
C Bavister
Secretary
July Ramblings
July is upon us. We have just passed the Winter solstice so summer is meant to be coming. June was also the 81st anniversary of D-Day. Some of our older members have been telling of the event as they remember it as children.
On a totally different note, watching those farmers buying tractors at field days, no wonder we almost need an overdraft to buy butter. The joys of a market economy.
July also has an increase in postage for those of us who us who use “snail” mail and it is the start of the trout fishing season. Keep warm and the hot water bottle handy.
Our Matariki/Mid-Year Lunch was great. Good food, good company. Let's do it again next year.
The partnership of Grey Power with Carter's Tyre Services is a marvelous deal, just using them once, the 25% discount on tyres will cover your subscription many times over. Spread the word and enjoy the benefit.

Consumer NZ
Editor
Clothe Drying Options in Winter
Outside on a line
Best for cost, environment and home health, but weather-dependent and a hassle.
On a calm, sunny winter day, six hours on the clothes line shifted just over 40% of the moisture in my washing. The method required me hanging my load out in the morning before I left for work, and remembering to pull it in before the sun dropped and the damp evening undid all my good work. One day of outside hanging didn’t dry my washing, but it was quicker and used less energy to finish it off in my dryer. On a good day, outside line drying costs nothing and has no environmental impact at all.
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TIP: A breezy, overcast winter day is better at drying washing than a calm, sunny one.
Indoor on a rack
No cost or environmental impact, but fills your home with moisture.
It’s easier hanging washing on a rack indoors than pegging it outside, and the method works even on filthy-wet days. It comes at zero cost to your wallet and uses no energy. However, my trial found a drying rack was far from a perfect solution. I set mine up in an unheated back room. Though large windows meant the rack was exposed to winter sun, there was no airflow around the wet clothes and I shifted just a third of the moisture in six hours. However, I could leave the load on the rack all day and night to dry. The biggest downside was to the health of my home – all of the moisture from my washing ended up in my back room.
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TIP: Make like a DOC Hut: putting the drying rack next to (or above) an electric heater or woodburner will dry clothes faster and keep moisture airborne. You must ventilate the room well though (open a window or two), otherwise you’ll end up with an unhealthy living space full of warm, moist air.
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TIP: Put the drying rack in your bathroom and run the extractor fan. It’ll add a few cents to your electricity bill, but the fan will suck some of the moisture outside, and the rest will be in a room designed to cope with damp.
Inside on a rack with a dehumidifier
A dehumidifier makes an indoor drying rack a better option (for a price).
Running a dehumidifier next to the clothes rack adds cost, but you get a triple-whammy of benefits: the dehumidifier heats the room, creates a breeze to help the laundry dry, and sucks up moisture. When I tried a Mitsubishi Electric model running full bore on “laundry” mode next to the drying rack, my clothes were dry in five hours and my room ended up 3°C warmer, with lower humidity than when I started. However, the dehumidifier used 1.9kWh of electricity (costing about 50¢). While I couldn’t fault the increased drying performance, the impact on my wallet was surprisingly high, and the dehumidifier’s noise rendered the room uninhabitable for five hours.
In a clothes dryer
Minimal hassle and drying time, a healthy home, but a lighter wallet and environmental niggles.
Drying the load in my $600 Electrolux vented dryer (using a sensor program) took an hour. All the moisture vented outside. I was expecting it to be the most expensive option, the price I paid for convenience, but it used 1.9kWh – the same as running the dehumidifier for five hours. Looking at my dryer’s specifications, it makes sense: it has a 2100W heating element and a small motor to turn the drum, so an hour of sensor-controlled use should use about 2kW.
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TIP: Check whether your electricity plan has cheaper periods, so you can save a few cents per load - some plans offer reduced off-peak rates or even free power for a short period each day. Make sure you're not paying a premium to dry your clothes at peak times.
Supercharge your drying
Just like a heat pump that warms your lounge, heat pump dryers are two to three times more efficient than vented models that use resistance heating. But there’s a catch: they cost two to three times more to buy – expect to pay upwards of $1,500. If you plan to work one hard all year round, it could be worth the investment eventually, but don’t expect to retire early on the savings you make over the machine’s lifetime.

Grey Power Federation
Grey Power Electricity
Advance Care Planing
Editor
Your electricity Concerns
Graeme Peters is an off-board Chair and holds the Energy Portfolio. Graham is always keen to hear from members regarding their electricity concerns. His email address is: energy@greypower.co.nz
Grey Power Electricity - Power Shift Plan
Grey Power Electricity has the Power Shift plan available to customers which offers half-priced weekends, night rates and off-peak power rates during the week.
This plan is a time-of-use plan, which means customers who will benefit the most from it are those who are able to shift the time they use power to off-
peak times to benefit from the cheaper rate.
Find out more:
Web: https://www.greypowerelectricity.co.nz/power-shift-plan
Phone: 0800 473 976
Advance Care Planning
Advance care planning is a process of thinking and talking about your values and goals and what your preferences are for your current and future health care.
We encourage you to write down what is important to you, what concerns you and what your care preferences are in an advance care plan. This will make it much easier for everyone to know what matters to you – especially if you can no longer speak for yourself.
An advance care plan can also cover what sort of funeral you would like, where your important papers are, who you want involved in discussions about your health and any advance directives.
An advance directive is your consent or refusal to treatments which may or may not be offered in the future, if you no longer have capacity to communicate your wishes.
Advance care planning can be approached one step at a time. The important first steps are thinking and talking about advance care planning. After that, it is helpful to write the key points down in a plan so you can share your wishes with others. The plan also needs to be regularly reviewed.
Whenua ki te whenua is a document designed to help New Zealanders think and talk through their advance care plans. It encourages people to look at what is important to them, their values and beliefs and consider practical decisions should they become unwell or unable to speak for themselves. It also provides resources and examples of other people’s approaches to advance care planning.
Digital PDFs available in English and te reo Māori.

