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Bonfire Night Is Coming — Who Might Be Living in Your Bonfire?

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  Bonfire Night Is Coming — Who Might Be Living in Your Bonfire? That pile of garden rubbish could already be somebody’s winter home. A few branches from the hedge. Fallen leaves swept off the lawn. Some logs stacked ready for 5 November. To us, it looks like a job nearly finished: the garden tidied, the waste collected and the bonfire prepared. To a hedgehog, it may look like shelter. To a frog or toad, the cool, protected spaces underneath may offer somewhere to spend the colder months. The problem begins when our plans for that pile are very different from theirs. Before Bonfire Night arrives, it is worth asking a simple question: Have we collected something to burn — or accidentally created somewhere to live? Why a Pile of Branches Becomes Valuable Property Look at a heap of garden material from ground level. Branches create sheltered cavities. Leaves fill gaps and provide nesting material. The interior offers protection from wind, disturbance and predators. Hedgehogs can use t...
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Is Your Heating Fighting Against Your House? Five Mistakes That Waste Money

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  Is Your Heating Fighting Against Your House? Five Mistakes That Waste Money Your heating system may be working perfectly—and still wasting your money. The boiler fires up. The heat pump hums away. The radiators become warm. Yet you are sitting on the sofa wondering whether to turn the thermostat up another degree. Before you do, it is worth asking a different question: Is the heat reaching the places where you actually need it? Heating a home involves more than producing hot water and circulating it around some radiators. Furniture, curtains, thermostat position, control settings and daily routines all influence the result. Sometimes the problem is surprisingly ordinary: a sofa blocking a radiator, a thermostat measuring a draughty hallway, or a heating programme that still follows a timetable nobody uses. In our own home, with an air source heat pump, solar panels and battery storage, heating is part of a wider energy system. That makes me particularly interested in how the diff...
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Could Your Household Become 20% More Resilient Before Christmas?

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  Could Your Household Become 20% More Resilient Before Christmas? A resilient home isn’t a bunker. It’s simply a home that can cope when normal life becomes temporarily abnormal. A cold evening. The lights go out. The heating stops, the router falls silent and somebody asks where the torch is. Or perhaps everything keeps working, but the next energy bill is difficult to afford. A storm cancels a journey. A burst main interrupts the water. Heavy rain starts collecting outside the back door. These are different problems, but they raise the same question: How much breathing space does your household have when something goes wrong? Over this fortnight, we have explored heating, electricity consumption, gardens, water, heatwaves, draughts and power cuts. This concluding article brings those themes together into a practical household resilience audit—and a manageable challenge before Christmas. What Does “20% More Resilient” Actually Mean? There is no household resilience meter. We cann...
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Is Your Home Leaking £1 Coins Through Tiny Gaps?

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  Is Your Home Leaking £1 Coins Through Tiny Gaps? Before buying another heater, find out where the warm air from the one you’ve already got is escaping. There is something particularly irritating about sitting in a heated room and feeling a cold draught around your ankles. The heating is on. The thermostat seems satisfied. Yet you are considering another jumper, a higher temperature setting or perhaps a small electric heater beside the chair. Before reaching for the thermostat, try reaching for a notebook. Your home may have a collection of small, unwanted air leaks: a poorly fitting door, a tired window seal, a letterbox that never quite closes or a loft hatch with a gap around its edge. None looks especially dramatic. Together, they deserve investigation. This autumn, turn draught-proofing into a little household detective work. The question is simple: Where is air moving when you haven’t deliberately invited it to? The mystery: why is a heated room still uncomfortable? A room’s...
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If the Electricity Went Off on a Cold October or November Evening, What Would Stop Working?

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  If the Electricity Went Off on a Cold October or November Evening, What Would Stop Working? “A power cut doesn’t just turn the lights off anymore—it can turn the house off.” It is half past six on a dark autumn evening. The curtains are closed, dinner is cooking and the heating has begun to make the house comfortable. Then everything goes quiet. The lights going out are obvious. But the heating has also stopped. The internet has disappeared. The electric hob is useless. The garage door may need opening manually, and the telephone plugged into the router may no longer make calls. Your mobile phone still works—for now. We have already considered what belongs in a resilient household cupboard. But food is only one part of preparedness. We also need to understand the systems that make our homes work. What depends on electricity, what has a backup, and does everyone in the household know what to do? Most power cuts are local and short-lived. A little preparation can make those interru...
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