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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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%.
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.
This is relevant for me as we had a Nest thermostat installed nine years ago. Now, as far as I can tell, it’s not one of the models that’s being dropped. However, Google and Nest haven’t made it massively straightforward to check.
There is a ‘How to tell which Nest thermostat you have’ help page, but the information is different depending on where you are. Compare and contrast the UK and US versions:
“Heating systems in Europe are unique and have a variety of hardware and software requirements that make it challenging to build for the diverse set of homes”
However, when I’ve looked, I appear to have a third generation thermostat, but a second generation heat link. The heat link is the rounded-square white box that is wired up to your boiler. I’m hopeful, therefore, that I do indeed have a third generation thermostat. I haven’t had an email about it yet, that’s for sure.
If it does transpire that I have an older thermostat, then it’ll only work locally. That means that it’ll still control the boiler using the schedule set up on it, but users won’t be able to use either the Nest or Google Home apps to control their thermostat. And features like Home/Away assist will also stop working. In tandem with this, the old Nest app is being retired altogether, with all functionality moved to the Google Home app.
I assume that this will also apply to anything that uses Google’s APIs, so users won’t be able to use Home Assistant as a workaround, for example. The change takes place on the 25th October this year.
Compensation
As well as notifying affected users by email, Google is offering money off its newer thermostats for those who want to upgrade and keep their smart features. Of course, as Google is withdrawing its thermostats from Europe, European users are instead offered 50% off a smart thermostat from Tado, which costs €199 normally. The same kit is currently £149 from Amazon(sponsored link) but I’m guessing the discount code will only work for direct orders. Tado smart thermostats will work with Google Home, and with Home Assistant, but they’re still cloud-based like Nest’s thermostats are.
And this is the concern I have. I’ve trusted Nest, and later Google, to provide a cloud service, which they’re now taking away for some users. Whilst this (probably) doesn’t affect me now, further changes in a couple of years could mean that my thermostat becomes unsupported as well. And if Tado decides to do the same with their thermostats, users could be inconvenienced twice.
I think what’s worse about Google killing off its older thermostats is that they’re not so easy to replace. A thermostat needs to be professionally installed. It’s not like a phone, or a smoke alarm, or a smart speaker, where the old one can simply be unplugged and replaced. And they’re not cheap – I paid £250 for my Nest thermostat back in 2016. Even with the discounts, you would still have to find someone to install it for you.
In time, we’ll be replacing our gas boiler with a heat pump, and when that happens, I’ll look to replace to Nest thermostat with something else. It won’t be Tado, as outlined above. At the moment, I’m leaning towards Drayton Wiser. It works with both gas boilers and heat pumps, and supports smart thermostatic radiator valves. It can also work locally – indeed, the Home Assistant integration (installable via HACS) doesn’t require the cloud at all. Others who I’ve talked to in smart home communities recommend it, but I haven’t experienced it myself.
I suppose, knowing Google’s history, that I should have been more wary about relying on Google hardware for my heating.
We’ve had our solar panels for a couple of years now, and, as a thought experiment, I’ve wondered if it would be possible to go ‘off grid‘. This would mean having no connection to the electricity and gas networks, and potentially the water network too.
Now, I’m very much aware that this is a classic example of Betteridge’s Law of Headlines, and indeed, the short version of this is pretty much, ‘no’ when it comes to electricity and water. Especially if the person reading this is my wife, Christine (love you sweetheart). It is intended to be a thought experiment after all.
Getting off the gas grid
We’ll start with the easiest one – getting off the gas grid. This is actually a long-term of ours, and many homes are now getting disconnected from the gas grid.
When we bought our house, which will have been 10 years ago this summer, it was a very gas-reliant house. There were three gas fires, a gas central heating boiler and water tank, and a gas cooker. We got two of the gas fires out before we’d even moved in, and the remaining one followed when we had the very old gas boiler replaced with a more energy efficient condensing boiler in 2016. Next to go was the gas cooker, when we had the kitchen renovated in 2022, so now we only need gas for heating and hot water.
