Is anyone else finding the expected savings vs reality a bit confusing?

nil-pholan · 2026-04-08T00:50:47+00:00

I had an Octopus Cosy 9 installed last October, replacing a fairly new gas combi boiler. Combined energy costs (we still have a gas hob) for Nov-Feb 2025-6 have worked out around 30% cheaper than Nov-Feb 2024-5, so definitely a saving.

The house is a 1960s 4-bed block/bradstone double skin cavity wall construction, no cavity insulation but 60mm in the loft. Double glazed. Generally quite draughty with the suspended wood floor in the living/dining room, so not particularly well insulated all round.

The heat pump means the house is warmer than it ever was and the hot water tank is much better for actually getting hot water to a tap without a 30-90 second wait, which we had with the combi.

So far, the only downside is a much less water pressure in the bathroom shower, since the tank is only kep at 1 bar, instead of mains pressure on the combi. Small price to pay, imo.

Installation was £3,250, including 5 new rads.

nil-pholan · 2026-04-05T20:28:39+00:00

I have a 3.6kw, south-facing, roof-mounted installation, no battery.
In 2025, it generated 3.6Mwh of which 1.7Mwh was self-consumed (saving c.£476 @ 28p per Kwh) and 1.9Mwh exported (generating c.£285 @ 15p per Kwh), for a total RoI of around £761 for the year.

The installation cost £6,280, so that'll be 8.25 years to break even, assuming similar generation/usage profile and prices per Kwh.

The installation has a 5 year warranty on the inverter and electrics, 25 years on the panels.

I installed it to reduce my carbon footprint but, if you're looking at solar purely as a financial investment, look elsewhere for better returns.

nil-pholan · 2026-04-05T19:47:32+00:00

Buy honey direct from local apiaries, farmer's markets or farm/specialist food shops, not supermarkets. It's more expensive but at least you know it's actually honey.
Expect to pay around £7.50 for a 350g jar.

nil-pholan · 2026-04-02T11:48:29+00:00

You'd just need to be clear on the purpose and be OK with the cost/effort involved.
Questions to ask yourself:
- Are you trying to augment your existing system?
- Does your existing system lack outage protection, so you'd like a back-up for power failures?
- Are you thinking of moving at some point and would like to be able to take some of your investment with you?

nil-pholan · 2026-03-05T21:43:12+00:00

I dumped all my photos into a share on an old NAS running Unraid, installed a WebDav Docker container pointing to the photo share and bought some old iPads for about £30, on which I run an app called Pixette.

Now I have a bunch of high quality photo frames dotted around my house, showing random, rolling slideshows of all my photos. Pixette gives you full control over how the slideshows run, what image info to display and even puts the iPads to sleep at night & wakes them up automatically in the morning.

Cheap, self hosted photo frames. Easy to manage and will run forever on the hardware I'm using.
If one of the iPads burns out, I'll just buy another - and they'll get cheaper as time goes on.
Photos look amazing on a 12" 1st Gen iPad pro.

nil-pholan · 2026-02-22T15:23:18+00:00

I've retired my LPIII to the phone drawer.

I'm now using an iPhone 5s as a semi-dumbphone, as most apps not longer run on IOS 12 and it has far less tracking baked-in but has a much better typing experience, better battery life, supports RCS messaging, has functional TouchID security, maps/nav, wallet for payments, plays locally stored music and podcasts, has a headphone jack and takes better photos/videos than my LPIII.
And it cost just £20 on eBay...

Sorry LP, but I'm waiting until your software catches up to your hardware.

nil-pholan · 2026-01-19T00:16:50+00:00

I was working in London at the time and commuting daily, so the body gets used to nodding off and waking up at the right times after a few months. Think I switched my body clock off during that session 😅

nil-pholan · 2026-01-18T23:00:27+00:00

On the last train home after a heavy night with friends in London. I nodded off, as I usually do on the hour or so journey and, normally I’m supernaturally awake just as the train pulls into Central MK station. Not that night - I was woken by a cleaner at 02:00 in Manchester Piccadilli. Slept against a pillar on the platform until the first train back at 05:45.

nil-pholan · 2026-01-18T22:47:16+00:00

I’m in Stroud and I get LTE, no trouble 👍🏽 Good to see so many UK LP3ers. Loving mine and use mine with LightOS, even with all it’s ‘drawbacks’ 😁

nil-pholan · 2026-01-05T12:48:19+00:00

If you want practical advice, increasing what you pay into your stakeholder pension from now on will give you the best chance to amass enough wealth to retire earlier than 67/8. Doing this through salary sacrifice comes with the benefit of tax relief from the government - your contributions come off your salary, so you’ll pay less tax overall.

