Smart Man……………..

You may remember this post about these little darlings

I’d rather have a tube of these
but sadly it is not to be.

Mr Smart Man was due today between 8 am and midday. As it was raining, we rang our supplier to check and were told he was on his way.

Swapping over the electric meter was a doddle, and we had lots of pretty lights on the gizmo. The gas meter wasn’t so accommodating, and our fitter had to ring the office as the gizmo wasn’t picking up a signal. Suddenly everything lit up like a Christmas tree and we were in business……………….. until he pulled off the drive.
The gas reading wasn’t registering, not that we were actually using any, so we put the heating on. The boiler was humming along nicely, but the gizmo was ignoring it.
We gave it ten minutes, pushed the buttons, read the instructions, and called the helpline.
Apparently it can take up to 10 days for everything to settle down! How efficient for something that is supposed to help save money.
Whilst on their 10p (they called us back) I checked our tariff…….. check, the new one is now in force………..  that we were on monthly readouts………. another tick and I can check the meters myself,  just have to press the red button on the gas to display the reading..…………. and confirmed our direct debit of £46 pm is currently sufficient to cover our usage……….. check three.

We went out, taking our neighbour too as she had a bit of bulky shopping to do, and I treated us all to lunch as I got paid today.

Tonight we have checked the readings and have used 38p of gas energy and 10p of electric.
Currently (excuse pun) our electricity is costing us one penny an hour to run.
This is really going to break the bank (not, hurrah) and falls neatly in line with our known consumption. I mentioned our low usage to the fitter when he handed me their booklet on how to save money. He could not believe we only use 3kwh of electric a day, but then we have no TV, nothing on standby other than the freezer which is on all the time, no dishwasher or tumble drier and our shower is pressure run rather than electric.
Our gas is just over 1 and half units a week in the summer (the reason why it didn’t register at first was because we hadn’t used enough!) and about 22 – 24 units in the winter so he laughed and said the booklet would be of no use to me and maybe I would like to rewrite it.

The gizmo will sit alongside the thermostat control in the lounge unless it’s charging, or we may leave it plugged in forever in the kitchen, though at the moment it’s sharing the double socket with the kettle so that might dampen its spirits sotospeak.

Sigh.
It’s done and I shall continue to read the meters every week though there is no need to supply readings to the company now, but I have of course confirmed the final ones on our old meters for charging purposes.
Business as usual.

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