Jekyll2023-10-23T09:07:46+00:00https://andrews.io/feed.xmlLaurence AndrewsMy BlogLaurence AndrewsOctober Solar Update2022-10-26T00:00:00+00:002022-10-26T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/october-solar-update<p>Yes, I have been doing a terrible job of updating the blog. Sorry again.</p>
<p>It has been about three months since we placed our order with JPS Renewables for our PV array and Battery. Thought it’d be worth a quick blog to update on where we are and how things are progressing.</p>
<p>The good news is that we now have a confirmed install date, we’re booked in for Friday, 11th November! The plan is to have a team come and have everything installed in one day (guess we pray for no rain?). We are having the scaffolding erected on the 3rd and dismantled on the 17th. That should give us time to get the chimney removed in advance of the PV.</p>
<p>The journey to get a confirmed date hasn’t been easy, there was some miscommunication about the getting a survey arranged, which had actually already taken place. We then clarified and were told we were being pencilled in for December because of a parts shortage of the PV and Harvi. Not ideal, but fine.</p>
<p>Last week I emailed and asked about having a Zappi added to our install (to avoid needing to do so later, once we inevitably get an EV). And I was told that the results of our survey were outstanding. Confused! I left it for a few days, but then had a call to confirm our install date for November!</p>
<p>I’m sure there is some well-intended customer expectations management going on, but the lack of certainty has been a bit frustrating and email communication could have been better. Since the survey (which was very easy and a good opportunity to ask questions) I have not felt confident that our case/project is being well managed.</p>
<p>Following the addition of the Zappi, I understood from the the sales designer that a container of panels had gone missing(!) which I’m sure wasn’t easy to deal with from their perspective. Perhaps that and the increased demand has resulted in a bumpy few months. I do however trust that we’re in a queue and that queue is being managed. I would not feel the same from other suppliers. Also remain confident that JPS know what they’re doing and aren’t cutting corners.</p>
<p>Either way, we’re on track and in line with our original expectations for install dates. Adding the Zappi was a very easy process, cost was slightly more than I expected, but a relatively reasonable cost. It makes sense for all components to be supported and managed on the same install. I understand also that the Zappi would be included in the 0% VAT deal, since it’s part of the same installation as the PV.</p>
<p>Expect another update and many more tweets soon. I will try and take as many pictures as I can.</p>
<p>This weekend we’ll try to clear the under-stair cupboard and garage to get ready. Weekend following (once scaffold is up) we’ll deal with the Chimney. I’ve booked the day off work on the 11th for the install since I expect it’ll be difficult to manage both. Also happens to be Charlotte’s birthday weekend so that’s a bonus! Hopefully we’ll be greener before she’s one.</p>Laurence AndrewsYes, I have been doing a terrible job of updating the blog. Sorry again.Going Solar2022-08-18T00:00:00+00:002022-08-18T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/going-solar<p>Exciting news! We’ve committed and we’re going Solar. A fair amount changed since the last blog post, reading it back, neither company that we were talking to were particularly interested in our needs as a customer; the council scheme was slow and it turns out they couldn’t wait to get us off their books, and the other one, well, let’s not go there.</p>
<p>Just after posting the last blog I got a call back from <a href="https://jpsrenewableenergy.co.uk">JPS Renewable Energy</a>. We had a home visit from a member of their team and spent time talking about our needs and the technology that they recommend for our situation. All very positive, Ross who visited listened to our needs and built a proposal accordingly. JPS used <a href="https://www.opensolar.com">Open Solar</a> to present the proposal which made it really easy to see the different options, associated cost and an estimated break even date.</p>
<p>After the visit I sent Ross and email late in the evening with a LOT of questions, I was very impressed to see a reply before I started work the next day. Clearly a firm that cares about the customer. We decided to proceed days after the visit.</p>
<p>Since proceeding, the company have a big red banner explaining that they now have a waiting list for enquiries. Clearly we got in touch just in time! We are expecting everything to be installed in November (four months from order) and we’re keeping our fingers and toes crossed.</p>
<p>Here’s a bit of a summary on the specification that JPS recommended and what we opted for…</p>
<h2 id="panels">Panels</h2>
<p>JPS recommended <a href="https://jinkosolarcdn.shwebspace.com/uploads/JKM395-415N-54HL4-B-F1-EN.pdf">Tiger Neo all-black panels</a> from Jinko Solar. Jinko is one of the largest manufacturers of PVs with a significant market share globally, they come with a 25 year product warranty and 30 year performance warranty. The panels are mono-crystalline, <a href="https://www.solarreviews.com/blog/half-cut-solar-cell-technology-explained">half-cut</a> with 108 cells, rated at 415w and physically larger than those recommended by the other firms.</p>
<p>The panels have some interesting tech; they have n-type cells (as opposed to the more popular p-type) which provides for a higher efficiency out of the box and over time, (<a href="https://solarmagazine.com/solar-panels/n-type-vs-p-type-solar-panels/">here’s an article which explains the difference</a>) and <a href="https://www.pveducation.org/pvcdrom/pn-junctions/doping">a great site that explains the science</a>. Essentially, the silicon is ‘doped’ with a different element to alter the number of electrons and holes in the semi-conductor. It’s expected n-type will become far more popular in the years to come. The panels also feature SMBB technology, which is essentially a round-shaped multi-bus bar (the metal bit in a cell) rather than a typical square, the round shape results in the trapping/scattering of more light towards the silicon and thus further improves efficiency, (<a href="https://solarwithyash.com/jinko-solar-panel/">here’s an article which explains how that works, and gives some other commentary to the panels</a>).</p>
<p>We will have a 12 panel array on the roof, with a total power rating of 4.98kWp, producing a real-world theoretical estimate of something close to 5,000kWh a year. Over a year, this will provide generation of about 40% more electricity than we use today based on our current consumption. Of course we’ll produce less than we need in winter and an excess in summer, so even with storage will draw some power from the grid on winter months and on days with low/no generation. In the theory, December should see us produce just under 180kWh/month and the height of July 620kWh/month. It’ll be interesting to see the actual real-world results. We use something like 300kWh/month at the moment, we moved in March so probably a tad more in Winter. Generation calculations are based on the EU application linked in my previous post.</p>
<p>The panels will each be mounted in a vertical orientation on the roof, in two rows of six. To help place them centrally and to avoid any shading we will have the chimney removed (which we don’t use). JPS will have the scaffolding installed a week in advance to allow for the chimney removal. The panels will be mounted on top of the roof tiles and so we will also have bird blocker skirt added. With all 12 panels we will have about 250 sq ft of PV on the roof, taking up most of the roof.</p>
<p>I still don’t think this will be enough, once we have an EV or two, install an ASHP, air-conditioning and have a grown-up daughter we won’t have enough capacity. All of that will happen in the next ten years, so within the life of the system. We should however have additional roof space available on the extension which should give us and extra 30/40% of roof space, about what we would need. What’s more, we could take the opportunity to sink the panels into the roof to free up the weathered roof tiles for the extension. sinking panels into the roof looks WAY better but not worth the additional installation cost unless there’s construction/roof work going on.</p>
<h2 id="inverter">Inverter</h2>
<p>This was a big change in thinking.. JPS were quite up front in recommending <a href="https://enphase.com/en-gb">Enphase micro-inverters</a> rather than a string inverter. There’s lots of resources online comparing micro-inverters to string inverters so won’t cover here. Essentially, micro-inverters are a small box which sits behind each panel to convert the DC to AC, principally eliminating the need for a single large unit that does the same and in doing so removing the need for DC current to run through the full string of PVs.</p>
<p>There’s a few advantages which I really like:</p>
<ol>
<li>The inverters are managed centrally but all function independently with the management system providing performance reporting and isolation control.</li>
<li>If an inverter fails, only one panel is offline instead of all of the panels. Since each inverter is handling smaller loads, there’s less stress on components and in theory a longer life.</li>
<li>There is no need for an enormous and possibly noisy inverter box inside the house or loft. The inverter is behind the panel, so it’s all out of sight.</li>
