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Blog posts about home renovations.

4G Smart Meter Communications Hub

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A photo of our electric meter with a new 4G communications hub on top.

If you’ve been reading this blog for some time now, you’ll be aware that, in March last year, our smart electric meter stopped being smart. It’s now fixed, and we have a new 4G communications hub too.

For some reason, that even now we’re not entirely sure of, no regular readings were being set back to our energy supplier. This meant that we had to take manual readings, which was a pain – our meter is in a cubby hole under the stairs in our cellar, behind our tumble dryer. We get our energy from Octopus (referral link), and although they tried various things at their end, after a few weeks, it was determined that we needed an engineer visit.

Unfortunately, this has coincided with the shutdown of the Radio Teleswitch service, which controls older Economy 7 meters. This means that, nationally, there’s huge demand for engineer visits to replace these older meters with newer smart meters. Whilst the shutdown should have happened last year, it’s been delayed and will (probably) happen this year. As such, it took until January for us to finally get an engineer visit.

The Communications Hub

It turns out that the electricity meter itself was fine. The issue was in the Communications Hub; if you have smart meters, then you’ll typically have:

  • An electricity meter
  • A gas meter (if you have mains gas)
  • A communications hub, which sits on top of the electricity meter and manages the home connection and the link with your energy supplier
  • An In-Home Display (IHD) which displays your usage
  • Some Octopus customers also have an Octopus Home Mini which sends your usage data over your Wi-Fi connection in real-time.

All these talk to each other using a private Zigbee mesh network. The Communications Hub then sends data to your energy supplier using one of three methods:

  1. If you live roughly south of the M62, then it’s sent over O2’s 2G or 3G data network.
  2. If you live roughly north of the M62, then it’s sent over a lower frequency 400 MHz radio data network operated by Arqiva.
  3. Or, if you have a newer communications hub, it’ll use Vodafone’s 4G network, and these are installed nationally.

4G migration

We originally had the second type, but now we have the third type which uses 4G. And it’s been working fine since the engineer installed it back in January, which is a relief. We’ve also noticed that it has a better connection with our IHD; before, it would periodically lose connection and wouldn’t show live data.

Plus, the new 4G communications hub is more future proof. If you have an older smart meter communications hub that uses 2G or 3G, then at some point in the future, your energy supplier will need to replace it. Of the four big networks, O2 is the only one still offering 3G at the time of writing. In fact, it may have already been switched off by the time you read this.

The slower 2G networks will be around a little longer, but the plan is that they too will be switched off in 2033. So, if you live in central and southern England, or in Wales, and have a smart meter, then sometime in the next 7 years, an engineer will need to come over and replace your Communications Hub. It should only take about an hour, and, at least in our case, there was no interruption to our electricity supply whilst the work was being done. There are no plans to shut down the 4G networks any time soon; according to this web site, Vodafone’s 4G contract runs until 2038.

If you live in the North of England or Scotland, then your current communications hub should carry on working. However, if you are having connection problems, then a 4G communications hub may work better.

Meanwhile, I’m just relieved that we don’t have to do any more manual readings.

Etikez PM260 Label Printer review

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A photo of the Etikez PM260 Bluetooth label printer, in a pastel purple colour.

I’ve bought myself a new Bluetooth label printer – it’s this Etikez PM260 Label Printer (sponsored link).

But wait, you may think, don’t you already own a Bluetooth label printer? Yes, I do, and I reviewed that one a couple of years ago. And, despite buying this new one, I still use the previous one more frequently! I’ll get onto why in a bit, but first let’s outline the ways in which this Etikez PM260 model is better:

  1. It supports larger labels. It comes with 30x40cm labels, but can support 50x80cm portrait labels.
  2. As well as connecting to mobile devices via Bluetooth, it can also plug into Windows PCs and Macs via a USB-C cable.
  3. You can do mail merges from Excel spreadsheets.
  4. There’s a wider variety of label designs, including clipart.

It’s mainly the first three reasons why I bought the Etikez PM260. I wanted to be able to print labels easily via a mail merge, so that I would be more likely to actually send Christmas cards this year. And yes, I’m aware that posting about Christmas cards in March is a weird flex, but I’ve already had a chance to use it for something else. Namely, our ten-year-old’s birthday party invitations. I drew up a list of names in an Excel spreadsheet, and then we designed the invitations in Word, and used Word’s mail merge feature to print the invitations. Then, we used the Labelnize app on Windows to design the labels, and imported the names for the labels from the same spreadsheet. As well as installing the Labelnize app, there are printer drivers to install.

