Self - motivation is useful, those without it generally need a helping hand and once activated rarely look back. I haven't got a smug attitude but just get on with it.
I never did follow Martin Lewis’s do a comparison and switch, so I’m probably on the wrong tariff. However, fixed the tariff for a year just before the current difficulties - so a bit of breathing space. Only 3 Humaxes (Humii?) to support. Not sure it was a good time to switch from gas to electric cooker. Needed new cooker when I moved and landlord frowned on gas cooker in older person’s accommodation. Probably thinks I’ll blow the place up!
Social circles develop from what you take an interest in. You have a social circle here, for example, and it would only take a bit of motivation to, say, organise a club meet. It just needs somebody willing to do it.
The retirement apartments my 80 year old aunt lives in has no gas into the building at all. She bought new from the builders and they were very up front about the lack of gas in the building being specifically to remove any chance at all of someone insisting on putting a gas cooker in. Fitting gas just for heating doesn't stop people putting in a gas cooker later. The heating is resistive electric in a Polish made double cylinder thing with inner for hot water and outer for the circulation water for the radiators, I've never seen anything like it. There are so many heating elements in the outer cylinder they disconnected some of them due to excessive electrical load, the lights dip when it turns on.
Should that not be Humaxes?
Who knows? BH always puts Humii, I prefer Humaxes. Not worth arguing about. There was a similar waste of time with Vax computers. Vaxes or Vaxen? (Bloody autocorrect changed that to faxes, vases and cases for first, and Valencia for second!) Pointless.
Not usually, certainly not in a technical post, but sometimes when I'm being jocular.
Almost impossible to blow up new cookers
How so? And it's not the cooker itself that is the concern, it is the room when there is a gas leak. This can be on the input connection to the cooker, which no amount of smarts in the cooker can prevent.
But an elderly person in sheltered accommodation may not know that, and just blow the place up instead.
An elderly person does not know that gas leaks are bad?
My mum reported a gas leak on a road near where my parents live. Later when walking during lockdown and talking to people that lived on the road, they said "oh yeah, it's been like that for years, never bothers us" ie. as if claiming the smell itself was the problem rather than the gas. The gas board came, took one look at it, and prioritised the road for total replacement of the cast iron gas main it was that bad. Some people are just stupid.
Something similar where I used to live. Someone replaced the old pipes outside the building with plastic ones right up to my meter. After they’d done I thought I could smell gas. Fortunately some other gas person was strolling around the area visiting every property and noticed the same smell. Windows open and emergency gas repair called. You’d think gas people would check their work for leaks, wouldn’t you?
I think if they're replacing a whole section, they wouldn't be able to check the multiple individual joints until the whole run is done... but then they should visit every single joint with a sniffer (or perhaps run a vacuum test on the whole section... or maybe both) once the gas is back on. Still, won't have this problem much longer, will we!
Can’t imagine how I’d heat this flat when the gas has gone. There are so many don’t do this or that. Don’t use electric fan heaters. If I do, do you think I’m going to tell them? The only gas item I have is outside. The boiler has been put in a brick shed. Unfortunately, the meter, on/off valve and the pipe to the cooker site are inside - so plenty of scope for a gas leak. Still, whether I’ve had covid or not, I can still smell the odd pongs.
How did you know? No candles, no cube style double socket adapters, and no plugs without the added protection on live and neutral pins.