Electric/gas bll

We're like some of the others. Although we try to be careful, we don't stint on what we want and make sure the place is warm all the time.

Our main heating and all our cooking and most of our hot water is by gas. We also have electric underfloor heating in the kitchen and bathroom. The summerhouse has electric underfloor heating and the greenhouse has an electric propagator.

All forms of heating are kept on permanently and are controlled by thermostats. Night time (after 1 a.m.) temperatures in the house are set to be lower than daytime temperatures. I get skin problems if swaddled up too much. Mrs Shiney sleeps under a quilt and I only have a sheet. She needs to be warmer than I do.

As we are in most of the time and Mrs Shiney sees patients at home the house is kept pretty warm - it never gets below 70F unless we are away and then we keep it set at 60F.

When I retired 15 years ago we said that the two main things we would spend money on were keeping warm (including household comforts) and having holidays. We spend very little on anything else - we don't smoke or drink but eat out, fairly cheaply, quite regularly.

@WeeTam we have solar panels and last year got 21% but should really have been about 15% return on it (PM me with regard to your mother's panels if you want to how that worked out ). The Feed In Tariff that pays us for producing electricity has dropped a bit for new owners (guaranteed to remain at your starting tariff) and will drop again, drastically, in January. So anyone thinking of getting it done needs to act fairly quickly.

The standard return can also be bettered by having a switching system to an immersion heater.

Virtually all drying of clothes etc. is done by tumble dryer.

Our house and summerhouse are fully airconditioned.

Total annual power costs are now somewhere around an average of £150 per month. We could reduce that by changing our lighting over to modern equipment but the capital layout is not worth it - especially as I can't do it myself. We still use the old fashioned incandescent light bulbs and they cost about 20p each.