It worked reasonably well, although for some reason the printer only printed on every other label. In other words, after printing 10 labels, we ended up with 9 blank ones interspersed. I was able to re-stick the labels onto the backing roll to use again, and I hope this was a one-off, otherwise a roll of labels will last half as long. The labels print quickly, as it uses thermal printing rather than ink or laser toner.

What’s less good about it

For day-to-day use, we still use the Phomemo D30 printer. It’s more basic and can only print text and emojis, albeit in a variety of fonts. But it’s much quicker to use. By contrast, the Labelnize app for the Etikez PM260 is much more powerful, but you have to choose a design for each label, or design your own. It’s therefore not as quick to use as the Print Master app for the Phomemo printer.

The Phomemo printer is also quite a bit cheaper – currently it’s £16, as opposed to £27 for the Etikez PM260 – and it’s smaller. Both have a built-in battery, although the Phomemo printer should have slightly longer battery life.

If you don’t own a label printer at all, then the Etikez PM260 definitely offers more features, and overall gets my recommendation. But both printers have their place, and we use them both regularly.

Hopefully, this means I’ll have less of an excuse not to send Christmas cards this year!

Olsen & Smith 1800W Smart Ceramic Heater Review

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A photo of the Olsen & Smith 1800W smart ceramic heater

My latest new smart home device is this little 1800W ceramic heater from Olsen & Smith (sponsored link). It’s only around 20 centimetres tall, but is able to output a decent amount of heat quite quickly.

We bought it because our ten-year-old’s room is consistently colder than the rest of the house. I suspect it’s because the radiator in there is under-powered, and hidden away behind a cover, but it’s typically 2°C colder than our bedroom next door. So far, our mitigations against this have been extra blankets on the bed and a hot water bottle, but I decided that we needed to do more than just keep the bed warm.

Using the ceramic heater

This ceramic heater is designed to be placed on a desk, or similar – it’s not really suitable as a free-standing heater as it’s quite short. It comes with a 1.5 metre cord.

There are a series of touch buttons on the top to control the heater. It has a digital thermostat, so you can set a target temperature and have it heat up to that level. There are four heat modes: low, medium, high and eco, which determine the power output. Low drops it down to 900 watts, and high uses the full 1800 watts of power. Meanwhile, eco mode automatically adjusts the power output to maintain the target temperature. It also includes a built-in timer, allowing it to automatically switch off after up to 12 hours.

It’s very quiet – it’s stated to run at between 28 and 56 decibells. I’m partially deaf, so I’m not the best judge of how noisy something is, but I could barely hear it. It’s certainly much quieter than our air conditioning unit that we use in summer, and quieter than a typical desk fan turned up to full speed.

In terms of its effectiveness, the heater seemed to warm the room up pretty quickly, as measured by its own thermostat. I have a separate ThermoPro thermometer in the room which measured a smaller but meaningful increase in temperature, but the heater isn’t pointing towards it.

Smart features

The ceramic heater uses Tuya as its smart home platform. As regular readers will know, I’m not a fan of Tuya, but I accept that it’s simple to set up, especially if you don’t have lots of other smart devices. Indeed, on opening the Tuya app, Tuya auto-discovered my new heater and asked to configure it. The app controls are easy enough to use, and mirror the controls on the unit.

The key reason why I wanted to buy a smart ceramic heater was to be able to automate it in Home Assistant. Our ten-year-old tends to only use their bedroom for sleeping, so the heater doesn’t need to be on much. Thankfully, when I reloaded the Tuya integration in Home Assistant, it appeared as a climate device. Home Assistant’s controls are limited to setting the target temperature, and turning it on and off; the controls for setting timers and heating power aren’t exposed. But being able to turn it on and off with an automation is possible, and so I have it come on around an hour before bedtime to warm the room up, and then switch off.

A peculiarity with this ceramic heater is that you can link it with Alexa via the Tuya app, but not Google Home. Which is odd; every other Tuya device I have owned supported both. Thankfully, I could add it to Google Home via Home Assistant, so our ten-year-old can use voice control with it.