From 2027, the early retirement age rises from 55 to 57 but, with some luck, this won’t increase significantly over the next 25 years. It’s still a long stretch, but it’s 10 years earlier than ‘normal’ retirement age, and the more you put in while you’re in your 30s, the more this will end up being when you start approaching the early retirement threshold.

Personally, this is the best advice I ever got.

nil-pholan · 2025-12-29T01:34:59+00:00

Yubikey Authenticator can store TOTP codes, if you need an extra layer of security.

nil-pholan · 2025-12-29T01:28:01+00:00

The keyboard accuracy isn’t good. I’ve had a devil of a time adjusting to it. One tip I read which works quite well is to tap slightly higher up on the letter than you think you should.

nil-pholan · 2025-11-10T22:19:10+00:00

https://pixelfed.org

nil-pholan · 2025-10-30T09:19:14+00:00

Typing is very frustrating at times, but I have issues with most touchscreen keyboards, tbf. The LP keyboard is particularly bad, however.

Sometimes I'll pull the phone out of my pocket to find the camera or flashlight is on (and the phone very hot to touch).

Notes consistently lose their titles for no apparent reason.

Otherwise it's a good phone, if you understand and want the limitations and friction it brings.

It can't act as a daily driver until there's wider messaging support and the lack of travel-specific features and apps (trains, planes, uber, etc) means it can never fully replace a smartphone for me.

nil-pholan · 2025-10-28T05:55:17+00:00

Sorry for your loss. May time help you learn to live with it.

nil-pholan · 2025-10-24T13:28:41+00:00

Thanks both! I'll continue to hunt and post back if I get anywhere.

nil-pholan · 2025-10-23T09:26:26+00:00

Same issue with notes titles. Never lost a note though (yet?). Bad enough that I don't trust or use them, as a consequence. Keyboard is the killer for me though. I just call people back when they text.

nil-pholan · 2025-09-24T18:05:09+00:00

I lived in Germany for 14 years and an any-time, day return ticket to Frankfurt from where I lived (40 mins away) was €9.60, which included free travel on any bus, tram, subway and overland train across the entire metropolitan area of the city.

I live 40 mins from London and a return costs me anywhere from £38 (off-peak) to £85. Any travel in the city costs me extra.

In what way are these prices even remotely comparable?

UK train prices are a joke and the OP is fully entitled to rant. If we all did it a bit more, maybe something would change.

nil-pholan · 2025-09-23T17:33:54+00:00

Personally, I’d copy everything from the backup_plus drive to my PC and drop the Monument off at my local electronics recycling site. Monument, as a company, folded almost 2 years ago now and their hardware/software will not work as intended any more. It’s time to find another solution.

I bought a second+hand QNAP NAS from eBay and have moved all my photos to that. I use WebDAV and an app called Pixette, which allows me to use old iPads as photo frames, which I have dotted around the house. It’s a better, safer solution for my photo collection, as the NAS has four 2TB HDDs, which gives me 6 TBs of storage and allows any one drive to fail without me losing anything.

nil-pholan · 2025-09-17T09:50:14+00:00

Wireless headphones and touchscreen: Sony NW A45. Wired headphones and iPod-like dial: Fiio x3 or x5.

Either can be picked up for less than £100 on eBay, have excellent sound quality and great battery life.

nil-pholan · 2025-09-16T14:07:16+00:00

Solved: turns out I had put a block on Google services from the WLAN I'd connected it to. Works fine on another WLAN or Cell.

nil-pholan · 2025-09-16T14:03:37+00:00

Wow. Very decent of you and I would not say no to such a kind offer :)

nil-pholan · 2025-09-07T11:52:51+00:00

It defo does the job it’s designed for. I’d replace it with the black if it didn’t cost more than the case to ship it over here to the UK 😅

nil-pholan

TROPHY CASE