now to be extra frugal to try and get those graph lines to go down again.

At least it has stopped snowing (actually I love the snow, it's snow much fun!! - pictured Ginger the snowman and me) so it should be easier to keep warm, I suppose not spending all afternoon building snowmen and getting freezing will help too.

10% in 2010

Lets face it the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference was a total COP out. It's time to ignore the politicians, get serious about climate change and do whatever we can with or without them. The 10:10 campaign is something that is tangible and totally do-able plus it will help reduce household bills too. Beat climate change and the recession all in one go - something every thrifty housewife should want to do!!

The 10:10 campaign is all about reducing your carbon emissions by 10% in the year 2010. The website gives all kinds of advice about how people can achieve that so go there now - no after you've read the rest of this because the 10:10 site doesn't say how as an individual you can baseline your carbon. There are a few carbon calculator sites the Transition House site reviewed last year.

If you really want to reduce your household carbon emissions you need to take notice of your electricity and gas consumption. www.readyourmeter.org is a site created by David Mackay (top geezer) and colleagues from Cambridge University. The site draws lots of nice graphs for you once you've added in your meter readings and it very kindly works out for you your CO2 emissions - very clever stuff.

By being interested in the charts it's almost impossible not to try and get those lines to go lower and lower (and horrible when it's winter and you have to turn the central heating and watch those lines rise (yes I am wearing several layers of jumpers)). Look out for electricity monitor free give aways too, the devices tell you which appliances are using the most electricity - some libraries have them to loan out to you like books ask your local library about them (and if they don't lend them out, suggest that they do!! :) ).

You can even compare your emissions against other houses, search for the "Transition House" stats. To check out how we are doing.

So join me and thousands of others and go for your 10% in 2010. Good luck and let me know if you sign up for the readyourmeter site so that we can compare charts.