A bargain

Finally, I want to highlight that this little ceramic heater cost just £20 from Amazon. There are a few cheaper ceramic heaters, some of which simply plug straight into the wall. But they tend to have lower power output, and aren’t smart. As much as I’d rather have something with local control, a smart ceramic heater for £20 is excellent value for money.

Solar panels – a 3 year retrospective

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A screenshot of the spreadsheet that I am using to track solar panel savings

Roughly three years ago to the day, we invested in a set of solar panels, along with an inverter and battery. Although I did a two year review last year, I’ve decided to do another one as we’ve reached the point where we’ve recouped 25% of our initial investment.

Back in 2023, the system we had installed cost around £11,000. We paid for most of it out of savings, topped up with a contribution from my parents and the rest was borrowed. We finished paying off the borrowed money at the end of 2024. So, on the basis that it has taken us three years to get to 25%, it means the full return on investment will probably take another 9 years. By then, we’ll still have a couple of years left on the mortgage, and our ten-year-old may or may not have left home by then.

Our system is from SolaX, and although they provide an app, I also transpose the data each month into a spreadsheet. What is notable is that 2023 was our best year – for example, in May 2023, our total savings were £136.78, made up of £85.90 of saved electricity and £50.88 of exported electricity. Over the course of the entire year, we saved £855.45.

Savings in 2024 were lower – £750.79. And last year was only a few pence higher at £750.96. Indeed, the weather last month was pretty terrible, as we only saved £11.43 and didn’t export anything. Suffice to say, we’ve already saved more this month with several days left to go. On average, our system saves us £65.48 per month on our electricity bill, and in some of the summer months, we actually get a net negative electricity bill as we export more than we use.

One thing we haven’t yet done is have our solar panels cleaned. It may be that, after being cleaned, they may allow more light in. However, having spoken to others online, they’ve found that it makes very little difference.

I think it’s important to be open about the savings we’re making. Whilst prices have come down – a similar system may cost around £9000 now – getting solar is a big investment, especially when paired with a battery. As such, I hope this information is useful if you’re considering getting solar and have a suitable property.

Cohhee Intelligent Battery Charger

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A photo of a Cohhee intelligent battery charger

Today I’m reviewing this Cohhee Intelligent Battery Charger (sponsored link) that I recently bought from Amazon, to recharge my AA and AAA batteries.

This isn’t the first ‘intelligent’ battery charger that I’ve bought – I have an older one, but it could only charge pairs of batteries (not single batteries) and didn’t detect batteries that could no longer charge. This Cohhee battery charger doesn’t have these faults; you can charge single batteries if needed, and mix and match between AA and AAA batteries. And, it’ll tell you if a battery is unable to be charged anymore.

Charging is quite fast – about 5 hours for AA batteries, and two hours for AAA. There’s a screen along the top that shows the charging progress of each battery. It’s relatively compact, and doesn’t need to plugged into a wall socket. Instead, it’s powered by a USB-C cable. It claims to have over-charging and over-heating protection too.

Having used it for a couple of months, I’ve found that the batteries I’ve charged up in it last longer than before. That’s probably because it charges the batteries individually, rather than as pairs, and identified the dud batteries that I could then get rid of.

Its normal retail price is only £9, but it’s on sale for £8 at the time of writing. Batteries not included.

Nanoleaf Matter Essentials LED Bulb review

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A photo of the Nanoleaf Matter Essentials B22 LED Bulb in a light fitting

I’ve bought myself a Nanoleaf Matter/Thread Essentials LED bulb (sponsored link) to use with another PIR motion sensor (see my review of that from a couple of weeks ago). Unlike last time, this is a Matter over Thread bulb, rather than a Zigbee bulb.

Whilst many of the smart home products I have bought recently have been Zigbee devices, I’m reasonably convinced that Matter and Thread are the future of home automation. To date, I’ve only picked up Matter smart plugs – some Meross Wi-Fi plugs and some Onvis Thread plugs – so this is the first Matter bulb that I’ve bought.