Now our boiler isn’t quite nine years old, but it’s likely to have a few years left in at least. When it’s due for replacement, our plan is to switch to an air source heat pump, which will be electrically powered. That will mean there’s no need for a gas connection to our home, and we can have it completely removed. As well as meaning that we don’t need to pay the daily gas standing charge, we’ll no longer have pipes carrying an invisible and highly flammable gas running into our home. And it’ll reduce our carbon footprint too.
Off-grid electricity
So that’s the easy one out of the way. Going off grid for electricity, however, is likely to be much harder.
We’ve made a start, at least, with our solar panels. In the summer months, with longer days and more sunlight, we generally generate enough to be self-sufficient. We also have a battery attached to the system, so the solar panels can charge the battery during the day, and then the house can run off the battery overnight.
However, at this time of year, we are very much not self-sufficient. This is especially true as I write this on a very dull Sunday afternoon, where our solar panels are contributing a mere 7 watts of power. That’s about enough to run a couple of LED light bulbs, but certainly not enough for our freezer, for example. We would therefore need other ways of generating electricity on dull days, or at night.
Ovo Energy have a useful guide here. Generally speaking, a roof-mounted turbine would be capable of generating 1-2 kW of electricity, which is less than half the peak capacity of our solar system. And that’s based on a lot of assumptions about wind speed that may or may not apply to your property.
As well as the installation cost, we would probably also need planning permission, as our house isn’t detached. We’re therefore looking at around £2000-3000, and it would probably take quite some time to recoup that investment.
Dull days with no wind
So, a solar system backed up with a wind turbine might cover our electricity needs. Unless it’s a dull day and there’s no wind.
I’m in a few Facebook groups for people who use Home Assistant and who have solar and battery systems, and quite a few other members have the Agile Octopus tariff. On this tariff, electricity prices change by the half hour, based on wholesale prices. If it’s forecast to be a particularly sunny and windy day, electricity prices can be very low. Indeed, they occasionally go negative – in other words, Octopus will actually pay you to take electricity out of the grid, rather than the other way round. It’s great for people who have battery systems that can charge from the grid, or who can plan their days to use more electricity at the times when it’s cheap.
Though we are Octopus Energy customers, we’re not on Agile Octopus, because prices can also shoot up on dull days with no wind. Our fixed tariff means we pay 21.10p/kWh, regardless of the weather, but on Agile Octopus, the electricity unit price can go up as high as £1 per kWh. And if you haven’t been able to charge up your home battery by then, it could get very costly.
As an aside, if you’re not already an Octopus Energy customer, here’s my referral link. You get £50 off your bill if you join, and their customer service is better than any other energy company that we’ve been with so far. There’s also an unofficial Home Assistant integration that uses their API.
Therefore, if we were to disconnect from the grid, we would need a third source of electricity. This is where it gets a bit more tricky. The options I have looked up so far include:
A wood burning stove, with a thermoelectric generator. However, in my research, I’ve yet to find anywhere in the UK that would sell such a system. And those that I have seen for home use would only be able to generate a few watts – not even enough for our house’s ‘base load’ (fridge, freezer, devices on standby etc). We have a chimney that we could use, but we would also need filters to stop particulate matter getting into the air.
Some form of hydro generation using water collected from rainfall on our roof. This would only really work when it rains; although we live in the Pennines where it rains quite a bit, I doubt this would power much more than a couple of light bulbs.
Therefore, we would probably have to fall back on a diesel generator, which would be noisy, smelly, and not good for local air quality or the environment.
No Smart Export Guarantee
The other benefit to being on the electricity grid is that you can be paid back for any excess electricity that you export. Even though it’s January, we’ve exported around £1 of electricity this month, and that’s only after our battery has been fully charged. In June last year, we were paid £46 for the electricity we exported, against £36 for the grid energy that we used. So that was a net payment to us that month. Indeed, over the whole of 2024, we were paid £227 for the excess electricity that we exported.
If we’re not on the grid, then we can’t export. So if our battery is full, that electricity is essentially being wasted. Of course, if I was serious about going off-grid, then I would probably invest in another battery to prevent this from happening, but then that’s another expense.
What about water?
