Energy savings

You may remember at the time of Copenhagen we invited Warm Zone to check on our preparedness for energy saving. At that time we seemed to be on top of most of the obvious things without major financial investment. Warm zone loaned us an electricity monitor which revealed some anomalies. After the Christmas lights bonanza had ended I started to look more closely at what it was showing us. The electric kettle for example at 3.1 kilo watts was one of the biggest users of electricity. I like my cupa tea. During the night we were still using approx 190 watts and even allowing for clocks on cooker micro wave and bedside this seemed high to me. On investigation I found we were using a number of extension leads which contained warning lights. I have now replaced these with no light versions which I had in my little electric store and I am getting a saving of 40 watts per day. Warm zone supplied us with an Eco kettle which is only 2.2 Kilo watts. The time to boil is slightly longer than the old model but nowhere near a third longer. The other advantages of this little beauty is it has two water compartments a larger storage one and the heating compartment with a clever little devise on the lid which enables you to fill only the amount you want to heat. Because of the large window on the heating compartment you can see very clearly when it boils and although it contains an auto cut off I have not used that yet because at 2.2 KW, seconds are expensive. I almost always allowed the old kettle at 3.1 KW to auto switch off.
We have ordered an energy monitor from British Gas which will monitor all our energy. I wonder what else we are going to find.
Has anyone had any experience with Halogen cookers? On the face of it these seem to show a substantial energy saving. I have found dealers on the web but have not been able to find a store that stocks them. I want to have a look and feel before investing in one of these.

Permission to publish

You might remember in my last proud granddad post I mentioned a picture painted by eldest granddaughter well I got permission to publish. I hope you like it as much as I did. Fear ladies and gentlemen by Freddie. Who knows we might even get a post from her in due course. Grandsons seem totally indifferent to contributing in fact eldest gave an emphatic NO. The face top left reminds me of the Magic Roundabout character Doogle.

F for Foxtrot

Having family in America we have over the years sorted most of the language differences. Things like trunk, in English boot. But occasionally we get one which is new. Over there the grandkids and Dad are on holiday for Thanksgiving. As is our practise now we Skype at these times. Yesterday I told them the joke about my mate who had Gammon flue, he said he had a touch of swine flu but he is now cured. My son in law thought this funny but the grandkids never understood. Gammon of course is ham over there.
Son in law then had to read out a long identity number which for some reason got confused in the email. Things were going well, he improvised with the letter id D for delta etc until we came to U he then said U for udder which at the English end caused us to burst out laughing.
There must be a dictionary somewhere of these ID codes because they are used by police and emergency services. A google search is required I think.
Anymore swine flu jokes?