Connecting over Matter

This Nanoleaf Essentials bulb connects over Thread, rather than Wi-Fi. This is probably why there is a ‘Frequently returned item’ warning on the Amazon listing, as it won’t work well without a Thread Border Router. Thankfully, I have three – two Google Wi-Fi devices, and my Home Assistant instance with a USB dongle. Like Zigbee, Thread is a mesh network, and so these three border routers, and my two Onvis plugs have formed a relatively good Thread mesh. That’s good, because this bulb is in a room on its own some distance from any of the border routers, but it’s able to join the mesh with the Onvis plugs.

As it’s a Matter device, I was able to add it to Home Assistant, Google Home and Apple Home with no issues. Nanoleaf include the necessary QR code on the instruction manual as well as the bulb itself, which is helpful. The bulb also supports Bluetooth, partly for commissioning onto the Thread network, but it can also be controlled by Bluetooth using the Nanoleaf app if you don’t have a Thread Border Router. However, due to Bluetooth’s short range, I doubt this will be much use to many people.

Appearance and usage

The design of the bulb is a little odd. Unlike most LED bulbs, it’s not a smooth spherical surface, but a series of blocky geometric shapes. I’d prefer a smooth look, personally.

The bulb was quite responsive when using it with Google Home. It’s a colour changing and dimming model, and when it turns on and off, it fades up or down, which is a nice touch. I found controlling it with Home Assistant a little more hit and miss – sometimes, turning it on took a few seconds, but other times it was instant. I’ll need to look into why that is.

Cost

The thing that mainly drew me to this bulb is its price – literally just five of your Great British Pounds. That’s not quite as cheap as the £4.33 Zigbee bulb that I previously bought from AliExpress, but as it’s from Amazon, I didn’t have to wait a week for shipping. And as it’s a Matter bulb, it’s better supported by Google and Apple. I just wish it was a little less ugly, but at £5, you can’t really argue.

ProBreeze portable air conditioner review

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A photo of our ProBreeze portable air conditioner

Phew, it’s been a bit warm, hasn’t it? I was planning to write this review in a few weeks time, but seeing as we’re experiencing a heatwave in England right now, I’ve brought it forward in case you’re considering purchasing an air conditioner yourself.

Earlier this year, we bought a ProBreeze 4-in-1 portable smart air conditioner, and this week, it’s finally been warm enough to put it through its paces for a review. We went with this model as it was a Which Best Buy, and relatively cheap – £250 for refurbished model direct from ProBreeze. Also, I was able to pay for it in three instalments using Klarna, so I’ve actually only just finished paying for it. It’s available from Amazon (sponsored link), but unsurprisingly appears to have sold out.

There are cheaper models from other manufacturers – Terence Eden reviewed this one which cost him about £160 in March.

Setting it up

For an air conditioner to work correctly, you need to be able to pump the hot air out of the room. So, the air conditioner comes with a chonky hose, that you can poke out of a window.

However, to stop the hot air from coming back in again through the open window, there’s a window sealing kit included. This consists of a series of sticky-backed velcro strips, that you attach to your window and frame, and a membrane with velcro edges and a zip with which to make a hole for the exhaust hose to poke through. There’s also a more rigid plastic slidy thing for use with sash windows, if you want to pretend you live in Ecuador.

Part of the reason why I’ve not written this review until now is because the provided hose wasn’t long enough to reach the opening of our window. Our house is at least 100 years old, with nice big windows, and when the previous owners had double glazing installed, they insisted on windows which opened at the top. I ended up buying a longer hose, and some additional velcro strips, from AliExpress to reach the window.

Taking the sealing kit off and on again is a bit of a faff, to be honest. We’ll be leaving it on until the weather’s due to get cooler again on Sunday.

Using the air conditioner

I’m going to cover the disadvantages first:

  • It’s quite noisy
  • It’s more expensive to run than a fan

However, it did manage to cool our bedroom down very quickly. We’ve been using it in the evenings, and then switching it off at bedtime. I don’t think we would want it on all night due to the noise.

In terms of the cost of running, expect to spend 20-30 pence per hour to run it. As we’re a day away from the Summer Solstice, we still had sunlight late into the evening last night and so it didn’t actually cost us anything (thank you, solar panels and battery) other than reduced export.

