Latest helpfulness...

In praise of plumbers: a final draught

Experience tells me that it’s not wise to sing a tradesman’s praises until they’ve started - let alone finished - the work you’ve hired them to do, but I’m childishly excited about some plumbing work I’m having done over the next couple of days. That’s not normal, is it?

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by Simon Handby in At home on 13.08.08 | 1 comment | permalink

Energy sapping

The sun’s out again over much of Britain, and it certainly seems like this summer’s shaping up to be a thorough improvement over last year’s storms.

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by Simon Handby in At home on 30.07.08 | Leave a comment | permalink

Wave off

We’ve taken a break from testing how much electricity washing machines use to answer a question about microwaves.
Sandra Storr asked us to look at the one-time ovens of the future, as she’d heard that they used as much power on standby as they did during cooking.

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by Simon Handby in At home on 07.03.08 | Leave a comment | permalink

Through the mangle

Just before Christmas we hooked up our washer-drier to the power meter we’ve been using to test how much power typical home and office appliances use, and measured the electricity it consumed in a 60-degree wash.

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by Simon Handby in At home on 03.01.08 | 3 comments | permalink

Greenwashing?

With visiting relatives in need of clean bedclothes, table cloths picking up stains from wine, cranberries and chocolate, and tea towels mopping up more than their usual share of dishwater, Christmas is a pretty busy time for the average family washing machine.

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by Simon Handby in At home on 24.12.07 | 5 comments | permalink

We built this city…

Back in 1985, Starship claimed to have built a city on rock and roll. Presumably because it had a better ring to it that ‘we built this city with judicious use of natural resources’.

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by Charlie Peverett in At home on 21.12.07 | Leave a comment | permalink

Screen test

Last week we found out how much power a typical office PC uses in a week, but that’s only the box that sits under the desk. Surely the computer’s display uses a fair amount, too?

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by Simon Handby in At home on 19.12.07 | Leave a comment | permalink

How easy is it to switch energy supplier?

We’ve been testing how much electricity our typical household appliances use, but when working out the cost we’d been using a figure of about 9p per kilowatt hour (kWh). It turns out this is a little on the cheap side.

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by Simon Handby in At home on 14.12.07 | Leave a comment | permalink

IT all adds up

Ever wonder how much electricity your home appliances are actually using? We’ve been plugging a power meter into various electrical goods in a bid to find out the truth.

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by Simon Handby in At home on 13.12.07 | Leave a comment | permalink

Girl power

Recently, we’ve been using a power meter to find out how much electricity our domestic appliances are using, and asking for polite suggestions where we could stick it next.
Barbara McStravick suggested that we connected up to the electrical products used in a daily beauty routine, so one intrepid Living contributor has done just that.

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by Simon Handby in At home on 15.11.07 | Leave a comment | permalink

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