<li>If we want to add more panels, we don’t need to upgrade or replace the string inverter, we just add more micro-inverters. We would however need to re-apply for another G99 if we add capacity and want to export it. It is possible to limit in software how much to export if necessary.</li>
</ol>
<p>There’s also some theoretical benefit for shading and leaf cover issues, where with a string inverter shading effecting one panel impacts the output of the whole array. I’ve seen videos online calling those claims into question and proving that it’s not true of modern half-cell split-module panels. Frankly, not really a concern since we’re unlikely to experience any shading.</p>
<p>There are some drawbacks:</p>
<ol>
<li>If something does fail, replacement or repair is going to happen on the roof, that’s not ideal as it’ll probably need scaffolding or access equipment.</li>
<li>Micro-inverters are certainly more expensive than a simple string inverter. Probably comparable in cost to a string inverter with panel optimisers.</li>
</ol>
<p>Enphase seem like a very sensible manufacturer, they’re US-based with a good online community, with a mature product line and a big market share, particularly in the US. The devices all have a 25 year warranty, with a UK company presence too, so no issues there. The <a href="https://enphase.com/en-gb/installers/apps">Enphase app/portal</a> looks great too and JPS showed a real-world example of an installation, with each inverter reporting it’s output easily showing past performance over time too. There is an accessible API and code on GitHub to connect to HomeAssistant, etc. The small little control box will sit in the under-stairs cupboard along with the alarm and distribution panel.</p>
<p>The model we’ll be installing is the <a href="https://enphase.com/en-gb/installers/microinverters/iq7a">IQ 7A</a>, we’ll need 12 in total, one behind each panel. The gateway uses CT clamps to monitor the consumption and production and supports ethernet for connection to the network. I believe that they inverters use Powerline to communicate with the Envoy Gateway, so there’s just a AC cable which needs to be installed between the roof and the consumer unit/meter.</p>
<p>The micro-inverter spec sheet seems to explain that a maximum of 10 units can be installed per section or per 20A circuit. But to be honest, I have no idea how they will be connected together. Speaking of which I also have no idea how we’re going to manage the cable between upstairs and downstairs. It would have been ideal to install the cable in the exterior wall cavity, but we’ve since had insulation installed so that might not be possible. We’ll wait for the survey to complete to understand. really hoping that we don’t have to have a cable present externally as that won’t look very good.</p>
<h2 id="storage--ac-coupled-inverter">Storage & AC-Coupled Inverter</h2>
<p>JPS recommended that we go with the <a href="https://www.givenergy.co.uk">GivEnergy</a> product line for storage. GivEnergy are a UK-owned battery and inverter manufacturer with manufacturing in China with good presence and established local market share. JPS were quite up front explaining that our current needs don’t necessitate much of a battery with an over-sized array. Before I really started researching I was expecting to at least install a battery which matched our daily consumption. I think over-rating the battery will be good, to help with odd days where there is low/no PV generation.</p>
<p>We opted to install the <a href="https://www.givenergy.co.uk/pdf/Version%202.0/Giv-Bat%208.2.pdf">Giv-Bat 8.2</a>, a relatively new product in their lineup and the second largest battery on offer. It has some unique features typically only seen with the premium options on the market:</p>
<ol>
<li>It offers 100% depth of discharge, so we’re getting all of that 8.2 kWh. Apparently it is a 10 kWh battery inside the box.</li>
<li>It offers 10 years of unlimited cycles, so we can go to town on charging and discharging.</li>
</ol>
<p>It is a bit of a unit at 94kgs but will fit in the under-stair cupboard just fine sitting on the floor. The battery has the trendy LiFePO₄ cells and operates at 51v DC. So it is plenty modern and should hopefully last some time. What it doesn’t have that some of the fancy options do have is a backup capability, allowing for the battery and PV to operate the local circuits in the event of a mains outage (like a UPS). While it would be good to have this, we haven’t really experienced many outages and I expect that with the increasing adoption of solar it will be something that can be retrofitted later once more options and demand exists on the market.</p>
<p>Because we’re opting for micro-inverters we will need to install an AC-coupled inverter to take the excess solar and charge the battery. The same inverter will convert the stored energy back to AC when we’re drawing from the battery. <a href="https://www.givenergy.co.uk/pdf/Version%202.0/AC%20Coupled.pdf">GivEnergy offer a 3Kw option</a> which is fairly straight forward. These devices aren’t cheap, well, they’re cheaper than the battery! But an important component in the system. Yes, there will be some efficiency loss with the conversion that’s not seen with a hybrid inverter and a string of panels, but I’m fine with that.</p>
<p>The 3Kw rating means we can draw a maximum of 3,000w from the battery (e.g. a high-power kettle) and anything above that comes from the grid assuming the PV isn’t producing. Our consumption profile shows us very rarely consuming >3kw and we would adjust accordingly anyway, such as using the tumble dryer only when it is sunny. On the same line of thought, we’re going to be charging the battery at a maximum of 3kw, so it will take us about three hours to charge from 0% to 100% if we needed to (I think…) assuming we have the excess to do so.</p>
<p>The inverter only comes with a 5-year warranty but is upgradable to 10-year with an additional cost of what I think is probably about 25% of the cost of a new unit. We opted not to take that on and will take the risk. Were it to fail after year five then prices for this would have probably reduced and I expect there will be improved products available too.</p>
<p>The inverter is smaller than the big inverter needed for a PV array, so can fit quite easily in the under-stair cupboard too. The GivEnergy platform also has its own app, online portal and open API.</p>
<h2 id="diverter">Diverter</h2>
<p>We mulled over whether it was worthwhile ordering an <a href="https://myenergi.com/product/eddi/">Myenergi Eddi</a> but decided in the end to go for it. This is a device which diverts excess PV energy to an immersion element in the hot water tank, negating the need to use the gas-fired boiler to heat hot water. That excess PV energy would instead be going to the grid, earning not much money. There are a few different systems around, iBoost, Solic and the Eddi. They all do essentially the same thing, but with different hardware/software.</p>
<p>We have a gravity-fed system in our 22-year old house. That was a desirable characteristic for us when we bought the house specifically because it will make installation of a diverter and later an ASHP installation easier. Yes, we may need to upgrade the boiler, hot water tank, etc, but that will be much simpler since the pipework is all in the right places. Our old house had a mains-pressure combi-boiler system and wouldn’t have had the option of installing a diverter in this way. I also like the fact that if there is a mains water outage we have a limited supply of fresh water stored in the loft cistern. And yes, supply does fail and an incident <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-62148068">recently affected people on the Isle of Sheppy</a> for several days during the hottest week of the year - no thanks!</p>
<p>Our hot water tank does need replacement soon, but not immediately - it’ll be something we think about when we add another bathroom or en-suite, possibly as part of the extension work. We also need to install a new shower pump and probably increase the capacity. For now, we should be able to install the Eddi and connect it to the 3kW top-mounted (not ideal) immersion element. There is something connected at the bottom of the tank, but I don’t think that is an immersion element, but some kind of temperature probe - could be wrong. We’ve actually never used or tested the immersion, perhaps I should see if it actually works. If we were to upgrade, I love the look of the <a href="https://www.mixergy.co.uk">Mixergy hot water tank</a> which uses a fabulously simple concept to simply heat just enough water and smart technology to plan for demand. Here’s a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z1Z4JCoPAGc">good video on how Mixergy tanks work</a>.</p>
<p>The Eddi will connect back to a Harvi device installed in the under-stair cupboard so it can determine when it should consume excess power as the storage battery will also be trying to do the same thing. This is all wireless, but I have installed an ethernet cable just encase anyway.</p>
<p>Our neighbour has a solar array and he also has a diverter installed. He said that in the summer months he basically doesn’t use gas at all, just paying for the standing charge. This is good news, since heating hot water costs us about 36p a day, plus 26p standing charge for gas connection.</p>
<h2 id="future-thinking-on-heating">Future Thinking on Heating</h2>
