washingmachine

Unblogged April

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A photo of the ruins of Sheriff Hutton Castle in North Yorkshire by Mike Searle

As you read this, April is almost over. However, I started compiling this a full three weeks ago. Going to London last month has meant that I have had plenty to blog about this month, and there are some things that, in a quieter month, may have become full blog posts in their own right.

Sheriff Hutton Castle

On Easter Monday, we went to Nunnington Hall (the blog post for which is scheduled for Sunday), and on the way we went past Sheriff Hutton Castle to the north of York. We didn’t stop to take a photo, so I’ve the photo at the top is one that I grabbed from Geograph:

© Mike Searle (cc-by-sa/2.0) geograph.org.uk/p/4662987
Sheriff Hutton Castle (1), taken Monday, 7 September, 2015

There’s been a castle on the site since the 12th Century, with the beginnings of the current stone castle dating from the 14th Century. It had a major role during the Wars of the Roses in the 15th Century, however, it fell into ruins in the 16th Century and has remained that way since.

Alas, the castle isn’t open to the public; it remains privately owned and changed hands as recently as 2019. Which is a shame; it feels just like the sort of thing English Heritage would have taken on and opened up. At least its location next to the village of Sheriff Hutton means that you can admire it from a relatively close distance.

It’s been rather sunny, hasn’t it?

As I write this (which is last Saturday – this has been drafted in bits), we’re mid-way through a run of very sunny weather. Which is lovely, for several reasons:

  1. There’s blossom everywhere and it looks so much nicer in the sun
  2. Our solar panels have been working really hard

Indeed, they’ve saved us around £20 of electricity this week alone. I’ve been able to charge our car up without needing to use much grid energy at all. On Thursday, according to Sheffield Solar, UK national solar production peaked at 15.4 gigawatts, which I believe is a new record and accounted for about 40% of the UK’s energy mix. And we’re only in April – I’m hopeful that, come June when the days are longer, it’ll be even higher. The growth in solar in the UK is nothing short of remarkable – MCS states that over a quarter of a million domestic solar installations were brought online last year.

A better power monitoring Blueprint

I first wrote about power monitoring in Home Assistant a couple of years ago. Back then, I used a different power monitoring blueprint for my automations, but I’ve found a better one. This newer one has several benefits:

  • It’s easier to set up, as it doesn’t require you to create several helpers (although you can create a single helper if you want to be able to see the status, but it’s optional)
  • It supports a ‘Power Time Delay’ mode, that avoids the automation being triggered by short power spikes. For some reason, our washing machine occasionally has little power spikes when not in use, and these were triggering Google Assistant broadcast messages.
  • Sending notifications to multiple devices is easier.
  • You can also create additional helpers that get updated with how many cycles have run, their duration, and cumulative power consumption. These are all optional.

Firefox 150

Whilst I would argue that Firefox’s version numbers are largely meaningless nowadays, version 150 of Mozilla Firefox was released last week. Mozilla had early access to Claude Mythos, an AI tool for finding security flaws in software, resulting in 271 fixes being made in this version. I have my issues with generative AI, but this must be a good thing, right?

It’s also worth reading this interview with the new head of Firefox, Ajit Varma:

Mozilla’s PR team told me they want to be both the best browser for people who hate AI and the safest browser for people who love AI.

I’ve been using Firefox (almost) without a break as my main desktop browser, since before the 1.0 release in 2004. With every other web browser now basically the same underneath, it’s good to have another open source alternative, and one that isn’t trying to shove AI front and centre if you don’t want it.

It’s worth buying a new washing machine

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Today, I’m going to talk to you about washing machines. We bought a new one last month, and it is so much better than our old one in several ways.

The new washing machine is this Bosch model, which is normally £399 from John Lewis. We actually paid much less, by combining loads of gift vouches from the wedding and a cashback offer that was on at the time. This is now installed in our new house.

Our old washing machine is the one in our flat. It’s a Hotpoint washer-dryer, so it will wash and tumble-dry our clothes in one process. It’s probably around 10-15 years old as we assume that it was installed when the building was converted from a mill into flats.

For a start, washer-dryers are never as good as stand-alone washing machines and tumble dryers. Indeed, the dryer part of our old Hotpoint machine is pretty rubbish – if you’re lucky, it’ll get a half load mostly dry in around two and a half hours after the wash cycle is completed. Bigger loads will come out wet.

But it’s also not that great at washing either. It’s okay, but takes its time, and the drum can only take 6 kilograms of washing – about 13 pounds in old money.

The new Bosch machine has a much bigger drum that can take 8 kilograms (17.6 lb), so we can wash a third more clothes in each cycle. It’s significantly quieter, and barely makes any noise apart from during the spin cycle, which is still comparatively quiet. This is good for us as the washing machine is in the kitchen, which is directly below the room that will become the baby’s room when it’s born.

As well as being a good price, we also chose the Bosch model because of its energy and water efficiency. It’s rated A+++ for energy usage, which is the highest possible rating, and it required the least amount of water. Indeed, it looks like it uses less water than our current machine despite being able to handle bigger loads.

Despite using less water and electricity, the Bosch machine still manages to be quicker than the old Hotpoint machine – even when you enable its energy efficient mode. So not only does it wash clothes more quickly, it costs less money to do so. And it has a countdown timer telling you how long it has left. Timers these tend to be standard on new machines nowadays but this is the first time I have owned one with a timer, and it’s really useful.

We chose to get a water meter fitted to the house, and so conserving water will save us money in the long term, as will the reduced electricity costs. Furthermore, as we’ve opted not to buy a tumble dryer, this will save us more money on electricity bills in future. The house has a drying rack in the kitchen and space outside for washing lines, which we don’t have in the flat. And with a little one on the way, we’re likely to be using the washing machine far more often than now.

If you have an old washing machine, I would advise you to consider a newer model. The improvements in energy and water efficiency may well save you money in the long term and make up for the cost of buying a new machine. We’re really pleased with ours.

Plus, if you get rid of your old machine, you can create silly YouTube videos like this one.

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