You should also plug it directly into the wall, where possible, and not use extension leads. Because it draws a lot of power, you risk damaging your plugs and/or causing a fire with extension leads. Which would be terrible and also an incredibly ironic way to lose your house, seeing as an air conditioner is supposed to cool it down and not set fire to it.

Hello Tuya, my old frenemy

The ProBreeze air conditioner we bought is also a smart appliance. So although you can control it using buttons on the front, and the included remote control, it can also be controlled using an app or Google Assistant and Alexa.

However, the app in question is Tuya’s Smart Life app. Regular readers will know that I’m not Tuya’s biggest fan (pun not intended) but it seems to work okay, and easily integrates with Home Assistant through the official Tuya integration.

Maybe in future I can take it apart and flash the chip with something else to use it locally, but seeing as I’ve only just finished paying for it, I’ll leave it be for now.

The other three functions

I mentioned that it’s a four in one device. As well as air conditioning, this ProBreeze device can also act as a dehumidifier, and as a simple fan without a cooling mode. I think the fourth mode is a quieter ‘sleep’ mode for use at night. It’s still quite noisy in fan mode, even when it’s not actively trying to cool the air in your room. I believe it’s now branded as a ‘three-in-one’ device.

How it compares to a fan

A simple fan may cool you down, by blowing sweat away from your skin, but it doesn’t actually cool down the air in the room. That’s where air conditioning and air cooling devices come in. Air coolers are usually simpler and cheaper, whereas air conditioning units are more powerful.

Air conditioning at home is still something of a novelty to Brits. We’re not used to hot weather, and our homes are usually designed to retain heat to get us through cold winters. An air conditioning device is therefore unlikely to get much use all year round, but it’s made a difference over these past few days. I’ve glad we’ve bought one – even if it is a bit expensive to run, noisy and a faff to set up the window sealing kit. Anything for a good’s night sleep.

10 years of being a homeowner

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I’m a couple of days late writing this, but Friday marked 10 years since we got the keys for our house. In that time, we’ve done a lot of work to it:

  • Renovated the entire downstairs, including a new kitchen in 2022
  • New central heating boiler and new radiators downstairs
  • Complete re-wiring downstairs
  • Removal of old gas fires and associated gas pipes
  • Opened up the cellar to use as a laundry room
  • Renovated our nine-year-old’s bedroom with new plaster, floorboards and furniture
  • Re-decorated the bathroom
  • Added solar panels and a battery

Despite this, the house is still a work in progress. Although we have redecorated the bathroom, and made some minor changes (new taps, new bath panel, replacement shower and shower screen), we’re planning on renovating it once money allows. In particular, at present we have a shower over the bath, but would prefer a separate shower cubicle. After that, there are also our bedroom and our spare bedroom that need renovating, and the landing. But we’ve done more than half of the house now and it’s much nicer for it.

This also means that I’ve had the same address for 10 years – my longest period of stability since moving out of my parents’ home in York, back in 2002. Another eight (and a bit) years, and this will have been the place that I have lived the longest. I’ve already spent more time living in Sowerby Bridge (15 years this November) than Bradford (8 years).

We originally took out a 25 year mortgage in 2015. However, we’ve re-mortgaged a couple of times, most recently in 2022 when we took out a five year fixed deal shortly before the Truss-Kwarteng Fiscal Collapse. And changes to our payments, plus our over-payments via Sprive, should mean that next summer will be the mid-point of our mortgage repayments. So we’ve got a way to go before we’re mortgage free.

Tuya Zigbee Window Sensors

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A photo of a Zigbee window sensor

I recently picked up a pair of these Tuya Zigbee Window Sensors from AliExpress. At £7.50 for two (plus VAT and shipping), they’re an absolute bargain; on Amazon (sponsored link), expect to pay more than double that for just one. The sensors detect when a window or door is opened or closed, and can both report the current status of the window or door, and be used to trigger actions when the window or door is opened or closed.

Wait, didn’t you rant about Tuya in February?

Why yes, I did rant about Tuya Wi-Fi devices, and I stand by what I wrote. However, you can get many Tuya-compatible Zigbee devices, which can be used with Zigbee2MQTT without having all your data go to servers operated by a Chinese company. So yes, I wouldn’t be keen to buy any new Tuya Wi-Fi devices in future, but I see little issue with Tuya Zigbee devices.