<p>Keen in the years to come to move to an ASHP, I have a romantic idea of a wood-burning stove with an integrated boiler (such as the <a href="https://www.stovesonline.co.uk/wood_burning_stoves/Woodfire-CX8-boiler-stove.html">Woodfire CX8</a>) sitting in our downstairs living space. The stove from that boiler could assist with hot water production and central heating in the colder, winter months where efficiency of the ASHP is poor and solar production will be very low or possibly zero if it snows! I think those wood burners look really good and so some something to consider for the extension, along with how we would install a flue, possibly taking advantage of the natural air flow to hear our upstairs bedroom too. If we do take this I think we’d need a separate thermal store in addition to the hot water tank, some thinking on <a href="http://www.heatweb.co.uk/w/index.php?title=Integrating_Heat_Pumps_with_Thermal_Stores">how that might be achievable here</a>, essentially a plate heat exchanger is needed to produce hot water because ASHP would operate at a low temperature. Overall our goal is to remove entirely our dependence on gas as a heating source and to reduce the need for high electricity consumption through the ASHP during the winter months when generation is low.</p>
<p>But that’s the thinking… We’ll stick with Solar for now. The rest can wait.</p>Laurence AndrewsExciting news! We’ve committed and we’re going Solar. A fair amount changed since the last blog post, reading it back, neither company that we were talking to were particularly interested in our needs as a customer; the council scheme was slow and it turns out they couldn’t wait to get us off their books, and the other one, well, let’s not go there.Considering Solar2022-07-17T00:00:00+00:002022-07-17T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/considering-solar<p>We’ve been in our new home for just over four months now and have really begun to settle in. In the first few weeks we did some decorating, replaced the carpet, curtains, lights (every bulb was incandescent!) and even had a new front door installed. Those changes made a big difference both in how we feel in the house, but also in the energy cost.</p>
<p>Since then we have been putting some thought into how we can improve things further for the future. There’s quite a few things on our list, but one thing we’re really thinking about at the moment is going solar. One of the benefits to this house is that the rear is south facing, (specifically, 208°/SSW) with a ridge line in the centre, sloping front and back. This would make it ideal for panels and mean they wouldn’t be visible from the street. Our next-door neighbour has the same house type with the same orientation and he had solar installed some years ago with good success. Here’s a picture of our roof:</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/considering-solar-3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>We would only use the top part of the roof for solar. The chimney we hope to remove, because we don’t use it, don’t need it and don’t want to deal with the hassle of it!</p>
<h2 id="our-journey-so-far">Our Journey So Far</h2>
<p>Just before we moved in we signed up for a council run group buying scheme called ‘Solar Together’. We didn’t hear anything for about two months, but eventually we were given a proposal and the name of the nominated provider, Senergy Direct. We agreed to the proposal which required a £150 deposit, and requested the battery storage too since buying it at the same time as the panels means there’s 0% VAT liable. I think there was actually the option to select different sized batteries, but can’t remember. Details of that proposal below, which I thought was actually quite reasonable.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/considering-solar-1.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Another two months goes by and we get another email explaining that the originally selected supplier of the scheme has opted out (because of component shortages) and that a new supplier has been selected, Home Energy Direct. A new less expensive proposal was provided but the size of the battery was reduced to 3.2kWh (no idea why…_).</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/considering-solar-2.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Things then went quiet again…</p>
<p>Getting slightly tired of waiting, I called up a firm that I saw were installing to some other houses locally, Fresh Electrical Solar. They arranged an appointment for about a weeks’ time for a survey. The survey was essentially an hour long sales pitch, which to be honest wasn’t really my cup of tea. They provided a quote there and then for 12 panels, a hybrid inverter and a 2.6kWh battery. The cost they provided me was quite a lot more, so we left things there. I was offered finance to help if I needed it. (Seriously, paying money to save money is a very silly idea). They seemed to have a large customer base and for what it’s worth and clearly have done a lot of the installations in High Halstow. It could have been the part of the pitch, but they claimed to have negotiated improved lead times of the supply of both batteries and panels, although the battery would be a few months behind the panels.</p>
<p>Last week I got a call from Home Energy Direct, the new supplier from the Solar Together scheme, I was busy at the time but they’re going to call back this week. Fingers crossed things work out there…</p>
<p>Since then I’ve done a little bit of research into what I think we need, but welcome input from those with more experience..</p>
<h2 id="our-need">Our Need</h2>
<p>At the moment, we use about 9kWh of electricity a day on average, which varies significantly based on if we’re doing the washing. We can use as little as 5.5kWh and as much a 12kWh, we usually use more electricity in winter, but that’s typical so that average of 9 will probably come up as we get through the year. Here’s a <a href="https://twitter.com/14zz4/status/1447501790820372481">twitter thread</a> with some analysis I did in our old house (we seem to use less electricity in the new house - yay!). I need to setup EmonPi in the new house, but have our smart meter as a rule of thumb.</p>
<p>Not exactly sure what’s led to the reduction, we’ve stopped using the tumble dryer for anything other than towels and generally have fewer lights on (the house is naturally lighter). We also have a much smaller cooker in the new house too which probably has quite a big impact.</p>
<h2 id="pvs">PVs</h2>
<p>12 panels seems to be a sensible number based on the size of our roof and to provide for most of our need most of the year. 12 panels will in theory generate about 5000kWh a year (<a href="https://re.jrc.ec.europa.eu/pvg_tools/en/">according to this EU website</a>), with an average day in July generating 20kWh and an average day in December generating 6kWh. Based on <a href="https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2020/04/comparing-solar-panel-generation/">Edent’s helpful blog</a> of a similarly sized installation helps support that as a reasonable estimation. Do check out <a href="https://twitter.com/Edent_Solar">his automated twitter account</a> by the way!</p>
<p>Regarding panels themselves… I have not looked at brands, the council providers both recommended JASolar panels. These seem surprisingly inexpensive looking online, at about £115 each ex VAT. Fresh Solar recommended a different brand “German engineered” but they looked comparable in spec and cost. These obviously need mounting to the roof some how!</p>
<p>I have no idea if there’s value in getting a specific type of panel, but suspect there isn’t and that so long as it is relatively modern we should be okay. Some seem to have better warranties, but I’m not sure how important that it.</p>
<h2 id="optimisers">Optimisers</h2>
<p>I’m not certain we need these, our roof is not shaded at all, but they sound like a good idea and I welcome the ability to monitor the performance of each panel. The two major brands available seem to be SolarEdge and Tigo. The SolarEdge optimisers seem to need a supporting SolarEdge inverter. The Tigo optimisers appear to be able to operate independently, with a CCA (Cloud Connector) and TAP (Access Point). There’s several models, but the TS4-A-O allow for monitoring, shutdown and optimisation of each panel. Tigo optimisers are about £38 each ex VAT, so not a small cost (plus the CCA and TAP). The council scheme lists both options, but no costs. Decision on the inverter seems to input into optimisers.</p>
<h2 id="inverter">Inverter</h2>
<p>There seems to be two main categories here, assuming the decision to use battery storage. A hybrid inverter, which connects the panels, battery and grid together (DC-coupled) or split inverters, where there’s an inverter for the panels direct to the AC/grid and then a separate battery inverter (AC-coupled). <a href="https://www.solaredge.com/uk/solaredge-blog/dc-coupled-vs-ac-coupled-pv-systems">The SolarEdge website has a good explanation</a>. Hybrid is most efficient since there’s fewer conversions between AC/DC and so less energy loss.</p>
<p>Since we’re definitely intending to install battery storage, the hybrid route seems most sensible. Knowing next to nothing, the Solis option looks decent (RHI-6K-48ES-5G), which comes in at about £1,160 ex VAT on some websites. This apparently has an off-grid backup function (not of particular interest to us) and supports a wide number of storage systems. The other option looks like the SolarEdge system, but these seem more expensive and more limiting for the type of storage that can be connected. The app on the SolarEdge system looks a lot better compared to Solis and much more easily interpretable. Several people on twitter seem to have this system.</p>
<p>Suppose it’s worth noting that having good reporting on the app is a pretty important, knowing how well the system is working will allow us to optimise how we’re living with it.</p>