Going off the water grid would be the most difficult. Although ironically, we’ve been inadvertently off the water grid four times so far this month, due to supply issues. I have an active complaint with Yorkshire Water about that, but let’s imagine that I want to willingly disconnect from the water grid for a moment.
Clearly, we would need some other way of getting clean water into the house. Rainwater is the most obvious, but we would then need somewhere to store it. In 2023, I read The Climate Change Garden(sponsored link) by Sally Morgan and Kim Stoddart, and the book shows you how you can store water in tanks underneath your garden to cope with water shortages. During the 2022 heatwave, we had a hosepipe ban for several months, and so I’m considering whether to get a water butt to store rain water for use in the garden. You may be eligible for a subsidised water butt from Save Water Save Money – you’ll need to pop in your postcode to see if your water company participates.
But even a butt, or huge tanks under our lawn, are unlikely to be sufficient. We would ideally need to have access to a constant flow of running water, such as a stream. And we would need the means to filter the water so that it’s fit for drinking.
And what about sewage? We don’t have a particularly big garden and so we probably wouldn’t have room for a septic tank, or any other means of storing and/or treating waste.
A case study: Gibson Mill
Up above Hebden Bridge is Hardcastle Crags, a National Trust property which is home to Gibson Mill. The Mill is off-grid, because of its remote location – it’s about a mile away from the nearest electricity cables, for example. So, electricity is instead generated on site, using solar panels and a hydro-electric generator. Mills were typically built next to watercourses and Gibson Mill is no exception, being served by Hebden Beck. Whilst this would have driven a waterwheel in years gone by, nowadays it drives a turbine to produce electricity. The solar panels have recently been replaced with newer, more efficient models, and there are huge batteries to store energy.
We last went back in 2023, and despite having more than one way of generating electricity on site, there was still a diesel generator at the back that was needed to top-up the electricity supply. Even then, they were unable to serve hot food in the café as a result of not having sufficient power.
Gibson Mill also has no connection to the sewerage system, so its toilets are composting toilets. Below the toilets are huge vats filled with worms, who digest our waste for us. It’s feasible at this scale because it’s a tourist attraction, and the alternative of laying pipes would be more expensive.
Conclusion – staying mostly on-grid
So, in summary: going totally off-grid would be difficult, although coming off the gas grid is achievable and something that we want to do eventually. We don’t live in a very remote area, and so going off-grid with electricity and/or water wouldn’t really make sense. Even if we could find the means to generate our own electricity, the upfront costs of installing the required equipment would probably outweigh the potential savings.
The recent cold snap, and corresponding increase in our heating bill, has meant that I’ve looked at using radiator reflectors at home. These are panels, made of reflective material, which go behind your radiators and reflect heat back into the room.
Unless you’re lucky enough to have under-floor heating, if you have central heating then your heat will most likely come from radiators hung on your walls. The heat from these radiators literally radiates out in all directions, which means that some of this heat will be going into the walls behind your radiator. Radiator reflectors redirect that heat back into your room, increasing the efficiency of the radiator.
Radiator reflectors are especially useful for radiators on external walls, as otherwise you’re potentially allowing heat to escape outside the home. Our house is around 100 years old, and we’ve been told that we can’t have cavity wall insulation, so heat loss is an issue for us.
Choosing radiator reflectors
The radiator reflectors that I bought are Radi Save from Must Have Ideas. Instead of individual panels, you get one five metre long strip of material, which you then cut down to size. Thankfully, the four radiators that I wanted to add reflectors to added up to 5.1m, so one pack was adequate; if I was to do the whole house, then two would have probably been sufficient. Each five metre pack normally costs £20, but they’re on offer for £15 each at present, plus postage.
The material is easily cut with regular scissors – you just need to measure the radiator’s width, knock maybe an inch off each end, and cut it to size. You also need to measure and cut out holes so that it can slide around the brackets. Then, just drop it in place behind the radiator, assuming your nine-year-old hasn’t filled the back of the radiator with various dropped toys. You can then attach them to the wall with double-sided tape, if you wish; I haven’t yet, as it gives us the option of storing them over summer when the radiators are off.
