Seriously cold. The ice hasn’t defrosted in the bird drinking table all day, and I had to leave my run until midday to give the sun chance to defrost the pavements. We’ve got the heating on round the clock, which is really making me wish that we’d got somewhere in looking in to alternative heating systems.
I’d like something solar. We have a good south facing roof, with plenty of space for solar panels, and I think my ideal would be solar hot water, as I understand even in winter the sun can raise the temp a few degrees, saving huge amounts on fuel costs. Given that taxes and energy costs are rising I think it would be a sensible thing to do, so I think next year I’ll be looking into finding plumber services to get something set up.
In the long run, I’d like PV panels too. My absolute ideal would be to be independent of the national grid, or a net exporter to it, that would be long term peace of mind for retirement! And solar energy is really all we have access to – can’t put a wind turbine on a bungalow! But I think that’s very long term thinking, and we’ve a house to extend before then (hm, could we build a wind turbine in if we raise the roof?), given that we currently have only 2 bedrooms between the 5 of us. I need to do a lot more research into it all as well – maybe I could make a resource a bit like the Yellow House all about the changes we’d need to do here.