<p>The council providers have recommended several different inverters, GroWatt as the default, but options for SolarEdge and Solis. Fresh Electrical listed GivEnergy Hybrid with a paired storage system (although mentioned using SolarEdge optimisers?). The apps for GroWatt and GivEnergy looked okay, but not great.</p>
<p>Probably need to do some more research on this, there’s a lot of options and not something that’s going to be cheap to change in the future. One thing to consider is that we may add additional PV in the future, possibly on the roof of an extension if we build one, possibly on more of the existing roof, so sizing appropriately now is important to avoid replacing the inverter later. That extra PV would help with an EV when we inevitably buy one in the future.</p>
<h2 id="storage">Storage</h2>
<p>I genuinely have no idea what capacity we would need in a battery (help appreciated!). Like most people we tend to use most electricity in the morning and evening. In the weekend when we have higher usage it tends to be during the day. I have 5kWh in my head, which seems like it would be the right starter amount to cover our usage outside of daylight hours, especially in the summer possibly less so in the winter. I like the idea of having a battery system which I can expand if necessary. I’m not particularly interested in using the battery to charge from the grid during off-peak hours, so think we just need to right-size for our needs.</p>
<p>My understanding is that a battery would do two things for us, targeted at reducing grid consumption. 1. absorbing surge demand (e.g. boiling the kettle). 2. supplying demand while the panels aren’t producing.</p>
<p>Options in the storage space seem to sometimes be tied to the inverter choice. The council scheme listed the PylonTech battery which from what I can see looks pretty sensible and the Solis inverter supports them, as I’m assuming does the GroWatt. It is scalable with additional modules and reasonably sensible in price. The Fresh Electrical lists the GivEnergy battery, which is part of the GivEnergy product line.</p>
<p>Fresh Electrical suggested only 2.6kWh of battery, which I really do think is inadequate. There was no calculation done to determine that as our requirement. The Council proposal I think I selected 4.8kWh and it was reduced in the updated proposal automatically.</p>
<p>There is of course the Rolls-Royce option in the Tesla PowerWall, which isn’t an option for us. It’d be overkill for our needs and too expensive for our pockets!</p>
<p>More research probably needed…</p>
<h2 id="other">Other</h2>
<p>During the summer months we’re going to be generating far more electricity than we need. While exporting obviously generates some offset against cost, it seems more practical to put that excess energy to better use. There’s two products, one called <a href="https://www.marlec.co.uk/product/solar-iboost/">iBoost</a> and another called <a href="https://myenergi.com/eddi-power-diverter/">Eddi</a> which divert energy to the immersion of a hot water tank to heat that instead, reducing gas usage. Seems like a pretty sensible idea. It would be easy to adjust our hot water schedule to allow for this kind of device to operate.</p>
<p>Interestingly the Fresh Electrical rep said that they don’t install these, instead they just suggest that people turn the immersion on/off on a sunny day since that will use generated power anyway.</p>
<p>We will probably park this idea initially, our hot water tank needs an upgrade at some point, so it’s probably worth waiting. We might even look at a product like this smart <a href="https://www.mixergy.co.uk">Mixergy tank</a> when the time comes.</p>
<p>On a slightly separate note, we have a company visiting tomorrow to quote for cavity wall insulation. This house was built in 2001 and should have had it installed, but it seems that it didn’t (naughty). Many of the houses around here have had it installed afterwards, including Dad’s. No idea how much that might cost, but I guess we’ll find out tomorrow!</p>
<h2 id="in-conclusion">In Conclusion</h2>
<p>We’ll wait to see what the council provider come back with when they call back this week about the PV/Storage. I’m relatively confident that I know what we want, enough so to express so anyway. I think the trouble will be that I may be seen as a difficult customer in an environment where there is tons and tons of demand. I think they represent good value, but not certain - compared to the Fresh Electrical quote they certainly do, probably worth us getting another to confirm.</p>
<p>One thing that we need to be really careful with is not overpaying for solar. At the end of the day it is simply a technique to offset future cost, to save money, it has no function as an investment. Perhaps “Being Green” but that’s all. We need to not rush, make sure we’re getting the right thing and be confident on the costs.</p>
<p>If anyone knows a dependable installed in the Kent/South East way, do let me know…</p>Laurence AndrewsWe’ve been in our new home for just over four months now and have really begun to settle in. In the first few weeks we did some decorating, replaced the carpet, curtains, lights (every bulb was incandescent!) and even had a new front door installed. Those changes made a big difference both in how we feel in the house, but also in the energy cost.Posting with Working Copy on iOS2022-07-11T00:00:00+00:002022-07-11T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/testing-ios-post<p>Hello from our first overseas holiday in a very long time. We arrived a few days ago and have just begun to settle in the our hotel and properly relax and unwind. This is the first time we’ve been to Madeira, Victoria’s first time to Portugal and Charlotte’s first trip abroad.</p>
<p>Work was beginning to really get on top of me last week; one thing in particular really quite upset me and made me realise what is important. So glad that we booked this trip when we did, it worked out as the perfect time to get away together and had allowed me to calm down. In the past when we’ve been away I’ve usually brought my laptop with me and always check in on work emails. Terrible habit which on this trip I’ve managed to break, Outlook and Teams have been uninstalled!</p>
<p>Not taking a laptop has however presented a bit of a challenge because I’m used to using it for so many things. Blogging, which I don’t seem to do very often anyway(!) isn’t something I’ve been able to do from my phone. I spent some time a while back looking into how to do it and the consensus online is to use <a href="https://workingcopyapp.com">Working Copy</a> to draft and publish via git and then use iOS shortcuts to resize, scale images. Working copy isn’t free, it’s £17.99 for the pro version, but is a very well built app. This is my first post using the new setup which hopefully works…</p>
<p>Authoring on iOS, specifically and iPhone mini isn’t easy. I’m not used to typing much on such a small device, but seem to be able to get on with it.</p>
<p>Anyway, back to the holiday. Hopefully a post about our trip will follow shortly.</p>Laurence AndrewsHello from our first overseas holiday in a very long time. We arrived a few days ago and have just begun to settle in the our hotel and properly relax and unwind. This is the first time we’ve been to Madeira, Victoria’s first time to Portugal and Charlotte’s first trip abroad.Hello, High Halstow2022-03-11T00:00:00+00:002022-03-11T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/Hello-High-Halstow<p>We’ve finally moved! It’s been a longer than expected journey and the past few weeks in particular have been really very stressful, but at last we’re finally in our new home. One week in and we absolutely love it and are so, so happy that everything worked out.</p>
<p>The new house has four bedrooms, a small study/office, is detached with a south-facing garden, garage and driveway for two cars. It’s bigger than our Upnor house, but not enormous and importantly has space in the places that is important for us now. Let me give you the virtual, written tour…</p>
<p>Downstairs, there is a living room at the back, which is plenty big enough for what we need now, smaller than Upnor but just fine. Because the house is south facing we get tons of gorgeous bright light into the lounge through the rear sliding doors. The layout of the room means I have a superb spot for my arm chair, right in front of the TV! There’s also a gas fireplace, which we don’t like and will remove, but isn’t an immediate priority. We’re going to hold off on replacing the carpet until we’ve removed the fireplace so will put up with the horrible blue carpet that is there now. In the past week we have put up some curtains from Dunelm, which were an absolute bargain and fit really well. Charlotte’s rock-a-roo fits just in front of the sliding doors so she has a nice view of the TV and room.</p>
<p>The kitchen is also at the rear which is really nice as you can look out to the garden while doing the washing up. It is a lot bigger than Upnor and has space for a kitchen table, a big deal for us, as it means we can have Charlotte in a chair or high chair while we’re cooking or eating, impossible at Upnor. The kitchen space also means that we can have our meals at the table, rather than on our lap (which became a terrible habit while at Upnor as our table was in the cold conservatory). The kitchen is old and needs replacing, but will be fine for the next few years. Very annoyingly, the cooker which seems to be the original (from 1999) doesn’t actually work, bit pissed off that wasn’t pointed out, to be honest. We’ve had to buy a new one and manage for the past week with ‘hob’ dinners! We also bought a new gas hob as the current one also isn’t great. For now, we bought basically the cheapest options from AO.com as we expect we’ll replace the kitchen in a few years time and will want something better/different. That’s probably a bit wasteful, a new hob, cooker and fitting set us back about £600, but not sure what else we could do. The kitchen also has a side door which means we can let the dog in/out from here, rather than having to traipse through the lounge!</p>