Installing the window sensors

The sensors come in two parts. One holds the batteries (two AAA batteries, not included) along with the circuitry, and the other, smaller part is what detects whether the door or window has opened. Each part comes with an appropriately sized piece of sticky foam, so you can just stick the small part to your window, and the larger part to the frame. You need to ensure that, when closed, the two parts touch.

To test whether they work, open and close the window or door – if you see a little red light flashing when this happens, then you’re good.

Zigbee devices need to be paired to your Zigbee mesh network. Once you’ve enabled pairing on your Zigbee controller (in my case, Zigbee2MQTT), you need to press and hold the reset button on the window sensor for five seconds. It comes with a little metal pointy thing to help with this – a bit like the pointy things for ejecting SIM cards on a iPhone. Once it has joined your network, you should be good to go.

Using the window sensors with Home Assistant

Any new devices in Zigbee2MQTT automagically appear as new MQTT devices in Home Assistant. Right now, I just have dashboard badges for the two window sensors, so I can see at a glance whether those windows are open. I’m planning to add an automation which switches the heating off when one or both of the windows are open, and potentially a notification at bedtime to remind me if I’ve left a window open as it’s getting dark.

You could add them to a door, so that when you open it, a light comes on, and then turns off when the door is closed, or after a certain time delay.

For now, I’ve only bought two of these. As mentioned, each one requires a pair of AAA batteries, and whilst I could fit them to every opening window, that’s potentially a lot of batteries to replace. At least they take standard AAA batteries which can be easily recharged. I’ve only had them a couple of weeks, and so I can’t yet give an estimate of how long the batteries will last, but they’re both still showing 100%.

How to: read a not-so-smart export meter

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A photo of our electricity meter showing our export reading

Somewhat annoyingly, our smart electric meter stopped being smart on the 26th March. I’m not entirely sure what happened, but since then, we’ve not had any automatic electricity readings sent to our energy supplier.

After a week, I reported the issue to Octopus, who are our energy supplier. We exchanged some emails back and forth, and tried various things, but apparently to no avail. What was weirder was that the gas meter still submits regular readings.

This web site has loads of information about smart meters, including how they work and how they communicate with your energy supplier. As well as the gas and electric meters, all homes with a smart meter have a ‘communications hub’ that sits on top of the electric meter, and it’s this that sends the data. So even though it was sat on top of our electric meter, it was only sending data from the gas meter. Weirder still is our ‘in home display’ (IHD) – the small black screen that sits away from our meters in our dining room. That was still accurately displaying data from both gas and electric meters.

With Octopus unable to fix the problem remotely, we’ll need an engineer to come out. And right now, there’s a long wait for smart meter engineer visits, as energy companies are currently prioritising those with a ‘radio teleswitch’ (RTS) meter. These older meters were used for (for example) Economy 7 tariffs, and listen for a radio signal to switch to a cheaper tariff – they’ve been around since the 1980s. Alas, the radio signal is being switched off at the end of next month, and there’s an estimated 400,000 RTS meters still in use. That doesn’t leave very long to have these replaced with smart meters.

Going back to manual readings

So whilst our gas readings are being sent automatically on a regular basis, we’re back to doing manual readings for electricity. As we have solar panels, we have to do two separate readings – an import reading, for the energy we use from the grid, and an export reading, for the energy that we sell back to the grid.

For the import readings, we can just use the IHD – press a few buttons, and it’ll give us our usage. But the IHD doesn’t display export readings. For that, we have to take a reading from the screen on the meter itself.

Our electricity meter is in our cellar, under the steps down from the kitchen. After we had our kitchen renovated, we also improved the access to the cellar, but it’s still in an awkward place. I have to move our tumble dryer out of the way, and crouch in the small space under the steps to take the reading.

It’s also not the most straightforward process. The meter itself has a small screen and two buttons, and you need to know which combination of button presses are required. Thankfully, Octopus offers this excellent guide to how to read various types of meters, and so I was able to submit both import and export readings. The next day, we were credited £116 for all the electricity we’d exported since the 26th March.

Hopefully, it won’t be too long before an engineer visits and fixes the issue for us. In the meantime, I’m also waiting to see if we can get an Octopus Home Mini, which bridges across to your home Wi-Fi network and sends data in near real-time.