Latest ramblings from Simmo

[simmo123]

Hi Folks,been a bit full on lately so i have only been able to have a quick visit to the forum but i think i am up to speed with most things,birthdays ,gossip etc,i have still been doing my regular spots for busking plus the odd senior gig, as well as keeping the garden up to scratch,i have just planted our 3rd crop for the season in our small veggie patch which includes all the usual salad stuff,our passion fruit vine has completely taken over our little backyard shed in fact i had to cut out around the door so as to get the mower out but the upside is we have had a continuous crop of passion fruit for several months.Our long hot summer seems to be going on forever with high humidity as well as high temps...i have just downloaded the forecast for the next 8 days as below

Feb 25 Fri.... Sunny..max...37c......min..24c
Feb 26 Sat... Sunny..max...38c......min...24
Feb 27 Sun... Sunny...38c.....min....24
Feb 28 Mon... Partly Sunny..max...35c.... min 24c
Mar 1 Tue.... Sunny..max....37c.....min.....26c
Mar 2 Wed... Sunny...max...38c....min... 24
Mar 3 Thu..... Sunny..max... 37c....min..24
Mar 4 Fri.... Sunny...max... 37c....min...24

So all in all quite a warm spell....Patricia is not a lover of this kind of weather & i must admit when i;m outside doing stuff i have regular breaks..it must be an age thing as it never used to bother me all the years i was doing contract work outside,the other thing is we don't normally get the humidity as high as it has been but that is due to a couple of cyclones hanging around off the coast further up north.Its 8.45pm we are able to open up the doors & windows to get what little breeze we can to cool the house down a bit,we do have an air conditioner system but they are not to efficient when its humid plus if there is any smoke from bushfires it drags it into the house through the system so we find that a bit of breeze can be the best way to go depending on the conditions.The latest thing which has been getting very popular over here at the moment is solar panels for generating electricity,(not hot water solar systems these are different) they have been around for a couple of years but because the WA Government has got a scheme going whereby they are giving a no strings attached grant (donation) to any householder that wants to put a solar system on there roof for the purpose of generating electricity to put back into the general electricity grid,the grant is worth about nearly $7,000 & does not have to be repayed,all that is needed is for the home owner to go to a company who specializes in this field (and there are dozens of them around) & arrange to get the solar panels plus an inverter which is also part of the package to be installed,from there the company only charges the home owner the balance of the total cost after the government grant has been deducted (this is paid to the contractor direct by the government)which for the normal 1.5kw system the amount payable by the home owner is around $2000.The reason i have brought this subject up is that after talking to friends who had gone down this road we decided to go ahead with one of these solar energy storage systems,the bottom line is we have had the system up & running for 2 months & today was D Day when our electricity a/c arrived (we have the meter read every 2 months) because there are only Patricia & i in the house our normal account is between $140-$160 per 2 month period,so imagine our surprise when we had a total bill for $11.60 & were informed that we had put back (sold) around $140 worth of electricity back to the main grid,this was deducted by the electricity board & we were left owing the balance an unbelievable $11.60.Sorry to bore you with all this stuff but there are some benefits with having to put up with hot weather after all,well i am just recharging all of my busking gear batteries ready for tomorrow's session,the good thing it is out of the full sun,until next time when i'm sure i will some other subjects to chat about.
....Simmo....