<p>At the front we have a separate dining room of a reasonable size with a window out onto the front garden. Right now this room is serving a ‘box room’ for all our junk, but will eventually be a family/play room so we can try to keep kids toys contained to one space (i.e. not in the lounge). We have a big play mat, sofa, sideboard etc which will live in here. We’ll also probably put in a TV and a few other bits. We’re going to replace the carpet here straight away but only with something inexpensive since it’ll probably get stained at some point.</p>
<p>On the other side at the front, there is a small office, is about 2 x 2.5m. So far, I love it! I can have my desk in front of the window, which means I get natural light for video calls with a blank wall behind me. I can also see when there are delivery people arriving before the dog goes mad, giving me time to mute. I really love that the office is downstairs and seems to help a lot with it not feeling like I’m just sitting in a bedroom all day. My desk doesn’t really fit, nor does any of the furniture which is really annoying, I will probably have to buy some new to make it work better. Possibly a sit/stand desk. Toyed with buying a 2000mm x 1000mm desk which would fit really nice in front of the window, but that’s a hell of a desk for a small room! Right now I’m decorating the office so that it’s ready for when the carpet arrives.</p>
<p>In the hallway of downstairs there is an under-stair cupboard, small toilet and of course a front door. We don’t really like the front door because it doesn’t let any light in and so the hallway looks really dark all the time. We got a quote for a new one, (£1,300!) so will have to wait on that too. We’re going to replace the hallway carpet but plan to put hard flooring though into the kitchen, office and hallway eventually, we’re going to wait until we do that kitchen to do so, as we’d like for it to flow and not have door bars.</p>
<p>Upstairs we have four bedrooms a main bathroom and one with an ensuite. The stairs up need some attention, the are very, very creaky and one of the steps has sunk so needs a bit of attention. before the carpet comes we need to open the ceiling of the under-stair cupboard and repair that. The landing is a nice size and central to the house. The two front bedrooms are the biggest, we have the one above the dining room and charlotte has the room above the office. In Charlotte’s room we’ve been decorating which wasn’t a small job, we chose to remove the enormous sliding mirrored wardrobes because these don’t seem super kid-friendly. Getting these out involved smashing them - not a fun job! We’ve ordered her some Ikea wardrobes instead which we designed with them on a zoom call - which was 100 times easier than going to the store! We’ve also taken up some of the floor as we need to put some sockets in to one of the walls where there aren’t any today for a lamp and stuff. We’re going to take the opportunity to put a light into the porch while the floor is up, which will hopefully avoid us needing to pull the carpet up again in the future.</p>
<p>Our room is not the largest, but has the right shape for our kingsize bed, charlotte’s next-to-me bed, our drawers and dexter’s steps. We don’t have the ensuite to this room, but the room that does is a bit too narrow for our bed. We quite like the bedroom, it’s smaller than in Upnor, but just fine and with a nice window looking out onto the street. We’re going to decorate this room before the carpet comes too, which is going to be a bit close for time!</p>
<p>The big rear bedroom with the en-suite will be our guest room, it’s big enough for a double bed and has another huge mirrored sliding wardrobe where we’ll keep most of our clothes. We’re not going to decorate this room straight away or replace the carpet, so we’ll live with it for now. The bathroom has been replaced recently and isn’t to our taste but is just fine. We have bought a new double bed for this room, the exact same bed we sold on Facebook a few months ago (doh!).</p>
<p>Last we have a small, well, tiny fourth bedroom which is currently serving as our dressing room and box room. This works reasonably well, although a normal morning routine right now involves us sleeping in our room, showering in the guest en-suite and dressing in the fourth bedroom - a bit awkward! Our hope with this room is to get it setup as a dressing/craft room for the time being. Ideally it’ll serve as an office for Victoria when she returns to work since she will also be based at home.</p>
<p>Oh yes, there’s also a main bathroom which has a lovely big bath. Dispassionately, it doesn’t have an over-bath shower so we’re going to need to address that. The bathroom was also fitted at the same time as the en-suite, so isn’t too bad at all. Since the heating and plumbing system in the house is ‘gravity fed’ we need to fit a shower pump to the hot water system for a new shower. The shower in the en-suite has it’s own separate pump. This pump should also fix the hot water flow-rate which isn’t currently anything to shout about.</p>
<p>I haven’t talked about the Garage, which is comparable to our old garage, there’s not a great deal of electric and no pluming out there at the moment, so we’re going to need to fix that. We’d like to put the washer and dryer out there so that we don’t have to listen to the washing machine going during the day. We also need to put in a new rear door as the one that’s there at the moment is just timber with a single glass pane, so not very secure. Since moving in we have put some shelves up to help with storage, that’s at least allowed us to clear some of the floor space!</p>
<p>The garden is not huge, but perfectly adequate. It’s shaped a bit like a T so has three ‘sections’ which breaks it up quite nicely. The previous owner has done a great job planting borders with flowers and shrubs, we have tons of daffodils and spring flowers which is nice. We also have a front garden which is actually quote big, but a bit of a useless space, so we might look at putting a driveway or something in one day.</p>
<p>….and that’s the wordy tour of the house! I’ll shared more about our future plans another time, but in short we hope to make the lounge bigger, extending into the garage space and opening up to the kitchen, making a large kitchen/lounge/diner with big bi-folds to the back. We’d like to put in another replacement garage and build a heated/insulated utility room to the rear. Above the extended lounge we’d like to put in a large master bedroom with ensuite in place of the small fourth bedroom. We’d probably look to replace the heating system at the same time, maybe put in underfloor heating throughout the downstairs and get the house ready for a ASHP. The top roof is ideal for solar panels too so perhaps that’s something to look at. Some neighbours have extended into the loft space, which is also worth considering, the stairs/landing are ideal for this and the roof pitch is good for it to work too. All in good time though, because none of this is going to be cheap!</p>
<p>Following the move-in we’ve spent a fair bit of homewares/improvements, with the removal costs, new furniture, boiler servicing, decorating, carpets, appliances and curtains/blinds we’ve spent about £6-7k. The move itself with estate agents, stamp duty, solicitor fees, etc has cost us just shy of £24k, which isn’t a small sum. The new house has extended our borrowing by about £150k, with mortgage overpayments to meet our 2050 mortgage-free goal we’ve added £700 a month to our outgoings, plus more for council tax, utilities, etc. We’ve obviously increased our LTV, but the expectation is that this house should increase more in value than Upnor, so that’s inevitable. Totally worth it though. We’re really happy.</p>Laurence AndrewsWe’ve finally moved! It’s been a longer than expected journey and the past few weeks in particular have been really very stressful, but at last we’re finally in our new home. One week in and we absolutely love it and are so, so happy that everything worked out.Below Deck Challenge Update2022-01-31T00:00:00+00:002022-01-31T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/below-deck-challenge-update<p>Well, we did it! I’ll admit, this wasn’t exactly the most challenging, er, challenge, but it has been an interesting exercise in understanding where we can actually save money if we really needed to. The ‘laissez-faire’ days of food shopping have been and gone in the Andrews household, we’re all about planning, meal preps and sticking to a shopping list from here on out.</p>
<p>I used to roll my eyes at <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0520lz9">Gregg Wallace’s ‘Eat Well for Less?’</a> TV show, he tells people that if they stop eating Heinz baked beans they can suddenly afford to go to Disney World. But u’know there’s some truth to it, we absolutely used to buy name brand stuff in the supermarket and where only the supermarket option existed, would default to the ‘extra special’ or ‘finest’ version without even thinking about it. Over the past month we purchased virtually everything store-brand, with a couple of exceptions where is either cheaper or the cost difference is incredibly negligible (e.g. Bread) or where we know the difference is worth the cost (e.g Mayonnaise). The biggest impact with this is not just buying store-brand, but buying ingredients and scratch cooking as much as possible, but we tend to do that anyway.</p>
