Warm air where?

On the subject of green savings I though it was about time to clean the filters on our heat recovery system and to stop thinking about mismanagement. We have fitted these systems to our last three homes and other than a bit of crawling about in lofts with ducting they are quite easy to do. Basically the 'stale' air is drawn from the kitchen and bathrooms and fresh air blown into the other rooms. The clever bit is that the stale air is passed through a heat exchanger and this warms the air coming back in. In theory this can recover 80% or more of the heat, the house stays fresh and no open windows let the precious heat escape. Running costs are very low as the fans are super efficient and in most unit the heat exchanger is passive and uses no power.
It would take a long time to recover the cost of installation but the air quality is worth buying.

Up tae 23p

Aye well the man arrived unannounced as expected and set our meter to 23p a unit. Not his fault of course he was doing as he was told but I think management have a fear of paper as we have seen nothing actually written down. What happens next we will have to wait and see. Strikes me that this is way to make all electricity users think green. What can we turn off now? Do we need the oven to cook this? How much of a load can the washing machine take? This has become a challenge to see how little we can use.

Legally hot day

A bit too hot today but not worrying as it will be back to normal tomorrow. The keyboard got a bit hot as well as I browsed around the Mobile Homes Act. Everything I see says that the park owner has no right of access to the home itself. They do to the Pitch, which is fair enough. We will have no problem letting folks in if they tell us what they want to do and arrange a suitable time. Anyway, fired off a letter to their legal department - it was not easy to find the head office address, I find that worrying. More about this later.
Watched the ducks playing with our on-site weeds. Well at least they like them.

Welcome - anytime?

Oh well a bit of a stushie today I hear. It seems the manager was on the site to configure the meters. But we were supposed to be told beforehand. Even if I was here I would have said no. The owners say their manager has access to the homes anytime they like (well 9 to 5). Can that really be right? I thought they could get on the grounds (or the Pitch as they call it, not happy about that either!) but not inside the home. Tell me first Eh - it is only polite. Will have to find out more about this as I'm not happy with the thought of someone having access on demand. Anyway the sun is supposed be out tomorrow - just a quick visit before the weekend apparently. And we have notification of the changes that have to be made to the meter - well someone told somebody so that makes it official. Hmmm more later.

Going Up?

Not sure what is happening with electricity charges now. A rumour is going about that the cost-per-unit will double or more. It seems we were to be advised of the new rates and when they were going to change them but the manager was on the park trying to do it yesterday completely unannounced. Nobody has had notification of what the new rate will be either. Not looking good! The weeds are also still getting longer...

Funny Electricity

The supply of electricity on park homes is usually quite a bit different from a house.
In your house you can choose a supplier and you have your own meter that is read by you or your supplier and you get a bill or pay standing order. In park homes the supplier usually supplies the owner and this is then charged on to the park home. With our home we have a card meter and we buy cards to use in it. These are the same meters used by landlords and can be set to a price per unit, 10p 12p or whatever. The rules regarding what you can be charged is fairly clear. The owner cannot make a profit on the electricity but can add something for management/infrastructure or whatever. Hopefully most owners are being completely honest and up front about this and making it clear about what are why the tenant is being charged. After all the tenant has no choice in what provider is chosen and has to rely on the owner choosing the best deal for the right reasons. Since our park has been taken over we are waiting to hear what rate we will be set to so more about this later on...