The market leader seems to be Radflek (sponsored link) – they will sell you panels and a kit to hang them from the radiator brackets. A pack of two panels costs £20, so they’re a little more expensive than Radi Save. However, as you would expect, there are many other radiator reflectors on sale from Amazon, including similar products to Radi Save.
Do they work?
As I write this, I have installed our radiator reflectors on two radiators – one in our bathroom, and the other in our dining room. Our bathroom radiator is small, and behind a door, and this is where we’ve seen the most benefit. The room doesn’t feel as cold as before, and there’s been less of an issue with condensation on the window since I fitted the radiator reflectors.
Also, I believe the previous owners of the house used to have a gas fire in the bathroom, where the radiator is now, however the old flue from the gas fire remains. As such, some of the heat from the radiator was being channelled out of the house through the flue. The radiator reflector seems to be preventing this now, which is great – indeed, the back of the reflector, facing the wall, was almost cold even when the radiator was on.
So yes, it feels like they’re working. I can’t back this up with my own solid data, but most product pages selling radiator reflectors seem to include images taken from thermal imaging cameras to show that they work.
Do they save money?
£15 for four radiators doesn’t seem like much, but it’s still an investment. Whether you will save money by using radiator reflectors will most likely depend on whether you have thermostatic radiator valves (TRV). These are valves on your radiator that open and close in response to how warm your radiator is; once your room is warm enough, the valves will close up and will reduce the flow of hot water into the radiator. As mentioned, radiator reflectors help by increasing the efficiency of the radiator, theoretically meaning that the radiator will warm up faster, and so that the TRV can close up sooner.
We have standard TRVs on our radiators, but it’s possible to get smart TRVs. These can be set to a specific temperature, using an app, and, if they’re from the same brand as your thermostat, can control your boiler or heat pump too. If not, then it’s possible to rig something up with Home Assistant.
If you don’t have TRVs, that doesn’t mean that you won’t save money – certainly, if you add a reflector to the radiator in the room where your thermostat is, you should still save some money. But hopefully you’ll find that your rooms are at least warmer than they were before, without burning more gas.
Can’t I just use kitchen foil?
I’ve long been aware of the suggestion that you just put some kitchen foil behind your radiators, rather than buying dedicated radiator reflectors. According to this web page, kitchen foil may work, but it isn’t likely to be as effective. It’s delicate, so tears easily, and isn’t as insulative as proper radiator reflectors.
We’ve now had our solar panels for two years, so it’s probably time to review how much money they have saved us, and how close we are to getting a return on investment.
We have a SolaX system, which includes twelve 400 Watt solar panels, an inverter and battery. I’m using SolaX’s app to estimate how much money this saves us, based on the electricity unit prices from the grid, and also the amount that we get paid for exporting surplus electricity under the Smart Export Guarantee.
I’ve included a screenshot taken a couple of weeks ago. We only saved around five pence that day, as the solar panels spent most of the day under a thick blanket of snow. But you can see that, in total, we’ve saved around £1600 in two years.
I should note, however, that whilst this averages out at £800 per year, last year we actually saved closer to £900. Alas, 2024 was a less sunny year, on the whole, and so our solar panels couldn’t work as hard.
The total cost of the system was around £11,000, so after two years, we’ve recouped 14% of our outlay. Had 2024 been as sunny as 2023, then this would have been closed to 16%. Assuming that we have more years like 2023, then we should break even in around 10 years time. That’s a long way away, but we’ll still be paying the mortgage on the house then, and we have no plans to move.
Since we had our solar panels fitted, prices have dropped significantly, and so a comparable system to ours would probably cost closer to £9000. You could argue that we should have waited a little longer to get our system installed, but back in 2023, energy prices were at an all-time high. Still, it does mean that the economics of getting solar panels fitted now is even better than it was.
Most of the money that we used to pay for the solar panels was either savings, or money gifted to us by my parents. However, we did borrow around £4000 to cover the rest of the cost, and still have some of that to pay off. Provided that we don’t have any more major expenses (I’m glaring at our car as I write this), we should have this paid off this coming spring.