<p>We did three shops over the month, all with Asda. We debated going to Aldi, but we don’t have the time and call me spoilt, but I just can’t deal with the whole checkout procedure. In experience, we don’t see a very big difference in cost between Aldi and Asda. Our first shop on the 4th Jan was a complete failure, we planned an online delivery which unfortunately got delayed and then eventually cancelled, apparently COVID-related. We instead printed the online order out and went and picked everything up, sticking meticulously to the list, which actually worked out quite well as we could substitute sensibly. The second shop on the 16th was very successful, we did a click & collect for 8am on Saturday morning, basically no subs, in and out in 10 minutes; we had to put everything in bags though, which was kinda annoying. The third on the 26th was also successful, we did another online delivery order which turned up on time and with only minor substitutions. The online delivery, which you can get for £1 if you find the right time (and so only 50p more than a click & collect) is certainly worthwhile. Asda’s online shopping experience is actually very good, better than Tesco and on-par with Ocado although they have differing strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>Reducing the duration between food shops has actually been a lot easier than I anticipated, before this experiment we would go to the shop multiple times a week and not even think about it. The most important change we made is to freeze milk and bread, we never used to do this and now that we do it has changed everything. It’s now essentially impossible to run out of bread between shops, I simply get the next loaf out and leave it defrost in the garage, same with the milk. No more milk that might be on it’s last legs, no more bread which is going to go mouldy unless we eat it quickly enough. Not all fruit and veg lasts more than a week, but to tackle this we simply eat meals that require the freshest salad/veg before those that don’t, which means the longer we go between shops, the more ‘cheat’ dinners we get. For fruits like pineapple and melon, we leave it until it’s ripe, chop it up and it’ll last several more days in the fridge. Bananas is the one thing that we do run out of, some shops do a mixed bag of some now, some later, but not Asda. Not the end of the world though and actually it’s a bit of a treat getting new bananas in.</p>
<p>Having a really good pantry has been a huge help to us and to be honest, we’ve eaten that down along with a bunch of stuff we had in the freezer while doing this (partly because we need to for the move!), so it’s not like we lived completely on £221 quid. We had cheese, pasta, rice, chickpeas, beans, tomatoes, snacks, etc so didn’t need to spend there. I don’t know if buying in bulk is always cheaper, but it is certainly worth it for the ease and knowing we generally always have enough. some things are undoubtedly cheaper in bulk, for example buying a big bag of dried chickpeas, batch cooking them and then freezing - it’s also easier because I don’t have to sod about opening tins. There are some pricier bits we keep in the freezer, a bulk pack of beyond burgers and fancy chicken nuggets which we buy from Costco and are probably more expensive than supermarket equivalents, but worth the money.</p>
<p>Some other things of note… buying cheap coffee is a false economy, I tried and failed. Ended up buying <a href="https://groceries.asda.com/product/filter-cafetiere-coffee/asda-extra-special-fairtrade-organic-nicaraguan-ground-coffee/910000856679">Asda Extra Special Nicaraguan</a> which for £2.50/227g is a pretty good deal and really quite nice (I’m not brave enough to bulk buy coffee at Costco). Way cheaper than the £7/227g I used to pay at M&S. We stopped buying Cravendale milk, we used to buy it because it’d last longer in the fridge, not an issue now we freeze. We still buy proper butter, but also now buy spreadable equivalent, it’s cheaper and during colder months is easier too since the butter we leave out is rock hard in the morning and useless for spreading (kitchen doesn’t have a radiator). Buying Medium Eggs seems to be marginally cheaper than simply defaulting to large, a medium sized egg is negligibly smaller, we still buy free-range no longer buy the fanciest eggs available.</p>
<p>Planning meals, both dinner and lunch has been important for success, we drew up a menu which lives on the fridge door so that we know what options we have when thinking about what we’re going to have for dinner. We don’t plan what we’re having on what day, but pick based on mood and time available. Options are categorised as ‘Proper’, ‘Easy’ and ‘Lazy’. Below is what’s normally on the menu.</p>
<p>Proper</p>
<ul>
<li>Lentil & Mushroom Spaghetti Bolognese</li>
<li>Indian Aubergine & Potato Biryani</li>
<li>Vegetable Lasagne (Courgette and Aubergine)</li>
<li>Lentil Shepherd’s Pie</li>
</ul>
<p>Easy</p>
<ul>
<li>Sausage & Mash (Linda’s sausages)</li>
<li>Chickpea & Spinach Dahl Curry</li>
<li>Red Thai curry</li>
<li>Quiche/Salmon, Salad & Potatoes</li>
<li>Fajitas</li>
<li>Vegetable Stir Fry</li>
<li>Tomato & Chilli Linguine</li>
<li>Pad Thai Noodles</li>
</ul>
<p>Lazy</p>
<ul>
<li>Frozen Pizza</li>
<li>Falafels, Chips & Flatbread with Mint Yoghurt</li>
<li>Burger, Chips and Salad</li>
</ul>
<p>Charlotte (Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner)</p>
<ul>
<li>Milk</li>
</ul>
<p>We could definitely save more money. We’ve done this challenge and haven’t really gone without anything or really even planned around making meals particularly inexpensively, some meals are actually quite expensive to prepare. We have been careful about what fruit to buy, not spending on a £4 punnet of berries or expensive exotic fruit. Fresh vegetables and salad are all generally pretty inexpensive, but buying frozen veg is probably even cheaper still, but not something we feel is too necessary (except peas, of course!).</p>
<p>The £221 was based on grocery food only, so excluding household cleaning, cosmetics and personal hygiene, baby formula, nappies, alcohol, take away food, etc. We include soft drinks, snacks, baking, etc as food. Coffee out, food while eating out, beer at the pub is counted in separate categories. Across all, we did relatively well, incredibly well compared to most months. We had one take away (£56! for three of us), two trips to the pub (£27.20), various visits to cafes and a breakfast out (£62), we also drastically cut down our non-pub alcohol spend (£40.38). So all those are additional to the £221.</p>
<p>For those that read to the end, over the past two years, our average food spend has been £530 a month. Peaked at £970 not too long ago, which is actually quite disgraceful. We’ll see how we go in February, but there shouldn’t be a reason we can’t keep up.</p>Laurence AndrewsWell, we did it! I’ll admit, this wasn’t exactly the most challenging, er, challenge, but it has been an interesting exercise in understanding where we can actually save money if we really needed to. The ‘laissez-faire’ days of food shopping have been and gone in the Andrews household, we’re all about planning, meal preps and sticking to a shopping list from here on out.Dadblog - Two Months Old2022-01-16T00:00:00+00:002022-01-16T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/Dadblog-Two-Months<p>Nope, I haven’t abandoned the DadBlog, it is still absolutely a thing… I’d say it’s been hard to find time, but if that were true I wouldn’t have been pumping out random posts about parks in Medway, my ancestors or how we’re trying to cut down our food budget. Truth is that I’ve struggled to find a way to write down and share about Charlotte joining us. Need to get on with it though, I know that sharing what we are going through right now will be great to read back on. So here goes..</p>
<p>We’re just over two months in to being parents and that time has gone CRAZY fast, it seriously feels like only the other week that we drove home from the hospital with a tiny human and not a clue what to do. Everyone tells you how much things will change and well, they’re right, our normal routines have been turned upside down. The same things are all still possible, but everything requires teamwork, extra effort and thinking through. Having a baby in our lives has tested us, we’ve both been at the end of our tether at times, frustrated, tired, exhausted but as a team we’ve supported each other and stayed on the right track. It is absolutely amazing though, despite it all, we love her more than we knew it possible to love something. The slightest smile and for a brief moment nothing else in the world matters and it’s all worthwhile.</p>
