There are two things to remember when you buy your water butt or rain water tank. Firstly, its no good buying one during a drought. You need to buy it while it is still raining, so that it can fill. Secondly, using a water pump with a standard, 200 litre, domestic water butt will give you less than four minutes of watering. That's why we sell a range of rainwater storage vessels, from small water butts, right up to large water tanks for serious volumes of water storage. With this selection, you can choose one to fit your needs: watering the borders, sprinklers for the lawn or washing the car.
Did you know that you pay for your water twice? You pay for fresh water provided from the mains, and then you pay a charge for waste water – generally based upon the volume of water you consume. So using a water butt really is a cost effective way of reducing your bills – particularly if you are on a water meter.
Compost bins are marvellous workhorses. Throw in your garden trimmings and leaves, add some lawn cuttings and vegetable peelings from your kitchen, and your compost bin will give you back some rich, brown, crumbly and (believe it or not) sweet smelling compost for your garden. We stock a range of composters from 250 up to 700 litres volume, covering small to medium garden needs. For the larger garden, we suggest having two or more composters to save you carrying the vegetation long distances, and to cope with the higher volumes.
Compost bins are environmentally friendly, natural, and work on their own (no additional bio-liquids or powders are required). As councils impose more taxes on the waste they remove from your home, the compost bin will save you money too.
Energy meters (also know as electricity monitors) are the best way for you to understand what is causing your electricity bill to be so high. Some energy monitors work by being plugged in between the power socket and an appliance to tell you what that particular appliance is costing you. Other electricity meters use a sensor on the electricity supply into the house along with a wireless display, to tell you the total electricity being used in your home. You can then walk around your home switching on and off electrical appliances and seeing the effect on your power consumption.
Energy meters can show you the power being used (in Watts), the amount of carbon you are generating (your carbon footprint), or best of all, the cost of the electricity you are using. Using an electricity meter over time you can learn how to be more economical in your power consumption, and save yourself money.
The Intellipanel is much more than just another plug block (otherwise known as a gang plug). This is a power saver, or standby saver. The idea is simple: plug your computer into the master socket and your peripherals (monitor, scanner, speakers, amplifier, printers) into the remaining sockets. When turn off your computer, the Intellipanel will turn off the power, completely, to all your peripherals. No more red and green LEDs, glowing gently in the dark when you leave the room, to tell you they are pushing up your electricity bill. Depending on the number and power consumption of your peripherals, this energy saving feature of the Intellipanel means it can pay for itself in as little as a year.
The Intellipanel also protects your equipment from power surges so you can relax if there is a thunder storm, or if a light bulb blows in the house. This standby saver works as effectively with a PC as it does a Mac, and there is a version specially configured for use with a laptop.
There are so many good reasons why you should use washable nappies. Maybe its the fact that disposable nappies can take up to 500 years to decompose fully in landfill sites. Or perhaps you are charged for your rubbish collections, and didn't realise that nappies make up 4% of the UK's household waste. The most compelling reason is that the average baby needs 4,500 nappy changes from birth to potty changing. And with the average nappy costing about 20 pence, that adds up to £900 per child. So washable nappies will save you a lot of money.
We sell washable nappies and the products you will need to go with them: nappy liners, nappy covers and the nappy cleanser. As a perfect gift to the parents of a new born baby, we also stock the Onelife birth to potty nappy hamper set, which includes everything the new child will need.