<p>It’s fair to say that sleep has been the thing we’ve found hardest. We still haven’t found a way to manage things in a sustainable way; every evening, night and morning is different. Some good, some bad, some terrible! I don’t think we’re alone, seems that what we’re going through is quite normal but it really is pretty hard. Over Christmas and New Year we managed well, Charlotte was beginning to develop a routine and with no other commitments we were able to manage to accommodate her needs in the evening or the morning and could do whatever we needed. Now that I’ve gone back to work, things have got harder again and she’s much more unsettled overnight. Victoria is of course off work, and so we’re trying to do our best with a system that involves her going to bed at 8/9pm, trying to get some sleep. Where I’ll then manage charlotte until 11pm or midnight, ideally feeding her, changing her, getting her to sleep and then taking her upstairs. Victoria will then get up worh her throughout the night feeding/changing as needed. The hardest part is that she just doesn’t seem to want to sleep when it’s night time and we can both be laying in bed for hours listening to her ‘chat’ to herself while we are both half asleep. Sounds like I’m complaining, not my intention, just sharing reality! Things I’m sure will get better in time.</p>
<p>Last week Charlotte had her first set of vaccinations, Victoria took her to the doctors where she had two injections, one in each leg. Victoria said that she had never heard her scream like she did and that the cutesy smile she was giving the doctor was wiped clean from her face quite quickly. We were warned that she’ll have a higher than normal temperature and that she may have some loose poops. To be honest, she’s managed just fine. More jabs next month (3 months) and then another set the month after that.</p>
<p>We’ve been managing really well with feeding, having switched to formula about 6 weeks ago. As mentioned in another post, we did our best with the breastfeeding, but it wasn’t working out. We seem to be the only one of our NCT cohort that is bottle feeding and it seems to be the only thing the group now talk about. Luckily, Victoria has a friend who is also bottle feeding so we’re not completely alone. We’ve both developed a hatred towards the phrase “Breast is Best” because it implies you’re not doing the best for your child unless you’re breast feeding. Not everybody can, and we’re confident we’re doing what’s best - so please fuck off with your inconsiderate phrase. We switched a few weeks in from Aptamil to Aldi’s Mamia. It’s a lot less expensive but importantly Charlotte seems to be able to manage it much better. We were struggling with the Aptamil, lots was coming back up, etc. I did some reading into the different formulas and they are all really, really similar. This seems to be working well, so we’re going to stick with it.</p>
<p>We did find that changing bottles helped a lot too. We tried the MAM bottles, then moved to the Tommee Tippee regular bottles. We’ve settled now on the <a href="https://www.tommeetippee.com/en-gb/product/advanced-anti-colic-baby-bottles#526=137&527=18007&471=164">Tommee Tippee Advanced Anti-Colic</a> bottles which seem to be working really well. There’s Advanced and non-Advanced, the difference is that the Advanced ones have a green top and a straw that goes in the middle of the bottle to help with air flow (I guess). Just this last week we’ve moved from the 150ml to the bigger 260ml bottles. Charlotte now has about 6oz per feed and about 5 or 6 feeds a day. she is pretty consistent with knowing when its been fours hours since the last bottle. She now drinks a bottle much faster than she used to, despite the teet in the bottle being the same. We usually wind her about two or three times during a feed, getting her to burp is very rewarding! We have a <a href="https://www.tommeetippee.com/en-gb/product/perfect-prep-machine#527=790">Tommee Tippee Perfect Prep</a> machine which has made making bottles so much easier. We also have a compartmentalised formula container which means you just have to dump the pre-measured formula in the bottle and then push the button on the machine. This is a great system. We have a belief that Charlotte is beginning to recognise the noise of the Perfect Prep machine, because sometimes she’ll stop crying, or at least calm down a little once she hears it (could totally be wrong!).</p>
<p>We’re not experts in this, but we’ve been following her development quite closely. The first thing we noticed was her looking at certain black and white shapes. By week four or five we noticed her first smiles to us (which is the most adorable thing). About 6 weeks she was beginning to really focus on things, change what she was looking at and even move her head to follow. She’s slowly started to make more noises and will ‘chat’ when she’s quite content and awake, this is really cute unless it’s the middle of the night.</p>
<p>In the morning we put her in her jungle chair (a bouncer) while we get ready and she will stare at the monkeys above her quite happily, smiling away looking at them. We have built a ‘stare station’ which we use downstairs, basically a wooden A frame with some toys and colourful shapes suspended from it, she loves this and will spend a long time quite happily having a good ‘ol stare. Baby sensory videos and Hey Duggee are her absolute favourite, she’ll be fixated with anything on a screen but big bold colours are what she’s most interested in. In the last few days she has been slowly grasping and grabbing, Victoria has put some wooden rings on the stare station which Charlotte enjoys pushing and moving around, she will also try and bash the monkeys in her jungle chair.</p>
<p>Very recently we’ve caught her mimicking some of the noises we make, Victoria has a great video of this. Very exciting! We get super excited over something new we’ve noticed and can’t wait to tell each other about it.</p>
<p>As you’ll have seen from the other posts on the blog, we’ve been going to a fair few walks. It’s been a bit difficult because of the weather but we try and go whenever we can. The buggy that we went for has been serving us well, the flat traditional pram part we have barely used, we’ve found it much more convenient to just use the car seat. She seems to like feeling nice and snug and it’s easier to make sure she’s warm in that part with the weather. The flat pram is also no use when going up and down pavements which is a problem round here with the way cars are parked. Car seat and the base has been very good, no complaints, seems really safe and cosy. We have used the lie-flat function of the car seat a few times, especially if she’s asleep in the push chair or we’ve brought her indoors from the car, where we’ll collapse it into lie-flat mode. The major frustration with the pram is that it could do with having a longer wheelbase, going up and down steep kerbs can be a bit of a problem, there aren’t drop kerbs everywhere.</p>
<p>Going to wrap the dadblog up there for now. I’m tired and it’s feeding time! Haven’t re-read this, so apologies for the nonsense sentences and spelling errors!</p>Laurence AndrewsNope, I haven’t abandoned the DadBlog, it is still absolutely a thing… I’d say it’s been hard to find time, but if that were true I wouldn’t have been pumping out random posts about parks in Medway, my ancestors or how we’re trying to cut down our food budget. Truth is that I’ve struggled to find a way to write down and share about Charlotte joining us. Need to get on with it though, I know that sharing what we are going through right now will be great to read back on. So here goes..Hillyfields, Gillingham2022-01-15T00:00:00+00:002022-01-15T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/hillyfields<p>Park #4 of <strong><a href="https://andrews.io/pages/medway-parks.html">The Medway Parks Challenge</a></strong>, is another park that I somehow didn’t know about, and our third Green Flag’er, Gillingham’s Hillfields Community Park.</p>
<p>The park consists of three sections, each at a different level, a sizeable play park on the lower part, on Parr Ave, a flat sports field and an upper orchard. The grounds are nestled between two primary schools, St Mary’s Catholic School to the south and Saxon Way Primary School to the west. There’s a third school, Rivermead a stone’s throw away from the play park too, did some work there a while back, lovely old Victorian building. To the east there is a disused railway line that leads from the mainline to Chatham Docks. Don’t really know why I didn’t know about this park, I’ve certainly driven along this road a few times before but I guess I just never noticed it.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/hillyfields-3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The park is reasonably big given that it’s in the middle of Gillingham and it’s really accessible for residents living close by. The whole grounds consist of about 10 acres. It’s mostly paved although there are quite a few steps, so it’s not the easiest to access with a buggy or wheelchair. The best option is to use the entrance on Parr Road between Garfield Road and Corporation Road, (which seems to be the main entrance). This entrance is actually a footpath and forms the Saxon Shore Way. Believe there’s also step free access from Greenfield Road to the south and Church Path to the west. It’s not possible to get from the play park to the top field without steps, unless you back track along Parr Ave and use the main entrance, annoyingly it would be relatively simple to make it step-free if the council installed a small incline/ramp on Knight Ave, which is just six steps.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/hillyfields-6.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The main field at Hillyfeilds consists of a pathed ring of about 450m which has distance markers making it easy if you’re running. It’s very flat, so this would be great for an easy going jog. Inside the loop is about 3 acres of grass which was being used by a kids football school on the Saturday morning when we visited, very nice to see it being used. There’s a fixed goal at one end, although the school was using their own netted goals. There are benches and litter bins throughout and even a covered and lit shelter for if it rains!</p>
<p>The upper orchard area can be accessed from the main field by a big set of steps or a steep grassy ramp to the south. There’s also step-free access from Rosebery Road which might work. Up here the orchard area is divided into a wooded area with a small pathed route and a grassed open area with trees. There’s a couple of picnic tables although unfortunately they were all pretty well vandalised and surrounded by beer cans. I imagine the view from up here is actually quite impressive although it was very foggy for us! There’s a couple of signs, one showing the river view and another explaining the orchard.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/hillyfields-5.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The orchard sign was heavily vandalised and no longer really legible, it seems to talk about the history, some of the trees and wildlife. I reported the damage to the council once we got home, although none of it looked particularly recent. The bank to the main field is quite steep and I imagine a great place for sledding after it has snowed. Despite a lot of people on the main field nobody was in the orchard area at all, it was quite nice and peaceful. I didn’t walk through the wooded area.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/hillyfields-4.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>At the bottom field there is the play park, this is actually quite big and has a few unique attractions including a really long slide, a spider-web type climbing frame, two(!) roundabouts and even a sandpit. To add some extra fun, there was also a traffic cone, shopping trolly and an old chair - reported to the council. I don’t really know why, but there was nobody in the park, despite it being prime park time. Things felt a bit grubby and sad, the extra long slide was full of dents from vandals and probably not something you’d feel too happy for your kid to use. All set in a nice grassy area though and I’m sure really popular in the summer. There’s benches, litter bins and picnic tables too. There are no dog signs as is normal for play parks. One thing that’s a little unusual is that the park isn’t gated although there is some space to the road.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/hillyfields-1.jpg" alt="" />
<img src="/assets/img/hillyfields-2.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Parking at Hillyfields was not great, all the roads are permit holders only. That’s probably not an issue for most people, but an inconvenience for us. We managed to find a side road to park which was fine in the end. I’m sure we would have been ok if we had parked in a permit area given the day and time, even though it was restricted. Sadly there was litter all over the park, particularly off of the footpaths and near benches. The park does have a friends group, but it seems quite dormant compared to Broomhill and The Vines. We enjoyed our little visit, but probably wouldn’t come back in a rush given the trouble parking. On to the next one!</p>Laurence AndrewsPark #4 of The Medway Parks Challenge, is another park that I somehow didn’t know about, and our third Green Flag’er, Gillingham’s Hillfields Community Park.Strood Waterfront2022-01-09T22:00:00+00:002022-01-09T22:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/strood-waterfront<p>After visiting The Vines, we thought we’d take a walk over Rochester bridge to get some yarn for a project Victoria is working on. Charlotte and Dexter were both behaving and enjoying the walk so we thought we’d swing by Park number 3, Strood Waterfront.</p>
<p>…Sounds like it actually might be quite nice, right? Not so much. Going to try and make this post as positive as I can, but the reality is that Stood Waterfront, also known as Canal Road Play Area, is unfortunately a little run down and could do with some love and investment.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/strood-waterfront-1.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Walking underneath the railway bridge towards the park we passed the Council supported ‘Innovation Studios, a collection of small offices on top of shipping containers. The park runs from here to the junction for a road that leads to Strood Station. That gives the waterfront about 220 meters of river frontage and views across to Rochester on the other side.</p>
<p>The area is mostly tarmac surface with some patterning to make it a little more interesting, there was lots of broken glass which wasn’t idea. We walked past two caged basket ball courts with a football goal; at the time there were some people using the area for exercise. There is a lovely small stone auditorium which would be great for a performance of some kind.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/strood-waterfront-4.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>Continuing on, there is a round bed of planters which don’t seem like they’ve had too much attention. Followed by a large children’s play area which features a unique rope climbing pyramid. There was also some outdoor gym equipment which appeared to have been installed more recently than the rest of the park.</p>
<p>Sadly much of the equipment was vandalised or graffitied, although there was some equipment working in the children’s area. Walking around the river front there is a strange metal sculpture, almost appears like an Elizabethan fire-beacon, strange!</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/strood-waterfront-2.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>We didn’t stay too long. It was pleasing to see some people enjoying the area, but I hope in the future there is some remediation to make things better. There’s clearly a lot of regeneration going on, with the site of the old Civic Centre and this side too, waiting for some kind of development. Some grass areas would be ideal too.</p>Laurence AndrewsAfter visiting The Vines, we thought we’d take a walk over Rochester bridge to get some yarn for a project Victoria is working on. Charlotte and Dexter were both behaving and enjoying the walk so we thought we’d swing by Park number 3, Strood Waterfront.The Vines2022-01-09T00:00:00+00:002022-01-09T00:00:00+00:00https://andrews.io/blog/the-vines<p>It’s been cold and rainy this week, so we’ve mostly stayed tucked up at home. Fortunately, the weather brightened up this Sunday though and we got ourselves out to park #2 of <strong><a href="https://andrews.io/pages/medway-parks.html">The Medway Parks Challenge</a></strong>, a Charles Dickens favourite, Rochester’s The Vines.</p>
<p>This is actually the second time we visited this year, it makes for a perfect little detour when walking around Rochester. We like to walk past the Cathedral on Boley Hill, past the Old Archdeaconry, through The Vines and then back towards the High Street on Crow Lane.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/the-vines-5.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The Vines is another of Medway’s Green Flag Winning parks and is immaculately kept with support of <a href="https://www.friendsofthevines.co.uk">The Friends of The Vines Community Group</a>. It’s a small park at about 3 acres, the smallest of Medway’s eight <a href="https://www.medway.gov.uk/news/article/1025/eight_of_medway_s_parks_amongst_the_best_in_the_uk">Green Flag parks</a>, but has plenty of history and things to see. It consists of green lawn, with some large flower beds and an impressive variation of mature trees.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/the-vines-2.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>One of the most impressive features is a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequoiadendron_giganteum#United_Kingdom">giant sequoia</a> tree in the north east side of the park between the paths. It has a grounded bed and some stools for people to sit on. At the centre of the park a tree sump has been carved into a book of Oliver Twist and has a small plaque explaining some of the tree types.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/the-vines-1.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>The park is paved, with footpaths at each corner leading to the middle of the park. An avenue of trees has been planted from The North entrance by the Old Archdeaconry to the southern, main entrance of the park. There is some history on these trees shared on the Friends website, explaining that in storms of 1983 and 1990 some trees were lost.</p>
<p>The park has many benches, litter bins and some small wooden features for children to play on. I particularly like the ‘vine’ metalwork on some of the entrance railings. The park is very accessible and has no steps, except two small steps for the west entrance. In summer and during Rochester’s event weekends the park can be very busy with people sitting enjoying the surroundings.</p>
<p><img src="/assets/img/the-vines-3.jpg" alt="" /></p>
<p>During our visit a man stopped us (we suspect he had heard about the Medway Parks Challenge…!) and said to us that we was surprised how little green spaces Rochester has. Pretty surprising, with The Vines, Esplanade Gardens, Churchfields and Rochester Castle Gardens I actually think Rochester has rather a lot of green space!</p>
<p>We’re sure to visit the Vines regularly this year and hopefully we’ll be able to get some pictures when things are a bit more green and less wintery.</p>Laurence AndrewsIt’s been cold and rainy this week, so we’ve mostly stayed tucked up at home. Fortunately, the weather brightened up this Sunday though and we got ourselves out to park #2 of The Medway Parks Challenge, a Charles Dickens favourite, Rochester’s The Vines.